CONQUISTADORS TOUR DAY 13

I take a night off in Chicago and stay with family. My cousin and his wife have two teenagers, wonderful people all, and they ply me with questions about my music, my tour, my travels. I teach the whole family circular breathing. The next morning, one of the kids asks, point blank, my thoughts on the afterlife. The other looks at my facebook profile, notes what I have indicated as my "political view" and asks "what's an anarchist?" I ask him if he has any idea at all. "Don't they want to destroy everything?" He is genuinely interested in knowing, and a critical response would be out of place here. I say that while some people who smash the windows of big corporations identify as anarchists, not all anarchists smash windows. I say that we are interested in the absence of hierarchy in the way we organize our society, that we want direct input into how decisions that affect us are made, that we favor equality. "Isn't that socialism?" he asks. Potentially, but not always and not exactly, I explain. This is challenging. Reminds me of this. Even on a day off, an opportunity to relate to the Conquistadors tour theme. Later, I tell a story and mention staying in a hostel in South Africa. One asks "what's a hostel?" The other responds: "it's a place without room service where you have to share a bathroom." Love these kids.

I catch up over coffee with my friend Alyssa, an actress, musician and dancer in town rehearsing a show. The tour goes from awesome to awesomer: Champaign, where I play tonight, is only two and a half hours away, there's a cheap Amtrak back to Chicago in the morning, so I get a co-conspirator for a little part of the tour! Alyssa and I worked together with our choreographer friend Lindsay Gilmour and five other dancers on Desire and Decay this winter. It is great to have a familiar pair of ears to play to, to listen through. I play a 30 minute set between a new, local three-piece (Bedtime) and a Chicago band called Harps of Tartarus. They would go over really well back in Ithaca on an Ithaca Underground show. Despite this thought, after the show we all talk, and I go off on an anti-Ithaca rant. I love the local agriculture in and around Ithaca, I love so many of the people, the mellow pace, the natural beauty. But I despise the cultural insularity. People talk up the "shop local, support local bands" thing a lot, which is great, but the lack of integration between the two institutions of higher learning and the downtown, and the failure of the apparent social and political progressiveness to somehow overlap with progressive attitudes towards the arts is a constant downer. Some of the most boundary-pushing stuff in town comes through in the punk and hardcore and math-rock all ages programming by Ithaca Underground.

The show in Champaign is put together by Greg Clow, a college radio dj and member of the band The Diamond Stretch. Greg hosts two all ages, alcohol-free shows each month in the basement of "Dan Aykroyd's House", a suburban home that feels a bit like a giant college dorm room. Wonderful, committed audience and really friendly people. Magnificent sounds from the Farfisa this night, and a hilarious question from someone in the audience after the set: "was that Harry Potter on the cassette?" It was Helen Caldicott, of course, who is equally concerned with good triumphing over evil.

SET LIST 4/3
Conquistadors
Rocket Ships
What We Have
Strange Lands
A Bloodletting
Helen Caldicott
The Love Story