Ballpark Tour '07

Sitting here, still reading love letters to the OakTeam from Chicago. That was crazy fun. But I really wish that we’d had a couple of gigs under our belts before getting there. The show we played in Columbus was scary good. My friend Joey Ward, from Bunn NC, just happened to be working in C-bus that night and surprised me with a visit. He said it was one of the top five OakTeam shows he’s ever seen, and that’s a lot. I thought it was too. I mean, seriously it was one of the better shows we’d ever played for sure. We were tighter than a boot camp fitted sheet. Bam bam bam!we did one song right after another, singing in perfect pitch and playing loose but together. It was a spiritual connection like you hope for on the stage and why we keep doing it. And it was effortless too, like riding a bicycle down a hill. We were just cruising and kicking everybody’s asses there.
The club was really cool. The Thirsty Ear, or “the ear” had two of the sweetest girls on staff. Christine, the waitress, took great care of us. When I casually mentioned that my throat was a little sore from the night before she made me a hot tea with lemon. She was a fan and asked to work on the night that we were there. We later sang “happy birthday” to her after midnight. And Amy the bartender spent her whole afternoon baking us cookies!
It was a crazy fun night and the owner, Dan danced all night.
We got up Wednesday morning and went over to Colin’s Coffee, owned by Colin, the dude in Watershed and The League Bowlers, who opened the show. You guys in C-bus need to check it out, it’s a cool hang with really great mud for us caffeine addicts.
It was on to Lexington, but not without a stop in Cinci to the Reds’ “Great American Ballpark”. We parked on the street and ran inside and bought a few things at their team shop. When we got to Lexington we went straight to Legends Field, which was closed since the early 11:30 game had been over for a few hours. We still took it upon ourselves to find a good spot to take pictures of the field.
It was on to the club and we got the usual stares from patrons and wait staff, honestly not making us feel as welcome as we had hoped. But we HAD just gotten the royal treatment from the first three clubs and were a bit spoiled. We saw the dude bringing in the PA and Dave yelled over at him “Hey man, we don’t need monitors!” “These are part of the PA” he said. Uh oh! They wanted us to start early because that would draw the kids in but apparently we (more the room than us) were too loud and they stood outside at the glass and stared in. The second set was better. A few adjustments were made and we did finally win’m over. Making our record STILL…undefeated! Many thanks to Scott Luallen, 9 Pound Hammer singer for getting the gig and paying for the PA out of his own pocket. It was a bit of a struggle but it did turn out to be really fun.
Late night drive to Charleston, WV and we unfortunately head home today.