Traverse City used to seem so far away from Lansing. Now it's en-route to the gig 8 hours away in the Upper-Peninsula. “3 ½ hour drive? Eh, it's nothing.” The longer the road trips, the more my sense of 'normal distance' becomes distorted.
Truthfully, Nic, Eric and I love Traverse City for various reasons, especially our most recent venue the Union Street Station. I'm not just saying that. Decent pay, complimentary Founders beer, a spacious stage, and a seasoned, intuitive sound-board operator are a winning combination not found everywhere. So Union Street Station is more dive-bar décor than fudgie* corporate chic (like much of downtown Traverse City), but they're hometown crowd oriented and unapologetically earthy.
The 'no smoking in buildings' ban may have been in place since last year May, but dive bars can be identified by the lingering look and aroma of smoke still clinging to the walls which by the way have never been washed. The lighting is very dim for this reason. The bathroom stalls are in pretty poor shape with plenty of etched graffiti into layers of black paint and there may or may not be soap or paper towels.
Most importantly, the staff are all easy going and accommodating without corporate smiles and other fake niceties. It's the kind of charm that distinguishes a place from every other bar in town yet makes it nearly identical to every small-town neighborhood bar over the state and probably country.
Our gig happened coincide with the week of the Traverse City Film Festival, which meant lots of tourists and no parking. Eric was concerned that the film festival would hamper our turnout, but against his pessimistic prediction, we drew a sizable audience of wonderful people including Eric's wife Tammy and their close friends from Traverse City.
Perhaps the greatest challenge of this gig was tolerating the extreme humidity. Union Street Station apparently has air-conditioning but chose not to turn it on despite sweltering temperatures inside and 100% humidity. I am not exaggerating. Even standing still, exerting absolutely no effort without slowly becoming drenched in sweat. To clarify, this was not sweat that came from inside the body, not at first at least. This was sweat that stuck to you like water droplets on the outside of a cold class of water. Our bodies were colder than the air in the room and the air would condense on our faces until we could hardly see.
Once we actually started playing, there was no stopping the torrential rain pouring across your brow as if someone was standing over you, dumping glass after glass of liquid over you. We could not even feel the beer we were drinking because it practically exited from our pores as soon as we poured it into our mouths.
The highlight of the evening came when Craig Griffith, harmonica player and back-up vocalist for the Michigan based rock band 'The Verve Pipe' joined us on-stage playing harmonica.
If you listened to pop or rock radio at all in the nineties, you know the Verve Pipe because of their excessively over-played single 'The Freshman', a kind of one-hit-wonder for them that helped put Michigan music on the map.
Griffith is a fantastic harmonica player, flashy yet intuitive, who simply asked to join us on a song or two. Given Eric's propensity to invite guest musicians to join us on the fly, he must have played closer to 10 songs with us throughout the evening. Truly, we had just as much fun with him as he appeared to have with us. Maintaining stamina to play for four hours can be challenging, but Griffith helped us focus on something beyond the response of the audience...and the sweat covering our bodies.
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* Yes, 'fudgie' is a real word, at least in the urban dictionary. Ok, it's derogatory slang for 'A tourist to the northern lower, or eastern upper peninsula of Michigan, especially the Mackinac area. Often these tourist are from lower parts of Michigan, and are usually on vacation "up north". The name fudgie comes from the fact that many of these tourist like to spend lots of time in the many fudge shops in northern Michigan. Locals are generally not fond of fudgies, as they seem to have no small town driving abilities, and can sometimes be snobby or annoying. Fudgies are identifiable by bright clothes, and the presence of cameras around their necks and the use of fanny packs. Also, the use of shoes and sock at wholly inappropriate times, such as on the beach and the pronunciation "Mack-in-ack" are dead giveaways.' http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fudgie
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ PS - My apologies for the lack of photos on this post. I honestly took no photos at the gig. Below is a picture of the beautiful view from Eric and Tammy's friend's home in Traverse City. Their home, on a giant hill, is only accessible by a skinny, half-mile driveway which is hardly accessible in the winter. Still, the morning view through the trees everyday is breathtaking. My thanks for their gracious and constant hospitality.
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| The fantastic view of Lake Michigan from Eric's friend's house where we stayed the night. |
