Great Big Sea in Seattle 2/11/06 (Part 1)
Feb. 12th, 2006 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperThis being all the pre-show meeting up and hanging out and dinner sorts of things! Part 2 will cover the actual concert and post-show hanging out. Highlights here: musicgeeking with Fred, tales of ambush by utilikilts, sticking me in a smuggling hatch, tales of interviewing the lads of Carbon Leaf, and meeting up with other LJers in the audience--and rumblings of a possible resurrection of our jamming group!
My friend Fred, one of the former Three Good Measures jammers, is living in Portland these days. He had made arrangements with me to come up to our place and crash for the night following the show, and so I was expecting him to arrive between 12 and 1. It didn't quite work out that way; he wound up getting here between 2 and 2:30 thanks to rearranging his expected afternoon schedule to go by the Utilikilts store before meeting up with me, rather than after. Fred informs me that for him, the Utilikilts store is a dangerous place. He went in there and came back out with $300 worth of kilts. I told him it sounded like Dusty Strings for me.
(Imagine if you will, folks, a not terribly tall but very well built ex-Navy guy with a dark buzzcut wearing kilts. Kilts are very flattering to Fred, who has excellent knees. ;) In fact, he wears kilts pretty much all the time now that he's out of the Navy!)
Anyway, before Fred showed up I fidgeted around the house and wound up picking up my guitar. We're talking pretty much biological-level compulsion to futz with GBS ditties, the day of a show. So I wound up trying to transpose the chords for "Trois Navires de Ble" into C, to see how well they sounded without a capo on my instrument. Verdict: not too bad. I found all the chords I wanted, though discovering that one of them winds up as D minor makes life a little entertaining since I'm not very used to playing that chord yet.
More musicgeeking happened once Fred showed up. He rather blew me away with showing me the happy results of his recent guitar classes, both his acquired knowledge of chords and his beginnings of learning fingerwork and tabs! Yay! He also had chords for two GBS ditties I hadn't played with yet, "When I Am King" and "Captain Kidd". So we played with those for a little while, as I broke out my iPod and tried to get a sense of how the strum pattern works on these two songs.
There are few finer ways to blow the afternoon before a GBS show than by playing their music with a friend. ^_^
Round about 4:30, we decided it was time to go get![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mamishka, so off we went.
We got to MurkSouth around five, and the addition of Mimi to our party made rearranging things in Fred's big bright yellow truck a bit of an adventure; he had to stick me in the little sekrit seat behind the two full-sized seats. Mimi said it was like Harry Potter's closet in the Harry Potter books. It really was kind of weird and funny, since I'd never seen that sort of a seat in a truck before. I wound up having to sit sideways with my legs stuck out in order to be comfortable back there. We made jokes about putting me in the smuggling hatch, and I told Fred that if an Imperial cruiser showed up, he'd damned well better not shoot me out the cargo hatch. Hee.
We made it downtown by 5:30, and wound up parking pretty much right between the Moore and Kells--very fortuitously located parking indeed. Fred handled his big truck deftly, though some of the moves he made in that vehicle made Meems and me go "eep!" It's the amusement factor of not being used to being in a vehicle that size; I thought he almost clipped the car next to us as we were parking, but no, we were good. I teased him anyway about making sure we actually would MAKE IT to the show.
On the way to our rendezvous dinner locale, I went past a window full of T-shirts and laughed out loud at one I saw, so I had to point it out to Meems. It read, "I am a bomb technician. If you see me running, try to keep up!" That was very giggle-worthy, and a fun moment in the midst of Mimi remarking in wonder that downtown Seattle right around Pike Place really is rather cool, and she didn't get down there often enough anymore. We made a couple other quick stops as well--Fred in Lark in the Morning, which is one of his personal GBS Meccas just because he bumped into Darrell Power once in there before one of the shows at the Showbox. He just wanted to make sure it was still there. Hee. ;)
We ate at the Pike Place Brewery, one of the many fine features of Pike Place Market. They have most excellent King salmon sandwiches there, as well as raspberry lambic. I didn't have any of the latter this time, thinking that I'd actually get drinks at Kells after the show. Bad call on my part; I did get after-show drinks, but the beer would have been better. Ah well!
Monica and Ren met up with us there, and much fun conversation was had by all as we got caught up on each other's lives since our jamming group fell apart in 2003. Fred and I swapped opinions of various bands who have played as opening acts for GBS--Carbon Leaf, the Young Dubliners, and Seven Nations especially. Fred told me he's been to enough Seven Nations shows now that the band is starting to recognize him. Heh! He also told me--and this part should amuseseimaisin--that for his guitar class, he was given the assignment to go and see a band "with a guitar". He chose Carbon Leaf. And he even got to talk to the various members of the band and tell him he was taking a guitar class and they were his homework, and what did they have to say about guitar? He got various amusing quotes like "guitar will change your life", "don't forget to breathe", and "fuck guitar, learn to play drums".
