I started playing shows with original music back around 2000.
Then around 2001 I lived in a duplex on Delmar. It was haunted. Right at the corner of Delmar and Jackson. It was either right across the street from the funeral home and/or the Scientology building. The open mics I hit up in St. Louis were at a place called Obie’s, if I remember correctly. Down in Soulard. 7th and Lafayette, kinda. And I don’t think I kept a setlist book then so I always figure that era around 10 shows. It just won’t be an exact science, but I’ve tried to get it as exact as I could.
Between 2000 and the middle of 2006 the shows I bothered to document are somewhere (I hope) in a book around here. Didn’t find it when I was looking for it last night. But I can take a guess that there are about 60-75 shows before middle of 2006.
The second setlist book starts with my first USA tour, Summer 2006 at an American Legion Hall in Highland, IL. Ends neatly at the last show of 2008 - Off Broadway’s CD release of ‘If It Feels Good, Don’t Do It.’ So that’s around 200 shows in that book.
On tonight’s Facebook Livestream show at 8pm CST we celebrate the finish of Book #3! I’ve got another 200 shows under my belt, and for those counting at home I’d say I’m about 30-40 shows away from a solid 500. It all started innocently enough with a show February 22, 2009 at revered St. Louis club Cicero’s.
Tonight we stick the landing. From the confines of my office in East Nashville doing a Facebook Live show. This will be the 24th Facebook Live concert, with a couple more after tonight to close out May.
Then you can find the party at Patreon.
Wednesday May 27th, 2020. Putting this baby to bed. Been a long haul with this one. Flurries of activity, dense tours, hard tours, and long spaces where there’s nothing. I had lean years for awhile, too. Hell I lived in a different city when this book was born.
As I am prone to do, I’m feeling sentimental. I’m romanticizing something. Honoring and thinking back. See because I can look at my own handwriting at dates in this book and it’s a calendar, really, of music shows that I’ve performed. And that was me then, each time, each one of those days. Throwing love out there, throwing effort out. I’m proud of it all. It hasn’t been easy, but it has been a passionate love.
