Eli is playing bass with me for the first 10 days of this tour. So far, it’s proving to be a typical ellen cherry tour: costing money, starting off slow, really cramped spaces in the car. But there’s hope on the horizon: we’re on our way to Chicago. We were supposed to start the tour yesterday in Cleveland, but the mall (seriously, this is the Tiffany tour, really.) didn’t have it together and didn’t get stuff set up in time for us to play for the lunch hour crowd. We were playing for tips and merch sales, so there wasn’t much point in getting set up by 1PM. So we missed out on that, but Eli said we should go the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since were in the area. I was skeptical—I hate to spend money before I’ve even made any, but it was a good idea. They have a great exhibit of stuff on The Clash right now and it was worth the time we spent. Then we made fairly quick time to Ann Arbor for our 8PM slot at a coffee shop on the main drag. Thanks to Ryan, our impromptu street team caller, we got some people in the shop and my cousin, Mark, drove in from the Detroit area. It was a nice, easy gig to start the tour. We made $18, but hey, at least that covered part of dinner, right?
The best part of the evening was when Steve Yob (my friend and supporter in the Ann Arbor area) and I decided that we should walk down to the Ark, the listening room that gets all the good name acts in touring through, and see what their deal is. I’ve gone through their system, I’ve played by their rules and all I want is a “rating” from them, to know if they are even going to ever book me. It’s a long story, best summed up by saying that they have a system in place that’s supposed to make it easier for them to book quality music, but they don’t actually follow the system. Which makes it a useless system, really. But, the music director takes tickets at shows and Gaelic Storm was playing last night, so I thought we would walk down there (2 blocks) and see if I could play a song for him while he was between tickets. Or even just pique his interest enough to give the multiple cds I’ve dropped off to him a listen. But, alas, he was already gone for the evening and I talked to someone else who works there. But I’m hoping I made enough of an impression that she’ll at least pass my card along and say “this crazy girl stopped by with her guitar last night, at least give her cd a listen.” So we’ll see what happens. I’m going to follow up and see if even anything was said. It would be a great room to play and I know if I got in there, I could put on the kind of show that they would want repeated on future tours.
I-94 across the bottom of Michigan is incredibly boring. Flat and nothing much going on at all. We stopped at Taco Bell for lunch in Easter Michigan and I talked to this guy who had multiple tattoos, including one on the inside of his lip that he and his girlfriend both got at the same time. But then he said, “oh well, we broke up. but at least it’s on the inside of my lip and eventually it will go away.” That’s the most interesting story I have for you so far, sorry.
The best part of the evening was when Steve Yob (my friend and supporter in the Ann Arbor area) and I decided that we should walk down to the Ark, the listening room that gets all the good name acts in touring through, and see what their deal is. I’ve gone through their system, I’ve played by their rules and all I want is a “rating” from them, to know if they are even going to ever book me. It’s a long story, best summed up by saying that they have a system in place that’s supposed to make it easier for them to book quality music, but they don’t actually follow the system. Which makes it a useless system, really. But, the music director takes tickets at shows and Gaelic Storm was playing last night, so I thought we would walk down there (2 blocks) and see if I could play a song for him while he was between tickets. Or even just pique his interest enough to give the multiple cds I’ve dropped off to him a listen. But, alas, he was already gone for the evening and I talked to someone else who works there. But I’m hoping I made enough of an impression that she’ll at least pass my card along and say “this crazy girl stopped by with her guitar last night, at least give her cd a listen.” So we’ll see what happens. I’m going to follow up and see if even anything was said. It would be a great room to play and I know if I got in there, I could put on the kind of show that they would want repeated on future tours.I-94 across the bottom of Michigan is incredibly boring. Flat and nothing much going on at all. We stopped at Taco Bell for lunch in Easter Michigan and I talked to this guy who had multiple tattoos, including one on the inside of his lip that he and his girlfriend both got at the same time. But then he said, “oh well, we broke up. but at least it’s on the inside of my lip and eventually it will go away.” That’s the most interesting story I have for you so far, sorry.
No comments:
Post a Comment