Some time
around 2004
I met Mell Picco,
working at the same
coffee shop together,
and it’s all been downhill from there.
We would meet up at the Columbia, MD lakefront’s parking garage. I would break out my guitar or upright bass and she would open up a book of her poetry, and we would wail for hours. My reasoning was that you can’t get a noise complaint if you practice there, and now we could say we were a “garage band”.
Post-game was always at the Double T diner. There, many friendships were forged, many bad poems were written in many Moleskine notebooks, serving staff were befriended, many gallons of coffee were consumed, world domination plots were hatched, spontaneous roadtrips came about, and generally a truly bohemian life was lived. Diners have held a special place in my heart ever since.
Mell’s cool, too, I guess.
We were such a font of creative output in those days, just about every practice was a new band name or a new crazy idea or instrument or direction as we tried on as many hats as we could. To name a few of the groups:
Astronomical Bastard
1,000 Paper Cranes
No Cats in America
Long Story Short
Midnight Magic
Silent Statue
Many additional musicians came and went, but me and Mell were always the “core” creative force of the groups.
We got word of the Mid-Atlantic regional Burning Man event, Playa del Fuego, having open sign-ups for time on the stage in the middle of the grounds.
The guitars slept in a tent. Not mine, of course, they got one all to themselves. It was our first show with the core group that would go on to form another band…