"Emotional Baggage Bard Tour" 2/3/17 - 2/7/17: Gamboling and Gallivanting in Providence
"Emotional Baggage Bard Tour" 2/3/17 - 2/7/17: Gamboling and Gallivanting in Providence
Rhode Island Highlights and memories....
Shows and Performances:
Friday 2/3 (Everett Open Stage Feature)
The first performance and first night in Providence was a great experience featuring at the Everett Dance studio // community space! Two years ago I played here with DRENT for a huge crowd and it was one of my favorite performance experiences on the road because there was so much love for creative expression and so many people in the room and Owen and I had been speaking about the ambition to feature there ever since! Finally I got to return as a feature which is a really nice gesture because this series only happens once a month! Such an attentive and enthusiastic audience of all ages, what an experience! I opened by doing Creative Differences with Owen and then did my solo performance with my unreleased narrative "The Following Story (A Midnight Pursuit)" and then "Pagliacci (A Most Memorable Case)"! Having all of the space to fill as a single act after seeing all the great dancers seemed to pressure me to be extra emotive and active with my body language, which was a fun demand that I felt I met! Illiterate Wordsmiths, aka Drent and Kleen Kut finished up our shared feature with one of their songs from their impending album "Edgar Allans Ave"!
Sunday 2/5 (Alchemy with Illiterate Wordsmiths and Jesse Ramos)
After spending many Sunday hours posted up in Small Points Cafe, reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, writing up my Connecticut journeys, designing an AllOne Family Newsletter and editing "Spontaneous Sundays With AllOne episode 5 featuring Sik Sense" I was very very high energy and felt like the hulk! The venue was pretty empty because it was a cold night, one of the artists dropped out and the Super Bowl was keeping everyone cooped up and I didn't mind because a handful of good people were in the building and I got to play the longest set of the tour on a great stage/sound system. Jesse "The Tree" Ramos is an appropriately named lean and lanky figure who I met when we shared a bill at The News Cafe the last tour I did in November.
My setlist:
"The Case Of Sydney Barringer" (soundcheck that revealed that this would be the best sound system/set up of the entire tour, making this an absolute hell of a time)
"Quality Vs. Quarantine" (Owen took a break from being the only enthusiastic person watching the Super Bowl on his phone to run across the venue and jump on stage in time to back me up for the part I gave him in the dense chorus of this song)
"Cardiac Compass (Path To Preservation)"
"Grab The Horns"
"Pagliacci [A Most Memorable Case]" (at this point in an incredibly surprising appropriate coincidence, an older Italian gentleman walked up and watched me perform half the song and when I was finished, he asked me if I wanted a slice of pizza, because he felt my performance earned it!)
"Build Here"
"I Get Down"
"Homesick Is Where The Heart Is"
"The Following Story (A Midnight Pursuit)" (unreleased non-fiction narrative)
"Zoned Out"
"Unbelievable" snippet, a rare song, and later "Creative Differences" with Drent!
Monday 2/6 (Madcap Monday at Firehouse 13)
Last tour I had the pleasure of meeting Nate and Caleb's Madcap Monday operation that is rife with art peddlers, comedians, rappers, poets and musicians of mostly high-quality talent! (Read of my last encounter here). Yet again, I met new friends and had the pleasure of catching up with and building friendships with people I met in my last encounter. One of the new friends I met was this storyteller/poet who was simultaneously funny and insightful/vulnerable through her work named Sara Dager. We spoke for some time after her set once I congratulated her and thanked her for sharing such great work and it turns out we have very similar niche music tastes! She also does Illustration, Sculpture and Collage and you can can check that out at www.birdplayart.com Tim Batty, who I bought/bartered a painting off in November went up and did a spoken piece at the end of the night where he explained some of his sales approached (which is an eerie and open "make me an offer") a monologue in which he told the crowd that the monetary exchange is directly related to the depth or sincerity of the story that he will tell that generous or stingy patron about the piece they've made their offer for. I found this really interesting. I also got to see a talented rapper Tom "Kudos" Brewer and we connected after each others' sets, mutually in admiration of one another's work.
Another new friend, Asim Barakzai filmed and edited my performance this night rather well and I'm extremely happy that he did because I really enjoy this performance and the sound/visuals he captured! Thank you Asim!! Enjoy the footage my friends...
