Sidewalk Cafe (5/21/04)
New York, NY
I always sit at Sidewalk. It's the only place I sit at all, in fact, and that may have something to do with the intimacy of the room. I tend to play mellow shows there (more mellow than usual), curling up with my ear to the guitar and the mic pointing upward from below. It's my favorite way to perform.
Sidewalk is unpredictable in terms of the audience. Some nights, the room is packed, but others are even more intimate than I'd like (read: the room is empty). On this night, I played most of the set to five people, including the young lady running sound. It seems reasonable to point out that Bill, Roland (a student from Lebanon who is staying in Bill's place this month), Charles, and Scott were in attendance for this unusual show, and most of the songs were by request. It was that kind of night.
I'd planned to do set full of new and obscure songs, and I opened with Cloud 9, one of the tunes I'm planning to record to this summer. I'm eager to hand this over to a full band, but I think it still works as a solo number. I followed that up with The White Flag, which was really the prototype for Songs Without Hooks and is one of my favorites. Oddly enough, it's one of my most misunderstood songs, and it seldom goes over well. After that, I was basically a musician for hire, filling the rest of the evening with requests from Bill (the one tune I denied him, a very old old song called Kathy and Joey, will never again see the light of day). Personal highlights included White Horse, The Beauty Pool, There, and Snapdragon, but the vibe was very pleasant throughout. When the next act was late for their slot, I was allowed to spill over beyond eight, and the I received some encouraging words from the damsel behind the board. Sidewalk is always a blast.
Catch you on the flip side!
I always sit at Sidewalk. It's the only place I sit at all, in fact, and that may have something to do with the intimacy of the room. I tend to play mellow shows there (more mellow than usual), curling up with my ear to the guitar and the mic pointing upward from below. It's my favorite way to perform.
Sidewalk is unpredictable in terms of the audience. Some nights, the room is packed, but others are even more intimate than I'd like (read: the room is empty). On this night, I played most of the set to five people, including the young lady running sound. It seems reasonable to point out that Bill, Roland (a student from Lebanon who is staying in Bill's place this month), Charles, and Scott were in attendance for this unusual show, and most of the songs were by request. It was that kind of night.
I'd planned to do set full of new and obscure songs, and I opened with Cloud 9, one of the tunes I'm planning to record to this summer. I'm eager to hand this over to a full band, but I think it still works as a solo number. I followed that up with The White Flag, which was really the prototype for Songs Without Hooks and is one of my favorites. Oddly enough, it's one of my most misunderstood songs, and it seldom goes over well. After that, I was basically a musician for hire, filling the rest of the evening with requests from Bill (the one tune I denied him, a very old old song called Kathy and Joey, will never again see the light of day). Personal highlights included White Horse, The Beauty Pool, There, and Snapdragon, but the vibe was very pleasant throughout. When the next act was late for their slot, I was allowed to spill over beyond eight, and the I received some encouraging words from the damsel behind the board. Sidewalk is always a blast.
Catch you on the flip side!
Setlist: Cloud 9 (debut)/The White Flag/White Horse/Painted Myself/The Beauty Pool/Upper East Side, 10 a.m./There/Snapdragon/Self-Portrait in Your Colors
posted by Michael Novick at 12:17 PM
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