Mad. Mad World

Stop the world. I want to get off.

If one more thing happens before I try sleeping tonight, I think my brain will shut down. Are everyone's planets out of alignment at this moment in time or is it just mine?

Going to Sprout for dinner and a music show temporarily lulled me into thinking that the world was finally righting itself.

The chicken salad over mixed local greens with bacon vinaigrette was a savory marriage of flavors and full of greens I couldn't even identify (always a good thing). I thanked the two people who had recommended it to me.

And the music was strong tonight. Dogs on Main Street (really one dog named Mac) began with the folk classic "This Land is Your Land," a song I can remember singing in elementary school

Saying, "I felt like I lost a friend the past few weeks. This is for Clarence," he launched into a rousing cover of "Badlands."

He was clearly getting hot up there (as dogs do on steamy July nights) and cracked wise, "Is the air conditioning set on Mexico?" before wiping his face of accumulated sweat. Being hot, though, did not affect how good he sounded.

During the break, I saw a friend who a) told me that he and another musician are recording a Christmas album and b) asked me about Jane Goodall and her chimp for the sake of updating his status.

After a while, you don't ask why.

It was my second night in a row for The Great Unknown, so I got to hear a lot more songs as well as a full drum kit on the songs I'd heard last night.

At one point, the girl standing next to me turned to her friend and stage-whispered, "These guys are amazingly good. They're from Philly!" I couldn't tell if she thought the two were mutually exclusive.

Favorite lyric:
My window is half full of clouds and it's open
And I'm inviting the weather in

I totally get that. My windows are always open and the weather, like the sounds of train whistles and birds singing, come in unbidden, but not wholly unwelcome.

And the continuing weirdness I find awaiting me when I get home? That would be any number of e-mails from friends full of crazy content.

"Thumper's mother said if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

"I will stand semi-politely behind the youngsters that flock to you."

"You are looking at the latest job fatality. I am now a permanent woman of leisure."


"Just sitting here fantasizing about you in a pair of leather chaps. Wow, I must have one hell of an imagination to imagine that. Titillating nonetheless. "


[Sound of Head Exploding]

Burgers with The Great Unknown

Folk on, Steady Sounds.

Once again, my neighborhood record store was hosting an early show (6:30) with no price tag. Happily the crowd was bigger than at the last one, including several friends and musicians.

The inimitable Jonathan Vassar led the charge with his repertoire of sad songs. When he asked for requests, I suggested happy songs, but, as I already knew, there are no such songs in his repertoire.

Luckily there are plenty of heartfelt songs about family, places and memories, all satisfying.

Philly's The Great Unknown played next, coming from an interview at WRIR and an afternoon at the river ("It's okay to swim in your river, right? Cause we would never swim in ours in Philly!").

Formerly a quartet and now a trio, these guys have beautifully harmonious voices, accompanied by guitar, upright bass and drum.

They sang a new song, a song that used lyrics written by school children and two songs on which the audience was asked to sing along. We did our best.

After the show, the band was looking for some company, so four of us suggested Patrick Henry's (hey, it was $3 burger night) for some food, drink and conversation (RVA as good host).

We pulled two tables together to accommodate the additional two who joined us, got a terrific server (who just happened to write a webzine) and began getting to know each other with the aid of beer, Coke and, for some of us, Patron.

The problem with burger night at Patrick Henry's is not the burgers (easily one of the most flavorful cheap burgers in town) but the array of options. Pineapple compote? Hot pepper jelly? Hmmm...

After the hilarious ordeal of ordering, made all the more so because someone would order, then hear the next person's choice and second guess their own order, we began noticing the music.

It was all over the place, but in a good way. The Shins, Van Morrison, classic blues, Beach Boys, the music spurred many music tangents, including one about the inanity of Van Halen vocals.

But we also had great conversation about Cuba and its future, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and other must-read authors, and goat-milking (the band having had their first experience doing so this morning).

One of the benefits of so much chatter was that none of us could inhale our burgers immediately, despite being starved by that point.

Two enormous baskets of "community" fries took a beating, but only after our burgers were history. We were that kind of hungry.

By then the smoking had started, infiltrating clothes and hair, as it inevitably does at Patrick Henry's.

We hung on for another hour, comparing shows and talking about the Listening Room, which they had played to great acclaim this past April. I expect them to wow again tomorrow night at Sprout.

