FOOD REPORT -- July 30, 2005 -- Jammin' Java
by Storm

While we did have an incredible time at our show last night at JJ, the important thing (as always) was that we ate well. The real reason we go to JJ has nothing to do with how great the atmosphere is, the quality of the sound, or the fact that they treat us like family. That's all jive.

No, we return to Jammin' Java for three simple reasons:

1. Pork chili. I'm told by the JJ crew that they actually have all of their chilis flown in from the San Francisco Bay area. It's made by some chef dude there, and MAN is it tasty. Generous chunks of succulent pork, juicy stewed green chili peppers, and who the hell knows what else mixed to perfection and served in a generous bowl over an appropriately toothsome rice. Heat can vary, depending on the strength of the peppers that the chef gets each week. They have other types of chili as well, and their other menue items are quite delish as well, but the pork chili is my go-to.

2. Chipotle. While Paul appreciates JJ's food, he can never turn down his one true love, which happens to have a storefront not 100 yards from the venue's front door. Yes, the "airline pillow" burrito is an essential part of Mr. Sabourin's diet (and no longer readily available to him near his new Pennsylvania home). Steak, rice, NO beans, hot salsa, cheese. Period. So you can keep yer sour cream, guacamole, lettuce, and other garnishes right where they are, thank you. Chips (with their trademark hint of lime) and hot salsa yes, yes, yes. And there aren't many places on this earth where you can serve yourself Mr. Pibb straight from the fountaion.

3. Coldstone Creamery. This mix-in ice cream parlor has very quickly lodged itself into our collective left ventricle, figuratively and literally*. We still love Herrell's in Northampton and Cambridge, but Coldstone is now just about EVERYWHERE. Most especially, they're a couple of doors down from the Chipotle.

Although they recently had to pull their highly acclaimed and addictive cake batter ice cream due to some nettlesome food poisoning, the rest of their flavors are A-OK. I enjoyed their caramel turtle concoction in a tub LITERALLY** as big as my head, while Paul opted for a more modest portion of Snicker's bars mixed into sweet cream ice cream.

Our dairy treats were sponsored by the Honorable Richard Hsu and Muffin, who we were hanging out with after the show. There were about ten of us in all, none of us minding that it took 10-15 minutes to reach the front of the line. It's a lot like flying Southwest -- sure, you're human cattle. But they smile at you.

The other great thing about Coldstone is that you can force the staff to sing little ditties by putting money in their tip jar. I'm pretty sure it's in their job description, because they always sing, no matter where you are in the country. I asked one of the employees once, and they actually have a little song book, kind of like Mao's Little Red Book, that has cutesy lyrics to well-known tunes. My favorite is the one that goes to the melody of "The Flintstones". One day soon I may just camp out there in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon with a wad of ones and have my own personal concert. Dance, monkey, dance!


* aren't you sick of people misusing the word "literally"? Coldstone's ice cream probably *is* clogging up my arteries, so I'm in the clear here. But how about the person who says, "I laughed my head off. Literally. My head LITERALLY came off as I laughed." Maybe head reattachment surgery is available in Sweden or something, but I haven't seen it in these parts.

** it wasn't really that big. I'm just messing with you. But it was an awful lot of ice cream.

Welcome to the Presumption Zone

I have always found it terrifically presumptious when someone automatically assumes that other folks will be interested in what they ate for lunch, or what they think about the latest Audioslave CD, or why they hate their co-workers this week, and so on.

But then again, it's kind of presumptious for someone to say "Hey, we've written these allegedy-funny songs! Please come pay money to sit in a room and watch sing sing them! And then pay more money to get those same songs on a CD, because you're going to like them so much, you'll want to hear them again!" And it is nothing if not the American Way to believe that one's own opinions are important enough to be published worldwide.

So as such, Storm and I have decided to jump right on the weblog bandwagon (because we love to be on the cutting edge of new technology and trends), and occasionally post our incredibly valuable, trenchant, innermost thoughts.

Or at least tell you about where we ate.

So this entry will be longer than most, I imagine. Let's start with the first of our two most recent "Big Gigs," the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival.

For the non-East-Coast-folkies out there, Falcon Ridge is a large gathering right near the NY/MA/CT border, ostensibly a "folk" festival, but really more eclectic than that might imply. (I mean, we were playing there, so it couldn't be that traditional) It goes Thursday through Sunday, and at its height, about 10,000 or so people attend.

We were a bit uneasy going into this festival, for several reasons:

- This was our first time there since the Da Vinci's Notebook "hiatus," and many of the people there don't take well to that term. We were very wary of "pulling a Jian." (Sidebar: there was a great group from Canada called Moxy Fruvous--talented, "anything-goes" stage personality, wrote many great and funny songs, and also had a more political element. They played Falcon Ridge some years back and because crowd favorites. Five years ago, they went on "hiatus" as well; the next year, Fruvous member Jian Ghomeshi, played FR as a solo artist; his material was more straight-ahead singer-songwriter kinda stuff, which apparently disappointed many loyalists who were pining for their "wacky" Canadian foursome; and as such*, he received a rather...whelming reception, according to reports. So whenever Storm & I return to an old DVN market for the first time as a duo, we now refer to the potential for disappointing people who want to hear all the old DVN songs and totally taking as "pulling a Jian.") DVN was quite popular at FRFF (I do love my acronyms, don't I?), and we were concerned over a potential backlash, as if people thought we broke up their beloved a cappella group just so we could do our little duo thing.

