Tour Report: Bedlam!

We returned triumphant to the even colder than here land of Minneapolis for a weekend of shows at The Bedlam Theatre. A great and wonderful experience. We performed with a short and exciting piece of "theatre of disruption" from Lamb Lays with Lion called The Little Skeleton That Could Not. This strange piece is open to many interpretations, often offensive, and quite confusing, which is to say: i loved it. I hope to bring them down to Milwaukee sometime in the near future, so i won't say more about my particular interpretation of the play. If things go according to plan, you'll have the chance to see it for yourself.

Another group we performed with who i hope comes to Milwaukee soon is To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie a great group of musicians whose songs combine ambient shoegaze with noise and psychedelic elements to create a compelling experience somewhere between a rock show and an experimental soundscape. They played with us all three times, along with their side project, Navy Wife. This is a straight-up noise two piece that builds layers of textured sound to immense complex compositions in a truly unique way. A couple of more conventional but highly capable rock bands wrapped up the night shows. Speeds the Name on Friday and The Wars of 1812 on Saturday. When these bands played kick ass music, Minneapolisites show up their Milwaukee counterparts by actually dancing, a lot, and un-self-consciously. It's too bad that Minneapolis exceeds Milwaukee in every way: including areas like coldness, distance from other major cities, and cost of living. It puts me in the position of being jealous, but unable to just move there.

The shows themselves went well. Friday night I felt anxious, first time performing for a couple weeks, but it went well. Saturday kicked ass, a large responsive audience, and energetic performances from all three of us. Sunday had the weird matinee feeling, but still at least 20 people came out, and we'd just eaten Bedlam's big delicious brunch, so there's no room for complaints. On saturday afternoon we had a sparsely attended, but interesting discussion of my Theory of Artist Revolution and Jeremy (of LLwL) Catterton's Theatre of Disruption.

Now for the transparency, we did three shows, audiences ranging from 60-20 people. We spent $126 on gas $10 on food, and $34 on a parking ticket (hurns). Made $36 on donation and merch sales and are awaiting an official check in the mail from Bedlam for our cut of the door. Will post that in a comment when it comes. Not that anyone is actually paying attention to this stuff.