It’s been almost a year since we stopped at a rest area off I-5, unloaded bags and boxes from the truck, and, after peanut butter and jelly, assembled the first copies of our CD, “The Long Way”. We formed an assembly line, sort of, only we kept changing places. Tom stuck the labels I’d printed on the discs he’d burned, until we figured out I was better at it; I showed Dave how to pop the trays out of the jewel cases we bought at Circuit City, then Tom showed us both how the pros do it; we all folded the tray inserts and put them in the cases and put the cases back together and put the discs in the trays and stacked them in a pile. I think we made maybe a dozen.
That night we sold the first copy, to an enthusiastically drunk young lady who, like everyone else in Ashland, had missed our entire set. We were packing up when everyone the bartenders had texted suddenly showed up, so we unpacked and played a Jackson 5 song and whatever else we could think of until we’d all had enough. After we were done, they played our CD on the stereo. I couldn’t make out exactly what our first customer squealed about it – but I could tell she liked it.
It took us three years to make “The Long Way”, start to finish. Along the way, I played a farewell concert, put my stuff in storage, left town, and came back a month later. Meredith Edgar, the fourth singer-songwriter in the band, moved to San Francisco to focus on her own music. Our drummer Evan Bautista went on endless tour with his band Silent Envy. Cameron De Palma, our friend and producer, moved to Portland and happily stayed there. And Dave and Tom and I, left to our own devices, found a new sound for our live show, all the while finishing the record we’d started with Evan and Meredith and Cameron – layering guitars, keyboards, mandolin, ukulele, percussion, vocals, and eventually Cameron’s saxophones on “Build a Bridge”.
It took a long time to make it, and I always wanted to have a CD release show when we were done – to get attention for ourselves, let’s be honest, and to sell some records, but also to celebrate. To celebrate the long way we’d come, and what we’d found when we got there. But we didn’t finally get it all together until the day of our first Northwest tour. And by the time we got back, well, it’d already been released, hadn’t it? So we never had the party.
But it’s a year later, and I still want the party, so we’re having it, July 18 at Red Rock Coffee, the place where we got started. We’re going to play all the songs from “The Long Way”, but we’re not just going to play the record. We’re celebrating the CD we made, but we’re also celebrating the way the songs have evolved since we recorded them. It’s a celebration of the old and the new, and so it’s fitting that we’re going to play the way we play now – Dave, Tom, and Erik, the acoustic-electric trio – and we’re also going to play with our old bandmates Evan and Meredith, back together with Tin Cat for one night only. We rehearsed last week with Evan, we’re going to get together with Meredith soon and we’re really excited to play with them him next Saturday.
We’re not just going to play “The Long Way” – we’re going to play older songs, too (I’ve missed Evan’s drumming on “She Stole My Bike”!), and newer ones (including some that have never been played at a local show). Our friends The Other Jacksons are going to open for us at 8:00, and when they’re done, we’ll play until the cafe makes us stop.
And it’s all free. Although you’re welcome to buy a copy of the CD. We have lots of them now – we’re not putting them together by hand at highway rest stops anymore. Heck, buy two.
Update (July 17): Meredith won’t be able to join us tomorrow night.