Sounds Good Show with Eugene Chadbourne and if.else

Pretty full and busy and awesome day yesterday. Mary Beth and I got a little bit of a late start doing errands, but I managed to get out to the Nonconnah release show at Two Rivers on time to at least catch the tail end of Owl's Head Mountain's set. Then Nonconnah played and all. Saw a few friends. There was a bit of craziness throughout the day, a few days ago Sounds Good (I guess they're about to change their name to something else) revealed they had double-booked against a recording session upstairs so we couldn't even start til after 10 so we had to move the show back an hour. Then Zachary just got back from SXSW late last night like 2 am or something and had the album release show and finally realized that playing that second show right off coming back in town from a big trip would be too much so he had to back out. So there was a lot of flux around the show. When the sound guy got there he said he hadn't known about it until Thursday. Eugene seemed a little dismayed by things that were going on and was considering just playing first and leaving. But he'd talked to some people there and changed his mind. I managed to squeeze in just a little bit of practice before heading up. Ooh also, (this is a goofy aside but,) I shaved and tried out a new pair of "facial hair scissors" (i.e. ear hair trimmers). Mine had been getting dull and not cutting so well. Anyway, this new pair, in addition to being sharp also have the benefit of being curved! Which makes so much sense and works so much better for cutting around a...you know...EAR! My ears haven't been this "smooth" since I was a wee lad! (Or at least since I started trimming them somewhere over a decade ago?) Anyway, back to the show. I played first after all. People seemed into it. I can never tell when I'm playing. Some things seem to fall flat some things seem to go okay. Going through the space's sound system and it's nice, clean, heavy bass certainly helped matters and did some heavy lifting. I was a little worried that for the more performance-based aspects of my set that I was trying out I wouldn't've gotten enough practice, but I think by the evening of the show, I was feeling okay about it. if.else was next and they were incredible. Philip flew down from New York for this. They did their usual thing of leaving optic-sensor driven oscillators around the room with strobing flashlights to encourage audience participation. Then they played their dual flutes. They ended by moving back to the stage where they played the flutes through mics going into a laptop that was making some noise and adding effects. Really, really, really good performance. Eugene Chadbourne was last. He was really good. This was an acoustic performance, starting with banjo and ending with steel resonator guitar. I picked up a cd: Eugene Chadbourne/Rob Magill/Daniel Masiel: The Banshee (Piano Music by Henry Cowell adapted for three electric guitars + Vincent Price). Anyway, there was a pretty good crowd that turned out. Matt who had the going-away party the day before showed up (he'd asked about doing anything musically and I told him I had a show "tomorrow" at "the old Black Lodge" and he was very drunk so I didn't think he'd remember or commit but he did so that was cool). Also, this younger "kid" (probably not actually a kid, but you know, pretty close) came up after my set and gave me a cd he had burned of his band and he seemed a little shy and nervous and it was quite endearing and also weird that the tables have flipped like that. I could tell Eugene seemed like he might be a little dismayed at first as it seemed so empty (and I was a bit nervous that not many people would show up after all), but people showed up. I mean, makes sense that people don't show up EARLY! And Sounds Good, though it has a bar, it isn't like a bar that people just hang out at outside of shows so it can feel even more empty than other places before things get going. Eugene did a little bit of localization during one song. He had some lines about robbing either a bank or a store or something and made it about the convenience store across the street ("the market on South Cooper") and mentioned my name with a synthesizer and mentioned if.else's "flutes" as a distraction. I mean, I guess it's an elaborated version of the ol' "Hello, _Memphis_!") but it was entertaining! I guess that's about it for now.