Screamin' Pumpkins – Melancholy and the Infinite Beer Shortage

Fall is my favorite time of year for several reasons: changing colors, a steady decrease in insects, and pumpkin flavored beer. Almost every micro-brewery brews a seasonal pumpkin ale for fall (Liberty Street actually brews theirs year round) and each tastes a little different. Some go for the pure pumpkin flavor while others are inspired by the spices in pumpkin pie. Even Michelob and Blue Moon have their own pumpkin ale offerings.

Easily, my favorite of the lot is Michigan Brewing Company's own 'Screamin' Pumpkin Spiced Ale', a beer described by Beer Advocate as 'a cross between a pumpkin pie, a Molasses cookie, and a Ginger snap'. Sound amazing? Yes!

Imagine my surprise when just this week, closing on the second half of September, I went to the MBC brew-pub downtown and...they were out of 'Screamin' Pumpkin'. Seriously. Out on draft, out on bottle, and the waitress (whom I am not holding responsible), did not know when or if they would get any more for the rest of the season. According to her, MBC shipped a bunch of the fantastic brew out of state this year and they had already gone through their short supply. MBC, where are your priorities?

Anyway, the next day I checked the local Meijer and Kroger. No 'Screamin' Pumpkin'. I even tried the fully stocked bodega 'Oades Big Ten' on Clippert...no 'Screamin' Pumpkin' and according to their clerk over the phone, they were not sure when they would receive more. Finally, I called MBC in Webberville to find out what the hell was happening. The guy there said that they had plenty on draft in Webberville, but the demand was far greater than the supply regarding bottle distribution. According to him, they were brewing more but he gave me no time table of when my stores shelves would be stocked.

Almost defeated, I tried to put the disappointment out of my mind. The very beer served at my wedding, brewed in state only once a year, was already snatched by eager and knowing beer snobs like myself before the season even officially started.

This morning, I stopped at Goodrich's in East Lansing for the first time just to check. Careful searching confirmed that the 'Screamin Pumpkin' was no where to be found on the shelf or in the cooler next to the other MBC brews or even with the other seasonal pumpkin ales. Just when I was about to give up hope, I checked the cooler one more time and discovered hidden on the floor...the last two six-packs of 'Screamin' Pumpkin'. Fortune it seemed was smiling upon me, rewarding my diligence with the delicious taste ginger spiced pumpkin pie in a bottle. Thank you Goodrich's. My quest – at least for now is at an end. 

One of the two remaining packs of 'Screamin' Pumpkin'

'A Walk to Remember'...To Take the Shorter Beach Path

In August, Erin and I ventured off to the west side of Michigan for Lake Michigan beach time. Anyone who has ever been to the lower west side of Michigan on the weekend already knows that the beaches of Holland, South Haven, Grand Haven and others are almost always packed by 9 or 10am. The roads by the beach also serve as a parking lot, and while the beaches are quite beautiful, they can also feel claustrophobic and uncomfortable for those of us with body image issues.

Perhaps betting against this knowledge, we still drove through Holland in the early afternoon in search of parking before quickly resigning to search elsewhere. The nice thing about Lake Michigan apart from its size is the related benefit that many cities and small towns touch its waters. If one beach is full, you can just drive to the next one up the road. Which led to our discovery of the beach in Saugatuk.

We visited Saugatuk several times before for the Waterfront Film Festival and playing with the band. Even with it's proximity to the coast, I don't think I even knew before this weekend that Saugatuk had a beach.

It's not easy to find. Once you pass the State Park guard post and park, an entire forest stands before you and the beach. Seriously. On one path, it's only a half-mile walk through looming trees and brush while the other path is more like two miles. Not being people that often follow the crowd, we accidentally took the two mile path on the way to the beach. Walking wasn't an issue since we had dined at the Hut of Pizzas an hour prior and Erin kept gleefully running up the hills while I took pictures of her. The trees were miles high and appeared to be sacred, never to be touched by urban landscapes. At last, we both saw dunes with grass beckoning us from up high and below, I chose to go below and meet Erin on the other side where we met up and ran down the scorching hot sand to the Lake Michigan waters.

