This past weekend

As many of you may know, I am in a folk band called Trunks and Tales, and this weekend we played two shows and did a lot of traveling.

On Friday we played at the Fire in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. The Fire is a small venue near Fishtown, and is half venue half bar. The turnout was pretty good, and we played with some very good bands.
Immediately after our band came a band called the Powderkegs. The Powderkegs played a brand of mellow, mostly keys driven indie music that didn't quite seem to find it's home among the more punk rock and folk oriented listeners in attendance that night. Regardless, the trio played a tight set, and the singer flowed back and forth between playing bass and keys.
Following the Powderkegs was Robert Sarazin Blake. Blake is a singer/songwriter from Bellingham, Washington, who often tours with his drummer Jordan Rain. Blake plays traditionally influenced folk music, but plays it in a spastic, spontaneous was that is not easily categorized. The singer slips between side banter and lyrics flawlessly, often inserting stories or anecdotes into the middle of his songs. He played for about an hour before the evening's headliner, Mischief Brew, took the stage.
Philadelphia's Mischief Brew needs no introduction in their hometown. The band is led by songwriter Erik Petersen, who also has a habit of playing solo acoustic shows. The full band experience is a folk/punk fireball, and the usually inebriated band rockets through their songs at warped speed, usually playing forty five minute sets jam packed with songs. This night ended in a memorable way, with Erik grabbing his acoustic guitar while the drummer grabbed a pot and advancing into the crowd to incite an acoustic sing along song to end the night.


Our Saturday was mainly filled with driving, but some history was stumbled upon. This past weekend marked the 39th anniversary of the Kent State Shootings, when four students were killed while protesting the United States Occupation of Cambodia. We were able to visit Kent State University, and the whole experience (mixed with the virtual police state that the town had entered) was pretty surreal. We stayed with some awesome people in Kent, and made some new friends in the Lansing chapter of Bash Back! a radical GLBT organization.

Sunday was the big day of our weekend, as we proceeded to Toledo, Ohio to play the Grand Opening of the Black Cherry Infoshop. This space is something that Toledo activists have been working on for two years, and their dreams have finally come to glorious fruition. The space is huge- the ground level is an info shop with books and dvds, and a kitchen is in the process of being built for a donation based cafe. The top floor is occupied by several apartments, which some members of the collective will be moving into. The basement of the space is a huge open room that is going to be used for the venue portion of the space. This particular night somewhere between 150 and 200 people of all ages and backgrounds filled the space for a potluck and a show with eight bands. The primary draw for the night was in the form of former Ohio natives Defiance, Ohio.

Defiance, Ohio is one of the more popular bands to emerge from the working class radical folk punk genre. The sextet is known for its energetic live shows and radical lyrics and agenda. Sunday May 3rd the band rolled through a set of songs from all of their albums, spanning the over five years that they have been a band. All of the concert attendees stuck around for them, and the crowd came alive as soon as the first chord was struck. The band put a good cap on a night of hope and celebration.