Cheese Lord Winter 2008 Tour
Feb. 19th, 2008 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fr_defenestratoWellup, I just got back from a 2-city Cheese Lord tour of Pittsburgh and Cleveland, where we at least managed not to embarrass ourselves on any given piece of music. Honestly I'm amazed at the reception we got, especially in Cleveland. I think we did a decent job, but then I've been disappointed many times in the past upon listening to the concert recording. But in Cleveland we got extended applause for individual pieces within the program—something I can't recall ever happening before. And we got a pretty immediate standing O at the end. Yikes! Are we actually GOOD? (BTW, our studio recordings don't count in the least; they're engineered within an inch of their lives.)
So anyway, two cities is our longest tour to date... our only previous gig outside the Baltington area was last October in St. Loomis. There was some speculation amongst the lords whether subsequent tours would continue the pattern arithmetically or geometrically. (Next tours 3, 4, and 5 cities or 4, 8, and 16?) In any case, given the reception we got, it really looks as if we're on the brink of the next level of notoriety, something I still find totally weird and undeserved.
It was exciting being on the road, too—literally this time, as we drove an 8-person passenger van and a 4-person minivan from D.C. to Pittsburgh to Cleveland and back to D.C. Everybody took off work Friday, and we sang in the St. Somebody Cathedral Friday night, then went out to a brew pub that itself used to be a big ol' church: still has the stained glass, but brewing vats now sit where the altar use'ta bein'. Pretty nice beer too, particularly the stout. Both cathedral and hotel were in kind of a lousy part of town (Oakland): although U. Pitt was right there, nothing else seemed to be. Where in the world do all the students go? Was there a hidden underground that we all missed?
Cleveland was better... we were in a hotel directly across the street from Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, and both were in spitting distance of [whatever stadia Cleveland sports for sports], the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, the Great Lakes Science Center, and Lake Erie. Hence, lots of neat and/or cute and/or trendy bars. Saturday night (our free night) a gang of us hung out for hours in the Boneyard Beer Farm, an excellent, quirky, comfy, good-music-playin', fishbone-motif-in-all-the-woodwork-havin', 40-beers-on-tap-pullin', sofas-in-the-front-sittin', damn-can-I-fuck-the-bartender, wait-your-turn-bitch, nifty, friendly kinda place. I just wanted to import the entire bar back to D.C. and go, SEE? to all the other bars.
Didn't get to do much gay stuff, although I had checked out Damron online and squirt.org in advance for the 4-1-1. Friday night after we had all loaded up the vans and returned from the church-brew-pub to the hotel, I waited a while in the lobby for a couple fellow lords to figure out what they wanted to do, then, well more than enough time having been wasted, I finally, frustratedly split to head to Pittsburgh Leather Central (I had brought my leather shirt and combat boots). The only cab I saw the entire night was the one parked outside the hotel that refused to take me where I was going because he "had to get back to the airport"; so I ended up walking about 2 miles to PLC (a lot of it on unshoveled snow-cum-ice), arriving at 26 minutes till last call, only to learn, in chatting with a patron at the bar, that I was not even a quarter mile away from the damn church-bar I had been hanging in. Grrr. Fortunately that same patron split his cab home with me. The bar itself was meh: lesbian upstairs, leatherman in the cellar (and it looked precisely like rickety old cellar steps in somebody's house, too). There was a back room where, I could tell, some sex was going on; and eventually one or two doable guys came wandering out therefrom. But with only a few minutes to play I figured, Why bother getting started? and drank my Yeungling Lager, which, I am told, is simply called "Lager" in Pennsylvania.
Didn't see the gay scene at all in Cleveland... Nathan (Lord Blue Pants) and I were all set to check out this one place where certain, ahem, shenanigans are known to happen, but honestly we were both really content hanging at the Boneyard with our pals. So oh well.
