Friday, February 8, 2008

DRAG THE RIVER SURPRISE SHOW!

I had planned on a quiet evening at home when a txt shot my way by Pat Martin said that Both Jon and Chad from Drag the River were at the Ottobar. I was excited but confused as the few shows they were playing for the release of the new record were nowhere near Baltimore. I jumped in the car and headed to the club to find Jon and Chad in good spirits, drinking and hanging out. Turns out they had a flight canceled and just took the first one that would put them on the East Coast. Lucky for us it was straight to Baltimore. Over the years of seeing Drag I've gotten to know Jon as one of the kindest, nicest people. So much so that I almost felt bad playing the guilt card and suggesting I find them some acoustic guitars to play a little bit downstairs (there was no show that night). After a little bit of asking around and a phone call to Kristin we found two serviceable guitars . I bought everyone a round of shots and we headed downstairs. It was only about 6 of us so we just broke out some chairs and Jon asked for requests. I think at least these songs were played: Medicine, song for Robin Reicheart, Brutal, A Thin Lizzy cover whose name I forget, A Jeff black cover titled I know and amazingly a taken request from me for "She used to smile" one of my favorite songs from the demo that kept me company on a lot of different tours. Getting to hear it live after all these years in such an intimate setting made me close enough to tears I may as well have been crying. There were other songs played and the night drug into drunken silliness including a created on the spot song or two by Jon (Full on which was about Pat talking about the full nudity of the upstairs touch-screen machine, Scrapple Omllette which I am sure you can guess was about and a few bars of Erica Noss also, self explanatory) Anyways it was a great an unexpected night, I tried to txt some people to let them know it was going down but there was only about 15 min or so between idea and execution. Sorry to those who missed it but I'm going to try to bring those guys back soon to play at the shop. I'll keep you updated.
ME AND JON DOWNSTAIRS, OTTOBAR

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