I'm Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail

Sometimes you need a mini-road trip.

Ashland Coffee and Tea was the ideal destination. We took a scenic drive up Route 301 under a low-hanging yellow moon, crossed the railroad tracks and joined the Saturday night revelers for some music and laughs.

Nobody delivers both better than the Hot Seats.

And while the food is not the point, it's perfectly serviceable, with sausage and shrimp jambalaya and chicken pot pie providing hearty warmth on a cold night. Walking in, we got our hands stamped and the door person said, "You've been here before, so you know the drill."

While both were true, I was still surprised to be remembered.

Two-tops are scarce at AC&T and those they have are directly in front of the stage, meaning we got front row seats by default. There was the usual P.A. announcement reminding us that this was a listening room environment (I did a silent cheer when I heard it) and that we didn't want to miss "a note or a lyric."

The Hot Seats, three beards, two faces, began with an old-timey tune (as they called it), "Sugar in the Gourd." The exuberant Josh Bearman wore a light blue suit coat and matching vest, making him the most dapper Seat tonight, despite soon shedding the coat.

With the Hot Seats, you're guaranteed funny lyrics, incredible musicianship and songs spanning the early 20th century to current. Songs like "Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young," a motto to live by if ever there was one.

During a stage discussion of the five members of the band, a comparison to Voltron (and cats coming together) was made. Ed Brogan wryly noted that if they were Voltron, "That would make me allergic to myself."

I'm with you, Ed, but I'd be allergic to the whole lot of you.

"The Ace" was introduced as "having lots of words and it's really funny." And few bands do stage banter like the Seats. There were colon jokes, grammar jokes and daughter jokes.

"Everyone fancies us a bluegrass band," Josh observed about the song "Fun in Town."

"This is a little bluegrass pop for you. It's even got minor chords!" I live for minor chords, just saying.

Of another song, Josh said, "This is one of our newer songs. It features double banjos, so it's a hit." What made it a hit for me was the lyric, "Are you looking for love or the semblance of?"

Apparently the band took song requests on Facebook before the show and one fan volunteered "On the Road Again." "That makes me wonder if they'd ever seen us at all," Josh noted.

Instead they closed the first set with John Prine's "Sam Stone" abut the hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes.

We decided to spend the intermission trying desserts, namely the mocha cake with cappuccino frosting and the chocolate cake. Nothing like a sugar buzz when watching the Hot Seats.

The second set began with more dueling banjos and the lyric, "I ain't a bit drunk, drunk, drunk, I'm just from Alabam." It explains a lot, doesn't it?

The crowd roared when Josh said, "Now that we're all grown up and mature, it's hard to believe we were ever a roving bunch of scamps," before leading into their seminal classic, "Peaches" with Ben doing the vocals that took the song over the top. We saw Ed play bass onstage for the first time and from where I sat he seemed to do just fine.

As is usual with the Hot Seats, there was a jail set because apparently there are plenty of good songs about being locked up.

There was the song Josh described as his mother's favorite, a tad surprising given the lyric, "From her cooter to her pooter." Actually, it makes me want to meet Josh's Mom.

It was the kind of show where we were told by the band, "We would be remiss if we didn't sing a song about cheeseburgers." It got meaty suddenly before they closed with the "Maybelle Rag."

But the audience was having none of it and hooted and hollered until the boys came back out, closing with a Porter Wagoner classic, "Another Day, Another Dollar."

This is the second year in a row that I've seen the Hot Seats just before New Year's at AC&T and if it's a tradition-in-the-making, it's a fine one. I love a ringside seat for a bunch of guys talented enough to trade instruments all night long, sometimes even mid-song.

I like watching the quiet fiddle player Graham tear it up on the side while the others hog the limelight. I like watching Ben with his handsome David Bowie-like smile impress on banjo and sing so expressively. I like Ed's low-key joke-making, clever backing vocals and songwriting skills. I like Jake's ability to play washboard while drumming and giving the band "the look." I can stand some of Josh's corny jokes but mostly I like his energy and enthusiasm.

