Day 23: New York, Pt 4
Welcome
Yesterday, Gabe, Liz, and I played a headline show in Brooklyn, New York.
It was a brisk Friday morning when we left our accommodation for a brunch date with Marshall, our US booking agent. Tristan pulled our white Chrysler Pacifica around to the front door and the rest of us boarded, taking our places in the Pacifica’s comfortable bucket seats and enjoying the drive up to Williamsburg, sometimes deploying the optional window shade if we didn’t want to experience the slightly chaotic leaf-strewn streets of Brooklyn grasped in an autumn embrace.
The restaurant was called K’Far and was in the bottom of a very flash looking hotel, not too far from where we had played at the Hall of Williamsburg Music. Marshall was already waiting, and we greeted him happily, always excited to experience a food recommendation from this man who books a restaurant with the same finesse that he books our tours. We ordered our food and spent a while debriefing about our year on the road, celebrating the successes, and talking about plans for the future. Our meals came out and they were all plated impressively, my chicken schnitzel kataifi with yemenite pickles and schug sitting atop a speckled plate, the bright colours singing out against the grey marble tabletop.
There was one chore to complete in the afternoon and Tristan and Jon were kind enough to volunteer for this task of transferring our equipment to Warsaw, the venue where we would be holding our final show of the tour. While I took a train back to our apartment, they went to Music Hall of Williamsburg and supervised the loading of a cargo van that would carry everything the 1.9km to our new spot on the other side of McCarren Park, in a neighbourhood known as Greenpoint. I was calm at this point in the afternoon, running through my songs for a final time and spending a while trying to make my drum machine communicate nicely with my midi pedal. Then at 5pm after brushing our teeth and picking out our best outfits Liz and I walked out the door with our instruments under our arms, heading for Utica Ave Station.
It was a thirty-minute journey door to door, catching an A train to Broadway Junction, and then an L to Montrose Ave Station in East Williamsburg which left us with only a half a block to walk. Another cheap and satisfying public transport commute to a gig was completed and though we were a little wet from the rain and I was beginning to get quite nervous we walked in the front door of Sleepwalk feeling excited to play. A dim and cosy room greeted us, a long bar lining one side and a plush bench seat with tables lining the other, and a scattered population of amber lights hanging from the ceiling. We walked past all this into the back room which was small and intimate, a round stage set into one corner and a single booth and a couple of tables and stools the only furniture for the audience.
Gabe was setting up for his soundcheck and the members of his band Gabriel Delicious were beginning to arrive and prepare their instruments. This is a musical project that Gabe has had on the burner for many years, and it has touched many musicians and been through many editions; the songs and the songwriter are the only constant in this art, and this was what we were excited to see and hear. This show had come about a couple of months earlier when the logistics for our Autumn USA tour were being firmed up and it was realised that we had a free night in New York. Where some of us saw this as a break from work Gabe saw this as an opportunity and reached out to several past accomplices, booking a show and then offering me the opening slot, and Liz the DJ position.
It didn’t take long for Gabriel Delicious to get through their soundcheck and then they vacated the stage quickly so Liz and I could have a bit longer to settle in. There was a certain amount of discomfort once we got up there; our rehearsals to date had all been acoustic and the sensation of having every sound amplified and blasted out into the room was startling. The sound engineer was patient and helpful, thankfully, and after an hour of playing and tweaking we were as ready as we would ever be.
DJ Lizard was the first act of the evening, pulling double duty and providing a thirty-minute DJ set as the doors were opened and a few people began to trickle into the back room. The second act was Corollarita, a two-piece from New Zealand who take their name from their favourite car and their favourite drink.
I began the set by myself, playing three numbers on the acoustic guitar and voice and awkwardly swearing in between songs in an attempt to break the ice with this polite crowd who had been very generous in their attendance of our mysterious show. If I was the Corolla in our line-up then Liz was the Rita and she came out for the remaining five songs playing some gorgeous pocket trumpet and providing backing vocals and even bass guitar for our final song. Considering that this was the first live performance of these eight songs I’m happy with how things went. There were some fine mistakes produced across our forty minutes on stage, but plenty more fine mistakes were avoided by the tiniest of margins.
For the first time in a week, I was able to relax as someone presented me with a drink and Gabriel Delicious took to the stage. Gabe was a commanding front man. He played Jon’s golden electric guitar convincingly, drawing from a creative selection of riffs and melodies that he distributed around his baritone vocal. It didn’t sound like a band that had only enjoyed a single rehearsal; on the contrary, Gabriel Delicious had the assuredness of a quartet that were sitting on a lot of shared experience but were enjoying the energy and risk that comes from being under rehearsed.
DJ Lizard spun up the decks a final time to close out our show, putting on banger after banger and committing some furiously clever mixes right up until we were kicked out of the room so the band playing in the late show could get ready for their midnight set. It turns out that the cocktail bar element of Sleepwalk was quite formidable and we spent the next couple of hours getting familiar with their drinks menu and celebrating this unique tour achievement.