Homegrown in Delaware

Eric Slick on tour May, 2006

Being off of the Adrian Belew tour for a few weeks is like culture shock. I realize that I don't do much during the daytime, and that usually involves sitting down with my mom and watching The View and Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which, to be honest, makes us both crazy but it's more like background noise and The View we sit around and trash; Millionaire, sadly, we play along with. Sometimes. When we're desperate. Television is a serious addiction! It should be a surprise to nobody that while I should have been decompressing and sleeping for two weeks I've been practicing, and I even managed to play a show in Newark, Delaware last night. I wish I had somebody taking pictures so when I reach a new level of insane somebody can say, "Here's the ocular proof."

I took the R2 train to Wilmington around 5:00 yesterday after what I felt was a productive afternoon with my friend Dom Angeletta, and when I say productive I mean eating quesadillas and recording Tom Waits knockoff songs in his new apartment. Not one empty seat on board. I stood for the entire train ride clutching a box of my mom's newly published books -- which inadvertently went to her old office and she didn't want to go there -- and my understandably heavy bookbag. Eric Svalgard, keyboardist for Project/Object and music director of the Wilmington School of Rock, picked me up at the station and we proceeded to load up all of our gear. I knew that we were going to do a "jazz gig" last night, but in musician lingo that could honestly mean anything. I had to learn a few songs, like Billy Cobham's "Crosswind" and Chick Corea's "500 Miles High" (any fusion snobs in the house?). Before I got in the car I jokingly asked, "Hey, do you have those songs on your iPod?" Eric smirked and said, "This is going to be a interesting night!"

Homegrown is a neat hippie cafe smack dab in the middle of Newark's Main Street. There seemed to be a lot of left over college students, so I didn't feel completely out of place. Right before we went on I met my fellow musicians Chris Gordon (owner of the Grand School of Music, a guitar shredder, and a member of the touring version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and the bass player Mr. Cole who has children at the School of Rock. Another entirely School of Rock related concert, and they were both fine players! Our setlists consisted of completely improvised material, jazz standards, the previously mentioned fusion numbers, and somehow at the end of the night we became a classic rock cover band. That's right, we even did "LA Woman" and "Smoke on the Water" complete with theatrical stick twirls and other assorted 80's moves. The dinner crowd seemed to enjoy even when we were supposedly too loud. A good time was had by all.

Have I mentioned I can't wait for the Belew tour to kick off again this Tuesday night at B.B. King's in New York City?

But what I really can't wait for is to play at the World Cafe Live in Philadelphia on August 14. I hope to meet a lot of you there.