The Hub. Beantown. Change. Confusion.

First off, this is what we've been living/traveling in the past week and a half... I finally got around to taking some pictures this morning of it.















Here's what we keep in there:
2 boxes of Carolane Acres
1 box of Spoken/Forgotten
1 Yamaha Keyboard
1 Gibson Acoustic Guitar
1 Fender Princeton Amp
2 Fender Telecasters
2 PA Speakers
1 PA Amp
1 PA Mixer
1 Pedal Board
2 LL Bean Sleeping Bags
1 LL Bean Tent
1 Bag of Luke's Clothes
1 Small Rolling Suitcase of Krista's Clothes
Unknown number of CD's
1 Luke Kalloch
1 Krista Vossler

I think that about covers it. This enables us to have just enough leg room and no lean-back capabilities while we sit so both of our postures have been getting better as the days go by. That said, let us continue.

Sunday morning consisted of a radio interview that we did at WMPG in Portland. The interview was conducted by the sweetest mousy man in the world named Isaac (his show is known New England wide as Isaac in the Morning) from 10:30am-12PM. We did a stripped down little set with me on guitar and vocals and Krista just doing a little singing. It didn't occur to me until we started to play that I don't usually play the whole time on Krista's songs so I had to sort of... improv a lot of it... make up some new voicings... some of them worked out... some of them didn't. Either way. We had a lot of fun with our not quite warmed up voices but we took it in stride with the new Tom Waits/Lucinda Williams versions of the songs.



















We met back up with Josh at the Northstar to figure out what we were going to do next. We had no idea what we were in for. We had been waiting for Dan for an hour and a half at the Northstar and hadn't shown up still. Due to some complications they couldn't use Dan's Jeep to go down to NYC so they brought Josh's truck... which, as most of you know, open truck beds in kind cold and unpredictable weather are not good for instruments that are made of wood and equipment that have electronics in them... so Josh was searching craigslist for a truck cap. This is where it starts to get confusing. I won't try to explain to you with words what the plan was supposed to be (because there were too many options) so I've attempted to create a visual representation of the travel plans for Krista and myself and Josh and Dan. I think it will make it easier.
Don't worry if you don't understand it the first time through... I still don't quite understand it and I've looked it over many times. Ponder it. Embrace it. Live on with life.

So with a very vague idea of what was going on Krista and I headed out to Boston to meet up with my friend Shannon Greenwell, a swell little lady originally from Rhode Island. After unloading at her place we took a walk up to Harvard Square and saw my good friend Mr. Tchadd Hanna (a fine cartoonist and illustrator) working his day-job at Uno's Pizzaria.

Tchadd Hanna and Krista in the Colbalt (please take notice of the bottle that Krista his holding... it's the Miracle II, an elixir that my mom gave her saying that it would help her soar throat. She said it was an all organic substance that works for pretty much anything... just take a cap-full and you'll be healed. We soon found out that it was just water. But no just any kind of water... HOLY WATER. After reading the back of the label we pretty much decided that it was water with a little touch of Jesus in it. My mom. She's crazy.)

After our failed attempt to score some free food from Tchadd we went out to burrito and ice cream joints to fill our tummies, when out of nowhere it started to rain! Rain! We don't see much of that in Austin. Krista and I were very excited to tromp around in the rain to get back to Shannon's house (especially Krista, she was jumping puddles the whole time). Upon our arrival back at Shannon's house, one of her roommates informed us that the other two haven't seen the internet phenomena known as "Two Girls. One Cup." Krista also hadn't seen it. I taped the reaction... I'll add it later.

After thoroughly scarring all of the girls, we crashed hard.

Next day we did some sight seeing of Backbay Boston, where Krista was wowed by the Commons and Public Gardens and the hustle and bustle of Newbury St. and I got to revisit the stomping grounds of '03-'05.

This picture was taken moments after a fight broke out when some students on the Berklee Beach almost fell on some other students and scratched their guitars and ukes. Why do you play your instruments out there anyway?! I just have donkey punched them.

We then continued down to the Christian Science Center where they were advertising Sunday School to the new students around the area (my initial reaction: "Is there beer at Sunday School?"... apparently not). We reflected at the Reflecting Pool and strolled on the Strolling Path and fountained at the Fountain Area. Ok, so I fountained at the Fountain Area.

I was scared but moist (which is what she said, consequently).

Despite some confusion about Josh and Dan getting down here (Josh ended up not getting a truck cap at all and not bringing Andrea and Isaac down to Cambridge with him... so pretty much that whole graph I made above was null and void [they are just going to wrap their gear in industrial strength trash bags and duct tape {also, on the drive down they found a tarp in the middle of the highway right before they got into New Hampshire, they just drove out onto the median and picked it up... CLASSIC!}]) the gig went off without a hitch. A bunch of people I hadn't seen in a long time (Lizzie, Coree, Zoe, Ben, Jon, Morgan, Tchadd, Bob, Tiffany, Shannon and Co.) showed up and we had a grand ol' time at the Middle East Corner. We thought that we wouldn't be able to fit all of our gear onstage (at least I wasn't sitting on Dan's cymbals like I did at the Northstar) but we worked it like it was an arena and played the shit out of it. Thanks to the Middle East for letting us play!

Josh, Krista and I left to go to Matt Griffin's (one of Josh's friends) house at the end of the night, while Dan went to a girl named Becca's house (we met her in Damariscotta at Schooner, strangely enough [I would like to point out at this time that Dan is the total rockstar of this band. When Josh called him this morning he didn't pick up his phone and when he called back he said, "Sorry I didn't pick up, I couldn't find my pants." Amazing!) for a good night sleep. But no without some Tom Foolery on the way.

Chad reading a free copy of the May 2004 Fader that he got from a homeless dude on the street.

Thanks Matt and Karen for the place to stay and breakfast! Talk to you all soon at the next blog!

Cheers,
Luke