I took Friday Aug. 13th and Saturday Aug. 14th off from work and went with Chance Jones to play a show in Columbus, OH Friday night and Detroit on Saturday night. Columbus was a small place called The Summit. The Detroit show was at the Belmont in Hamtramck. Both shows were pretty low in attendance. Very low. However we did have a great time over the weekend in general.
After we got back into town from that, we had a show at Frederick Meijer Gardens and it was a great follow-up to the low attendance shows. There was probably somewhere between 1,400-1,800 people in attendance at the gardens. There were tons of kids dancing and screaming like crazy in the front and the crowd in general was fantastic. Possibly the most fulfilling show I have ever played with any group I've played in over the years.
Next up was the show in Grand Haven for the Indie Rock Invitational. This was essentially a "battle of the bands" type thing with the winner from both nights playing at the end of the whole shindig Saturday night. We weren't able to make it out Saturday night, so we would not be competing, just playing. Got to see most of Lazy Genius' set as soon as I got there which was great. We had a perfect break in the rain and a good turnout provided for a great show. Between this and the Frederick Meijer Gardens show, we were able to reach fresh sets of ears that might not have otherwise been found. Very cool. What was even cooler was that AB! & Coconut Brown were playing a show about 2 blocks down the street from the Indie Rock Invitational, so we finished up watching Chip Fundy(From G.R.) and headed down to catch the last half of a killer set(as usual) by the A.B! crew at the Rosebud.
At the Grand Haven show I finally acquired an A.B! disc. I've been wanting one for some time now and was able to catch them with one for sale. On top of that, I also got the new Apostles album off of amazon.com a few days ago. It sounds great. Great music, great mixing all the way around. The physical copies should be coming out in the next week or so and I'll be picking up that as well. Two desperately needed albums in one week?! Righteous!
Next up on Saturday was our friend Ben's wedding. Ben is the drummer for the Total Blam Blams and we played one song outside before the rain really started to come down. After a little bit we moved the equipment from under the tent to the lodge building. Once we got everything dried off and set back up, we played the rest of the set and had a fantastic time.
I went to the beach with Jessie on Sunday for some much needed relaxation. I needed it after that marathon week plus stint. Doesn't help the exhaustion factor with a a 45 hour work week/band practices on top of it.
Expunk recorded an interlude for the next album yesterday. Very ambient piece that will make for a nice transition. Also booked a show with Lazy Genius on September 10th which I'm really excited for. We already had a show booked for September 16th so we're trying to keep busy.
Heavier Than Air Flying Machines has practice tonight and hopefully we will be working on some new material to get an album worked up. Life is good in G.R.
