AllOne NovEmbark Tour 2016: 11/23 & 11/24 Bruce & Kenny in Washington D.C.
NOVEMBARK TOUR 2016: 11/23 & 11/24 Washington, DC
Hey AllOne Family,
As I initially started writing this I was preparing myself to head out to meet with Drent in Rhode Island and play a run of events in New England, and then I was preoccupied for a month and had to come back and finish this. My sincerest apologies...Happy New Year...but while on the subject of holidays, the day before Thanksgiving (Turkey-ve as they call it nowhere) I drove down to Washington, DC...here's a little about that adventure:
A Lengthy Drive Rife with Entertainment and Tolls.
So after a stint of shows back home on Long Island I was really fulfilled and excited bit of course also jittery and eager to get on the road! Thanks to The help of organizer Joel Pomerantz at Electric Maid, who responded to my email to him (got his information through DoDIY.Org) I had an event set up at that community venue in Tacoma Park. For those of you who don't know, or were like me and just didn't think about it... the day before Thanksgiving Eve (still never called Turkey-ve but I'm trying to make it stick) is notoriously one of the worst ones to travel. (Which really means it is the best day to travel, except everybody thinks that so it sucks...make you think a little more about the value of consensus hm?). This turned my proposed 5.5 hour trip into a 7.5 hour trip. I'm not complaining, it is just a fact. What I will complain about are the tolls...what a nightmare! Luckily I had my new Chevy Spark with me and that thing is a miracle machine.... drove down to DC on a full tank of gas (which cost me a mere 20$ by the way). This saved my ass when I nearly paid 40 dollars in tolls on the way down. But that is neither here nor there (which is exactly my route if these pirate toll booths insist on robbing travelers!). So to keep busy on the way there, I used my Bandcamp and Podcast app and listened to the following excellent projects:
Upon arrival I found myself without gas and without money, I considered pawning some technology I had with me. I was filled with fear and doubt. I sat in the gas station with a nearly empty car and no money to fill it with. I panicked. I abandoned that thought. Decided to trust in the event and the people and force myself to have to hustle for it at the show. With the pressure of having to get home on the line, with Thanksgiving the very next day and a show on Long Island two days in advance, I really had the pressure on. Thankfully the folks at the show were really generous and helpful.
Electric Maid and new friends among earthy folk and bizarre "space rock"
Electric Maid is a charming little community space that looks really epic with a big electric blue sign like a marquee out front and inside it is far less intimidating but even more homely, it feels like you're in a professional house concert living room. It was spacious inside, with the walls adorned with local artist's work and a small stage. Gil ran sound and was a hilarious guy, Joel and Mike helped set things up and were very cordial while we talked music and politics and social issues. I set up my merch table and tip jar (with great hope in my heart) inviting people to take whatever they want and pay whatever they could.) This humble approach seems counter-intuitive given my great need to get enough funds to make it back home etc. but in my experience this is an optimal set up. When inviting people to pay what they afford but encouraging them to take something regardless, everyone walks away with something to listen to and remember you by, and some people will offer to spend more money than I would have had the audacity to ask, so it all evens out.
I had the pleasure of meeting and befriending the other performers of Nostromo (formerly Pocket in The Back) and Eli Lev, who I clicked with a lot. I opened the show with a set that I really felt went well. It was a small crowd of people so I just focused on delving deep into my material and my emotional connection to the moment and tried to do my best. I really like the set list for how much of my catalog it represented and the way the themes and feelings evoked by the songs flowed. I felt so reflectively good about the feeling that performing it gave me that I wrote it down for potential replication... here's the set list...
Travel Baggage (Carry On)
Pennsylvanian Patriarch
Work In Progress
Build Here
Rush Hour '98
Roamer
Quality Vs. Quarantine
What's Your Problem?