Meems shared with me her recent adventures on FireflyMUX, and got all of us updated on her current hope to find an art agent and investigate the possibility of illustrating children's books.
And Monica and Ren told us about their recent challenges with Ren working swing swift and Monica being the sole person to look after their daughter in the evenings. Monica also told us that she has now had her last birthday (the 29th) and all subsequent occasions will be the anniversary of her 29th birthday. As I am on the high side of thirty-mumble, I wasn't terribly sympathetic. ;)
Once we had sustained ourselves for the forthcoming evening of Vertical Movement, we hied ourselves over to the Moore!
Getting into the Moore was quick and easy--one of the advantages, I suppose, to having a show with assigned seating, since we could just walk right in. So that was cool. And since we were fairly early (it was only about 7:30 by then), I stopped at the swag table on the general principle that the B'ys do not yet have enough of my dollars. There was an array of new shirts on sale, and I saw one I wanted, but unfortunately they didn't have the one I wanted in my size. Foo. I'll have to perhaps buy it off the swag shop on the site. But I did for giggles get a deck of playing cards with the album art from The Hard and the Easy on it, so the B'ys did at least get some of my dollars that way!
While we were in the line one of the ushers called out a reminder to everyone that there was no opening act, so we should be sure to get into our seats on time. Which was a reminder of this show being New and Different in structure.
So then we went to claim our seats. Meems and I were in row L, right at the end of the row, practically right up against the wall. And there was a big jutting piece of wall right next to Meems' seat, so we had to come in from the opposite end of the row. Once we got comfy, though, we kept chatting with Fred since his seat was only two rows ahead of us and pretty much right in front of us. And! While we were chatting,casirafics spotted me and came over with solcita. Introductions happened, and much to my delight I learned that solcita was not only another local GBS fan, but musically inclined as well. She and casirafics both perked right up when I talked about our jamming group, and expressed general approval of the whole concept of getting together to play Great Big Sea songs and have pie. Because, hey, PIE.
So that was all very fabulous, and if it leads to a resurrection of our jamming group, that will be beyond delightful.
As it wound down to eight o'clock, everybody scampered to the seats, the lights went down, and the show began!
My friend Fred, one of the former Three Good Measures jammers, is living in Portland these days. He had made arrangements with me to come up to our place and crash for the night following the show, and so I was expecting him to arrive between 12 and 1. It didn't quite work out that way; he wound up getting here between 2 and 2:30 thanks to rearranging his expected afternoon schedule to go by the Utilikilts store before meeting up with me, rather than after. Fred informs me that for him, the Utilikilts store is a dangerous place. He went in there and came back out with $300 worth of kilts. I told him it sounded like Dusty Strings for me.
(Imagine if you will, folks, a not terribly tall but very well built ex-Navy guy with a dark buzzcut wearing kilts. Kilts are very flattering to Fred, who has excellent knees. ;) In fact, he wears kilts pretty much all the time now that he's out of the Navy!)
Anyway, before Fred showed up I fidgeted around the house and wound up picking up my guitar. We're talking pretty much biological-level compulsion to futz with GBS ditties, the day of a show. So I wound up trying to transpose the chords for "Trois Navires de Ble" into C, to see how well they sounded without a capo on my instrument. Verdict: not too bad. I found all the chords I wanted, though discovering that one of them winds up as D minor makes life a little entertaining since I'm not very used to playing that chord yet.
More musicgeeking happened once Fred showed up. He rather blew me away with showing me the happy results of his recent guitar classes, both his acquired knowledge of chords and his beginnings of learning fingerwork and tabs! Yay! He also had chords for two GBS ditties I hadn't played with yet, "When I Am King" and "Captain Kidd". So we played with those for a little while, as I broke out my iPod and tried to get a sense of how the strum pattern works on these two songs.
There are few finer ways to blow the afternoon before a GBS show than by playing their music with a friend. ^_^
Round about 4:30, we decided it was time to go get
mamishka, so off we went.We got to MurkSouth around five, and the addition of Mimi to our party made rearranging things in Fred's big bright yellow truck a bit of an adventure; he had to stick me in the little sekrit seat behind the two full-sized seats. Mimi said it was like Harry Potter's closet in the Harry Potter books. It really was kind of weird and funny, since I'd never seen that sort of a seat in a truck before. I wound up having to sit sideways with my legs stuck out in order to be comfortable back there. We made jokes about putting me in the smuggling hatch, and I told Fred that if an Imperial cruiser showed up, he'd damned well better not shoot me out the cargo hatch. Hee.
