I even miss how cold it gets...

it's about 11 am on wednesday, I've just gotten into work. I spent the morning with tom brosseau and mary jones, running around new haven, and getting them to the 10:43 train to the city. I haven't slept, really. there was a spiced loaf involved. but I'll get to that later.

so, as you can tell from the pictures, I saw the decemberists at toad's place on thursday night. it was such a great night that I've got to at least post the highlights, and whenever I say that I inevitably wind up giving a blow-by-blow of the entire night. we'll see how long winded I am this time...

I leave work on thursday around 4:30 and I'm parked directly in front of toad's at 5:00, behind the super-galactic tour bus with trailer, complete with oregon plates. there are decemberists everywhere - jenny smoking a cigarette, chris funk needing a shave, colin in a bright yellow t-shirt - and I'm doing my best to contain myself. I'm armed with iced coffee and a half of a wheat bagel, just to sustain. the manager and sound guys are ambling around as well, and I walk straight into the side door like I know what I'm doing. I introduce myself, as I've seen bill do many a time, and thrust forward the emails from the management people at big hassle regarding the open photography policy. there is no way that I am going to fight a sea of fifteen year olds for first place in line, and then be sent back to my car because toad's won't hang with detachable lenses. I'm assured that everything is going to be fine with a series of shrugs and grunts from the manager, and I take my place dutifully at the front door. a few stragglers have started to linger, and I determine that it might be a good time to hit the ladies' room once more - with an hour left before doors, I also determine that a book might be a good idea.

I will have no idea until later in the evening what a fateful decision that will wind up being.

that should like, be a line in a song or something. anyways.

first I go looking for some fante, because I've loved what I've read so far (ask the dust) and I know I'll dig anything else this guy puts out - but what I've read is all they have, so I slide from f to p and see the ever-recognizable font of the bell jar staring back at me from the shelf just above eye level. I grab it and make my way to the cash register, where I proceed to get into a discussion about National Novel Writing Month with the guy behind the counter. he looks at me like I'm slightly insane. I give him the website. and it's back to the door of toad's.

I manage to get partway into it before some of the people that have come by over the course of the evening start falling into place behind me - there's always so much to talk about with those first few people in line, they're usually just like me, only younger. happy and excited and in this case, totally freaked out about their first live decemberists experience. I pass the time by telling them about the people that have come by over the last two hours that think I'm working the door, asking me what time doors are, hearing soundcheck and so on. the best part was when a girl with cass mccombs came up to see if I was running the door later, and I was like, no, I just want a good spot, and I asked her if she was with the decemberists, and she was like, no, I'm with cass mccombs. so in my infinite wiseness, I go, yeah, I think I saw her open up for them at the avalon in boston - to which she replies, um, cass is a guy? and smiles politely and goes inside.

right.

so finally they start letting people in, and the kids I've made friends with fall in to my left (I'm just right of center, as usual). there's some yale school of drama students that are actually quite nice there as well, and they fall in to my right. amy (one of the drama students) and I make our way to the bathroom, and by the time we make it back the crowd on the under 21 side is already about ten people deep. people just give you the nastiest looks when you're cutting back through, and it's all, no, really, I was here already - and they tend to not believe you. so we settle in and do some light checks and cass mccombs finally takes the stage.

I wish I would have seen them in a little coffee shop somewhere, they seemed to get lost in the expanse of the stage at toads, harsh lights and bad sound guys and a crowd that wouldn't stop talking. but what I was able to make out I did like very much, they were interesting and thoughtful and they made for some great shots since they weren't moving around much. they pulled a solid half hour and left us sufficiently warmed up for our headliners.

the usual stuff followed - another bathroom run, procuring of beverages, a worse crowd fight-through than before, still shots of stage lights and birds and stands and equipment and instruments and what not. and again, as usual, right when you just can't take another minute, the lights go down and they all filter out. colin, petra, chris, nate, jenny, and the drummer (whose name is escaping me at the moment) - bathed in green spotlights and just delirously perfect from the first note forward - it's funny, over the course of the day I found myself being a little offhanded about things, you know, I've seen the decemberists a bunch already, no big whoop - and then they start to play and I'm screaming like a teenager.

they did what the decemberists do - they took us all on a journey through the books in their minds, into corners and behind doors, where sinews and pantaloons abound. where we all believe in robin hood, and we all obey colin's every gesture. we become part of their experience, if just for an hour and a half, and it's majestic and spellbinding every single time... there's moments of laughter and moments of all the switches just being on, where they've all just got this thing running through their veins, and just to witness it is a privlege in and of itself. it's just - glorious. like indie rock church, in the accordionista pirate ship kind of way.

now, before making my voyage to york street, I had emailed back and forth not only with kristin but also with the esteemed ms. cheryl waters, of kexp fame. cheryl proceeds to tell me, after a fulfilled request on the air, to make sure I drop the kexp tag when I talk to them. when I talk to them. because that's like, totally going to happen, cheryl. sure. and I joke with her that I don't get to live in that world, unless we're at the museum of television and radio and I'm helping load in or something. for those few days a year, that's when it all fuses and I talk to cary brothers and luke temple in the same span of days, or walks get taken with band boys, like devin davis in times square - but the other 355 days of the year, I'm a fan, like everyone else. and conversations with colin meloy - well, they're just not a reality.