Seize In Caesium
This Is For
Eli Lev went up next and was such a personable guy with a versatile array of skills from slight beatboxing to a great voice, guitar playing, native flute and harmonica as well! He was such a great personality, an apparent progressive lover of humanity, of travel and earth, bringing up social concerns without being preachy and warmly sharing stories. With a loop pedal he would create and layer his songs that were performed with great passion and genuine excitement. He had a quality about him that was self-assured and confident without seeming arrogant. It was refreshing to see a fellow performer care about life and their craft and audience, something affirming about someone excited about their craft and motivated to share it, knowing the good that can do for people!
Nostromo closed the show out with some blaring space-rock jams that we close the set with Gil the sound man getting up and playing Blink 182's Dammit and I jumped on stage and sang the lyrics with them, nostalgia flooding.
Between album sales/tips and my cut of the door, which Joel was nice enough to weigh even heavier in my favor than we agreed out of apologetic reparations for the slim crowd, I was able to fill my tank! My heart actually ached with gratitude and the relieving of stress! I waved goodbye to my new friends after I exchanged information with them, certainly eager to return!
The reuniting of Bruce & Kenny (a capital city romp around)
After the show, I filled my gas tank with an air of pride rarely if ever attributed to such a menial task and went to head to see my fellow skateboarding friend Kenny Packard after he got out of work. I hadn't seen him in several years since my last stint of touring in 2014, so it was great to reunite with such a meaningful person in my life. He and I met through my time at SUNY Oswego and we had a ridiculous internet show called "The Bruce & Kenny Show" that "aired" for 25 consecutive weeks! He showed me around the city, we met his friends at a bar and hung out on a main street that was bustling with bars on Turkeve, which I forgot (again) was one of the biggest "going out nights" of the year!! Getting to catch up with someone you haven't seen in a while is a great opportunity to reflect on your own circumstances, both failures and successes in a way that friends that you see more often don't always seem to evoke. I find it also often brings on new perspectives and chances to experience new mentalities brought on by all of the life and the places and people that they've encountered in your long absence. I found it very cathartic to pick each others' brains, reminisce on goofy college times as well as explore the adventures of him over the delicious make-your-own-falafel we got at 1 am! Afterward, we went back to his apartment which was in a really nice old area full of what are called Rail Road Homes which remind me of the boarding house from Hey Arnold. Small but tall, very old and close together all with porches and nice sets of stairs standing tall over the small streets lined with suburban canopies, after ascending the seemingly ancient creaky steps that went on forever, I bundled up in my sleeping bag on the floor and said goodnight.
Thanksgiving On The Road, An Amiable Odyssey In A Phone Booth
Waking up in a strange city on the dawn of a holiday is pretty interesting, it certainly made me feel like I was a little more the agent of my own life and decisions, it also made the holiday seem less locked into the traditions I was familiar with. It felt like it signified something important about control over my life and so we packed up and we went to a really cool artisan grocery market that he works at called Glenn's which had all sorts of interesting local foods and drinks where I met a bunch of his friendly co-workers. He was generous enough to treat me to a stew and grilled cheese sandwich which was delicious and we ate at this little bar in a beam of sunlight while the people working there offered me beer samples so in the spirit of "yes" I lightly drank while eating brunch and making new friends.
While walking back to my car in the brisk morning air, we expressed many thanks for our friendship over the years, the excitement about the much-overdue visit and ogled many prime skate-spots that the hilly outskirts of the capitol teased us with! Kenny shipped me off into my car which began a traffic-riddled 7 hour drive to my dad's house for Thanksgiving back on Long Island. What I did do that I really enjoyed was spent the first 3 hours of that morning drive just calling people with my bluetooth car features and saying hello indiscriminately going down my list of contacts and just catching up and wishing people well. It was a great feeling! Even just leaving voicemails or full little exchanges with people's voices joining me in the car that only lasted a few minutes were such great company and it helped passed the time rather quickly. Caught a glimpse of Manhattan's
uniquely beautiful lit night-sky-line that pictures never seem to do justice to. Although there was relatively no traffic on account of the holiday, I still didn't get to my Dad's house until the evening and I felt bad because I awkwardly couldn't sit at the table what with just being so cramped up in the car for the past quarter of a day. After wearily recounting my adventures to my family, I found myself uncharacteristically falling asleep early only to be reinvigorated and awake until 3 or 4 in the morning. It gave me time to reflect on all that I am grateful for and that my "crazy improbable jaunt" was actually not all that bad and I made it home on the generosity of others, spending a holiday with people I love in differing states and had the affable conversations of dozens of people in my head, their voices full of delight and that I had called. It reminded me how close people and places and adventures are if we choose to engage in them.