We made it downtown by 5:30, and wound up parking pretty much right between the Moore and Kells--very fortuitously located parking indeed. Fred handled his big truck deftly, though some of the moves he made in that vehicle made Meems and me go "eep!" It's the amusement factor of not being used to being in a vehicle that size; I thought he almost clipped the car next to us as we were parking, but no, we were good. I teased him anyway about making sure we actually would MAKE IT to the show.
On the way to our rendezvous dinner locale, I went past a window full of T-shirts and laughed out loud at one I saw, so I had to point it out to Meems. It read, "I am a bomb technician. If you see me running, try to keep up!" That was very giggle-worthy, and a fun moment in the midst of Mimi remarking in wonder that downtown Seattle right around Pike Place really is rather cool, and she didn't get down there often enough anymore. We made a couple other quick stops as well--Fred in Lark in the Morning, which is one of his personal GBS Meccas just because he bumped into Darrell Power once in there before one of the shows at the Showbox. He just wanted to make sure it was still there. Hee. ;)
We ate at the Pike Place Brewery, one of the many fine features of Pike Place Market. They have most excellent King salmon sandwiches there, as well as raspberry lambic. I didn't have any of the latter this time, thinking that I'd actually get drinks at Kells after the show. Bad call on my part; I did get after-show drinks, but the beer would have been better. Ah well!
Monica and Ren met up with us there, and much fun conversation was had by all as we got caught up on each other's lives since our jamming group fell apart in 2003. Fred and I swapped opinions of various bands who have played as opening acts for GBS--Carbon Leaf, the Young Dubliners, and Seven Nations especially. Fred told me he's been to enough Seven Nations shows now that the band is starting to recognize him. Heh! He also told me--and this part should amuse
seimaisin--that for his guitar class, he was given the assignment to go and see a band "with a guitar". He chose Carbon Leaf. And he even got to talk to the various members of the band and tell him he was taking a guitar class and they were his homework, and what did they have to say about guitar? He got various amusing quotes like "guitar will change your life", "don't forget to breathe", and "fuck guitar, learn to play drums".Meems shared with me her recent adventures on FireflyMUX, and got all of us updated on her current hope to find an art agent and investigate the possibility of illustrating children's books.
And Monica and Ren told us about their recent challenges with Ren working swing swift and Monica being the sole person to look after their daughter in the evenings. Monica also told us that she has now had her last birthday (the 29th) and all subsequent occasions will be the anniversary of her 29th birthday. As I am on the high side of thirty-mumble, I wasn't terribly sympathetic. ;)
Once we had sustained ourselves for the forthcoming evening of Vertical Movement, we hied ourselves over to the Moore!
Getting into the Moore was quick and easy--one of the advantages, I suppose, to having a show with assigned seating, since we could just walk right in. So that was cool. And since we were fairly early (it was only about 7:30 by then), I stopped at the swag table on the general principle that the B'ys do not yet have enough of my dollars. There was an array of new shirts on sale, and I saw one I wanted, but unfortunately they didn't have the one I wanted in my size. Foo. I'll have to perhaps buy it off the swag shop on the site. But I did for giggles get a deck of playing cards with the album art from The Hard and the Easy on it, so the B'ys did at least get some of my dollars that way!
While we were in the line one of the ushers called out a reminder to everyone that there was no opening act, so we should be sure to get into our seats on time. Which was a reminder of this show being New and Different in structure.
So then we went to claim our seats. Meems and I were in row L, right at the end of the row, practically right up against the wall. And there was a big jutting piece of wall right next to Meems' seat, so we had to come in from the opposite end of the row. Once we got comfy, though, we kept chatting with Fred since his seat was only two rows ahead of us and pretty much right in front of us. And! While we were chatting,
casirafics spotted me and came over with solcita. Introductions happened, and much to my delight I learned that solcita was not only another local GBS fan, but musically inclined as well. She and casirafics both perked right up when I talked about our jamming group, and expressed general approval of the whole concept of getting together to play Great Big Sea songs and have pie. Because, hey, PIE.So that was all very fabulous, and if it leads to a resurrection of our jamming group, that will be beyond delightful.
As it wound down to eight o'clock, everybody scampered to the seats, the lights went down, and the show began!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-12 08:10 pm (UTC)Ahahahaha. I do love Scott. :)
YAY SHOW! :D
no subject
Date: 2006-02-13 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-12 10:45 pm (UTC)And really, all the pouting and sulking is because I have to go have dinner with my in-laws and that is so my idea of fun on a Sunday evening :)
no subject
Date: 2006-02-12 11:00 pm (UTC)Commiserations about the dinner. ;)
no subject
Date: 2006-02-12 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-13 01:46 am (UTC)(We decided at one point that our first album, specifically because of Weebl and Bob, would have to be called Pie. ;) )
no subject
Date: 2006-02-16 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-16 10:53 pm (UTC)