I especially like how even the band can't remember which of their songs are on which album. I guess I just like good music and laughing. And a nice road trip.

Hell, who wouldn't?

Eve Hands Off the Apple

Before Richmond had a Listening Room, there was Ashland Coffee and Tea.

It used to be the only place I knew of with a guaranteed no-talk policy during shows.

So with an invitation to head there to see The Hot Seats, we took a drive up 301 for an evening of bluegrass.

We got there in time to score a table right at the corner of the stage, affording a great view of the flying fingers of The Hot Seats.

Our waitress looked like Carole King in the '70s and had a low-key wit that made her endearing.

When she brought our food, we all noticed the absence of roll-ups.

Rushing off and returning with them, she said,: "And here's some silverware so you can eat with dignity."

I especially appreciated it since chili can be ugly when eaten with one's hands.

My partner-in-crime amused me with stories of a friend who had been busy "finalizing the loopholes on her New Year's Eve resolutions."

I found that to be laugh out loud-worthy. If I were going to make resolutions, I'm not sure I would have remembered that important step.

The Hot Seats have many strengths, not the least of which is their range.

From Flatt & Scruggs to Porter Wagoner to John Prine, they have a knack for finding the covers that most closely align with their original and hysterical material.

Introducing "Jail Song," banjo player Ben held them up a second, saying, "I'm not in tune. I got this one mixed up with the other jail song. Sorry."

I can't help but like a band with multiple jail songs.

The song "Peaches" provided one of my very favorite lines of the night (and there were many). "You can always find your type if you like 'em over ripe."

Fruit (low hanging or otherwise) as metaphor for women?

The song "Soft John Blues" got plenty of laughs with lines like, "Gotta get me some of those pills."

A statement of our time, Viagra references seem to be cropping up surprisingly often in songs, as in the zydeco tune "Can't Rooster like I Used To."

The band brought up guitarist Ed's brother Dave to add "traditional bluegrass trombone" to a few songs.

That brass and strings combination is one of my favorites and it's everywhere these days.

The Hot Seats' set moved along at a fast clip with a dozen songs in each set.

Introducing one, they said, "Not all bluegrass is supposed to be happy. Not only is this one not happy, but discordant."

Unhappy and discordant, what more could you need on New Year's Eve eve with trains whizzing by every few minutes?

Okay, house-made chocolate cake slathered in ganache, but we had that.

Another thing I loved about the band was their musicianship; they endlessly and effortlessly switched instruments, demonstrating the range of each performer.

After the encore, our server came back to bring us our check and thanked us for being such great customers.

Telling us that lots of shows brought in picky people, this one had not and she appreciated it.

Susan Greenbaum shows, she said, brought in the worst.

Why? I guessed that it was because the audience would be largely female.

Cracking wise, my dinner partner asked, "Aren't all women picky?"

"She's not!" the server said, pointing at me. "She's perfectly nice and reasonable. You should keep her."

As if I were up for keeping.

I'm not sure whose eyebrow went up higher, mine or my seatmate's.

We walked out into the mild late December air of Ashland and  began the leisurely drive through rural Hanover County homeward.

Among an evening of great lines, I'd have to give the honor of funniest yet deepest line to: "Can we just have intellectual honesty?"

Only if you're given the dignity of using silverware to eat while a talented and humorous band plays.

And a Honeycrisp apple.

Irish Boys Sing Purty*

I had forgotten that the tag line for Ashland Coffee and Tea was those magic words: "A Listening Room."

And when two Irish guys are going to sing in a silent room, I am there, much as I was when I saw them a year ago in January in the midst of my life falling apart.

That time I'd driven to Charlottesville to hear Guggenheim Grotto and tonight I only had to meander up Rte. 301 to the Center of the Universe to hear those two beautiful voices together again.

I arrived in time to eat before the show. My server told me right up front that he was new and I told him he could make his mistakes on me. I ordered the spinach salad (dried cranberries, feta, walnuts, maple-seasoned chicken with Chianti basil vinaigrette) and was happily tucking into it when he came by to refill my water glass.