Must-Experience Parks/Cafes/Businesses/Bars:
**Spent a lot of time during the first few days in Providence at Small Points Cafe writing and reading The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, researching new places to play and editing Spontaneous Sundays episode 5! They had great coffee and scrumptious food I got to enjoy in comfortable chairs in the artful quirky walls of this cafe, there were toys littered about decorating the place playfully and the bathroom had robots painted on the walls interacting with the mechanical parts about the room. The workers were all cordial even while it was very busy and they didn't mind that I spent hours and hours in there reading and getting work done (which was probably because I couldn't resist treating myself to their various pastries and breakfast items, coffees and teas that were somehow very tasty but also very cheap!
** Symposium Books was an absolutely enthralling local bookstore that had both the clean and organized presentation of a franchise and the erratic and quirky array of where I ended up suckered into picking up a rare old copy of Jules Verne's "Master Of The World" from 1965! They had cassettes, vinyl records and even book enthusiast's apparel! Definitely recommended that you go in there if you're a reader or a even an oldschool music fan!
Just across the street from Small Point Cafe, which as you can see became my caffienated nest while I was in Providence, an eye-catching piebald sign reading "Craftland" came to my attention (As most eye catching things storefronts full of lights and shapes and colors and artful pieces and decorum inside. What I discovered indoors was an overwhelming array of locally created art pieces and handmade memorabilia like a brick-and-mortar Etsy. I ended up charmed into buying a few pins and an HP Lovecraft postcard. I couldn't get photos inside because that wasn't permitted but this establishment by its very nature would be changing constantly it seems with its wares and it's arrangement and you'd be making a mistake not to visit!
**Box Seats
Monday night, Owen's father was kind enough to treat us to dinner so we went to this bar and grill in Attleboro called "Box Seats" that seems simple enough but the Salmon dinner I got and the buffalo chicken tenders we started our dinner off with was absolutely delicious. Simple and easy yum yum for your tum tum if you're in the area check it out. Many thanks Mr. L!
**Hot Club
While Owen and I spent Monday gamboling about India Point Park (see below) we walked near the bridge in providence (a bridge whose ingenious construction/set up was so marvelously assembled via years of studying the tides and the weather patterns to decide the perfect time to float the structure across the water and fit it in place. What a remarkable story! At that point we came upon the artfully painted and 30+ years standing "Hot Club" on the sidewalk/boardwalk alongside the water. Upon examining and after asking Owen about it and liking his report, we capriciously opted to go inside for a drink and ended up meeting a cool bartender named Scarlet and I got a delicious "Stuffie" for the first time which is a big over-stuffed clam, evidently a New England staple. I was advised and invited to return in the summer when the place is packed out.
** Geoff's Superlative Sandwiches
Tuesday morning, when it came time to say goodbye so that I could head down to NYC to perform my second feature night at Inspired Word, Owen said he would take me to a real top-notch place for lunch. In fact, he was correct in suggesting that the choice of Geoff's Superlative Sandwiches in Providence would be an ideal choice. This place felt like a big new york sandwich shop. It had the frenetic pace of a sandwich shop (especially one whose absurd two-for-one tuesdays deal made the place busy as a beehive) homely vibe to it. It was a modestly sized place that had walls practically made of chalk board with hand-written sandwiches of all sorts that you've heard of and never thought to dream of. Unbelievable! I ended up playing it pretty simple and getting a tuna sandwich called "The Diamond" with banana peppers and some veggies on it. I ordered rye bread but they gave me their "superlative bun" which was a giant soft dusty roll that turned out to be a really preferred "mistake"! They had a barrel of pickles in the center of the store and after you ordered your sandwiches they'd give you a small bag and let you forage around with tongs in the brine for unlimited pickle spears. Owen and I spoke about future artistic plans and what would go on with our projects we are working on and so on.
After we ate lunch we left the bustling deli and recorded some freestyles for Episode 6 of Spontaneous Sundays. Then after well-wishing, we parted ways and I was off to NYC to perform at Inspired word!
Rhode Island was a great experience and was a reminder and an example of that I can build friendships and maintain them by traveling more frequently. This tour and the NovEmbark tour are the closest two tours I've ever booked and I'm already working on a short tour for early March, so I'm really excited to keep these sort of relationships and opportunities growing.
