Hurting@AceOfClubs, NYC, Friday Aug. 5, 9pm

bump.

Man, I'd love to come, but I've gotta go to a birthday party- in New Jersey.

Where in good ol' NJ?

Hoboken.

How ironic.

(Dontcha think?)

It's tonight, folks.

you should tell marissa about it and put her on the guest list!

I'd be honored if she came to my show.

dude, that movie is pure PHILADELPHIA. the bank aykroyd stumbles out of dressed up as a drunken santa claus is my bank. [its a wachovia these days]

if anyone wants to take me to the crazy eddie murphy bar from the film, drop me a line.

I'm going to the Howard Tate concert at Joe's Pub at 7:30, but if I can make it over afterwards, I'll say hi.

Hi Maria. Apparently, you CAN see us in Philly tonight. North Star Bar put us on their web site for no apparent reason and has still failed to take us off. We never discussed the show. Why don't you guys book that club instead?

Well, I'm back from NJ. How was your show?

Not bad. The club kind of sucked, honestly -- the room is really dark and dead and it feels like you're playing in a studio. Joe McCombs made it out though, but I somehow lost him before we got to chat much.

How was the party.

Not bad. The club kind of sucked, honestly -- the room is really dark and dead and it feels like you're playing in a studio. Joe McCombs made it out though, but I somehow lost him before we got to chat much.

How was the party?

Sorry about the double post there.

Party was good. Saw some friends I haven't seen much recently. Man, that Washington Avenue is noisy on a Friday night.

Oh yeah. My gf and I like to call it Broboken.

why dont we book the north star? where do i begin... kidding aside, im glad plain parade does 1-2 shows a month at this point.

anyway, i went to see oneida tonight.

Actually, I used some ILM skillz at the party to explain the significance of the title of Here Come The Warm Jets.

Now I am interested to hear about the Howard Tate show and the Oneida show.

short review: oneida were awesome / incredible / etc.

Hurting's band was good -- reminded me a lot of Grant Lee Phillips's solo material, actually. I had to bail early, though, didn't realize how late it was & had somewhere else to be. Thanks for the invite out, and sorry I couldn't stay to chat!

P.S. to k/l: Howard's show was very good as well. He debuted several songs planned for January or February release: I arrived late and missed his cover of the Carpenters' "Close to You," but saw him do two new Randy Newman-penned songs and a lot of his older material. He only did a couple of the falsetto yips (and unevenly, then), and he really should not have tried to play guitar, but his lower register's sound and phrasing were in great form. A cover of that B.B. King song that Primited Radio Gods used for "Phone Booth" went over especially well, as did "Get It While You Can." It was just Howard, a pianist, and an upright bassist, so he skipped the uptempo and horn-centric stuff.

Thanks, Joe. Wait, Hurting, what time did you actually play and until how late were you there?

I think we went on about 10:15 and played til 11pm. I stayed thru the next two acts. I didn't like the band after us so much. The guy after that though (Greg Gehring?) was kinda cool -- he was this bone-thin junkie-looking guy that played old-style rock and roll on acoustic guitar and sang like Jerry Lee Lewis.

Unfortunately like 2/3 of our friends went to see Mike Wexler at the Knitting Factory instead.

I think I saw that guy Gehring busking when he was going in a little more of a Gram Parsons direction.

I guess he spells it Garing. I thought he was pretty good the one time I saw him.

You know I was in that area around midnight as I made my way back from Hoboken. I probably could have stopped in and found you. Ah well.

Eh, it wasn't a fun place to hang out anyway. Some other time.

The Garing guy did do some Gram Parsons-ish stuff too, but he was most striking when he did his spastic Elvis/Orbison/Great Balls of Fire schtick.

He's apparently from Nashville, as it turns out, which isn't that surprising.

http://www.greggaring.com/

Nashville is such a weird, desperate town.

Now that I think of it, you join a long line of people that I ended up NOT seeing at that space, including a former bandmate.

I remember thinking Garing was pretty good when I saw him busking- he had a full band with maybe about 7 players. He was really projecting pretty well out there on the Montague Street sidewalk and doing some good harmony singing with his Lower East Side Emmylou Harris proxy. But then I am a sucker for any kind of halfway decent busking.

I keep wondering if Edd S Hurt is going to show up on this thread and give us the Nashville lowdown on the guy and say that everybody down there is tired of him or something.

Having played Nashville a couple times, I'd say it's very possible that no one has ever heard of this guy. Every watier and bus boy you meet is a singer-songwriter, and they all market themselves as heartfelt and rootsy and americana-ish. Unsigned artists buy ad space on park benches, bus stops, etc. Tax services have open mic nights (ok, that's not actually true).

At the same time, he was pretty good, so maybe people do know him. Edd Hurt to thread, then.

gosh, I haven't thought about Acme Underground for a while, used to spend time there when I was in NYC.

Greg Garing--another guy I haven't thought of for a while. I remember him doing his captain manyhands act, well, at Tootsie's, upstairs, back 8-9 years ago, seems like. Always pretty good, he had a nice local following. But yeah, Nashville is so weird and desperate, and everyone is so jaded, I guess...I wondered what happened to him. Nothing ever seems to make much impact here, you know?

I'm hoping Howard Tate will play down here. He's been playing with Steve Weisberg, whom I talked to actually late that night after the Joe's Pub show as he was driving down the West Side Hwy. We're hoping he can get it together to have Tate play at BB King's here, which would be great. Apparently without a drummer, too, since it sounds like Howard's still getting his feet as a live performer after all these years...?