He did so without spilling a drop and then set the water pitcher down with a flourish in front of me and placed my glass on the counter.

We bonded.

I already knew how amazing Guggenheim Grotto sounded live, so it was really just a matter of enjoying it for the beauty of the sounds. It was simply done like last time, with only guitar or ukulele and sometimes keyboard.

Kevin informed us that he has the mid-ranges and Mick does the upper and lower ends and together it is pure poetry. Kevin explained the hat on his head as having resulted from a lyric, "I tip my hat to the willow tree."

Grinning, he said, "I love that line. Well, I wrote that line, but I didn't have a hat when I wrote it. Now I have a hat." The heat eventually made him remove it for a while, but I noticed that it always reappeared for the suaver numbers.

Because I am constitutionally unable to resist coconut cake, I went for their dessert special of Coconut three-layer cake. The slice was enormous, easily two actual slices, and not one but two different couples commented on it and asked what it was.

It was a refrigerator style cake, so a dense crumb with exactly-sweet-enough icing and a generous amount of coconut (it could have stood even more, but that's probably just me).

About their song "Vertigo," Kevin said that they'd written their version five years earlier than U2 had written theirs.

"But I think this is what they were trying to say...in their ham-fisted way." Don't you love Irish band rivalry? Besides, it's like comparing passion fruit and star fruit.

Toward the end, we were praised by Kevin, who said, "You've been easily the most reverent audience we've had." Sound of clapping.

"That makes us sound like rock gods...which we are. I meant respectful, not reverent." Actually, given what those two voices can do, the audience probably was a bit reverent. And of course, we were all reveling in having a silent room in which to hear every nuance.

Well, silent except when the server broke a glass.

Bonding not feasible.

*My friend Isaac H. about why I would like another obscure Irish band.~2003

Under the Darkest Moon at Ashland Coffee & Tea

You've got to love the way Ashland Coffe and Tea quietly brings in these interesting musicians who don't make it to rva because there's nowhere comparable for them to play here.

I've seen Marshall Crenshaw, Sara Bareilles and the Kennedys, among others, there, undoubtedly because we just don't have a dedicated listening room space and Ashland does.

And just this morning I saw that Austin singer-songwriter Darden Smith would be performing his folk-tinged pop there tonight.

The last time I saw him was the mid-nineties and he was opening for Shawn Colvin, whom I didn't even stay to see (I'd seen her before and I was to see her at least three or four more times since, so I think she's forgiven me).

I was excited beyond belief that this show had dropped into my lap.

And then there's the charm of AC&;T; it's not like any Richmond place.

The typed sign on the bathroom door says: "Please knock first. Our locks are less than secure."

Handwritten directly underneath is: "Be sure to scream loudly to be heard."

I thought it was pretty funny until after the show when I went to exit the bathroom only to be trapped inside; I chose not to scream but luckily only had to bang on the door for about a minute before being rescued.

When the twenty-something Ashland-born and bred waitress asked for IDs from a table of obvious thirty-somethings, one guy responded, "Wow, you're a hard ass."

With all earnestness (and probably fear mongering from management) she answered, "I just don't want to go to jail ever."

Such sincerity!

Their menu is basic but more than adequate.

The owner was kind enough to let me get a glass of a by-the-bottle only red, the Lolonis Ladybug Red Old Vines.

I ordered the Chicken Chili and a chocolate milkshake (they also had espresso shakes for those who crave caffeine).

The waitress' eyes got big when I ordered so I felt like I had to defend my choices.

"I think it'll be a great combination," I told her.

Smiling wide, she agreed, "Beans and dairy. No, beans and chocolate. That's gonna be awesome."

So I had her seal of approval.

After taking the stage, Darden Smith proceeded to tune his guitars (including a cherished Collings) before giving up and saying, "It's my birthday and if I want to play an out-of-tune guitar, I can."

And when the man opened his mouth to sing his well-crafted and consistently romantic songs, it was with a voice that didn't sound like it had aged or declined in the least in the intervening years.

He's a huge fan of trains, which come up in his songs repeatedly and after recently returning from Europe, he made a train comparison.

