Wednesday with Miguelito. June 28, 2006
View of the Potomac from the taxi. June 28, 2006 9:16pm
Crazy day yesterday. Went to rehearsal at American Dance Institute in Rockville and got there about 15 minutes late. Ugh. The dancers didn't seem to mind cuz they were still working out some choreographic details that didn't need live accompaniment at the moment. Besides, I needed to tune, stretch and retune the new guitar strings I put on that morning. It was like having a new guitar with an edgy bright sound. Nice!
So far so good. Finished rehearsal, grabbed a late lunch at Baja Fresh before getting on the metro towards Old Town Alexandria to pick up the sound equipment. My intent was to setup the sound at the Andalucia Restaurant in Rockville super early and chill out at the nearby Barnes and Noble before my gig. But I was nodding off again on the metro and decided instead to stop by the Pink Flamenco and take a nap for an hour or so.
Left the house at 6:00pm and got on the metro. The train was between stations just before my destination and it stopped due to mechanical difficulties. Happens sometimes and usually it gets up and running again in minutes. This time though, we ended up sitting on the train going nowhere for about half an hour. Kind of annoying, but I had a cool science fiction book to read (Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly). Fortunately I factored in a little bit of extra time for delays etc. The gig in Rockville didn't start until 9:00pm anyway.
The train operator ended up backtracking and took us to the Braddock Road station which is too far for me to walk to Las Tapas with my now increasingly compressed schedule. Caught a cab, arrived at Las Tapas, picked up my sound system and said hello to my flamenco colleagues on my way out and headed towards the King St Metro. I was satisified that I'd arrive in Rockville with just enough time to walk in the door, setup sound and start playing.
Got to Metro Center to transfer to the Red Line. The train announcement screen displayed the arrival time of the next train: 15 minutes. Ugh. Don't need this. Pulled out my book and Ipod to take my mind off things. 15 minutes later, the screen stopped displaying arrival times and the station manager announced that the train at Gallery Place was being offloaded. Which usually means that the next few trains will be very very full which means it's going to be very very hard for me to get on the train with all my sound equipment. So the only option I had was to take a taxi all the way to Rockville. I was back on schedule, sort of. It was feeling a little disappointed having to cough up a large amount of cash for this ride which ended up costing me $45 but at least I arrived at the gig at the same time the client (for the private party that Sarah and I were performing for) arrived at the restaurant.
We started the show at 9:45pm. Opened with Sevillanas and Sarah did her tientos. Played a ten-minute guitar solo and Sarah came back onstage to do her solea and then we finished off with bulerias. The client promptly paid us in cash plus a nice little tip. Sarah had a ride waiting for her and Monica, the manager, offered to give me a ride to my next gig at Meze. It was already 10:40pm and the next gig started at 11:00pm-ish in Adams-Morgan. Yikes!
Good thing Monica is a fast driver cuz I got there on time, believe it or not. As I stood there in front of the club, I caught my breath from lugging all the equipment from the car, composed myself and approached the bouncer who checked for my name on the guest list. This was a private party--Meze's fifth anniversary.
Got in but decided to leave my equipment at the door for the time being. The place was seriously packed and I wanted to touch base with my dancer before hauling all that sound gear through this crowd.
Made it up to the third floor, found Marsha and decided on what we'd perform. The party was at a high and we didn't want to cut the DJ music and do our thing for fear of killing the party. But I was there and after rushing down here from Rockville and making the effort of transporting all my equipment I was intent on doing the show one way or another. So we decided to just do four coplas of Sevillanas--short and sweet.
Faster than I've ever done before I setup my sound system in five minutes--didn't check my watch but I'm sure it was my fastest time. The music was already cut and the party vibe was starting to fade so I had to get this flamenco show going right away!
Plugged in the red stage light--a excellent decision cuz it basically defined a performance area for Marsha in this already crowded space. She did two coplas in the back and another two in the front. Applause, applause and five minutes later we were done for the night, at least the performance part. But I wasn't going to just turn around and go home and ended up staying until the very end. Here are a few pics....
Yana and Miguelito. June 29, 2006 12:45am
I know Yana from a few years ago, when I used to stay at Citron until closing time every Monday and crash at my brother's place in Rosslyn. I'd see her on the metro from time to time. She speaks Russian so naturally I got to squeeze in some practice with her.
Party downstairs. June 29, 2006 1:06am
Every once in a while, someone would grab a stack of paper napkins and toss them into the air and as it "rained" napkins the crowd would go wild--hence the white napkin hangin' off the light in the top right corner of the pic. Kinda cool for the party vibe but I feel bad for the people that have to clean up afterwards. Must be a Turkish thing.
Party upstairs. June 29, 2006 1:09am
I saw lots of familiar faces---people from Citron whose faces I recognize but haven't talk to yet.
Miguelito and "Adam" June 29, 2006 3:17am
Every time I've been here at Meze over the past few years, I always ran into Adam--he probably works here. Anyway, turns out he's a friend of one of my dancers and although I don't really know him that well, he recognizes me as the guy who comes to Meze with flamencos.
Meze owner Yavuz, Francie and Laura. June 29, 2006 3:37am
It's 1:46pm on Thursday and I don't have anything scheduled this afternoon other than catching up on sleep or maybe catching a movie. We'll see. Check my blog tomorrow. Until then, ciao!