-Under less than ideal conditions, CAROLINE BLUE made their first out of NY state show at Legends in Gales Ferry, CT last Saturday! The Boys in Blue played the whole night after a 5+ hour trip in a van, stayed the night and then made the trip back to NY in even WORSE weather conditions! Kudos to you guys! New additions to the LIVE PICS 2006-2010 and FANS, FRIENDS & FREAKS pics are now up. In addition, go to the CAROLINE BLUE MY SPACE PAGE and check out WWJ’s recap of that weekend in their blog. WARNING-it’s not for those with short attention spans 🙂
*READ WWJ’s SHOW RECAP IN THE FIRST COMMENT BELOW*
CAROLINE BLUE 
Hi Everyone!
-Sorry I’m a little late with the recap. I didn’t get home till late Sunday night and last night I was finishing up the Xmas shopping. Hope everyone got their shopping done. At least the weather seems to be OK for the time being….
-Anyway, on with the recap of CAROLINE BLUE’s show at Legends in Gales Ferry, Connecticut on Saturday 12/20/08. This is the very 1st time CAROLINE BLUE has ever played outside of New York state…and it almost didn’t happen. Some of you long time readers here might recall back in March 2007 we had booked a show at Barney McNabbs in NYC. This show was cancelled due to a freak snow storm that hit and last Saturday’s show almost met the same fate. We were checking the weather reports and , although it was snowing, it seemed manageable. This was to be a 3 band bill with Against the Wall (NYC), CB & Noah’s Reign from the Rochester/Buffalo region. Late Friday night I received an email from the booking manager at Legends. Noah’s Reign cancelled due to the weather and Against the Wall said things were never fully confirmed on their end so they weren’t going to be there either. Now-things might have ended right there-3 original bands from NY coming to Ct 5 days before Xmas in bad weather. However, I’d previous been in contact with Legends in regards to doing some followup shows (when there’s no snow!) and mentioned that we can basically-by doing a combo of covers & originals-do a whole night by ourselves. I’m not sure-but I believe this might have been a factor as to why the show wasn’t outright cancelled. They asked if we were willing to do the show solo. After looking at the weather for the weekend, we agreed to do it. Going to Ct wouldn’t be too bad. Leaving there would be worse, but we’ll get to that shortly….
-So our adventure to Ct started with me being over an hour late to pick up our drummer Joe in Utica. Lateness is one of my faults and Joe doesn’t have a car. Usually Andy gets him, but I’m closer to him for this show so it was my turn. We get to Andy’s, throw our crap in the van and away we go! Before we go on, I have to mention that Andy was the one who did all the driving to and from Ct. I did offer to drive at one point, but maybe the fact that I told him that I drive like a Granny when the weather is bad made him not relinquish the seat. I was the navigator though and Joe was our buffer so that the equipment wouldn’t slide into us (HA!). Btw-don’t fall asleep on a car ride involving Doc.
I found that out the hard way 🙂
-The trip to Legends took about 5 1/2 hours I believe. Starting in NY, the weather was clear but as we got closer to Massachusetts and then Connecticut, we started seeing more & more snow. We passed by several cars that were involved in accidents in one form or another.(Joe knows the exact number) Luckily, we weren’t one of them. By the way, please note-never accept advice about the location of cheaper gas prices from someone who hasn’t driven in years (HA!). One funny thing-we get to the Mass. Turnpike and Doc goes to the toll booth guy “Can I have a receipt please?” and the guy goes “You can have a receipt…when you pay me $2.20”. 🙂 Guess you had to be there…..
-We made it into Ct & Legends around 6-6:30 I believe. Very nice place.Well laid out. Nice stage too. Course, it’s always nice to see “Tonight CAROLINE BLUE” on the huge road sign outside-and they spelled the name right too! They even have a display case where bands can sell their stuff there via consignment (and yes, there are some CAROLINE BLUE CDs there-only for $5!) We got in and set things up. Btw-they also make some great food here. I forgot her name, but the woman who cooked us dinner was excellent.
