Yuki Show Diary: 10/11/08 New Albany, IN

Again, I'm doing this after the fact, so bear with me.

We got asked to play this fest for the New Albanian Brewing Company. The whole situation was pretty sweet as we were paid in advance, they put us up at a hotel, fed us and the beer was free flowing. The only issue was getting there.

We'd thought we were playing at the brewery, but that turned out to not be the case. There was this Harvest Festival in downtown New Albany and we were playing kind of adjacent to that. Unfortunately, our contact didn't have a cell phone and the people at the brewery/restaurant weren't exactly the best with helping us out.

Actually, I lied when I said that was the only issue. We asked for backline as the largest vehicle we had was a Subaru, which we packed to capacity with gear and merch. Someone usually gets the short end of the stick on the backline and Saturday that was me. The kit was one drum and one cymbal stand shorter than what they said I'd have. The four piece kit, I can hang with, but I ended up playing with a high hat and one cymbal. The stand didn't even have a nylon sleeve on it, so I wasn't going to put my cymbal on there. Ended up using their cymbals, which were junk, but ended up being the least of my concern.

The biggest issue was, the heads on this kit were completely dished on both sides. Really, if I can just digress a moment, heads aren't that expensive, at least if you're not buying bass heads. When they get to the point were they are cratered like the moon and won't hold any tension anymore because they've been that stretched out, it's time to replace them. Flipping the drum over and doing the same thing to the resonant side head is not an acceptable substitute.

I tried to get as much as I could out of that set but, of course tuning was impossible as the heads were that shot. I ended up just cranking them down so I at least had some response, but half way through the set, they'd loosened back up. At least I was being miced so you could hear me as there's no way I'd have much volume with that pathetic setup.

Alright, so what about our set? Well, we played between a banjo playing one-man-band kind of thing and a band called Sativa Gumbo. Yeah. We went over better than I'd expected, and we played better than we had at the Mel the night before, but it really wasn't our audience. Still, by the time the flaming hoola hoop girls came on, we had a bit of a group at the stage.

Did I mention the flaming hoopers? They were supposed to do their thing before we played, but ended up not. We wanted to try to coordinate something with them, but didn't. Then, halfway through our set, we were told they were coming out. Sucks that we didn't have much notice (as there were better songs to do their thing to) and now the group that was up front watching us got pushed back as they roped off about 12 feet in front of the stage. Kind of buzz killed a bit, though we would have loved to work something out in advance with them. Maybe next time.

The show itself went well, with one exception. About halfway through, I had what I can only describe as a Stockdale VP debate moment. I knew what song was next, I obviously knew how to play it, but I just blanked out. I recovered, but it was really weird sitting there and feeling like I'd just forgotten why I was there. This is bothering me more than it probably should.

Checking out the next day, this kid with a chipped tooth and looking pretty rough asked me what I though of the Harvest Festival. I said I had a good time. He said there were too many fights. Looked to me like he hadn't won many of them. I'll take in to consideration his advise not to go to the skate park after dark.

We hit ear-X-tacy and this cool shop Ultra Pop! in Louisville on the round about way out of town. Ultra Pop! had this awesome Godzilla vinyl I really wanted, but I'm not quite readly to drop $175 on a toy. Yet.

Anyway, all in all a good time and I guess we're going back to play Louisville December 13th. Groovy.

EDIT: stumbled across a Flickr of photos from the show. Check it out here: http://flickr.com/photos/ivoryocean/sets/72157608206409188/with/2958154339/