Adventure #27: Fall 2010 Tour (Day 12)
Around 8:30 AM or so I woke up from an oddly vivid dream in which Mike Riggs imprisoned all the One Year Leasers at his oceanside manor (Mike: I know where you keep the gold. Don't even try it.) to a 4 year old Trenton about 3 inches from my face yelling “Uncle Nathan! Wake up Uncle Nathan! Mommy! Look who I found on our couch! Wake up, Uncle Nathan!” I haven't seen Trenton since he was 2, so I was impressed that he remembered me at all, let alone with such enthusiasm. We walked Lexy down to the bus stop, where Trenton insisted on introducing me to all the kids who take the bus with her, then headed back to Jenny's to play blocks. And trains. We raced our trains. I won. Take that, 4 year olds! This is Pen Pen with his favorite non-blood-related nephew and said nephew's lucky pine cone.
In continuing with my quest, we decided to go to the William Howard Taft House which is in Cincinnati. 4 down, 40 to go! Jenny brought Samantha and Trenton, who were both oddly well behaved. Trenton was actually interested in my weird little quest, and kept asking where the museum was. At one point, I just shrugged and said “I think we're in it.” The tour guide was overly enthusiastic about Taft in that hyper-specifically-focused-historian way that I find totally charming. This is Pen Pen and what I can only assume is a life-sized bust of our nations largest president.
We dropped Trenton off at school, and got a quick lunch at Adam's restaurant before I had to hit the road. Bridget was right. The drive through southeastern Ohio is actually quite nice. The view of the mountains rising up beyond the highway was breathtaking and totally unmarred by strip malls and chain restaurants. This is Pen Pen showing his appreciation for the beautiful part of Ohio by erecting a wooden modernist sculpture at a rest stop.
I made it to the venue around 8:30, and there was someone inside playing accordion. I had a brief panic that maybe I had gotten the night wrong or something, but no, my name was on all the posters. The girl, who henceforth will be known as Ashley, because that's her name, was on a tour of her own and had shown up and asked the bartender if she could play before I started. She played a lot of Appalachian music and other sort of folk stuff, and was quite good. It's not every day you see an accordion player in a bar, unless you're Ashley, in which case, it probably is. By the time I finally got started around 10:30, there were still only a handful of people in the bar. The bartender told me that the combination of the thunderstorm and the Marshall game that night basically screwed my chances of having much of an audience. Nevertheless, I played a 2 and a half hour set, with Ashley backing me up on a few tunes, and the few people who were there were really digging it. I wasn't really sure what to expect my first time in West Virginia, but I definitely wasn't expecting a girl to keep asking me to play Misfits covers, so that was pretty cool. Everyone there was pretty rad, especially the sound guy, so hopefully I'll be able to come back some time on a better night. Next up: Wilmington, North Carolina. My last show of the tour. Then Emma's wedding! I'm sad for it to be over, but I'm pretty excited to not have to wake up every morning and drive 6 – 8 hours. This is Pen Pen curious if this is only Charleston's #1 live music venue by default.
This is a song I wrote this one time. You should download it and share it with your friends.
The Abatements - Come Up by keroscenerecords
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