Day 9

Guys I'm so sorry! Internet has been so hard to find, oddly enough. In an age where Dave, our cellist, has google maps on his freakin cell phone, no coffee shop in Baltimore had internet. ridiculous. Here are entries as I wrote them from the past few days.

Day 9 - ATM House

hey hey.

So today we just finished playing a show at the ATM house. No, it is not a place that has anything to with money, or retrieving money. But Don't ask me what it means...please.

Yeah, that house was crazy. I should've taken more pictures around there. But before I explain that, lets rewind to this morning. Alex, Adam, and I got up early and the left what I'll call the quintessential male college apartment. BUT they had extra space and were wiling to let us invade the entire downstairs of their apartment, so that was nice. Anyway, we left around 10am to get to the Philadelphia International Airport to pick up Chris Schreck, one of the, we'll say, vintage Trapdoor Band members who'll be joining us for the next few days. He plays a mean guitar. Even if you don't know him, you may recognize his face from the back of the self-titled Trapdoor Band album. Go take a look.

Anyway, we stopped at Marshal's Diner. Alex has this love for diners. This sweet old lady was our waitress. And once another elderly couple left, it was just the waitress, the cook, us, and the ladies from the View--on TV of course. We had an interesting conversation about that show, and I wondered what weight it carries with the women who watch it daily. Simulacra. That's what I think.

After a much needed breakfast, we continued to Philadelphia. We picked up Chris, dropped off our things at the ATM house and then went for a stroll through the University of Pennsylvania campus. It's kinda cool down there. All the campus buildings look like a little village. And the squirrels there are so cool! (sidenote: Everyone who knows me well knows I have a strange, unexplainable love for squirrles. I laugh all the way to class just watching them run by. IT's weird I know). Anyway, they were fat! and grey. No one cares about that except me and my mom. we tried to get into the U. Penn library, but you had to swipe a campus ID card to get it. lame. They won't even share their books. Thanks U. Penn.

On the walk back, it started snowing pretty hard. Snowflakes are fun till they land in your eyes continually. Philly gets cold! A biting cold. The kind that makes your hands hurt.

Back at the ATM house, we hung around for awhile before Balmorhea played. Adam got some cool pics and hopefully blogger will let me show you them. We opened with "Soft Rustling" and closed with the new song, newly named Cabbage Town. We forgot the melodica, buuut we're cool so it worked out anyway. Rob and Mike sang over my solo violin thing and it was golden.

Trapdoor played a pretty fun set. We threw in the favs: a stomp-filled version of Earth Mouth, Guaranteed Winter Time Blues, All is Full of Love Cover, Elizabeth. There were more. I don't remember. But people were pretty into it. This one girl who lived there kept asking for more, so we did "Ship of Death," and called it a night.

Then Balmorhea and Trapdoor said our goodbyes went our separate ways for the evening.

Noteable interesting moments of the night:

-the basement--so dusty, you could taste it
-the cat, so cute and cuddly one second, barfing under the coffee table the next
-no one from the ATM house cleaning that up
-during the show, the crowd strangely and suddenly yelling "FACT, West Philly!!! COUNTER FACT, West Philly!!"