Week's show reviews plus ANECDOTE 1

So Many Dynamos played 3 shows this week. Here's how they went:

Friday, Jan 26 @ Billiken Club, St. Louis, MO
Awesome, awesome, awesome. It was one of the best lineups we could ever play. Say Panther opened. I've been recording them in my basement studio and have fallen deeply in love with their songs, so it was great to see them played live again. Maps and Atlases played second, and they're probably the best band in the universe. We headlined, which is quite a difficult task to do after Maps, but it went well. We're in that awkward stage where our record isn't out yet but we're playing new songs from it, and luckily the crowd seemed interested enough for it to not be weird. Everytime we go a while without playing a show in St. Louis, i assume everybody forgot about us and doesn't care anymore and, thankfully, this show proved me wrong.

Thursday, Jan 31 @ Stagger Inn, Edwardsville, IL
Our dirty secret is that we don't live in St. Louis, we live in Edwardsville, IL. It's a college town 30 minutes from downtown STL where the cost of living is cheap and we've been living there for 3 years. For some reason, this was the first time we've ever played in Edwardsville. We played at Stagger Inn, the bar Griffin works at, with the Red Light Runners, who are fellow employees there. Our dear friend Steven Colbert (pronounced Coal-burt) played inbetween bands. There was a storm all day and all night which detracted from the draw, but we made the best of it and Steven certainly enjoyed the free Stag pitchers.

Friday, Feb 1 @ Black Sheep Cafe, Springfield, IL
It's been about 2 years since we played Springfield, and Red Light Runners invited us to come up with them for this show. We didn't really have any reason not to! We played with 3 ska bands. Ska is alive and well in Springfield, IL. Mustard Plug played there earlier in the week! The show was great, no complaints.

I've decided, in an attempt to add interest to this blog when we're not active, to post stories about things that happened to us a while ago that are still entertaining. Here goes nothing:

Anecdote 1: The Most Uncomfortable Stay

Last year, we spent 2 months on tour with HORSE the band. They are great friends of ours, and I think they brought us on tour as sort of a science project; they like our band, so will people that like their band like us as well? It's almost musical Reaganomics.

The first show was in Dallas, TX. We were really nervous, and we fumbled through our set with minimal heckling and even more minimal responses from us. By the end of the tour we were experts at verbally destroying hecklers, but we were still new then.

When the show was over, we realized that we had no place to stay. The crowd had dwindled and we had lost any chance to publically announce our current homelessness via a sign or stage announcement. We went around to everybody that was still around and asked them if we could stay with them.

16 year old kid: "You can totally stay with me!"
Us: "Are you sure? Do you live with your folks?"
16 YOK: "Yeah, i live with my dad."
Us: "Are you sure it's cool with him"
16 YOK: "Oh, yeah, it's totally fine"
Us: "Oh, thank you, thank you"
16 YOK: "Oh man, you're totally going to make my spring break"

We followed the kid to his house, got our sleeping bags out and walked up to the house. The house was dark when we walked in, and the first thing I saw when I peered in was the mounted head of a lion. His dad is a hunter, and had gone on trips to other countries and illegally hunted some endagered species. He had a prize lion and a giant zebra rug hanging from the wall. Yes, a fucking zebra, head included. He also had the Texas state record for longest hunted alligator, which was stuffed and hanging out like a tacky coffee table. We ate wild boar sausage, which was actually the highlight of the evening. It's pretty great with some ketchup on it.

The house was gigantic, but we were quarantined to one hang out room which contained a pool table, a drum set, a couch, a TV, and a mounted lion head. All night the kid was very hesitant to let us out of the room and kept telling us to be quiet. It was a pretty small room, and I personally slept inbetween the couch and the drum set with my legs under the floor tom. They left the TV on all night, Jay Leno and then infomercials.

We were woken up at 8:45. "Dude, you guys have to leave. My dad is going to be up soon". It all made sense. We have a rule of never staying anywhere we're not wanted and we'd unintentionally broken it. The kid lied to us, he had never told his dad that we'd be over. We asked if we could take a shower. No. We asked if we could use the computer to get directions to our show. No. We couldn't leave the room except to get out of his house, right now.

We were groggy and sore from an unsatisfying night of sleep, and the kid stood there with arms crossed, tough guy style, watching us roll up our sleeping bags. We got into the van and drove off, shocked at this kid's complete lack of tact, and drowned our sorrows at the Cracker Barrel.