Ah, Ash St. be a lady - yarrr

This past weekend found us yet again in the comfy confines of downtown hometown PDX and the Ash St. Saloon. We were bringing the combined tributaries of the Romanes and Blondage all together for the pleasantly successful "Return to CBGB's" bill. The same evening also happened to coincide with the start of the Rose Festival and the Starlight Parade (featuring the Hamzinger's gorgeous bride!) wherein the streets of the outlying trailer parks disgorge their inhabitants upon downtown. This makes for great people-watching and horrible traffic; add some rain to it all and the turnout for our show wasn't nearly as packed as we'd hoped - BUT it was still packed with quality, fo' sho'. We had to get downtown early enough to claim parking, too, which made for a long-ass day spent drinking quite a number of pints at the daylight-friendly new Thirsty Lion pub next door. Oh, and also, many thanks to part of our Sea-town fan-base finding their way down to, in the Cap'n's own words, "get his fix!" of us.

The Romanes kicked things off this time 'round (being the 3rd appearance of this wondrous lineup) and, let their rough beginning fuel their 3-chord mania through an intensive set. I think their Pinhead made a painful stage hop at the end of the set, tho', as he was nursing a very sore ankle; hopefully that was all it was and nothing worse.

Blondage was, as ever, out-freakin'-standing. Like the Romanes, too, they're just a nice group of people to hang around and wait for the show with. The Blondage set proved, I think, to be the most crowd-pleasing portion of the night, too. I think that comes with playing 2nd inherently or, at least, the opportunity to excel on the night does. People have actually made their way into the place by then and are drunk enough to enjoy/crowd to the front/dance. They always seem to hold back for the first band, and I'm furthering my highly-scientific analysis here by saying that they're most likely just not plain drunk enough yet to fully express themselves. The Blondage set was also well attended with probably the highest number of dancing female audience members I've ever seen at a show we've been associated with (we get some, believe me, but, well, you know...). Ash St. Sound Gal Heather responded with a strange PA mix of older dance songs that the audience members ate up, staying to dance until we hit about our first chord.

Taking an alphabetized approach to our set list, we kicked off with "288" and basically proceeded Sesame Street-style from there on out. We had a decent, enthusiastic crowd remaining, too, which always feels just plain great. I had a number of friends in attendance that hadn't either seen us at all previously or had but it had been awhile. That latter group could then shiver in wetness over our vastly-improved skills and show. No, really. I mean, it's us but, you know... We were pleased that we didn't just plain die on-stage physically. It also gave us some extra preparation and fundage for the upcoming East Coast touring. I'll try, faithful readers, to update this site with all of the goings-on for that series of three shows, once we return, triumphant and exhausted!