Cafe de Kirk, load-in and setup. Note available floor space on my side of the stage (which would be to your far left!!)
Wednesday,
2/12/14 – Boxtel, Café De Kerk – De Kerk means “The Church” and this tiny club
is decorated with rescued and recycled bits of an old church that was being
torn down – an old stone archway separating the bar from the performance room,
stained glass windows, old beautiful woodworking, bits of the wrought-iron
gates…lots of other items loaded this joint with real funky charm. Reminded my
of Ann Arbor’s old Mr. Flood’s Party back in my yoof. The folks who promoted
and set up the show had done a fund-raiser amongst the fans so that they could
afford to have us come and play, which was very cool. Setting up in a space
like that was a challenge…I sized down my amp to one cabinet again and squeezed
out enough space so that I had a place to stand on stage, but it was a tight
fit!
Writeup in the local newspaper.
Although the place was about the size of my
living room, it was a fantastic place to play and a fabulous time…wonderful
people! I’m sure that they packed in what had to be well over the legal limit
of patrons, it was absolutely jammed. If I wanted a drink, people would shout
across to the bar and a beer would get passed through the crowd…I’m really glad
there wasn’t any emergency, my only game plan in that scenario would have been
to bust through a stained glass window, which I would have hated to do!! We had
a great show, and at the final encore Mike’s amp (a Fender Deluxe Reverb
borrowed from the promoter) literally burned up its transformer, giving a
little smoke and excitement to the end of the night. Fortunately, the owner of the
amp was not at all upset…perhaps having the Boogieman From Hell blow up your
amp is a good enough story to justify the repair bill. He really loved
Mike…everybody there did! It was a real Hooray Michael Katon fiesta!
Johnny Bee and pal out for a ride.
I
do a lot of reading on this bus…and in hotel rooms when I get the time. And
yeah, I bought a tablet thinking I’d do the e-book thing, but when it came down
to it I did what I always do…loaded my bag with paperbacks. I just really LIKE
physical books, and they don’t run down my batteries either. Right now I’m
reading Arms Of Nemesis by Steven Saylor, a good book set in Rome just before
the reign of Julius Caesar. The institution of slavery is a big part of the
story, and I’ve had some very interesting conversations with Henny Houben, who
is a serious student of history, about this, since he’s taking an online course
where he’s writing a paper about American slavery and Jefferson’s take on it.
He had a document by Jefferson discussing this, and it was a fascinating read.
Some very strange and conflicted ideas involved there, to be able to
rationalize enslaving another person. But I digress…I have a fear of running
out of books on the road. True, I know I can download something in a pinch, but
still. I need the actual books. So I wound up buying another on the ferry back
to the Continent…Dissolution by C.J. Sansom, which is set during Henry VIII’s
dissolution of the monasteries of the Catholic church. A pretty dark period
too, but it looks to be well-written. And that brings my total of unread books
to 5, which should hold me through the tour!!
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