Two New Hits

One thing that I can proudly say is that every time we've played Nashville, we've brought our A game. Saturday night at fooBAR was certainly a new contender for our best show (as was our last show in Nashville at Springwater). They give 10% of drink sales to the band, so we were surprised to make $35 on the 25 or so people there. The sound there was okay; they had a monitor and ran the vocals through their stereo speakers placed all over the bar. The stage was so small that the drums took up most of it. Daniel set up all of his stuff between the stage and bar of the door, able to smile and wave good-bye to every person who came in or left.

The crowd consisted of five our friends. Aleesha was intently watching and taking pictures of us from up close, while three of my friends played darts in the back until the very end. Daniel, who will record us in the next couple of months, came and watched the second half of our set. The rest were new to us, but I don't think they were there to listen to a band (other than perhaps a cover band). They were there to drink (which might explain why we made what we did). Any possilby interested hipsters and many of our friends were off trying to see Pavement play a couple of miles away. The crowd seemed pretty indifferent, enjoying what they heard, perking up and cheering a little more when they heard us play "Eli Whitney." It was nights like that that I was glad we had "Man Vs. Cheetah." In Murfreesboro, where the people have seen us have mostly seend us before, it's this albatross around our neck that they'll yell for and act like they're only there to wait for that song and that's it (even if that's not the case, that's how it seems). When we're playing for less familiar faces, "Man Vs. Cheetah" is the ace in the hole, the little concealed hand that I could smirk about because these people had no idea of the rock'n'roll freight train that was about to hit them and make them drag their attention to our band.

We finally debuted "Bob Dole." Daniel said, "This should be interesting," as Kelly was getting ready to start. This made Kelly start to waffle and ask if we should play it. I would've been ultra super pissed if we hadn't. I expressed this, but the older man with a cowboy hat sitting five feet from us convinced them by saying, "No guts, no glory." True enough, we played it, and it was our best performance of it so far. Stopping to laugh in the middle of it sure got everyone's attention. There's the scripted laugh when Kelly sings, "The crowed laughed and cheered," but I couldn't help but laugh and laugh during the bridge at the way Kelly sings it. There've been a number of times when the words will visibily crack me up on stage, but this was the first time in a while that had happened.

The greater success was "Let's Go to War," which has come together pretty quickly but still needs some tweaking on its arranging here and there. We had just finished Man Vs. Cheetah, and Kelly interestingly set it as the new closer. It totally paid off, and it helped us keep the rock up for another song like "Helter Skelter" used to, only this song is like 100x cooler! I was complimented on that one by my friends after the show and still later. I can't wait to burn that one down at Liquid Smoke this weekend.