Monday, November 17, 2008

Viva Oswegas










Oswego is a town in upstate NY, near Canada and on a great lake. They get an obscene amount of snow up there and they have a real appreciation of music. I was told by people that have played upstate that playing music there is awesome and after this weekend, I agree.
I went up with Vessel and Bread and Roses in the Bread and Roses Van. The ride up was hilarious. I didn't know these guys very well but quickly realized we were on the same page. We stayed with Goodnight Neverland, another awesome Oswego band who are also very nice. Which also means we got up there at 10pm on Friday and weren't playing til Saturday night, so we had an impromptu house show and traded songs and sing alongs til roughly 4 am.
After crashing on the floor in my sleeping bag, we got breakfast and hung out at the house for a while. This nice dude came over and bought all of us pizza which was also really nice. There are a lot of nice people up there. Either that or I met a lot of nice people.
So, The Show.
The lineup was. . .

Goodnight Neverland
Mayflower
Vessel
Colorwheels
Bryan McPherson
Bread and Roses

Everyone was awesome. Truly a kick ass bill. The energy was amazing. Goodnight Neverland tugs at an emotion in me that's very nostolgic and 'feel good' at the same time. Mayflower was a straight up, in your face, melodic, punk band. Vessel now has singer songwriter Jeff Rowe with them and they were foot stomping, fist pumpingingly awesome. Colorwheels was a lighter indie rockish outfit that I couldn't pay too much attention to because I was getting my stuff ready to play but also sounded very good.

My set,
Possibly the best show crowd-wise I ever played. Its an amazing feeling when you start playing and the place goes fucking nuts. I played solo and on the floor. People were crashing into me and it seemed like the whole place knew the words to my songs. A bunch of guys were right up front and screaming along with me. At one point I saw raised glasses crash in mid air and glass flew everywhere. The floor was soaked and I kept slipping around. My guitar got all fucked up and I had to stop the set a couple of times to address technical issues, which was a bummer, but shit happens. Eventually Jeff Rowe gave me his guitar and I finished the set with his. Thanks Jeff!

Bread and Roses finished off the night. They too were awesome. People were square dancing and singing along and having a great time. They were having such a good time that toward the end of their set Adam, the fiddle/saw player, was hoisted up and crowd surfed while continuing to play the fiddle. He also got "Viva Oswegas" tatooed on his knee before their set.

I'm not bullshitting. Probably one of the best, if not the best shows I've been involved in. Boston, its time to step up. The bar has been set.

4 comments:

LauramomBoston said...

DAMN ME!

I knew I wanted to come.

;/

MUMS DONT GET TO DO NOTHIN!

um..is that tattoo on YOU!?

Bryan Mcpherson said...

That is Adam from Bread and Roses with the tattoo.

Anonymous said...

My eyes started watering reading this. Thanks for everything!

---Shannon

Unknown said...

fuck yeah man... great weekend. wish we headed south instead of back east and turned it into a full blown tour.

long live KING BABY!