Charlottesville, Virginia

Charlottesville is a really historic town with a lot of statues. We saw General Lee when we were driving in. The place where we perform is in a pedestrian area of the city with lots of cafe’s and pubs. Dave Matthew’s apparently lived there so everyone you meet wants to tell you their connection to him. It’s another one of those long load-ins. We need to block cars and walk everything down a lane and into the Gravity Lounge. We had one guy blocked in who wanted to leave but instead of yelling at us he helped us carry an armload of gear. It’s funny how a positive experience like that can form such a favourable impression of a town when one looks back. We had a little time before soundcheck so i went for a little walk in the rain. One guy came up to me and told me i looked like Michael Bolton and started shaking my hand. We all have our celebrity twins but I’m not sure that Michael Bolton is mine. I thought he might have wanted money but he just seemed to want to talk. He told me he was “this close” from a career in the National Football League and showed me a scar on his knee from an apparent football injury. And that a family in Charlottesville had taken him under their wing and helped get him out of the “ghetto” and for that he will forever be grateful. He now works at the hospital. He was wearing a hospital uniform and an I.D. tag. Although i guess he could have been an escaped patient. The last thing he showed me was a crumpled up picture of a woman with the date 1996 on it. He said that she was coming in to see him tonight from Memphis. Who knows? It all sounded plausible to me. Charlottesville just seems like a friendly town. People on the street look up and smile and say hi. Not everyone, but more than other places I’ve been. The show was at seven o’clock. There was only a handful of people there to start but throughout the set it slowly started to develop into a pretty healthy crowd. Our apologies to those who thought show time was later. The reason we played so early is that there was another show set to start at ten. A lot of places that we play like to have two separate shows a night to maximize the utility of their venue. We packed up and Tyler and I stayed behind to watch the next band and hang out with Mike from the band Eddie From Ohio. We had played with them in Florida in 2004.  The Little Ones from Los Angeles are a young band who seem to be on the way up. It was a free show sponsored by a radio station. People showed up in droves. A good looking young crowd. They seemed to like the music but nobody really went wild for it. It was more of a sedate indie rock style show even though the music was pretty rockin’. To me they sounded a little too much like Death Cab for Cutie. But i like Death Cab for Cutie so we stuck around for the whole show. The mix was perfect and the band sounded great. Maybe you’ll see them on Conan O’Brian one day.  Mike lives close by so we stayed at his place. We hung out and watched Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report and after more than a few wet goodnight licks from his Rhodesian Ridgeback we called it a night.