Thank you as always for your interest, I hope you've gotten something out of this and enjoy the photos, videos and the music and podcasts that I've found! If you find yourself in Providence and visit some of these places, let me know how you liked them!
Live Easy and Laugh Hard,
-Bruce "AllOne" Pandolfo
Hello Hello fellow wanderers!
Where were we when we last spoke a little over a week ago? Ah, I was curled up in a ball in the backseat of my car in Connecticut off of I-95 after nearly running myself off the road headed north post-show in my soporific keychain of a car! That Friday morning, I woke up cold and cramped with the only thing warm about me was a red hot knife in my side. I thrashed about and coughed stifled screams. The culprit was the cup-holder in the center of my back seat that had gradually burrowed with unforgiving persistence into my muscles. I got out of my car and stretched in the cold while exhaling visibility and limped circling my car like a geriatric shark. I hobbled into my driver's seat with a cry and sped towards the the hobbit house location that is Owen "Drent"s esteemed residence that was bordered by a stretch of woods and resembled a house fit for wizardry and all sorts of old-world activities. In the interest of making this 4 day narrative of manageable length for perusal, I'm going to try a different reporting technique, a non-chronological list of highlights and memorable moments, with the usual decorative cropping of photos, links and videos for the intended arousal of your endorphin and satisfaction of your generous curiosity....
 |
| Some of the beautiful overgrowth on the old house Drent rents out of that prompts the antiquated feeling it calls to mind |
 |
| Monday afternoon I wandered about the extensive property of Drent's place in spite of his warning that coyotes populated the area. Along with finding many large stones and a frozen creek, I stumbled across this huge abandoned stove/fireplace! |
Rhode Island Highlights and memories....
Shows and Performances:
Friday 2/3 (Everett Open Stage Feature)
The first performance and first night in Providence was a great experience featuring at the Everett Dance studio // community space! Two years ago I played here with DRENT for a huge crowd and it was one of my favorite performance experiences on the road because there was so much love for creative expression and so many people in the room and Owen and I had been speaking about the ambition to feature there ever since! Finally I got to return as a feature which is a really nice gesture because this series only happens once a month! Such an attentive and enthusiastic audience of all ages, what an experience! I opened by doing Creative Differences with Owen and then did my solo performance with my unreleased narrative "The Following Story (A Midnight Pursuit)" and then "Pagliacci (A Most Memorable Case)"! Having all of the space to fill as a single act after seeing all the great dancers seemed to pressure me to be extra emotive and active with my body language, which was a fun demand that I felt I met! Illiterate Wordsmiths, aka Drent and Kleen Kut finished up our shared feature with one of their songs from their impending album "Edgar Allans Ave"!
 |
| Chris "Kleen Kut" caught me in the headlines "moth to the lime-light's shine" |
 |
| Illiterate Wordsmiths dropping knowledge at Everett |
Sunday 2/5 (Alchemy with Illiterate Wordsmiths and Jesse Ramos)
After spending many Sunday hours posted up in Small Points Cafe, reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, writing up my Connecticut journeys, designing an AllOne Family Newsletter and editing "Spontaneous Sundays With AllOne episode 5 featuring Sik Sense" I was very very high energy and felt like the hulk! The venue was pretty empty because it was a cold night, one of the artists dropped out and the Super Bowl was keeping everyone cooped up and I didn't mind because a handful of good people were in the building and I got to play the longest set of the tour on a great stage/sound system. Jesse "The Tree" Ramos is an appropriately named lean and lanky figure who I met when we shared a bill at The News Cafe the last tour I did in November. My setlist:
 |
| Getting my squat on while going cuckoo crazy rapping face to face with Jesse Ramos, who is the only rapping tree I know. (sorry groot). |
"Quality Vs. Quarantine" (Owen took a break from being the only enthusiastic person watching the Super Bowl on his phone to run across the venue and jump on stage in time to back me up for the part I gave him in the dense chorus of this song)
"Cardiac Compass (Path To Preservation)"
"Grab The Horns"
"Pagliacci [A Most Memorable Case]" (at this point in an incredibly surprising appropriate coincidence, an older Italian gentleman walked up and watched me perform half the song and when I was finished, he asked me if I wanted a slice of pizza, because he felt my performance earned it!)
