piece. friday. april 26, 2024. 10pm.

once a long time ago i went to this kinda yuppie pizza joint/brew pub. i had no idea where i was, i didn't really know many of the people i was with very well (excepting, of course, my girlfriend at the time, who had dragged me up there in her late 70's volkswagon station wagon), and frankly, i wasn't terribly hungry.

now, all of a sudden, i find myself taking the stage at said yuppie pizza joint/brew pub (which, appropriately enough, is called "piece"), and things are starting to look a little bit familiar.

well. that's certainly quite enough of that digression.

my sister Heather, who had never seen her dear brother perform before, finally got the chance. she and her friend Daks were in town for an ultimate frisbee tournament, and while they were here, they got the real chicago experience: the all-you-can-eat-indian-buffet glory that is the star of india, rolling in the grass at the promontory point, and sleeping on my floor.

anywho... this show was a great time for all, but it was not without incident. written in the sand, of course, played a spectacular set. this is especially amazing because matt roan (who will, given the chance kick your ass) had just gotten into a bicycle accident, and rocked the drums as hard as ever through stiches and scabs on his head and hands.

we were still extremely paranoid about getting broken into, so we were checking on Neckface every 10 minutes, but thank goodness, we passed the night without losing more than a pint of sweat on stage.

the luck of the guitar gods was not with us that night. my new silver guitar was having some tuning issues, and pretty early in the set, Robert broke a string, and ended up borrowing Chris from WITS's guitar to save the time changing a string. this, however, didn't help too much, because one of the strings on Chris's guitar kept coming out of the groove in the nut, causing no end of trouble. hmmm... i guess if you don't know anything about guitar anatomy, that sounds really dirty. i promise, it's not. in fact, it's pretty much a giant pain in the ass when it happens in the middle of the set. and because we were using WITS's PA system, which wasn't terribly powerful, we had a hell of a time getting the vocals loud enough. whatever - some nights it's better if people can't really hear me sing.

my sister had somehow managed to procure herself a pretty sweet VIP table by telling the person at the door that she was "the sister of one of the guys in the band". i don't think i've ever gotten such treatment for actually being one of the guys in the band. anyway, to further make her feel special at the show, i mentioned her presence to the crowd, introducing her as "dorkus" (which is generally how i refer to her). she doesn't mind this most of the time, but wasn't too happy about me doing it in public. i don't think she realized what i said at first, because she waved back with a big smile on her face, happy for the attention from her "rock star brother". then afterwards, when she was confronting me about embarassing her in front of everyone, i told her that i was under orders from our dad to call her dorkus, and somehow she believed me, and it was him that got the earful instead of me. ha.

oh, and the always amazing Monica was there, making sure we were properly cheered. and i guess i alluded to this earlier in rather vague fashion, but piece makes a pretty damn nice slice of pizza.

in any case, it was a weird night. somehow it's enough just to say that.