Andrew Vladeck

Blog ~ The Wheel hits The Road

We swore it was snowing in Burlington, as white, fat, fuzzy things (seedlings?  not old hippies) filled the air around my car.   It was beautiful and surreal, like that scene from The Right Stuff, where mysterious golden droplets surround John Glenn’s spacecraft.

Ah, Vermont, where a Sunday drive up Route 7 finds locals engaged in a “Piscachio Hunt” on the front lawn of Church, the “Ho Hum Motel” in the shadow of Mt. Philo, the rural birthplace of the fabled founder of AA, the biggest moth I’ve ever seen, that had gigantic owl eye patterns on it’s wings.

The Radio Bean in Burlington was lit up like a fishtank in the afternoon sun, dazzlingly bright and hot, and not finding a rock I could crawl under I sweated it out with people out front before the show, which included a young woman carving a stick with a gigantic hunting knife.   It was a great way to start the tour - with people who love music, ice cream, and organic yerba matte tea.  

The next day brought a gorgeous drive to Cambridge, MA and Club Passim, celebrating it’s 50th Anniversary.  I opened for Shannon Whitworth and her band from Asheville, NC - gorgeous voice, banjo playing, and is there anything better than a pedal steel guitar?   Thanks to everyone who came out on a rainy Monday, setting a precedent for the “this is your life tour” as fans, friends and family from grace each show.  I never knew I had so many cousins.   Problems arose as I was getting ready to drive out of Boston - I couldn’t turn the key in the El Camino Roadster.   Shannon took the keys, climbed in, put her cowboy boots to the pedal - and in one try fired it up, with the radio blasting AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.“  Hot.

Immediately after the show I started for DC ~ stopping halfway and sleeping in my own Brooklyn bed.  At night you can make Boston to NYC in 3.5 hours, which can come in handy.  At this point, however, touring solo became tedious – and I wished for a friend, bandmate or dog to help with driving and conversation.

The DC gig at IOTA with DC’s Lucky Day and Richmond’s At the Stars was one of my favorite nights - the DC train catastrophe was on people’s minds and shutting down the rails.  Still, many made it out - old friends, new friends, and cousins.  And all my hard work rehearsing and developing the set was making these shows extra fun for me.   I’ve figured out a way how to boost my banjo/guitar/etc sounds to fill up the whole frequency range and room using various pedals and tricks.  It’s freaking awesome to push out that much sound out of my two Fender Twins.    It was another night in which other musicians and the soundman asked me how I get the sound I do, which is oddly satisfying.  An old friend, “The Guru,” counseled me firmly: “The colonel doesn’t give out his recipe, and neither should you!“

I spent an extra magical day-off traipsing around DC with some great new friends.  There was the American Folklife Festival on the Washington Mall - that had an odd combination of the music Latin America and Wales (unfortunately the country and not the leviathan).  We followed it up by driving around with who I understood to be the “Yalla Sashi Betch” crew, crashing a party at the Danish Embassy where, over cocktails, the four of us we rescued a fly drowning in the pool dried up with a coffee Tryst in the Madam’s Organ neighborhood.  It was the first time I realized I actually feel bad for Chinese Food Restaurants and the new wave of Thai Food gentrification.

On the drive to Philly the next day I stopped in historic Wilmington, DE to see more relatives - connected with my father’s cousin David Bromberg (one of the most inspiring musicians in my life) and got a tour of his encyclopedic shop of violins from around the world.  I held at 100K violin from the 16th century – Bile ‘em Cabbage Down!   Caught up with another cousin near Rittenhouse square and went to soundcheck at the super cool North Star Bar.   The folks in the other bands were all incredibly nice (Wooden Birds and Other Lives on a big tour from Oklahoma, and the delightful Two White Horses from Sweden).  Together we learned of the tragic news of Michael Jackson, and perhaps that’s why we all had a particularly fine show and quality hang.  There was the usual exchange of CDs with other bands, and happy trails until we meet again.

Back in wonderous NYC.  Returning never fails to blow my mind…I mean, it’s amazing, within 36 hours of being back I feasted in Chinatown, took in performance art in Tribeca, witnessed a magical rainbow in brooklyn with beers at Barbes and a concert in the park with Dr. Dog, sweated through a MJ-infused house party in the Slope, performed with Balthrop, Alabama on Smith Street, cheered Dawn Landes’s rock stylings, fired it up with Seb Leon… and no, I did not tweet once about it.  This is my life at the moment.  Just got a new banjo - super excited for my NYC record release on tuesday!

That’s the latest.   Love it or hate it, the popularity of twitter and it’s combo of bite-size blog morsals of immediate gratification and the corresponding withering away of attention spans and interest in information that is not in real-time makes me think there are fewer (but better, perhaps) readers of the old-fashioned blog post.   Maybe the reality is the above would be more engaging if it was twittered in it’s crack-rock sized installments in real-time, but there’s something that is so undignified, mosquito-like, if you will, to be constantly stopping everything to swat a thought into the twittersphere.   For those fellow Luddites, I salute you in staying the course on journeys that exceed 140 digits.

Posted on 07/04/09 at 12:37PM | Filed under: blog