so, it’d been about three years since last i played the crossroads.

i was on a sabbatical of sorts from The City, living with josh hodges (at that time, 1/2 of junkface) in a 1 bdrm apt across the hall from ryan bjornstead and emma newman (at that time, an item, the newmans) in the small town of calumet. once the proposed capitol of MI, calumet died when the copper industry moved to the arizona, leaving a downtown wrought with burned, boarded-up (and otherwise abandoned) buildings. there was very little to do in calumet, and i was glad for the time to kill. we read books, played chess, tip, and prepared lavish meals. joshie was putting the finishing touches on the sexton blake album, ryan and emma worked their day jobs, and i became a good pen pal for once. we all slept 8 hours a day. free and easy good times with my bestest close friends.

it took me about a month to go completely bat shit crazy.

before i made my buscape back to The City though, we played two shows in the nearby port town of houghton. they have long lived in my memory as the freshest and most fun i’ve played. the big one was at this all ages space called exurban, which was ran by this rick rubenesque fellow named bernie. we’d been coming there twice a week for yoga classes and small talk, so on the night of the show we had the run of the place. ryan’s prints hung on the wall, we set the stage to resemble our living room rehearsal space, (complete with clock radios and desk lamps) and burned a CD of background mummuring that we gradualy turned up as the room filled. it created a tension in the air that stuck with me untill our last song of the night. emma played keys and ryan played bass on rainstorm (both first peformances for the future members) and when the bottom dropped out and fell back in i’d never felt so sated. real up front and glowing. (read:positively pregnant) the warm up show for exurban was a night or two before at the local skate park, level 2. we’d worked up new songs, tightened up the older, and planned out smoother switches between the instruments, using loops and noise to bridge the gaps much in the way starfucker does these days. in spite of our requests to keep the skate in session, the overheads came down and the kids gathered near the stage. it was a small crowd of kids rarely older than 15. attentive, if sedate, or bug eyed, if stationary, they didn’t know what to make of us, but in the end came around and when i saw them next, it was with their friends outside exurban.

succinctly, the U.P. holds a special place in my heart. it spawned at least a dozen songs, some of which are still in rotation, recently finished, and or yet to be recorded. it marked a changing of the guard as josh and ryan defected back to PDX, and i returned to NY, and took on a renaissance man as my better half in junkface. it kindled and rekindled friendships that would again turn to music upon my return to portland, and it cemented me in my resolve to be playing out, about, for kids all the time. i left flexible, fit, well fed, rested, read, and practiced. a pen pal. it was a great joy to come back a better man. if sane.

randy

“We had no knowledge that our lives had just changed. You seldom sit at a crossroads and know it’s a crossroads. But from the ovation forward, my life was not going to be the same.” -Alex Raffe

Links:
JunkSpace
Deer or the Doe
Simmantics