"Build Here"
"I Get Down"
"Homesick Is Where The Heart Is"
"The Following Story (A Midnight Pursuit)" (unreleased non-fiction narrative)
"Zoned Out"
"Unbelievable" snippet, a rare song, and later "Creative Differences" with Drent!
 |
| Jesse "The Tree" Ramos raps in tightly woven bursts of stream-of-consciousness non-sequitur sprinkled with self-effacing and conscientious nuggets of wisdom. |
 |
| Illiterate Wordsmiths finalized the night with a really high octane and intense performance. Post-nap Drent was super intense to make up for his mid-show slumber and Kleen Kut was rocking the stage with his 90's inspired style like a champ! |
Monday 2/6 (Madcap Monday at Firehouse 13)
 |
| Nate Cozzolino performs incredibly every Madcap Monday at Firehouse 13 during the "Midcap" portion of the night! He was bartending at Alchemy Sunday night and remembered me and was very supportive and encouraging. Find his music! |
Last tour I had the pleasure of meeting Nate and Caleb's Madcap Monday operation that is rife with art peddlers, comedians, rappers, poets and musicians of mostly high-quality talent! (Read of my last encounter here). Yet again, I met new friends and had the pleasure of catching up with and building friendships with people I met in my last encounter. One of the new friends I met was this storyteller/poet who was simultaneously funny and insightful/vulnerable through her work named Sara Dager. We spoke for some time after her set once I congratulated her and thanked her for sharing such great work and it turns out we have very similar niche music tastes! She also does Illustration, Sculpture and Collage and you can can check that out at www.birdplayart.com Tim Batty, who I bought/bartered a painting off in November went up and did a spoken piece at the end of the night where he explained some of his sales approached (which is an eerie and open "make me an offer") a monologue in which he told the crowd that the monetary exchange is directly related to the depth or sincerity of the story that he will tell that generous or stingy patron about the piece they've made their offer for. I found this really interesting. I also got to see a talented rapper Tom "Kudos" Brewer and we connected after each others' sets, mutually in admiration of one another's work.
Another new friend, Asim Barakzai filmed and edited my performance this night rather well and I'm extremely happy that he did because I really enjoy this performance and the sound/visuals he captured! Thank you Asim!! Enjoy the footage my friends...
Podcasts I listened to (that I would recommend):
On way to RI from CT I listened to
"Easier to act and then change your thinking than to think to change your actions"
is a paraphrased takeaway from this hilarious and interesting interview! That made me think of the relationships between the maxims "Fake it til you make it" or "actions speak louder than words" and is a contrarian point to the idea of "mind over body" that is so often spoken about these days.
Saturday I went to the gym for two hours with a travel card and listened to:
"Not everyone who voted for Trump is racist but every racist in America voted for Trump"
Sunday I listened to...
Must-Experience Parks/Cafes/Businesses/Bars:
**Spent a lot of time during the first few days in Providence at Small Points Cafe writing and reading The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, researching new places to play and editing Spontaneous Sundays episode 5! They had great coffee and scrumptious food I got to enjoy in comfortable chairs in the artful quirky walls of this cafe, there were toys littered about decorating the place playfully and the bathroom had robots painted on the walls interacting with the mechanical parts about the room. The workers were all cordial even while it was very busy and they didn't mind that I spent hours and hours in there reading and getting work done (which was probably because I couldn't resist treating myself to their various pastries and breakfast items, coffees and teas that were somehow very tasty but also very cheap!
** Symposium Books was an absolutely enthralling local bookstore that had both the clean and organized presentation of a franchise and the erratic and quirky array of where I ended up suckered into picking up a rare old copy of Jules Verne's "Master Of The World" from 1965! They had cassettes, vinyl records and even book enthusiast's apparel! Definitely recommended that you go in there if you're a reader or a even an oldschool music fan!
** Craftland
Just across the street from Small Point Cafe, which as you can see became my caffienated nest while I was in Providence, an eye-catching piebald sign reading "Craftland" came to my attention (As most eye catching things storefronts full of lights and shapes and colors and artful pieces and decorum inside. What I discovered indoors was an overwhelming array of locally created art pieces and handmade memorabilia like a brick-and-mortar Etsy. I ended up charmed into buying a few pins and an HP Lovecraft postcard. I couldn't get photos inside because that wasn't permitted but this establishment by its very nature would be changing constantly it seems with its wares and it's arrangement and you'd be making a mistake not to visit!**Box Seats
Monday night, Owen's father was kind enough to treat us to dinner so we went to this bar and grill in Attleboro called "Box Seats" that seems simple enough but the Salmon dinner I got and the buffalo chicken tenders we started our dinner off with was absolutely delicious. Simple and easy yum yum for your tum tum if you're in the area check it out. Many thanks Mr. L!
