Tag: Portland – May 2006

Off to Portland to sample its charms, take a break, and see two AWESOME bands.

Hem and Over the Rhine: Sweet Intoxication

It was everything I thought that it would be, and more. Here’s the setlist for Hem and Over the Rhine at the Wonder Ballroom in Portland on Monday, May 8th, 2006:

Hem: Sally, Daniel, Gary, and Steve were out for this show and, presumably, the whole tour.

  1. The Golden Day Is Dying
  2. Rainy Night in Georgia
  3. The Fire Thief
  4. Reservoir [a new song for the upcoming album, Funnel Cloud]
  5. Lazy Eye
  6. Betting on Trains
  7. Strays [Daniel: “I wrote this song, about marriage, long before I was ever even married and knew what I was talking about.”]
  8. Jackson
  9. When I Was Drinking
  10. Hollow
  11. We’ll Meet Along the Way [another new one from Funnel Cloud]
  12. Sailor
  13. Carry Me Home
  14. Half Acre

Encore

  1. Pacific Street
  2. Stupid Mouth Shut [by audience request, over All That I’m Good For]
  3. My Father’s Waltz

Funnel Cloud is due out in September. I cannot wait!

Over the Rhine: Karin and Linford with Rick Plant and Devon Ashley. I saw Rick and Devon with them in Nashville just before Christmas, and it was just as wonderful then as it was tonight.

  1. Latter Days
  2. I Want You to Be My Love
  3. Born
  4. Looking Forward
  5. What I’ll Remember Most About Dying
  6. The next song was one of Linford’s solo piano numbers; I thought when I heard it that it was “Weak in the Knees Across the Sky”, but back in my hotel room, listening to my iPod, I can’t place it. Blast!
  7. Little Did I Know
  8. Hush Now (Stella’s Tarantella) [just K&L]
  9. The Seahorse [just K&L]
  10. Some cover I didn’t recognize
  11. Firefly
  12. Trouble [new … although they’ve played it for months now]
  13. Drunkard’s Prayer

Encore #1

  1. I’m on a Roll [new]
  2. Cruel and Pretty

Encore #2

  1. When I Go

I did not tape this show; I wanted to soak it all in. I’ve seen OtR before, but I’d never seen Hem, and they were everything I’d hoped they’d be. I’ve heard some bootlegs of theirs before, and they’ve been hit or miss—sometimes because Sally’s voice has been shot, and sometimes because the sound behind them has sucked [especially the monitors … when Steve is trying to pull BGVs out of his ass, that’s a bad thing]. This was totally worth flying out to see, even if this very tour will be in my neck of the woods in a month.

My Vacationing Skills Stink

Well, they do. I’m just not cut out for vacationing, I don’t think. What did I do when I got up this morning? I checked in with the office because I had a bad feeling about things—and that feeling was proven right, as the meeting we’re hosting this week wasn’t Thursday-Friday as we’d been told but instead Tuesday-Wednesday. We would have never learned that if I hadn’t tied in today, and that would have been bad … foreign nationals + corporate visitors + 1 day early = one very frustrated Geof.

That effectively killed my morning, between emails and calls. Grrrrr. I’ve gone out and explored again today, but my photographic muse has been silenced, mostly—when I did want to shoot, it started to rain; when it stopped, I didn’t have anything I wanted to shoot—and I’m just plain tired. I also recognize that I have to be out of the hotel super early in the morning, and I’m beginning to wish that I had chosen a hotel out by the airport. Oh well; I’d have a longer drive from the show tonight.

But as much of a blah as today has been—and don’t get me wrong; I’ve had a good time here, hanging out with my friend Holly as she’s had time—tonight is the show: Hem and Over the Rhine. Good times.

In PDX

Turns out that I had to MAC-authenticate to get on the wireless network here at the hotel, and given that it was really late when I got in last night, I just decided not to fool with it.

Flights were nice; I finished Blue Like Jazz—which I recommend, Rick ;)—on the first leg of the trip, which meant that I was left to my standard airplane fare [namely The Economist and the Harvard Business Review] for the second leg.

It’s a gray, rainy day here in Portland, although right now it looks like it’s going to clear up a bit. I hope so. It’s been too rainy for me to feel like I can haul out my camera [although I drove around with it for a while]. I’m saving my Powell‘s run for tomorrow when I won’t be fighting the 9-to-5 crowd.

[Yes, I will write much more about BLJ. I’m still processing all of it.]

Happiness Is a Warm 4GB CF Card

Consumers of my Flickr photostream will see new photos for the first time this year. Last year, I bought Alex’s Canon 10D body, but after that, I didn’t have any desire to take photos. [I never claimed to be a rational actor.] My old Sony went to some friends, who have put it to good use.

As I got ready to go to Portland, though, I got the desire up to take photos again, so I picked up some lenses for it. Just today, I got my 4GB Compact Flash card. I installed it in the 10D, turned the camera on, and saw the beautiful result on the LCD: 999. Yep, I can well exceed 1,000 photos on that card, which means my battery will run out long before the storage does.

My hotel has complimentary Internet access, and my iBook will be going with me on the trip. I plan to take lots of photos. [I don’t presume that any of them will be any good; my brother is the shutterbug in this family.] They’ll start coming out as soon as I get there, I’m sure. 🙂

In 24 hours or so, I should be most of the way to my parents’ house in Tennessee; I will then do as quick of a job installing their DSL modem and setting up a small home network as I know how [having just done this here at home with virtually the same equipment, I should find it easy]. I’ll get up on Saturday and haul ass to Nashville to fly on out. Both of my plane changes happen in California, which will technically indicate that I’ve spent time in the Golden State; while I’m tempted to not count it, I’ll spend much more time there than I have in Delaware.