Jam – 2012-07-31 – Carroll’s | my Steal Your Space book

Wow what a big month of July and what a big night to end it all, just in time to commemorate what would have been Jerry’s 70th birthday. First let me talk a little about this prolific month of July we just finished. If you count up the songs, we played 112 songs in the 5 jams in July 2012, by far, this has to be a record. We have a “take no prisoners” attitude these days, leaving nothing on the table or at least trying to get our monies worth.

The reason we chose to play on this Tuesday night instead on Jerry’s birthday on the next night was the fact that Ollablle was playing a free one-hour concert at the City Winery between 6:30 and 7:30. Perfect timing to enjoy a super-dooper cool scene filled with free phenomenal music and then take a nice easy 60-block or so trip up to Deadstein. First of all I must mention that Ollabelle has such a great positive vibe and you couple that with the same vibe provided by the City Winery and the weather and you have the makings of a perfect evening. They played an hour, there was a great crowd with lots of friends, taping, close viewing and just great music. I suggest you check out Scott’, Rich’s or my videos. What an up-lifting experience to get you psyched to play your own music.

After the Ollablle show I drove Rich and Scott up to the jam, enabling Scott to leave his car at home. By the time we got there just minutes after 8:00 o’clock, everyone was there waiting to play, including Andy Trister who accompanied us for the first half of the night during one of his all too infrequent jams with us. We played some great music during this set.

For some reason I guess like to start jams with Trister on an Uncle John’s Band, I think I hope it is at a tempo and energy level that gets us underway in a controlled manner considering we have 3 guitars in the room. Out of the Uncle John’s I tried to segue us into a Hey Pocky Way, but the train wasn’t going to that town. It was bee-lining to Aiko-Aikoville and we ended up there, which wasn’t a bad thing. As we forged through the first set most of the stuff was good and a lot of fun. I don’ think Andy wanted to leave, but a full night with him just isn’t in the cards. We formulated a nice 12-song first set with lots of good moments. I gave Stagger the Same Thing he asked for, a first for him with us. We tried the Bucket once again, but this time with Andy, it gave it a lot more legitimacy. After that the rest of the first set just kept getting better and better.

With Andy gone for the second set, we decided to get back to business and focus on Jerry’s 70th birthday. This was not until we played the I Shall be Released which we saw Ollabelle play a few hours earlier, which we have never seen them play before. They did it a lot better than we. Out of the Terrapin I entered into the Stephen without the standard intro, I thought that would get us going, and it helped, but we struggled a bit. We don’t do the Stephen enough. Our 12 o’clock quitting time reared its ugly head at the end of the Going Down the Road but that meant we were into August 1. This meant it was the big guy’s birthday, so we stayed a little later to play one additional Black Muddy River in honor of Jerry. This was 21st song capper on a long and great night, so I thought.

Since I drove Scott and Rich uptown from Ollabelle, I decided to give them a lift home, downtown, and take the Holland Tunnel home myself. We all walked to my Honda Fit parked in Scott’s secret spot on 54th street and I hit the button on my key-fab to open the trunk, but it didn’t unlock. I don’t think there is even a key hole on my trunk to manually open the truck. I used the key to enter the driver’s side and to my dismay, the car was deader than we were. Lee drove around the block to go home and saw us standing there and had jumper cables, so we tried jumping the car, but we are 4-Jews and I guess car maintenance is not in our DNA. We couldn’t get it jumped and Lee almost shocked himself to death in the process. I’m sure we did something wrong. Scott then whipped out his AAA Card and a service call from a 54th street station was dispatched. It probably took them a half hour to get there and 5 minutes to jump the car. Just after 1am, I was driving Rich and Scott downtown as my alternator was charging my battery. I was praying I didn’t stall my car out, which I didn’t. After some bad maneuvering to get out of Scott’s neighborhood to the Holland Tunnel coupled with some tunnel traffic meant I wasn’t in NJ until just before 2am and didn’t get home until around 2:45. I long happy ending to a great night, that’s what she said.

When life looks like easy street there is danger at your door.

To hear any of the music we played, go to the MP3 provided below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/07-31-12/