$24.58, I bought a headache.

(Part ten of a sequential tour narrative. Go to April, 25 2009 to start at the beginning)

Lynch's Irish Pub is a fine establishment in Jacksonville Beach, FL. It was recommended to us by a hotel employee so we took the lead and were moderately pleased. The blues band was good and the girls were good looking but the dudes were meatheads. So it goes. Our room at the Hilton is nice...perfect for blog madness.

Where was I? Oh yes. We were waking up in New London, needing to get back to Brooklyn to drop off Bartow and Aaron. But first, we had to scenery dork over to Mystic for some clam chowder or some crap. Quaint small town on mother's day=long lines at the chowder shacks. So we don't know where we are and I'm hungry so I start getting cranky and impatient. After following Sam and Tim Scenery I pulled the plug on the wild chowder chase and ate deliscious Mystic pizza with Bartow and Aaron (who was sick and didn't feel like walking all over town). It was good and I was ready to drive back to NYC and get to the South. Well, Sam and Tim didn't seem like they wanted to leave yankeeville so we found a pizza restaurant on Staten Island to make the experience last just a little longer.

I forgot to mention that an old friend of mine from when I went to N.C. State now lives in New London. I haven't spoken to him since 1995 but I saw his name on a flyer for a tattoo art show and knew it had to be him. The folks at the club confirmed that he is from N.C., tall and nice. There had been a fifty year old ban on tattoo parlors in New London and now Colby has gone in, had the ban lifted and opened a parlor. Alas, I didn't see him though I would have liked to. Colby got me into the Smoking Popes, among other bands. I thought it would have been fun to get a tattoo from him that night but he never came by the club. Oh well. I found it funny that if I had gotten a tattoo from him, two of my three would have been from Connecticut.

Soooo, we left Staten Island and drove all the way to Fredricksburg, VA where we spent the night. In the morning, we ate Waffle House and kept truckin' on down to Winston-Salem where we landed at Krankie's Coffeehouse. What a great establishment? My family met me there and I took off with them to have dinner and so forth. It was great to see them again, but that goes without saying. The show at the Garage was a lot better than we expected for W-S on a Monday night. The opener was good but he played too long. It happens and it's annoying and you get over it. Everyone wants to play in front of people but you don't always get to, as evidenced by us in Auburn.

On the way to Raleigh the next day, we went through Chapel Hill and I had lunch with Scott, Jason and Arun. That was nice. I saw Bill Kelliher walking down the street which got me bummed that I couldn't see Mastodon at the Cradle that night. Still listening to Crack The Skye and loving it even more. I bought the new Obits record in Iowa City but haven't heard it yet. Also, I got a couple care packages while in W-S, one of them containing the new Gary Louris/Mark Olson album. It is rather awesome. For the first time in a while, I have a bunch of new music to listen to!

Tim and I just listened back to some of the recordings the New Excuses made in Orlando Tuesday. That shit is hot. A brand new Gminor waltz of Tim's was particularly live and raw.