Norfolk & Western: The Paris of the Midwest (Detroit, MI & Toronto)-- Local Cut

Norfolk & Western: The Paris of the Midwest (Detroit, MI & Toronto)

October 8th, 2009 [7:30AM] Posted by: Norfolk & Western | 0 COMMENTS

10-7 Madison/Chicago/Detroit/Toronto

It’s the time in the tour when routine sets in. Wake. Shower. Coffee. Eat. Drive. Load. Wait. Soundcheck. Wait. Play. Wait. Drive to Hotel. Sleep. Repeat. We did have our first great show in Madison. An old two screen theater wherein one theater serves as a music venue with standing room in the front. It was the first show where we could let loose a bit—turn up the amps and feel confident about the set.

The next morning I had to go to the Fed Ex to send a lot of merch home (I overestimated our projected sales) and sent the rest to New York in anticipation of the Canadian border cross. There is a heavy duty on bringing merch into Canada. If you have merch, they will search your car and find it. If you don’t, they’ll let you right through and you’ll ask yourself why you went through the trouble. We headed for Chicago to play at Shubas, one of my favorite venues in the country. It was a double header show, one early & one late. For Rachel that meant a quadruple header. Alex (violin player for the Mirah band) bought Cory a beer cake—perhaps a consolation for almost hitting him with the car in the Madison hotel parking lot? And Dave was to turn 29-years-old at the stroke of midnight.

I finally met Carl Saff in person. He’s the guy who masters a lot of the albums I record. He looks almost exactly how I imagined he’d look (minus the Omar facial scar I somehow thought he’d have). I also got to hang out with my good friends Holly Abney, Melissa Scales, Shelly Steffens and her boyfriend Donny who looks alarmingly similar to John Lennon (the nose!) and we later found out he was born on the same exact date as Sean Lennon. John did sleep around…I’m just sayin’. We spent most of the next day driving to Detroit. Granted it was a Sunday night downtown in the financial district but Detroit was abandoned. Rarely did a car drive by. As we all know, people have been fleeing the city in droves and the current median house price is now $7500. Once known as The Paris of the Midwest, the skyline is amazing. It’s obvious this place was bustling not so long ago, and just as obvious it no longer is. Grand buildings boarded up was not an uncommon site. The show took place in what might have been one of the strangest places I’ve ever played. We loaded in through revolving doors leading to a lobby with marble stairs. Once up the stairs, chairs had been laid out in front of a coffee counter which in turn was in front of Bank of America window tellers. Incredibly ornate ceilings were extremely tall and we knew this was going to have to be a quiet show. Just the sound of footsteps echoed throughout the building. We tailored the set so, playing a few songs we hadn’t rehearsed for the tour but seemed appropriate for the room. Let’s just say we were not in our element.

After we played and Mirah was about to go on, Cory, Dave & I found an old pub which at one time in the late 1800s was a ticket depot for a train station. It was a beautiful old building once again harking to the glory of the past. But now the wall adorned a sign saying that the bar accepted Detroit’s newly printed currency that is in reaction to the desperate economic climate. That and the giant TV screen with Family Guy playing made it clear this was a new era. After the Mirah band finished we were thinking of heading to that pub but I asked the security guard at the building where we were playing if it was safe to leave the car with our gear there for about 15 minutes. He began to tell us the story of the Wolf Pack, a gang in Detroit who have been recently breaking into cars in the neighborhood. Just last night he witnessed them break into a car across the street from where we were standing and the woman who owned the car said “hey, what are you doing” and they said “stealing your shit, what does it look like!” and she replied “well, here’s the keys- just take the car. At least I’ll get insurance then.” I guess that was his way of saying “no.” Either that or he was fucking with us, I wasn’t sure.

We decided to cross the border that night thinking it would be easier and less crowded than in the morning. I was right. They let us right through with only a bit of interrogation. So now we’re $85 down from sending all that merch. They didn’t even ask us if we had any! It was still only 11:00 when we got to our hotel in Windsor so we found a sports bar across the street and bought Dave a birthday Whiskey. Cory and I played pool and I played the best game of my life, which isn’t saying much but now Cory might think I’m a shark. The next day was an off day in Toronto. We got there with plenty of time to explore. Toronto is truly an amazing city. Rachel, Cory & I stumbled upon the Kensington area which seems like a village within the city. Lots of ethnic open markets, book stores, great restaurants, local artisans shops. This would be what Robyn Hitchcock would refer to as the “groover strip.” Sean Nelson told us this is Robyn’s term for the area in town where you’d find said places…you know, where you can get tofu instead of eggs. We found Toronto to contain more groover strips than any other city we’ve been to.

Rachel, Cory & I went to the Royal Ontario Museum where the Dead Sea Scrolls were on exhibit. Without getting into the exhibit itself, I found it ironic that after 2,000 years of being hidden in caves, the scrolls were in much better shape 50 years ago when they were found than they are now. All the chemical adhesives and cigarette smoke during the initial restoration process took its toll on the scrolls. The 50s! Chemicals, rampant smoking and a robust Detroit. So now we’re driving to Montreal. We know only a bit of French. Rachel knows how to ask where the next whiskey bar is as well saying that she is a little bunny. And, Rachel gets the *** quote of the day *** from Chicago when she said “It’s hard being in two bands because I just get jealous of myself!”