Getting up to go, a girl at a nearby table told me how much she liked my skirt. I didn't tell her it had been chosen for its thin fabric, brief length and breezy nature, not as a fashion statement.

Walking outside was like walking into an oven and while I didn't complain about the heat, my driver did. Guys never seem to tolerate summer warmth  as well as girls.

What a difference a skirt makes.

Crawling to Riesling and Music

I once did a pub crawl in the mid-90s and it involved jello shooters at a place that no longer exists in the Bottom. Alrighty, I decided, I'm just not the crawling type.

So naturally when I heard there was a Riesling crawl, I figured it was much more my speed. The only problem was that it was happening on an evening when I had non-negotiable music plans, so how far I could crawl was to be determined.

Inviting a friend to join me ("What the heck? Life is too short," she acquiesced), we parked mid-Carytown and sauntered over to Ellwood's Cafe for the first offering, a NV Wegeler Riesling Brut from Germany. We took our glasses and some housemade cheese puffs to the patio where other crawlers were sipping in the sunshine.

Since it was the first sparkling Riesling for both of us, we had nothing to compare it to, but it was nicely dry and a festive way to begin our evening.

My friend called it a good breakfast wine and I could see her point. We savored our bubbles before meandering down to Amour Wine Bistro to see what they had in store for us.

The answer was lots. They were doing "A View From Above," a Riesling flight, so, what the heck, we each got one. Naturally they were from owner Paul's beloved Alsace and offered a nice contrast to what we'd just had.

The 2008 Trimbach Ribeauville was the featured Riesling (for those unwilling to do the flight), no doubt because of the winery's major presence in the region. I loved its floral nose and long finish.

The 2009 Pierre Sparre had a nice acidity but a quick finish. The 2008 J. Fritsch was from a small producer, obviously made by a devoted winemaker and easily the most elegant of the three, soft and round with a lingering finish. Yes, we could drink this all night we decided.

Amour was also offering food pairings and we had the shrimp gratin with Pernod (obscenely rich and ideal with the Rieslings) and the smoked salmon in a pastry shell.

When my friend complained that her pastry shells weren't nearly as good, Paul offered to teach her the secrets.

He and I also got off on a tangent about dating since I'd heard from the mare's mouth that he was doing just that, causing him to ask me if I was. You haven't heard anything about me, I assured him.

By the time we finished the food and the flights it was 7:30 and, while we had enjoyed four different Rieslings, I had music looming on my horizon, so we never made it to the last two stops, Can Can and Secco.

The former is no big deal but I'll definitely need to stop by in the next few days and see what unique bottle Secco had chosen to pour. I can't not know or taste.

As seems to be the new norm these days, the Listening Room at the Firehouse was mobbed. I took a front row seat with the charming author to one side, the quiet musician on the other and the busy photographer a chair away. Now the show could start.

The Great Unknown offered up further proof that the City of Brotherly Love has a terrific folk scene as the Listening Room continues to bring them down to demonstrate.

Their harmonies were to die for but I was also totally captivated by the hand drumming (it's why I fell in love with Guster all those years ago), such a unique sound.

They've worked with schoolkids and collected phrases for lyrics and performed such a song tonight. They'd recently done the same with Martha Reeves (minus the Vandellas) at the Apollo Theater.

Jonathan Vassar had told me that his band had played an early-on show with Athens, Georgia's Hope for Agoldensummer years ago and been influenced by them.

A trio of two girls and a guy, their set tonight was testament to the power of siblings singing together; the two sisters' voices were magical in harmony. And easy on the eyes, according to the male on my right.

They covered Timbaland (to much laughing approval) and "Ain't Nobody's Business But My Own" (including a lyric alteration that sang "Antonia's so sweet," a nod to everyone's favorite vintage dress wearer and songbird) and did both really well.

Last up were the Green Boys from Fredericksburg with alt-country and a little bluegrass pickin' thrown in for good measure.

They were young and handsome and included a set of brothers (seatmate nudged me and asked, "So how do you like him?" no doubt to make himself feel better about ogling the sister act ).

I liked the warble in his voice a lot. I like that instrument trading went on. A friend liked the drummer's facial hair. There was plenty to like about the Green Boys.

All of whom, I might add, were much too young to remember the days of jello shooter pub crawls.