Northpaw Lives

By now I suspect most of you are aware that I’ve joined a band. The name of the group is Northpaw, but I didn’t find that out until I’d been to several practice sessions. I guess I’m not that selective. The band consists of Tim Maloney on guitar, keys, and vocals; Sara Rolfe on violin and vocals; Kurt Fleckenstein on drums; Dusty Ray on bass; and yours truly on sax. We had our first gig Friday night at Road 34 in Fort Collins, CO. I’m not sure how often she’ll want to go, but Jess was very excited that she could attend this time. A huge thanks to Greg and Emily for watching Phoebe and to John and Thomas for sharing toys. We hear that Skipper had to sacrifice and spend some time outside as well (Phoebe told us “woof, woof, Skipper…No, Skipper! Outside!).

To keep this blog post short, so I can get back to writing about the cute little lady of the house, the first show went pretty well. We had a few hiccups but no train wrecks, and we all started and stopped together, so I’m pretty happy with the night. I was reminded that the world of small bands playing at bars is about the least punctual you’ll find. We were the 2nd of 3 acts on the night (Faded Freakshow opened things up and a group called Widow’s Bane headlined the show). The show was supposed to start at about 9:00 with Northpaw playing at around 9:30, but we didn’t start our set until almost 10:30. Needless to say, we didn’t get back to Boulder to rescue the Brinkmans from Phoebe until well after our original plan of midnight. We owe them way more than the 6-pack we dropped Phoebe off with.

I’d also like to say thanks to all of the friends that came out to watch us play. Most of you traveled all the way from Boulder (or Longmont) on a Friday night after working all day. Kudos! And a really big thanks to Jay for recording the whole show. I can’t wait to hear how everything came out. For those of you who also can’t wait, one of Sara’s friends shot some video of “Plannned Obsolesence.” It was the last song from our set. The audio isn’t awesome, but it gives you some idea of what we sounded like. I’ll put up some mp3 files from the concert once I get a copy of the good recording from Jay.