but then, I have just spent the last eighteen hours with tom brosseau. so maybe things are looking up. but you know what I mean.

and this time, well - it wasn't a conversation per say, but I did manage to completely accidentally fatefully have direct contact with colin meloy, and when it happened I could barely even hold it together. you've seen the photos, and if I haven't told you about it a hundred times on the phone already, here's the story:

so I'm shooting away, on picture number two hundred and twenty something, just digging the scene and all. and periodically over the course of the show, colin, nate, and chris will all come and play about three inches from my face - there's a monitor directly in front of me that's pushed back a few feet, and they took turns coming over and playing all balls-out and making us scream like girls. so one of the times colin comes over, I try (in vain) to get a good shot of him but I'm so spun about the fact that I could totally pull him off the stage if I really wanted that I can barely hold the camera straight. so on top of my brain slowly seeping out of my ears, I almost collapse when he goes, "whose bag is that?" and I've got this little brown bag on stage, just enough to hold my wallet and my camera and of course, the book. so one of the drama school guys and I pick the bag up simultaneously and back off a few steps, thinking he wanted us to move it so he could sit and play or walk around in the crowd or something. and he squats down and peers into my bag, and I just know to hand it to him, and he takes it and pulls out the book - and he says, "I could see the font" (at which I need to mention that if you've ever seen or owned a copy of the bell jar that the cover is written in this very recognizable font, to the point where you could in fact see it from several feet away and know what it was).

so I'm exploding, and colin meloy puts my bag down and takes the book up to the microphone and starts to read from it. talking about how this really must be such a college town - standing on stage at toad's, holding my fucking book. I am so not kidding. and what you've got to do right now is put on that copy of the live solo show that kristin made me that I have most likely sent you, and remember his voice - when he goes something like, "we're going to move from the something related material to the nautical related material" and he's got that storytelling - drone, but it's not a drone in the bad sense of the word, it's just - his voice. complete with cocked eyebrow and dramatic pauses.

and so he reads:

I left Joan to pay the driver and hurried into the empty, glaring lit room. A nurse bustled out from behind a white screen. In a few swift words, I managed to tell her the truth about my predicament before Joan came in the door, blinking and wide-eyed as a myopic owl.

The Emergency Ward doctor strolled out then, and I climbed, with the nurse's help, onto the examining table. The nurse whispered to the doctor, and the doctor nodded and began unpacking the bloody toweling. I felt his fingers start to probe, and Joan stood, rigid as a soldier, at my side, holding my hand, for my sake or hers I couldn't tell.

"Ouch!" I winced at a particularly bad jab.

The doctor spoke in a low, curt voice to the nurse, and she hurried to a side table and brought back some rolls of gauze and silver instruments. "I can see," the doctor bent down, "exactly where the trouble is coming from."

and as he comes back over, the page marked with bookmarks now strewn across the stage, ones that the guy behind the counter had given me, I am completely and totally dying. I cannot stand it, not for one more second, and he hands the book back to me and smiles, and I am just a puddle of teenage heart-throb angst. I am so totally and completely starstruck, on top of feeling like an absolute dork for having a copy of the bell jar in my bag - and my knees are weak and my fists are clenched and then my hands are over my mouth because I'm just exploding with pure glee. I seriously feel at this point like beams of light are going to shoot out of various parts of my body - stomping my feet and all. and then they go on with the show.

there's another half hour of songs to throw us out further into the stratosphere, chris funk parading into the crowd, much whales and general debauchery. in line I've told a girl the story about the mariner's revenge, and she's never heard it before, so I'm all, "and so there's this guy, and his mom is with this dude who's like, all fucked up and leaves them with gambling debts and she goes crazy and the son is cleaning toilets in a boat or something, so then they're out at sea, the son, following the bad guy that drove his mom crazy, and they're about to catch up with him, and then they both get swallowed up by a whale - and the crowd goes all nuts and screams and stuff - and then as fate would have it, you know, it's just the son and the guy and he goes to wipe him out but first he has to tell him all the stuff that his mom had said to say if he ever found him -" and as the song is playing I'm completely laughing to myself, at picturing her hearing it for the first time, and how funny it must have been to remember the story I told and how right along with it the song went - and then the rush of "thank you, new haven, goodnight"s and such, and we were left reeling.

shows just totally wipe me out, in a good something besides blood running through your veins kind of way.

so we lingered and traded emails with all our new friends (kacia is on the scene by this point, making it up to the third row or so just before they went on) and scouted out the merch table before spilling back out onto the sidewalk. now, I don't know if I just encourage random conversations or what - tom brosseau did just tell me that I was very charismatic, that I had the charisma of ten people combined - which I found so odd - but the merch guy, who was a punk rocker from london who has a girlfriend that knows somebody and they had him come on the road with them, talks us into these $25.00 limited edition prints, which we agree to buy one of if he will go downstairs with a sharpie and do the deed.

we do. he does. and the rest, as they say, is history. there's a few candid shots from the car, there's procuring of giant sized advertisement toad's posters, and frenzied half-speak reeling calls to kristin.

and that was my thursday.

I like thursdays. but I like tuesdays too.

more on tom brosseau, spiced loaves, and postcards later on.

till the radio plays something familiar,

~vvb