What else? Oh, Lord Mike and I roomed together in both cities (that was arranged for us, since (a) his crashing at my place for a month was common SCL knowledge and (b) since Lord Dan the Elder left we have an odd number of out faggots—so Nathan and Gig got the gay suite). We stopped at Breezewood in both directions, which as a town is precisely analogous to McDonalds fries (quite plainly on display there): absolutely disgusting and yet irresistible. And yet almost everything in Breezewood was closed at 10 p.m. Sunday on our way back. How can that be? It's a hideous, garish slice of American consumerism—and it's FUCKING CLOSED, DAMMIT!
So anyway, two cities is our longest tour to date... our only previous gig outside the Baltington area was last October in St. Loomis. There was some speculation amongst the lords whether subsequent tours would continue the pattern arithmetically or geometrically. (Next tours 3, 4, and 5 cities or 4, 8, and 16?) In any case, given the reception we got, it really looks as if we're on the brink of the next level of notoriety, something I still find totally weird and undeserved.
It was exciting being on the road, too—literally this time, as we drove an 8-person passenger van and a 4-person minivan from D.C. to Pittsburgh to Cleveland and back to D.C. Everybody took off work Friday, and we sang in the St. Somebody Cathedral Friday night, then went out to a brew pub that itself used to be a big ol' church: still has the stained glass, but brewing vats now sit where the altar use'ta bein'. Pretty nice beer too, particularly the stout. Both cathedral and hotel were in kind of a lousy part of town (Oakland): although U. Pitt was right there, nothing else seemed to be. Where in the world do all the students go? Was there a hidden underground that we all missed?
Cleveland was better... we were in a hotel directly across the street from Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, and both were in spitting distance of [whatever stadia Cleveland sports for sports], the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, the Great Lakes Science Center, and Lake Erie. Hence, lots of neat and/or cute and/or trendy bars. Saturday night (our free night) a gang of us hung out for hours in the Boneyard Beer Farm, an excellent, quirky, comfy, good-music-playin', fishbone-motif-in-all-the-woodwork-havin', 40-beers-on-tap-pullin', sofas-in-the-front-sittin', damn-can-I-fuck-the-bartender, wait-your-turn-bitch, nifty, friendly kinda place. I just wanted to import the entire bar back to D.C. and go, SEE? to all the other bars.
Didn't get to do much gay stuff, although I had checked out Damron online and squirt.org in advance for the 4-1-1. Friday night after we had all loaded up the vans and returned from the church-brew-pub to the hotel, I waited a while in the lobby for a couple fellow lords to figure out what they wanted to do, then, well more than enough time having been wasted, I finally, frustratedly split to head to Pittsburgh Leather Central (I had brought my leather shirt and combat boots). The only cab I saw the entire night was the one parked outside the hotel that refused to take me where I was going because he "had to get back to the airport"; so I ended up walking about 2 miles to PLC (a lot of it on unshoveled snow-cum-ice), arriving at 26 minutes till last call, only to learn, in chatting with a patron at the bar, that I was not even a quarter mile away from the damn church-bar I had been hanging in. Grrr. Fortunately that same patron split his cab home with me. The bar itself was meh: lesbian upstairs, leatherman in the cellar (and it looked precisely like rickety old cellar steps in somebody's house, too). There was a back room where, I could tell, some sex was going on; and eventually one or two doable guys came wandering out therefrom. But with only a few minutes to play I figured, Why bother getting started? and drank my Yeungling Lager, which, I am told, is simply called "Lager" in Pennsylvania.
Didn't see the gay scene at all in Cleveland... Nathan (Lord Blue Pants) and I were all set to check out this one place where certain, ahem, shenanigans are known to happen, but honestly we were both really content hanging at the Boneyard with our pals. So oh well.
What else? Oh, Lord Mike and I roomed together in both cities (that was arranged for us, since (a) his crashing at my place for a month was common SCL knowledge and (b) since Lord Dan the Elder left we have an odd number of out faggots—so Nathan and Gig got the gay suite). We stopped at Breezewood in both directions, which as a town is precisely analogous to McDonalds fries (quite plainly on display there): absolutely disgusting and yet irresistible. And yet almost everything in Breezewood was closed at 10 p.m. Sunday on our way back. How can that be? It's a hideous, garish slice of American consumerism—and it's FUCKING CLOSED, DAMMIT!
