Janis' Tour Blog: The blog is back! 7/31/09 Vaudeville Mews, Des Moines, IA

FGC has had a uncharacteristically light summer up until this point, but we're back in full swing, and I'm hoping my blog will be too. We'll see.

Yesterday's show in Des Moines started out with some ups and downs. The first "down" was having to get up early for the 6+ hour drive and be on the road by 11:30am. Musicians brains do not compute before noon. I tried to ease the pain by buying everyone breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts, the day's first "up." Aren't I sweet?

We get on the road and encounter another of the day's "ups". I check my email to find that I had beaten the Red Lion Hotel chain's Best Rate Guarantee and scored 2 nights of 2 rooms for FREE for the band's travels to Colorado in a couple weeks. Stickin' it to the man! I wasn't happy for too long, as when we stopped for gas about an hour later, we realized that our video camera and audio recorder had been swiped out of the back of our van while we were loading up at our house that morning. LAME.

We tried to shake off the bad news, instead focusing on the mountain of work ahead of us for the evening. Luckily Des Moines fan, Dax (from now on spelled "Daxxx" cause it's much cooler), was on hand to help load in and set up our gear and light show. Using our lights always adds an extra hour or two of setup, and getting 'em rigged up at the Mews was no easy feat, involving ladders and death-defying acrobatics. I pleaded "girl" and did not participate beyond running cables.

The place filled up and we started off the show with a brand new tune we've been working on ("G Song", for now), that we weren't even sure was quite ready to be debuted, but our Des Moines crowd is such a comfortable and welcoming bunch that it's always easy to be risky there. We pulled it off pretty well, and the second set unveiled 2 more new songs, an original temporarily called "F Song" or "Groove Cheese", as well as a Medeski Martin and Wood cover called "Wiggly's Way." It's a shame we didn't have our audio or video recorders on hand to capture this show; it was certainly a fun night!

We ended the show a few minutes before curfew and enjoyed some time hanging with the fans before they got kicked out, and then the joy of tearing everything down. We got to our hotel close to 4am and crashed hard.