post-6/4 show decap

So how did last night's show go?  The first thing you should know is warts.

I have warts on my foot. Check that. I actually have a wart colony on my right foot. You have to love the name; it makes it sound like it would be a swell place for a tropical vacation. Instead of being a nice white sand beach with cabanas, though, it instead looks kinda gross, actually. It hasn't really bothered me otherwise, so I've been dealing with it. My wife, however, found it a bit disturbing whenever she tried to gaze lovingly at my sole, so I decided to go to the podiatrist and get it taken care of.

Yesterday morning, I had a morning foot appointment. The doc removed some dead skin and then applied some of the super-duper strength foot drugs. They did this before, and that time, the medicine mildly stung. This time, it made the whole colony blister up, swell, throb, and go owie. If I wasn't so manly, I might've whimpered.

This made the day challenging. Walking sucked. Standing sucked. Doing anything which put pressure on the foot sucked. Most of all, carrying all my gear? Up stairs? That also was not pleasant. So the whole day, I was feeling a little weird. Add to that a last-minute show. Very weird. Plus, as we learned from the whole canned cider incident, weird vibes were in the air anyway.

My set went well in spite of having a mixed vibe. I was the first person of the evening who wasn't playing his acoustic guitar through an electric guitar amp...so I sounded better than the others (who were younger than I and less experienced at this kind of thing). I was gonna use my new pitch shift pedal, but the electrical plugs in the bar are bad, and my adapter kept falling out. Plus my cool mood lighting wasn't working for some reason...which I guess one should expect out of a $5 clamp light kept in the trunk of one's car. I also managed to spill my drink while setting up...not that it was the first drink ever spilled on that stage, but still.

I am, however, a professional at all this (in spite of not getting paid), so these were all easy to overcome. Plus I think I know how to properly approach a solo performance. Too many people just bust out their three chord songs one after another, with no real break from the angst. I, however, learned a very important lesson from my friend Micah Schnabel: a solo performance is still a show, and an acoustic guitar need not lead to any less intense of a set. So I have my banter, which, thanks to my teaching experience and my time doing comedy on the radio, I do pretty well. I pace my sets well. I play strange covers (last night, it was Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball"). I play my kazoo (which definitely adds to my performance's element of unexpectedness and memorable). I would add to this by moving around on stage like a low-rent Angus Young, but the sweat already drips directly into my eyeballs.

I was well-received. I got applause, "woo"s, whistles, and immediate feedback (my song "How to be Cynical," off my album Skeleton Coast, apparently "rocks"). Overall, everyone seemed to like me (save the headliner Gareth Asher, who never came out of his van to see any of the openers...unbelievably rude and unprofessional, but there you go). 

I did not sell any albums, though. I pointed a few people to my Bandcamp page, and I hope they get my stuff. It would be nice if they paid for it; although I know cds are going extinct, it would still be nice to make enough money off album one to pay for album two's pressing. But in spite of the current lack of monetary support, I am making connections. It is, after all, a long game.

The one bad thing, though? When I got home? My feet were absolutely killing me. Oh well. I guess a little throbbing wart colony blister pain is worth it. It is, after all, rock and roll.