Tuesday at Bohemeo's, Houston

We braved the crazy roads of Houston once more and arrived at Bohemeo's, in a historic district of Houston. It is in what I think was called the Old East Side, a blue collar neighborhood where the workers who basically built Houston over the last 100 years lived. It is just outside downtown. Houston is a vast city. It takes an hour in any direction to get out of it. I have never seen roads in worse shape, and I have never seen such complex highway routing. There are stoplights on interstate "on ramps," and 2 lanes suprise merging into 1 in a curve so you can't see it coming on an elevated highway at interstate speed. If you wreck there you fall off the interstate into traffic below. It's totally crazy, people.
Bohemeo's is such a cool club! Lupe Olivarez, the owner, and a musician himself, was great. He has a great sounding room, very live, and a hip-hop ready PA, so it had subwoofers, and was running in stereo (2 things Zoo likes muchly). Lupe ran sound for us, and it just sounded great. Kayte played another awesome show, I sound like a broken record singing her praises, but she is really is a terrific performer. Kevin, too. They get a lot of energy of pretty small instrumentation. We did a full band arrangement of Uncomplicated, and Scott played bass and I played drums! It was fun. That's a groovy song. Then I added melodica again to "Hallelujah." Scott's been sitting in on hand drums some with them too. After her great set, we jumped up on stage and proceeded to give maybe our best show of the tour. The sound has such a big impact on the quality of the show. We could hear everything, and it was big when it needed to be. That's the thing, the PA needs to be loud enough so that when you lean on your instruments, you get the volume back that you need to create intensity. If the PA is too weak, you are trying to emote but it isn't translating. Lupe's club was the exact opposite! We would dig into our instruments, and all the sound and volume would be there, and we had some really intense moments during the set. Candy Shelter really went well. I started it out more expressively than I usually do, inspired by the good sounding PA, and the boys had a new beat behind it that sounded awesome. Ghosts did the same thing. The Plybons suyrprised me with a part they had worked out for the chorus that was really big sounding. I started singing "When I feel dead inside you make me live again" and they started pounding behind me on the way into the chorus. We had just come out of a quite delicate sounding verse, so it was very intense, and super successful! I went with it and their idea made the song work really well. The Tuesday crowd was not very big, but we made friends with the folks there, including a cool guy from France named Chaz. He had an interesting insight about America and Houston in general. I asked him if he liked it here. He said that he did not like the city, but that he liked what happened to him here. I interpreted that to mean that he liked the opportunities that the American way of life gave him economically, and that he liked the people he had a chance to meet and be involved with. He just didn't like the reality of being on the ground in Houston. Hot. Humid. Crazy roads. I liked Chaz. He was a street performer in France. He and Kayte hit it off, and he talked to her about giving yourself over to the emotion of the music. He also listened to us very intently, and was smiling at the end of songs, and clapping before the last sound was finished. He was a great audience. I enjoyed performing for someone paying attention that closely.
Time to get moving towards Austin. We are gonna be playing at a house party at the Bakers tonight, and there's still packing to do. We didn't do much of yet because Kayte made french toast for breakfast at Aunt Willie's this morning (probably in honor of Chaz!).
Being on the road is great!
We haven't had car trouble yet, so keep us in your prayers.
Zoo

Monday at Khon's, Houston

Khon Lu is a cool guy. He has a little wine bar where they serve only high quality local wines and beer, and his family is always around, and they play darts in the back, and poker Texas Hold 'Em in the front on Mondays. He was passionate about the small company wines and beer from the area, and his passion reminded me a lot of Chad's passion about good tea. In the vacant store adjoining Khon's, which they have access to, Khon has created a performance space for musicians. The walls have curves and are painted cool artsy colors, there are really high ceilings, and gels on the lights, so the vibe is awesome. We set up there and had so much room to move around, and it felt really comfortable. The acoustics in that place were fantastic. I could tell when we were setting up that it was going to sound great. There was a sweet natural reverb in that room. It always lifts my singing up a notch when there is good room sound to sing into. It feels likes leaning on a wall made of trampoline, you just lean into it as far as you want and it molds to your shape and gently supports you. I love good room reverb! Anyway, one of Kayte Grace's fans from youtube came out, and it was her 16th birthday! Needless to say, she had a cool birthday. Kayte played an amazing opening set, really singing well, and sounding good. Scott added hand drums to a couple of songs, and I played piano on "Soaked You In" like we did at her EP release party in DC a couple months back. Anyway, in all of the excitement about the youtube fans and the afterglow of a great performance, Kayte and Kevin kinda forgot to mention that we were playing next, and most of the crowd left! Oops! But Joe Next Door played anyway, because the acoustics were just too good to pass up. Khon's wife Ashley, and their kids hung out and danced while we played. One of their little girls thought we were there to celebrate her recent birthday, and we were happy to oblige that role. They could hear us through the wall in the wine bar, and outside the wine bar smoking, and they told us many times how much they loved it. We got audio and video of the whole show, trying to take advantage of the special room, and we hope to be able to edit it and post some highlights when we get back. I was told by the band that I have never sung my solo song "I'd Be Close to You" better. Stay tuned for mp3's and vids next week sometime, after we get back and have time to work on them.

The streets in Houston are the worst I've ever seen, full of potholes, bumps and broken pavement. Where the pavement is not broken it's wavy and weird. There's lots of detours and road construction and blocked off areas. Whew it was a time navigating our little tour bus through it all. We get to do it again tonight on the way to Bohemeo's.