135 - Red Shed
Photo by Amy Zamarripa
I really wasn’t supposed to go out on Wednesday night. I was recording basics on Thursday - getting the bass and drum tracks down, the foundation for the rest of my recording, my first day in the studio, what I’d been working towards the whole year!
That afternoon, I finished my prep session with Dan where we played through some songs, made corrections to the charts that I would then re-write cleanly that night. I went to wait for the bus. I wanted to go to the store and get some olives because Sally the Studio Cat had gotten her face in the ones I’d bought earlier that week. I’d been off dairy since mid-March and some nice fancy olives had seemed like they would be a good stand in for cheese.
As I sat at the stop looking up the bus schedule, a little voice pestered me to go to the Red Shed Open Mic. It was the first one of the warm season, so I hadn’t been since last year. ”Don’t be silly,” I told the voice, “You can’t go out tonight. I know you think it would be cool to have 135 open mics under your belt before recording, but really, 134 is just as good and you need the rest!” ”Red Shed, Red Shed, Red Shed!” it chanted.
I started walking toward the other bus stop, to the bus I’d need to take to get to the Red Shed. I figured I could still make up my mind to go home or to the store instead. I figured if I did go, I could leave early, and I could even do my charts while listening to the other musicians.
Still, as I sat there waiting for the bus, I had plenty enough time to change my mind. But the little voice was persistant and clear. I’m not always clear enough myself to listen, but when I can hear, those little intuitive voices don’t tend to steer me wrong, so when the bus pulled up, I hopped on.
I missed the Red Shed stop, but luckily the next stop was at the point where the bus looped back around, and even with that delay I made it in time to find Amy setting up the stage. Except she couldn’t find the mic or the cord for it. I had both my mic and cord in my gig bag. Amy made it through her first song with a noisy guitar buzz before we decided to try my guitar cord too, and sure enough, the buzz went away!
“Fine,” I told the smug little voice in my head, “You were right, I had to come. Only now I can’t leave early! And I should have listened when you said to grab a granola bar from the studio!”
Luckily the food truck in the parking lot had veggie burgers. I had to pay an ATM fee to get cash out to buy one but I was pretty hungry and in it for the long haul that night. Since it was the first night back, the list was light and we got to play five songs each. I played all five of my EP songs, and I didn’t take Amy up on the offer to play a second time at the end because I wanted to save my voice and I could feel it getting tired from the long day and the air cooling down. She gave me a ride home and it was fun to catch up a bit, we hadn’t hung out in a while.
Somehow over the course of events at Red Shed, I forgot to rewrite my song charts, but I figured getting to bed ASAP was the top priority, I didn’t have to be to the studio till 11:30am.
Songs: Keep Telling Me, Anchor, Jonah’s Whale, Rain Song, Shoreline of Alaska
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