Pretzles, Snakesuits and Mega-Danceparties

We've hit February's ground running like parched maiacs to the sea of beats. Our first two shows of the New Year's new season, in Saratoga and Ithaca, NY were pretty much as bombastic as could be. We all felt fresh and inspired by a month of re-cretion, re-juvination and re-st. I think our friends in both those towns felt similarly because they seemed particularly pumped-up: screaming, dancing and really keeping the party going. In Ithaca a new (and way bigger) incarnation of the once-duo Beat the Grid opened up the night. They've got a huge horn section and dazzling frontlady, Hayden Eager, and so it was kind of the perfect warm-up. For some reason Ithaca wanted to do a costume party that night... so we joined in the spirit. Adam donned his snake suit, Mark wore Danilo's damlation outfit, Darby brought out his sexy librarian alter ego, and I wore a crazy polyester jacket that Liu Christmas-gifted me.

Above are 3 self-portraits of us doing hands-in right before the show. Please note Adam's snake costume, this is the only photo I have of it.

Our sweet friend Ryan Curtis showed up with his full body-painting setup, and he razzled a few of us up...

Gosh, I'm so lucky to be prancing around on stage every night, shaking my body like I'd always dreamed as a kid.... it felt great to be back in that energy. We finished our set with a brand new song, Came Out of a Lady, ran around blasting our horns in the audience, and it worked great. Just when I was ready to end it all and collapse backstage we went back out to make an encore out of Bad Mr. Kurtz and invited Beat the Grid up to play percussion and dance around. I was sweating so much! Wailing into the mic! And then... the song ended... but the music didn't. For another 10 minutes everyone kept playing their various tomtoms, shakers, cowbells, switching around instruments, dancing and laughing. This has never happened before onstage. What a silly and awesome moment.

This weekend that just ended was more of the same on the mega-danceparty font. We had local dudes Bodega and our Boston friends Spiritual Rez in Philly with us, and wonderful beautiful dancers came pouring out of the cracks in the snow and ice to rally and party. And that was SOME snow and ice! Now I understand what Obama meant by Snowmageddon: After the show we decided to seek out one of the infamous Philly pretzel factories that are said to be open all night, selling fresh ones to the vendors. The one we found was closed (ahhhh! what disappointment!) and the icy chunk nightmare we found on the tiny side streets leading back to I-95 was truly chilling. Foot-deep chunks of solidified snow rutted and scarified the as-yet un-plowed streets... cars were banked in parking lanes on both sides creating narrow yet severely bumpy passes, it was like threading a needle on a bucking bronco! Lucky we escaped without ripping off any bumpers with our manly grill.

Finally, Northampton... there aren't really any adequate words... And since there aren't any pictures either (I had to give Ian my camera's batteries for his Game Boy, cause I used his in my in-ears) I'll just have to be extremely minimalistic: (it was SOLD OUT and a) MEGA-DANCEPARTY!

Love,
Kalmia
+ Rubblebucket