Downtown Saturday Night

This past Saturday night was pretty solid as far as rocking people goes. The mayhem started on the early side when my unstoppable rock band Valley Lodge and I jumped into a taxi and took it from our underground rock hideout in Chelsea to Juvie Hall in the Village, where we were set to play a couple hits on Sara Schaefer's popular chat/variety type show "Sara Schaefer Is Obsessed With You." The show was sold out, which was especially good for us since we prefer to rock as many people as possible at all times. Given the small space and all though, we had to rock in a "stripped down" fashion so we didn't blow people's asses out too much. John and Phil played out of little amps and I played acoustic guitar. Griff- who plays drums for Heather and was filling in for Rob, who was away doing some sort of secret agent type stuff- played a mini-drum set that doesn't pummel as much as a normal set usually does when played by someone with cold balls of steel. All four of us sat down in chairs too in an effort to add to the stripped-down type vibe we were kicking out. I even crossed my legs a couple times during the performance. You can get away with that sort of thing when you are a badass. I wouldn't recommend it if you are just some kind of totally normal person who doesn't make a habit of kicking ass at all times though.

Things got a little crazy right before our performance on Sara Schaefer's show when I accidentally broke an empty Teany bottle, the delicious tea made by the popular musician Moby in his spare time. The bottle made a big popping sound when it exploded on the ground and I think most of the people in the crowd thought it was some sort of crazy pyrotechnics we had planned out beforehand, but really it was just me breaking a bottle on the floor by accident. Pyrotechnics or not though, it sort of added to the sense of unbridled chaos we like to get going at our performances.

We ended up playing two hits- "If It Takes All Night" and "All Of My Loving" on Sara's show. I think my microphone might not have been or something while we played, but it seemed like people generally had their minds blown by our awesome yet sensitive rock power. Not a dry seat in the house.

After playing on Sara's show, Phi, Griff, and I headed back to our Chelsea rock hideout to grab the ammo for the Heather show later that night at Arlene's Grocery. It's always fun playing more than one rock show in a night, kind of like playing a double-header in baseball or something only with a lot more potential for hardcore boning. No, not really, but it's still fun rocking as much as possible whenever possible.

Our show at Arlene's was pretty rocking. The crowd was decent but not overwhelmingly large, which is to say that I wish like 40 more people showed up. On the namedropping front, my new close personal friend Kyle Gass from Tenacious D and Trainwreck came to the show and rocked out, so that was cool.

Since this was my first real show with Heather, I was slightly nervous because I wanted to make sure I rocked balls and shredded effectively and all that sort of thing. My shirt was a little too tight, but other than that things seemed to go pretty well. I only wish they didn't make me carry all of the equipment afterwards. They tell me it's character-building and for my own good and all that, but I think there might be some sort of hazing going on. No, just kidding- those guys know better than to mess with a badass.

Dave Hill