Tour Diary – Falls Church, VA (April 23, 2010)

(Jason Lent has forsaken the island paradise of Hawaii to follow us around for a few months. I have happily placed the tour diary in his capable hands. It should bring a new perspective to our ramblings.)

New York. New Jersey. Delaware. Maryland. Virginia. Five states in under four hours and each extracted their fair share of my beer money for tolls. I decided to take the back roads from the hotel into Falls Church to save up for dinner. The rolling, tree lined roads were dotted with the new estates of recently acquired wealth. Falls Church sits somewhere near Washington, D.C. but I never figured out how close. The town itself appears to be a few intersections lined with a tiny strip mall. It has the feel of a commuter colony feeding the larger urban areas that sit over the hills.

The venue tonight was a rock club with some dinner theater mixed in. The venue offered seating if you ate dinner and had two bars on each side of the sound booth for those just drinking. It had every appearance of a loud night with a sell out crowd and no seating in front of the stage. Lee Harvey Osmond attacked the stage tonight with Jeff Bird shifting to the bass cabinet and playing some funky runs on the low end. The set was blistering and Aaron Goldstein showcased his guitar skills on several songs while Tom towered above the crowd and delivered his musical sermons.

Tonight, the set list reflected the crowd’s noise level but the aging P.A. had enough heart to drone out the geese and anything else in a three-block radius. I played a hunch when I saw the venue and stood up front in the pit all night. Beers were spilled on me, couples talked endlessly and the entire pit swayed in time with the songs. I loved every second of it. There was very little room for the delicate strains of the more intimate material and it reminded me of the early years when we crammed into these rock clubs on a more regular basis. The band played like giants tonight and delivered the rock and roll to a hungry crowd. It was loud and had an attitude. As Tom Wilson said during the opening set, I don’t know where the f*ck I am but I’m happy to be here.