STEVE2.NET

What a great weekend of music and beer drinking! Some of my favorite things!! Lemme tell you a little bit about it:

My friend Audra Kubat came down from Detroit on Friday and we met at the Eye Candy Gallery for the Tremont Art Walk and - wow - she was dressed so elegantly in a beautiful long black gown and high-heels - she had her hair hangin' long and pretty it was soo nice to see her! By the time I arrived Audra was already playing a low-key set of pure TFA (Totally Freakin' Acoustic) tunes and it was the sweeeeetness!

Lots of art patrons came and went through the gallery during the evening, and I think that Bob and Rita sold a few pieces (in between plastic cups full of red wine) and everything went really well and Bob and Rita both seem to like having a guitar player singer in the shop - as it should be! This is only the second time (that I know of) they have had a guitar player, and it seems to work really well in the Gallery as a TFA set - however, I have thought that it might be really sweet to do one Art Walk where we setup a PA outside of the gallery and, you know, 'crank it up a bit'.

Inside the gallery it's a small space and the art patrons are SO important to the overall ambiance - the patrons and the visual art are the focus so the TFA thing works real well and serves the purpose. I am pretty sure that we will get another TFA artist in there for the next Art Walk - and I think it would be so appropriate to have the king of TFA himself (Chris Nekvinda) do the honors! We will see about that - I am currently in negotiations with Chris to get him into the Arabica for a set and, you know, its very difficult because Chris is such a busy guy.

After the Art Walk cooled down we drove West to the domesticated wilds of Lakewood - where we simply crashed out at my place - at least for a few hours anyhow! We were both up at the crack of dawn (4AM for me) listening to music, drinking beer, smoking and chatting and by 7 we were getting lit up and ready for a trip to the beer store for IPA and American Spirits!

Later in the afternoon (we were properly lit up by that time) we went to the Phoenix Cafe where we had coffee and Audra played a few tunes - she sounded really sublime with her rock and roll poet core folk girl gears all smoothly oiled and meshing with her SMOKINGLY georgous voice - whoo! You have just GOT to see and hear this woman play! And if you have heard her play then you know what I mean.

Later that evening at the good ole' Arabica University Circle Audra gave a more concentrated and purely powerfull performance displaying the full range of her vocal talent singing songs (in her beautifully honey thick voice) from all three of her releases and a few new songs that she hasn't even recorded yet. It was great, there were only a few folks there but among them I was thrilled to see Mike and Amanda - its always super nice to see them!

Thanks also to Mike Allen for playing and singing three of his own original songs - Catch Mike Allen at the Barking Spider on the FULL MOON the 30th of this month for about an hour long set from 8-9:30PM