**Hot Club
While Owen and I spent Monday gamboling about India Point Park (see below) we walked near the bridge in providence (a bridge whose ingenious construction/set up was so marvelously assembled via years of studying the tides and the weather patterns to decide the perfect time to float the structure across the water and fit it in place. What a remarkable story! At that point we came upon the artfully painted and 30+ years standing "Hot Club" on the sidewalk/boardwalk alongside the water. Upon examining and after asking Owen about it and liking his report, we capriciously opted to go inside for a drink and ended up meeting a cool bartender named Scarlet and I got a delicious "Stuffie" for the first time which is a big over-stuffed clam, evidently a New England staple. I was advised and invited to return in the summer when the place is packed out. |
| Owen peeping through a giant old part of some kind. |
On Monday, Owen had off and we slept in a bit to recover from the late and exhausting night performing at Alchemy (when Drent when home to sleep, Chris and I went out to chill and rap and catch up getting food til 3am so I was shot too). I got immediately antsy and cagey as I always do in any situation when indoors and so I elected/voted/begged/protested that we go out and explore and adventure somewhere. He ended up taking me out (as he said later, it was like taking a dog out) to India Point Park, where I ran around, jumped over fences, slid down handrails, climbed trees and jumped across rocks and ran up stairs and scaled a massive jungle gym excitedly. The cold air felt good in my lungs and it was nice to be out of breath and outdoors with the cold air blowing and the sun warming my skin. After a lot of time over the weekend spent avoiding the cold and working indoors it was liberating and invigorating to embrace the outside and to stretch my limbs and use my muscles. It was cathartic and I felt much much better during and afterwards. Owen tried to keep up, laughed incredulously and gave me the historical low-down on Providence and the various things we came across, (or went across, like bridges!). We later met with Chris and started working on a song for a little mini-EP rap project we are cooking up with our friend Jesse (The aforementioned arbor).
But SHHH. That is an undisclosed secret (why would a "shhh" be in caps?! That's oxymoronomatopoeia !!
** Geoff's Superlative Sandwiches
Tuesday morning, when it came time to say goodbye so that I could head down to NYC to perform my second feature night at Inspired Word, Owen said he would take me to a real top-notch place for lunch. In fact, he was correct in suggesting that the choice of Geoff's Superlative Sandwiches in Providence would be an ideal choice. This place felt like a big new york sandwich shop. It had the frenetic pace of a sandwich shop (especially one whose absurd two-for-one tuesdays deal made the place busy as a beehive) homely vibe to it. It was a modestly sized place that had walls practically made of chalk board with hand-written sandwiches of all sorts that you've heard of and never thought to dream of. Unbelievable! I ended up playing it pretty simple and getting a tuna sandwich called "The Diamond" with banana peppers and some veggies on it. I ordered rye bread but they gave me their "superlative bun" which was a giant soft dusty roll that turned out to be a really preferred "mistake"! They had a barrel of pickles in the center of the store and after you ordered your sandwiches they'd give you a small bag and let you forage around with tongs in the brine for unlimited pickle spears. Owen and I spoke about future artistic plans and what would go on with our projects we are working on and so on.After we ate lunch we left the bustling deli and recorded some freestyles for Episode 6 of Spontaneous Sundays. Then after well-wishing, we parted ways and I was off to NYC to perform at Inspired word!
Rhode Island was a great experience and was a reminder and an example of that I can build friendships and maintain them by traveling more frequently. This tour and the NovEmbark tour are the closest two tours I've ever booked and I'm already working on a short tour for early March, so I'm really excited to keep these sort of relationships and opportunities growing.
Thank you as always for your interest, I hope you've gotten something out of this and enjoy the photos, videos and the music and podcasts that I've found! If you find yourself in Providence and visit some of these places, let me know how you liked them!
Live Easy and Laugh Hard,
-Bruce "AllOne" Pandolfo
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