- Since we wanted to make a good impression, we were playing our main-stage set with a backup band, a trio from NYC called GrooveLily. These three are old friends, and all terrifically talented (go buy all their CDs right now; I'll wait...); rehearsals had gone really well, and we were very excited with the new sound. But to perform for the first time in a totally new configuration in front of several thousand people was unnerving. If you're used to performing either a cappella or with just a guitar, suddenly going to a full "rock band" setup, drums and all, can throw you for the proverbial loop.

- There was not just one, but three different "comedy music" acts; besides us, there was Modern Man, a trio of very funny guys--older, "folkie" types, with terrific timing; and the Arrogant Worms, a Canadian trio who've been around since about 1992--also really funny, because they're from Canada, where everything funny originates. (Well, almost everything) While some might see this as an embarrassment of comedy riches, I was a little worried that three was too many, novelty-act-wise; and I'll freely admit to being a little intimidated--these guys have all been around for quite a while, while we are, to a degree, still trying to sing and play instruments at the same time without vomiting.

So there was a bit of angst going in, all told. But all in all, we made it through the weekend just fine (from our perspective, at least). Thursday night was spent hanging out with the Arrogant Worms at Party Central (beer and potato chips in lawn chairs on the patio of their "rustic" motel, right near the dumpster). Friday was the comedy workshop (basically a mini-concert with multiple groups taking turns, usually based around a theme) with Modern Man and the Worms, and we held our own (even if Modern Man did one-up us on our "rejected commercials" bit with a semi-off-the-cuff "Preparation H" commercial). Saturday was a fun duo-themed workshop (with The Nields, The Kennedys, Lowen & Navarro, and Notorious), and that afternoon was the main stage show. It went as well as we could have hoped, all things told; but apparently, our backup band's vocal microphones were not on in the main speakers. They were working in our monitors, so we were clueless; but all the nice 4-part harmony stuff we worked on ended up being kinda-lame-sounding 2-part harmony. Dammit and triple dammit! Nonetheless, the set was well-recieved, and we sold a nice kettle o' merch.

Later Saturday brought the return of an old DVN tradition, when we (us & GrooveLily) converged on the festival "food court" and our old friends at Myron's No. 1 Yakitori, where we plunked down in the kitchen and assembled beef & chicken skewers for about an hour. Believe it or not, this may have been the most fun we had at the festival. (Every year we go there, I pretty much exist on their dumplings & different sauces) The fun was marred a bit when I got a touch of heat-induced migraine (which was accompanied by a most comical bout of stoned-like incoherence, where my brain ceases to function and I can only properly remember about 8 words), but a quick nap in the van fixed that.

Saturday night we got to do some backup vocals for our old friends Eddie from Ohio; unfortunately, drummer Eddie Hartness had a family emergency and couldn't make the festival, so the other three were scrambling for "helpers" for their set. This was a singularly unique experience: at night, the hillside is totally dark, and even though there were roughly 10,000 people out there watching EFO, you can't see any of them from under the stage lights--just a bunch of glowsticks, and a wash of crowd noise. So you have basically no perspective on how big the crowd is, which was a good thing, as it was probably the largest live crowd we've ever performed for. But while performing, the mind can sometimes wander to strange places, and at one point, I started being overcome with an urge to walk up and plant a kiss on Robbie Schaefer's head. Not in a gay way or anything (not that there's anything wrong with that); it just seemed like his head needed to be kissed, right there in front of thousands of fans. I actually had to physically fight this urge for a little bit, before the angels of my better nature prevailed. As surreal as it can get sometimes, I really love that this is my job.

Sunday we sat in with EFO again for the Gospel workshop (always a fun experience, and a surprisingly ecumenical one, considering the theme), and had our last workshop, "Groovin' on a Sunday Afternoon" (with Redbird and Gandalf Murphy). We had no idea what to play for this workshop, so we just busted out our '80s cover songs, to the amusement of many and the visible chagrin of several. And one long crappy ride down the NY State Thruway later, we were back home.


So a week later came our big CD Release Party at Jammin' Java, a great northern VA performing space, and a kind of home base for us. We'd been looking forward to this show, but again wanted to do something special for it. Since the GrooveLily backup band thing was too cost-prohibitive (good backup musicians are expensive), we decided to have a special opening act, Milk Munny. They're old friends of ours from Chicago, and while they're still struggling to find their sound, we thought we'd give 'em a shot in front of our crowd. An acoustic duo like us, they coincidentally played the same '80s cover songs we have in our repertoire. Their guitarist (just named "Cruiser") had to borrow Storm's guitar as well. But they seemed to go over well enough, so hopefully they'll open for us at more shows in the future.

For our set, the crowd was great and supportive, leading to a fun, loose show for us. We realized that this was our first show in recent memory where we were both in front of our own crowd and not pressed for time; as such, we were a lot more relaxed, and just had fun with everything. Thanks to everyone who showed up, and nuts to the rest of you.

Damn, I can be a windy bastard when I want to...maybe we'll update this blog regularly, maybe we'll just let it fester like the DVN Guide to Cool and Uncool. Here's hoping it's the former.

Paul.

*Yes, I do love using the phrase "as such."