The Musical Performance Portion

I will attempt to fill you in on 3 or 4 things that have happened since my slacking. First up, Canoes playing at Madison Theater and me playing solo for the first time in over a year.
Well that pretty much sums it up. We played the “New Noise Band Showcase” on July 21 with the likes of The Yugos, Archer’s Paradox, and Public. There were 8 bands total, which is definitely too many, but we were really excited about the opportunity to play the Madison.
The stage is big and the sound is real good. There are a lot of really good bands that play there and thinking about that while on stage was just a cool feeling. Also having a Newcastle on stage was pretty neat as well. (If you don’t get why this is neat, don’t worry about it)
We seemed to have a pretty positive response to the set and overall night. It was a good time and we shared it with friends old and new. We actually just booked another show there on August 31.

On Monday July 30 I got text from my friend Chris who plays drums in a pop rock band called Aritso. He told me they were playing a show at Skully’s in Columbus that night and a band dropped off, he wanted to know if Canoes would be able to fill the slot. We tried frantically to get everyone together but in the end, one of the members just couldn’t pull it off. So I told him I would play solo if he wanted to and he said yes.
After work I packed up my keyboard and all our Canoes merch and headed up to Columbus.
Little did I know this would literally be one of the best nights in my life for so many reasons.
I loaded in with the rest of the bands and quickly remembered one of the reasons I hate playing solo: being referred to as the “acoustic act” or the opener before the “real bands”. I wanted to be like “Hey I AM in a real band, I promise, please believe me!”
I set up my keyboard on stage, but they were not ready for a soundcheck yet, so I went down the street to get coffee with Eric and Hayden from Aristo. Tom showed up and then I headed back for soundcheck.
I started playing at about 8pm. I had about 9 friends from Columbus come out, and almost all the guys in the other bands stood up front and watched. I was really excited about that and between the coffee, everybody watching, and a sipper Yuengling, I had a blast on stage. I played 5 songs from NMWA and then our new song, pimping the band between almost every song. I didn’t feel the need to limit talking in between songs, so I told them about how all the songs were about a stupid girl and made jokes that I thought were funny, etc. It seemed to go over well.

Afterwards, I made sure to talk/hang out with everyone that came out to see me, eventually I was just walking around talking to the dudes in Aristo and Tom, Jordan and Tyler. It was amazing.
We stood up front for Aristo and Tyler and I sang along to some of their songs. It was pretty awesome.
After the show I talked to a bunch of people, and met some seriously amazing people. Then I went to Brett and Tom’s house where I passed out on the couch from sheer exhaustion. (Brett, who was in West Chester that night picking up his new car, had just arrived home and walking in the door and seeing him was the cherry on the whole night)
The next morning I woke up and drove home. That’s a wrap!!!!