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.

Sunday at Serda's, Mobile

Well, downtown Mobile is really cool. It is a port city, so it reminded me of Wilmington, my hometown. There were big ships, and lost of water. There's like 5 rivers all converging at Mobile Bay. There is a long long twin bridge that goes over all 5 bodies of water that you ride on to get into Mobile. It is several miles long, I mean it is a long bridge! Then it culminates with a big bridge hill and a twin dark red suspension arcs. It was like a piece of music, except it was a bridge. The show at Serda's went OK. We had some sound difficulties that meant I had spend extra setup time working on EQ-ing the speakers, which meant I didn't have time for a guitar sound check (Translate that as Zoo starts Bruises and Cuts and has to scramble around trying to fix the sound while the band keep playing the intro for like 2 minutes!) Then, because of the rush during setup, I forgot to finish connecting the piano. Translate that as Zoo counts off Useless Ears and then hits the piano riff and no sound comes out! Aside from the technical difficulties, the band was playing in a room at the back, separated from the people by a hallway. There was a camera though, pointing at us and projecting our images onto a big screen TV mounted out front. It was weird being separated from the crowd. But we sold some merchandise, and the house liked us and gave us some gas money. He also gave us pointers for some other venues, and for a good local seafood restaurant so we could have a birthday dinner for Scott. I had "fresh catch" grouper, and Jamie had fresh gulf shrimp (they're big and delicious!). Both were freaking fantastic!











Scott got some free fried strawberry cheesecake for desert, since it was his birthday. There was a little chemistry between Scott and our waitress, but alas, we were on the road all too soon for anything to blossom. The best part about mobile was meeting Matt and his wife. They came to the show, and then they opened their home to us. They even got a place for themselves and their kids so we'd have room in their house. It was immeasurably kind. We had comfortable accommodations, and showers on a night when I thought we'd sleeping in our own stink. Matt is a musician too, and plays guitar for his church. We now have a friend in Mobile Alabama! As I'm writing this we are on the way to Houston, currently traveling through Mississippi. We are on the way to Khon's, where we will be playing from 8-10, and where they will be having Texas Hold 'Em night! Promises to be fun...
Also, Kayte, Kevin, Scott and I played together on one of Kayte's songs yesterday. We are planning to do more of that tonight. Being on the road has been fun so far! We basically ran out of gas in Atlanta, but I brought my lawn mower gas can with about a gallon in it, and that got us to the gas station. The trip to Houston today is the longest haul yet, and I expect we'll be tired tonight. Jamie has been helping drive yesterday and today, and that has been a big relief. Driving with the trailer requires full time awareness, and just being able to stop thinking about it as a passenger is like resting. The rest of the week will be more relaxed though, since we are playing 2 days in Houston, and 3 in Austin, which is only 3 hours away. Jamie and I will be doing a long haul on our own next weekend, but that's then, and this is now, and there's no time now to worry about then.
More soon loyal friends and fans,
Zoo, over and over and over and over and out.

Saturday at Java Monkey, Decatur GA

Amazing night, amazing venue, amazing food! Kayte and Kevin joined us tonight, and for the next 5 shows. They were awesome! My mom also came to visit, down from Cornelia. She doesn't like to drive long trips these days, so it was great to see her. And man, the Java Monkey in Decatur GA is a place worth stopping by if you can. We will definitely be coming back. The music space is a covered stage area that is outside. There is a lot of foot traffic in this area. It has a cool downtown vibe, kinda like Trade Street, back home. We were in downtown Atlanta last night, and that feels metropolitan, with sky scrapers and lights, but this part of Atlanta was much further south, and felt like another town. We played to a receptive crowd, sold some merch, and got some terrific food. I mean like melted brie and apples, pita bread with hummus to die for, chef salad full of lots of beautifully colored baby greens, mozzarella/tomato sandwiches, amaretto butter cream cake, and mango black tea. Yeah.
It was awesome. A guy came by as we were packing up, and he went crazy for the green guitar. He was a little drunk, but he was appreciating all the right things about it. He had an eye that picked up a lot of the unique craftsmanship of the instrument. He requested to hear a song, so we pulled out an acoustic and did an impromptu version of "I love the way you smell" with Scott playing dumbek, and Kevin beating on suitcases. It was cool. He signed the email list, and then shoved some money in my hand since we had already packed the tip jar. All in all, a great night! Getting up wicked early for a trip to Mobile, though. G'night friends!
Zoo, on the road.

Friday at The Urban Grind, Atlanta

Well, the first show of the tour was good. Scott & I played duo arrangements of the set for a small but attentive crowd who listened throught the whole thing. At various points through the set I saw each of them reacting to songs. That was cool. They were all Devin McLaughlin's friends, who came out for his opening set, and then stayed for us. He was a nice guy who played acoustic and sang a nice mix of covers and originals with his friend playing saxophone along with him. It was cool. He had a nice voice. I'm glad he brought his friends. We didn't sell anything, but we got most of them on the mailing list. Also the venue liked us and said we could play again the next time we come through. One down, 8 to go!