w/ Amneon, A Wanted Awakening, Evince Ethos

Sept 10th: Aside from booking the actual shows, I was surprised to find that arranging the rental van was the hardest party of tour planning. I figured I would just head over to Hertz or Avis and rent a 14 passenger van – end of story, but it seems none of the big chains rent those in Maine. We ended up going all the way to a place in Lisbon for the van, and upon picking it up thursday afternoon, we found it to be a pretty new GMC that we later learned got surprisingly good gas mileage. Packing took a bit of experimenting, but eventually we all were headed out to the first show: Worcester MA.

All excited we arrived at the venue (Tammany Hall) fairly early for load in. The trip down was uneventful, but uneventful can be a good thing, and one band was already there. Other bands arrived later and after a conference it was decided we would go on second. My Sis, Nephew and his wife came early to hang out (and drink), and Cruella and I made some chitchat with various members of other bands outside. They were all very nice and surprisingly young. One band, A Wanted Awakening, had recently relocated from Albany NY, near where I went to college, but when I was there they were not even born. Yes, they were THAT young. (The show was actually 18plus.) Good eggs, though.

The openers Amneon were very green. They had decent technique for their age and showed some promise but played way too long – almost an hour. The crowd was not large to begin with, and unfortunately it seems they drove the crowd out onto the sidewalk, thus killing the audience for our set. We’re so used to getting a great reaction even from crowds of strangers that this was a bit of a surprise, although we got some compliments from those who did stay, including the soundman, who told Cruella excitedly “That did NOT SUCK!!!”, and another gal told Runtt “You beat those drums like they owed you money!” How cool is that? We did, however, totally crush and our new song “Thunderbirds” went down great. Sound onstage was also REALLY good – way better than we’re used to.

Band number 3, Evince Ethos, was the “local” act and contained some ex members of Shroud of Bereavement. Once they set up a crowd magically appeared, all of which seemed to know them personally. Upon cranking up they sounded like an amped-up Nightwish, which normally I would regard as a good thing, but truth be told they were a bit lacking for their own identity.

When we originally arrived we didn’t really notice the building next door to our club, but during load-out we realized it was very obviously a dance club, complete with door goons in suits and trench coats, holding clipboards. Patrons were the classic guido guys with open shirts and gold chains, and chicks with chunky thighs in hot pants. (lotsa those…oi!) Otherwise, load out was as uneventful as the drive down, though as my sis Selene watched she commented “Obviously you inherited at least one thing from dad – his ability to pack a car.” Truth be told our Dad was THE master of car packing. We were done just about when Evince Ethos’s set ended, so we had to hi-tail it outta there, unfortunately missing A Wanted Awakening, which was a shame since they were such nice people. We drove to my nephew Matt’s house in Fiskdale for the night. Hats off to them for putting us up.