You Never Know. And Jason Eady.
Good Lord....you just never know.
Thursday evening I was glancing at the News-Gazette listings in the E3 section and the name Jason Eady jumped out at me. It rang a bell so I looked him up and yes, sure enough, he is the guy I remember Kevin Welch talking about----Kevin produced his last album. I looked at the venue and it said The Spot on North Cunningham. Ernie and I just looked at each other. "Is that the quonset hut place out on 45?" he asked me. We stared at the listing, googled a bit and shrugged our shoulders. A free 3 pm show at a quonset hut out on 45. Weird.
I was in a lousy mood by Sunday afternoon. Battles with the guys and I ended up arguing with Owen as I would an adult which is really not fair because let's face it....he's a brilliant little guy...but he's 9. So I was mad at him, mad at myself, mad at Leo and would have been happy to be mad at Ernie if he'd given me a reason. He dragged me out of the house though and we headed over to .....The Spot. To be fair it's not a quonset hut...I don't know why it is in my mind. We pulled up....nothing on the sign....and not a car in the parking lot. There were a couple in back though. "ohhhh, I don't know Ern," I said.....it was freaking me out a bit. The place is about a block down from the Peterbilt place and almost across the street from Fantasies, the porn place. We walked in and there were two people sitting at the bar. They stared at us. We sat down. One of them went and got a bartender. She was lovely. I went with White Zinfandel on the rocks. It's been many a year since I drank White Zinfandel.
Here it is later in the evening when I was out in the parking lot trying to call my children.
The smell of grease was overwhelming. In fact today I can't wear my jacket because it stinks of grease so. Not that I ate anything....good God no....but there was grease just wafting everywhere. Evidently they open at 3:00. I was thinking a 3:00 show would mean they were already open but no. So we watched as people cleaned up and talked about how drunk people had been the night before. The lights and mics were still set up for a band. A couple of other people wandered in. We eventually moved to a table in front of the stage because it seemed the polite thing to do.
Jason got up on stage. They left the lights on the other two mics on either side of him so it kinda looked as though he was waiting for people. Ernie decided to make a quick run to bathroom before Jason started. He got up and left the table. Something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye and I realized it was my husband's feet flying into the air. He had tripped over what I can only imagine is a very small dance floor and literally cartwheeled across the floor. Just to make it better they had just turned the music off, Jason was just about to open his mouth, and it was dead silent. It just added to the surreal atmosphere.
What a weird fucking afternoon.
So basically the place was a total dive, stunk to high heaven and people at a couple of tables talked through the entire show. They got food and I hoped that would shut them up but no such luck....they talked right through their eating.
But you know what?
Jason Eady was great. He was freaking great.
You just never know when you're going to hear great music.
The countrier the song, the better his voice sounded. He did some great Merle covers but it was his own songs that stood out----including one or two he'd written with Kevin, or Kevin and Dustin Welch. He said he's working on a new album with Kevin producing again, and that he's going for a more country, as opposed to singer/songwriter feel. Really strong songs. Oh, and at least one he wrote with some of the Trishas....
Between sets we chatted a bit and picked up his most recent album. Met the guy who's doing the booking there---he wants to make the place a real music venue and not just a biker spot. Kudos to him for getting Jason Eady.
Weird afternoon.
But you just never know.
And I wasn't mad at ANYBODY by the time we got home.
look how cute my baby is!