Saturday follow-up: Poetry & Nine Days
Sunday, June 17, 2007 at 7:15AM 
I'm off to Green Bay in a couple minutes (driving Kim up to the airport), but when I get back home I'll post an update on yesterday's funnitudiness (and yes, funnitudiness is spelled with two n's...look it up!), with Kathryn's poetry and the cats from Nine Days at MetroJam. Have a grand morning y'all!
OK, we're back from GB...lunch at Noodles & Co., an hour at Barnes & Noble (got a few items, including "The Brew Master's Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food;" a book about Cat Woman, full of images from comic books, TV and the movies); and a stop at Kavarna coffee shop on Broadway.
Well, yesterday's poetry reading with Kathryn was great...had 15 or 16 people, young and older, in attendance and who really enjoyed Kathryn's poems and her style of recitation. A very nice turn-out for our first poetry reading, and we got several comments on what a cool thing this was and that we have to hold poetry readings regularly from now on (which we plan to do).
Earlier in the day John Hampson and Jeremy Dean from Nine Days stopped in before their headlining gig at MetroJam last night. These two guys were real genuine, down-to-earth and were a real pleasure to chat with. Jeremy told me that besides his band duties he's also into graphic design (he dug our mugs, so they left with a couple) and John said that his wife has been wanting to open a coffee shop near their home in Long Island. They gave me a copy of their latest CD, Slow Motion Life (above) and a cool looking T-shirt (thanks guys!), and said to make sure to say hi if we made it to the show after closing (Kim, Cheyenne, Jesse and I closed a little early and sped over to Washington Park to catch the performance). Man, what a great show! Watching Nine Days live it is obvious that these guys love what they do...lots of energy, great tunes, solid musicianship (love the sax, Jeremy...outstanding), and a fun and sincere rapport with the crowd...if you missed them, well, you need to turn to the person nearest you and politely ask them to kick you in the arse right now.
Another cool thing was when John spied me in the crowd and gave a shout out to Stumpjack..."Is that my friend, David!? We have to thank some people...including Stumpjack Coffee in Two Rivers, where I had a great espresso today..." Thanks, John, that was much appreciated.
After the set ended we hung around for a few minutes and chatted with John and Jeremy again, bought a couple of CD's, and got our coffee egos stroked a little more. And I don't want to get too far ahead of myself but we chatted briefly about booking the guys for a gig at Stumpjack sometime (maybe an acoustic set). We promised to follow up on that, and I'll give John a holler this week to see what needs to be done to make it happen. Thanks John, thanks Jeremy...you guys made my week.
Check out Nine Days' website and MySpace site, and check out Kathryn's site as well, the girl has some serious writing chops...man, it's been a great weekend for the art of music and poetry. Peace!
Reader Comments (4)
It's spelled with 3 n's, just like you spelled it. 2 are just adjacent. But now I'm sounding like Fletch and "Babar".
It was a great great night at Metrojam and made even better with that little shout out to you guys! A little thing at Stumpjack how great would that be?
I was at MetroJam and saw Nine Days' set and they were awesome. When they gave you guys props that was the best because I love your place too. The best damn coffee and atmosphere in the state. And that would be SO cool if you could get them or even just the lead singer and the guitar player or keyboard and sax guy in to play because I think they definitely would mesh well with what Stumpjack's got goin on. I'm just thinking about the size of their band and the size of your space and maybe the whole band would be too much. But either way it would be awesome.
Thanks for the feedback everyone. I too think it would be great to get them here, and I just shot an email out to John about that, so we'll see what, if anything, happens. And I also tend to agree that it might be too much to try to book the whole band, for reasons of space, money, scheduling (those guys have lives outside of just doing gigs every weekend), etc. so maybe getting John and Jeremy, for example (I love that sax), might be the way to go...but heck, anything is possible.
Been listening to their "Flying the Corporate Jet" in the car...really nice...along with John's solo album, "Seventeen Minutes and Thirty Eight Seconds In the Dark"...also a very fine album. The guy has a lot of talent for sure.