Chicago

Ok. I’m going to resurrect some of the features of the last west coast tour. Observed animals (possibly wishful thinking), quotes from the van, and a new one. I will be putting a star in a reasonably priced car*. We have a favorite game whereupon we change the name of primarily forgotten celebrities. I’ll do this until we run out.

Animals: Swan – Only one and no hummingbird.

Quotes: Lisa, “I was writing “number” on my phone an “numbat” came up in the autocorrect. That’s not a real word is it?”

A legitimate question in that Chuck has oft told the story of a fellow classmate in his natural resources class who when asked on a test what another word for leaf litter** was, answered “numbat,” and furthermore wrote that a skunk was called a scunch.  Ha! But as it turns out there is a numbat and it is a marsupial indigenous to Australia.

 Here are some numbat fun facts:

1.     Also known as the Banded Anteater or Walpurti.

2.     Unlike most marsupials they are active during the day, reflecting the behavior patterns of termites, (white ants) their primary food source.

3.     They consume on average 20,000 termites a day.

4.     The female does not have a pouch. The newborns cling to her teats and are protected by her long belly hair.

5.     In clinical studies there was no significant increase in fecundity when they were given standardized tests covering basic STEM subjects. In fact they showed a 17% increase in time spent in their burrow listening to Queen with the lights off.

SIARPC: Queasy Jefferson

We were playing a club called the Red Line Tap, which was located within Anna Karenina distance of the Red line, and yet according to my friends it was so far away that it could barely be described as actually being in Chicago. My friends, dear though they may be, will not likely make it long enough to form a band of hearty, hard-scrabble survivors in the coming apocalypse.

It was a gorgeous evening that required us to drive something like 10 miles along Lakeshore Drive. Way up there in beautiful sites this country has to offer has to be the Chicago skyline to your left, the lake to your right, the early evening spreading its honeyed light all over the seemingly young and energetic citizens jogging and frolicking about their world-class museums in what could only be considered a smug and frankly annoying manner.

I liked the club and neighborhood a lot. We pulled into an alley behind the club that smelled like lettuce and loaded-in through this odd semi-covered hallway that contained the detritus of all the businesses on that block. The reason I provide this detail is that out of one of the back doors would come the occasional young opera singer in training. They would pace nervously around the alley singing (operatically natch) things like, “I like to sing I like to sing I like to a lot!” up and down the chromatic scale. I was pleased of course as the closer real life can get to that of a musical the better I say.

We’ve really struggles to find a home in Chicago. (not a sweet home – you know how I feel about post-war blues) We haven’t played any club more than once and I don’t know if the Red Line will be it or not but we actually sold it out. I’m not saying anyone who wanted to see us couldn’t, but they told us that we were at capacity. You know, which is pretty cool. We played pretty well for an opening night. I’m really enjoying getting to play the new songs. I hope people are enjoying hearing them because it’s what we’re playing. It’s interesting, to me at least, in that it feels like there’s more room to move inside these songs than the ones we’ve done before. Not necessarily room to play more notes but a spaciousness that feels bigger somehow. We’re a different band than we were before I think. That’s a good thing.

Tomorrow is Minneapolis

*British Top Gear

**mulch