2 gtrs

Sweatpants at Shattered Wig on FRIDAY

Sweatpants are playing at the Shattered Wig on Friday. The Shattered Wig is an awesome showcase, the longest running in Baltimore.

The movie I Will Smash You is also locally premiering at the show. I'm excited to see it on the biggish screen. Sweatpants is doing a song from the movie. Michael Kimball and Luca DiPierro made the movie.

Blaster Al Ackerman will read. The last couple times I saw him read I couldn't understand his words because he had a bar of soap in his mouth. Because of this, I thought it was a good reading.

Ingrid Burrington is going to do something. She really wowed me at the Transmodern Festival last year with her chapbook of 100 Questions. (One of them was, "Will you help me move on Thursday?") She did a bunch of diagrams for Michael Kimball's month of Everyday Genius (for example click heres). She has a chapbook forthcoming from Publishing Genius.

This is the bio for Sweatpants:

Sweatpants is a vigorous band that brings the rock led by Publishing Genius magnate Adam Robinson. After they opened for Springsteen in Munich a year ago Springsteen said he was too shaken to do his five minute monologue opening to "The River" and instead he told the band to leave and performed a short acoustic set.

We are going to smash a pinata. In the pinata will be reticulated ventricles.

Sweatpants at the Cake Shop in NYC

This is from when we played up at the Cake Shop back in August. My friend Joe took it. I remember that it was very hot when we played and I would sweat a lot on stage so I wore a headband like Mark Knopfler. At one show I didn't wear it and I went blind with wet eyes.

I was very nervous playing this show because I had never played in NYC before and something about NYC seems "for real," like I felt some pressure to do it up for real. Normally I don't mind not feeling like a real band. In general I have thought of Sweatpants as a "fun thing to do" and actually, over the last year, as a way to beat out frustration and stress. Playing with Dave and Jamie is a great way to release tension that builds up from the publishing biz.

Playing in NYC, on the other hand, was very tense and nervewracking. Also my friend-from-way-back, Josh, was at the show. That's his head there in the foreground on the left. Next to him, with the girl-hair, is Leah. Josh and I were in our first bands together. In high school we played as Rocktommy. I stole a couple of the riffs in Sweatpants songs from Josh's songs over the years. We even cover one of his songs. I was hoping he wouldn't be angry.

After the show we went outside where there was a rolled-up carpet, and I whacked my friend Bill with it. Then Bill took it and threw it at me and Leah like a missile and knocked us both over. Leah was here last week and I asked her did she get any bruises from that night and she laughed and said yes. I had a bruise that was shaped like a rolled-up carpet.

We went to some bar, a kind of famous one, and got into a barfight. Some guy on the dance floor bumped into Bill and I asked Bill did he want me to take the guy down and Bill said yeah so I tackled the guy and straddled him. I was careful to tackle him gently. The guy laughed and so did I. Then I think someone tackled Josh. We were in a pretty famous bar in Manhattan and everyone was tackling each other.

I was just getting waters at the bar and the bartender was like you better tip. I tipped her a lot of money. Then Jamie and Bill and I drove to Philadelphia but only made it halfway and stayed in a Budget Inn.