hi8us tour blog

This weekend’s run of gigs was quite excellent. We hit The Stone Church in Newmarket, NH for the first time on 10.1.09. Our set went really well, and it was a good feeling to be playing in such a cool room. We have been playing some of the same new songs consistently in our sets, lately. A few of them are called ATM Tune, Rode, Derek Does Ohio, The Donkey Kong Collaboration and another one called I Know U Know. We might change the name of that last one. Anyway, we are planning on putting these songs, along with some others, out in studio form in the coming months. We are looking forward to the whole process. Our collective style has been really coming together in recent months, and we have all felt that added swagger on stage as a result. Show note: we played this show with an act out of NYC called Stratospheerius. They were insanely good musicians and did a version of Magic Fingers by Frank Zappa during their set. It was excellent. Well done, guys!

Friday night, 10.2.09, we returned inside at Cap'n Carlos in Gloucester, MA. The stage was a little tight, but as a result I think we played some of our tightest sets in recent history… yes…pun; ) At this type of gig, it is wise to pepper the sets with a few more covers. There was a wedding party there, and some other folks who don’t know us that would have likely beat us if we didn’t play something they knew. Anyway, by early 2nd set everyone was getting down to our songs right along with the Bill Withers tune. Not a bad night at all. I thought this might have been the best quality we played all weekend.

The final gig of the run was up in Portland, ME at Brian Boru in the Old Port on 10.3.09. Some old friends were in the house for this one. Everything felt good on stage. Gig note: they stopped the house music halfway through Billie Jean… which left us with a totally deflated room of drinkers looking at us in silence like we just ruined their science fair project. Being the on-our-toes kind of quartet that we are, we jumped right into our own little rendition of Billie Jean, and quickly won the cougar-filled crowd over. It was all good from there on out. We crashed at a dumpy hotel that night. I guess it was a blessing in disguise, though. We all got up early, and there was an extra sense of urgency in getting out of there. We cruised back to the Commonwealth, and were home in time for the Pats kickoff at 1pm on Sunday... and they won! YAY.

jim