Our feet recently ex-foliated, the waters felt amazing. A few couples and families lined either side, however being purists we were not keen on lapping through the seaweed or lake foliage churned up from boat propellers. Instead, we enjoyed the water from the lake's edge and enjoyed watching the boaters out on the water. We reveled in the sun and relaxed the afternoon away, then re-joined civilization and drove back to Holland to see an early evening movie.

Erin had already staked out 'The Dutch Village' on our way in and said must stop there on our way back in honor of her ancestors. Taking pictures of geese, REALLY big geese and dutch building facades, one felt like they were in an extended version of EPCOT's Holland. Steep ticket prices turned us off from walking through the official gates so we wandered over to the local AMC movie theater to see, “Crazy, Stupid, Love”. Funnier than expected, surprise cameos made the movie even if it wasn't sure where to end.

Trail Through The Forest

Scenes Through the Trees

Saugatuk Beach

Outside the Dutch Village

Yes, a Wooden Shoe Shop

The 'Union Street' Sweat – Guest Harmonica Talent Helps Turns Damp Dive Into Dance Haven

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. 
***

* 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

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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. 
 

The fantastic view of Lake Michigan from Eric's friend's house where we stayed the night.

TMBG Are 'Older Than They've Ever Been' But Still 'Twisting'

If lyrical non-sequiturs like 'I'm your only friend. I'm not your only friend. But I'm a little glowing friend. But really, I'm not actually your friend. But I am,' give you nerdy goose-bumps of joy, then you should have been at The Intersection in downtown Grand Rapids Sunday night. 'They Might Be Giants', the original experimental pop-nerd rock duo from Brooklyn brought the full-band treatment to classic cuts and new tracks from their latest album 'Join Us'.

Brand new album, signed by the entire band: $20!

For anyone completely unaware of the TMBG cult phenomenon, allow me to provide a brief bio. TMBG attracted a small by nerdy legion on college radio with classics like “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”, and “Particle Man” in the early 1990's. They found their niche by blending a host of different musical styles like funk, punk, and pop-rock without sounding like any of them.

Their catchy eccentric sound tapped directly into middle-school nerd brains across the mid-west including my own. More original than 'Weird Al' parodies and intellectual enough to make you feel enlightened by simply memorizing their songs, TMBG was the only band that I knew that could apply a pop hook formula to a biology textbook forming a song like 'Mammal'. Sing it with me 'So the warm blood flows through the large four-chambered heard, maintaining the very high metabolism rate they have.' Yes, humor and learning belonged in music and it did not have to be biblical.

For me, Sunday night's show highlighted so many reasons whey TMBG stands the test of time. Specifically, they incorporated classic material throughout a set list of new album songs, they promoted audience interaction at one point dividing the audience into 'Apes' and 'People' for a shout off, and perhaps most importantly, they got a large audience of white people to dance...albeit very very badly.

They are fan-centric yet true to themselves, tight musicians but open to improvisation, and goofy without feeling gimmicky. When it's so easy to be cynical and hyper-aware of media manipulation, TMBG feel authentic and anti-agenda...although one does have to have a sense of humor for actual appreciation :)

TMBG Full Band WITH Back Screen Projections

Yarn Puppets interlude performing imitations of Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger (no joke).

TMBG Drumset Up Close

Yes, the real John Flansburgh up close, handing out window stickers.

The Not-So-Secret Meijer Gardens

Our euphoric high from Hiawatha continued the Tuesday after, temporarily dulling our senses for the Tuesday Evening Music Club. Held in the Meijer Gardens Outdoor Amphitheater in Grand Rapids, the Music Club originated from the mind of prominent Grand Rapids singer-songwriter Ralston Bowles to showcase regional up and coming artists. Every Tuesday night from the beginning of July through the end of August, two bands take the stage between 7pm and 9pm. Earlier this summer, music legends Elvis Costello, Huey Lewis, and Brian Wilson played on the very same stage. It was both empowering and nerve-wracking to play on the same stage in an amphitheater large enough to to fit 1,900 people. Easily, this would be the largest venue we had ever played.