Electric Maid and new friends among earthy folk and bizarre "space rock"
 |
| Iphone Panorama of the inside of Electric Maid. |
Electric Maid is a charming little community space that looks really epic with a big electric blue sign like a marquee out front and inside it is far less intimidating but even more homely, it feels like you're in a professional house concert living room. It was spacious inside, with the walls adorned with local artist's work and a small stage. Gil ran sound and was a hilarious guy, Joel and Mike helped set things up and were very cordial while we talked music and politics and social issues. I set up my merch table and tip jar (with great hope in my heart) inviting people to take whatever they want and pay whatever they could.) This humble approach seems counter-intuitive given my great need to get enough funds to make it back home etc. but in my experience this is an optimal set up. When inviting people to pay what they afford but encouraging them to take something regardless, everyone walks away with something to listen to and remember you by, and some people will offer to spend more money than I would have had the audacity to ask, so it all evens out. I had the pleasure of meeting and befriending the other performers of Nostromo (formerly Pocket in The Back) and Eli Lev, who I clicked with a lot. I opened the show with a set that I really felt went well. It was a small crowd of people so I just focused on delving deep into my material and my emotional connection to the moment and tried to do my best. I really like the set list for how much of my catalog it represented and the way the themes and feelings evoked by the songs flowed. I felt so reflectively good about the feeling that performing it gave me that I wrote it down for potential replication... here's the set list...
Travel Baggage (Carry On)
Pennsylvanian Patriarch
Work In Progress
Build Here
Rush Hour '98
Roamer
Quality Vs. Quarantine
What's Your Problem?
Seize In Caesium
This Is For
 |
| Eli Lev |
 |
| Nostromo |
Between album sales/tips and my cut of the door, which Joel was nice enough to weigh even heavier in my favor than we agreed out of apologetic reparations for the slim crowd, I was able to fill my tank! My heart actually ached with gratitude and the relieving of stress! I waved goodbye to my new friends after I exchanged information with them, certainly eager to return!
The reuniting of Bruce & Kenny (a capital city romp around)
 |
| My impossible-to-eat-cleanly delicious 1am custom Falafel experience was on point. Thanks Kenny! |
 |
| D.C..'s charming and almost-intimidatingly gargantuan "railroad homes" are so much nicer than their name suggests! |
Waking up in a strange city on the dawn of a holiday is pretty interesting, it certainly made me feel like I was a little more the agent of my own life and decisions, it also made the holiday seem less locked into the traditions I was familiar with. It felt like it signified something important about control over my life and so we packed up and we went to a really cool artisan grocery market that he works at called Glenn's which had all sorts of interesting local foods and drinks where I met a bunch of his friendly co-workers. He was generous enough to treat me to a stew and grilled cheese sandwich which was delicious and we ate at this little bar in a beam of sunlight while the people working there offered me beer samples so in the spirit of "yes" I lightly drank while eating brunch and making new friends.
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| An unconventional, though delicious Thanksgiving brunch of stew and grilled cheese from Glenn's Market in DC! |
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| My exhausted stupid face consumes a local DC micro-brew given to me by overzealous grocery store bartenders (yep, that is a thing) with brunch in anticipation of a lengthy holiday drive (like any decent person would). |
Most everything is in our grasp,
the first step is to realize how close it is,
the second step is to decide to reach for it.
Reach out to those you care for, no matter the distance!
-Bruce "AllOne" Pandolfo
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| My phone camera fails at capturing the majesty of NYC's perpetual skyscraper garden and Edison-born-Twilight. |
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