Wednesday July 8: Aurora, IL to Chicago, IL
@ Beat Kitchen.
Today is the one-year anniversary of Connecticut Four's first show! I was fortunate enough to be there at the Wild Buffalo in Bellingham with them, which makes being with them now all the more meaningful. A year after their first show, they play in Chicago at a lovely venue. Not bad! I am proud of them, and I'm pretty sure they are proud of themselves; they have accomplished much in a year that has been frought with a fair amount of distraction for a new band.. School, changing cities, jobs, relationships, being in other bands, etc. The fact that they are awesome as people, musicians, and performers helps.
Cristina made breakfast for everyone in Aurora, thanks to Emily and Adam, and drove into Chicago. It was grey and rainy, and even a tad brisk. The traffic coming into the city was so slow and confounding, we ended up arriving much later than planned. We unloaded quickly.
Meghan had arranged for her second cousin, Jim, to take us on a walking tour of Chicago. The man himself is a walking encyclopedia of Chicago history, and he did his best to fill us in with the limited time he had available. We took the El into downtown, visited the site of the 1893 World's Fair, Millennium Park, Hyde Park, the Planetarium, the Univeristy of Chicago campus, a giant reflective bean-shaped thing called The Bean, a sweet outdoor venue designed by Gehry (which made me angry because it's so much cooler and functional than Seattle's EMP), and a big golden statue. Jim explained the way the city was rebuilt following the Great Fire, essentially using brutal amounts of money, the rich purchasing themselves a world-class city.
Valerie earned herself some blisters today, which, when combined with the still-itchy bee sting from Anaconda, made for a slightly painful stroll. We had picked up some anti-itch spray several days ago, but it ran out, so we ducked into Walgreen's for more. She and Jim went to a cell phone store so she could replace her phone, and the rest of us returned to the Beat Kitchen.
The show was a little odd. It had been set up as a benefit for some kind of art collective, with all the performers being acoustic soloists. CT4 were the opening band, had nothing to do with the benefit, and are punishingly loud by comparison. That being said, we got dinner from the venue and had a nice little herd of friends and family show up. Cristina's brother Christian, Meghan's friend Elizabeth, my friends Kerri, Mars and Megan, plus a few more relatives of Meghan's. It was a small but loyal crowd. I returned to the stage to perfom my Ode to Chicago/Please Buy Merch song, and I was very nervous for some reason. There were literally 10 people watching.
We crashed at Elizabeth's, yet another extremely kind and generous host, up on the third floor of one of Chicago's many neighborhood brownstone/walk-up homes. After a small amount of dawdling, we retired for the evening.