"Their trains are efficient and get you where you're going, but they don't sound like anything. Ours sound great but don't get you anywhere."

During a non-train song, one rattled by outside and he stopped to comment,

"I love that sound."

When he launched into "Midnight train," it was only a matter of seconds before the seventh train of the evening rolled by, causing in a group chuckle.

During a visit to San Diego last summer, he got to see Burt Bacharach perform and became obsessed with him, waking up the next morning to discover that he had drunk-downloaded countless Bacharach songs by Dionne Warwick the night before without remembering doing so.

Next he began learning to play them and as a result, we heard "Say a little prayer" tonight.

Midway through the show, he asked for requests and I was quicker on the draw than anyone else and asked for "Days on End," which got him telling us how the song came about.

"This is why I have a great job. I took a nap and woke up in the middle of it and wrote this song. Then I went back to napping."

For days on end, I'm rising up with the sun
For days on end, I can't get nothing done
Cause the world is spinning a little too fast
The sky's been a little too blue
Too many stars at night
And I've been thinking 'bout you
For days on end

Prior to his last song, Smith mentioned his merch table and told the audience that, "If you came with a date and they don't buy you a CD, they don't love you."

Then he mentioned a recent project he's doing with a NYC collective called the Harlem Parlour Music Club, a group with an emphasis on Appalachian music ("...because, you know, Harlem is a hotbed of Appalachian music," he said).

Everyone involved was supposed to bring a song to contribute to the group and Smith's was a gospel number entitled, "Dying to be Born Again."

He closed his show with it, but that wasn't the one that stuck in my head as I drove back down 301.

I know your lips, the cut of your hair
The shape of your hips, baby I've been there

Think about my coat hanging on your door
And I think about your dress, it was lying on the floor.

When It's Real Love, You Know You Do It for Free

As I drove through the pouring rain and flooding roads on my way to Ashland Coffee and Tea to see Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles, it occurred to me that a cozy coffeehouse for a show was an ideal destination to wile away such an evening.

The weather and locale also dictated my food choices; I ordered the Brunswick Stew, which was made with pork rather than chicken and loaded with limas and corn. Accompanying it was a warm corn muffin double the size of my fist (really), not too sweet and not too moist or crumbly. When I got down to the last of the stew broth, I emptied all the bits and crumbs from the muffin paper into my bowl and watched the muffin absorb every bit, allowing me to enjoy a sort of deconstructed sopping process, using my soup spoon to scoop up the wet crumbs.

For dessert, I stayed with their strengths and got the homemade cookie trio: white chocolate macadamia, oatmeal craisin and chocolate chip, with a glass of cab. I was satisfied.

As I ate and people took tables around me, the discussions were of musicians like Alison Krause, Jerry Douglas and Brandi Carlisle. The type of fans who refer to Merlefest and South by Southwest by the year, because they've been to so many. I was happily ensconced at my favorite table, one from the stage and next to the bar. Later, when the band left the stage, the bass player came over and thanked me for sitting there.

The band got right to it shortly after 8 and it was probably after the second song that Sarah Borges told the audience, "Okay the trains are a little disconcerting. It's like my whole life just flashed before me." I love how beautifully expressive her voice is, but she was also pretty, smart, witty and flexible (she told us that last part, but she moved awfully well, kicking and sashaying onstage). At one time included in the generic alt-country niche, the band's new CD is more straight on indie rock, plus the band did several covers, including J. Geils' "Cryin' One More Time for You." They're both Boston bands, so it made sense as a choice, at least the way she explained it.

The band was terrific; bass player Binky announced to us all his room number at the "quaint little spot called the Day's Inn," the guitar player used a half-filled bottle of beer instead of his left hand to play one song and the drummer requested that they skip something on the set list because it made his head spin. Sarah provided very clever banter between each song, making up ditties and teasing her band incessantly.

And when it was all over and time to head out into the rainy, windy night, Binky's question to me as we stood in the bathroom line after the show resonated in my head; was there really anything better to do on a rainy night than listen to a live band? Binky had a point.