-We also went to check in at The Knight’s Inn before performing-not too far from the bar. We didn’t expect a huge payout so we just had 1 room and shared it. I had to go buy an air mattress the night before. Doc was LOL when I started using a pump to blow it up.2 guys walking into a hotel room and you start hearing something being inflated-not a good thing! (HA!). And for those of you who maybe thinking that some man bonding happened-it didn’t. There’s nothing wrong with being like that-but none of us play for that team….
-Anyways, we hit the stage at 9 PM. We had about maybe 25-30 people here tonight. Now, before you think that this sucks, consider…the weather sucks outside, it’s 5 days before Xmas, the economy overall could be a lot better and here’s a band from NY that hardly anyone in CT has heard of (that I know of)….Honesty I thought we’d be playing to 5 people-bartenders included!
-Lights & sound were done by Redbone Recording and Shawn did a great job. Monitors were cool and no broken strings. Joe did break his splash cymbal though. We all signed it and it’s currently hanging on the wall @ Legends. Playing wise I think we did alright. We’re getting tighter. Mental note to self-when doing a song in drop tuning and the next song is in normal tuning, tune back up before starting the next song 🙂 We had a pretty good response to our covers & originals. We sold some CDs, buttons & hot sauce! We also had our FREE CD samplers there and a bunch of those were taken as well. The people here were great-there was even a guy here who was originally from Tully (close to Syracuse) here. We also had women doing cartwheels and splits in front us-that was a 1st-and we got to sing Happy Birthday to Melina-one of the bartenders. She’s the one who has the CB buttons on (you’ll see when I get the pics up).
-One thing that was kind of a downer was that we were told to take 2 breaks this night. It would’ve been better to just take one-or even if I could do some acoustic stuff and have that serve as a “break”. Reason being-for the most part-when bands take a break, they lose a portion of the crowd. It’s happened to us before and it happened again this night. But we continued on till the end. Then we packed up and it was off to the hotel for some much needed sleep before the long trip back. Sorry people-no “aerobics” stories to tell. You never know in the future though-one of our missions is to get our drummer Joe laid by as many women as possible .
Joe must have rug burns and bruised peter by the end of 2009 🙂
-We left the hotel just before 11 AM-and it was already snowing pretty good. We passed by more accidents-including a bus that was off the road as well as a Wal-Mart tractor trailer that was jack knifed into a tree on the side. The roads were pretty bad in Massachusetts this day.Doc was having a time with all the “slow” drivers that were in his way 🙂 Outside of stopping to eat at a Chinese Restaurant, we pretty much kept driving till we reached NY. The plan now was to get CB back home and it had 5 stages. 1st stage was leaving CT. 2nd-leaving Mass. 3rd-getting to Doc’s. 4th-getting to Joe’s and then 5th-me getting home. I actually didn’t get home till 10:30 PM but I digress…
-A question…does anyone know why there are no rest stops from the Mass. Turnpike to Albany? If there were, we didn’t see them. Joe was getting to the point where anytime a rest stop sign even appeared to show up, he’d point and go “Food!” (It’s the Caveman in him-HA!).The weather changed alot. It would be clear for awhile and then it would be snowing heavily. At one point we even encountered some thick fog! That really sucked. If it was me driving via Granny style it would’ve been an extra hour or 2 before the trip ended. But we made it thru in one piece.
-We want to thank Buffalo Joe for getting us this show and all the great people working at Legends (Glenn, Tamara, Melina, Shawn, TJ & the woman who cooked our meals) for their hospitality & kindness. You treated us great & it’s deeply appreciated. We hope to be back here sometime in the Spring/Summer of 2009. We also want to thank all the people who braved the weather to checkout a bunch of knuckleheads in leather pants from NY (Esp-Gary “Granpa Metal”-told me he’s been waiting for about a year for us to finally play in Ct-hope you like the CDs!).We made some new friends here and we hope to see you all when we come back. It’s cool to finally meet people who you’ve only known via My Space (Hiya Kim!).
We also want to thank all of you who have managed to read this far & not fallen asleep-HA!
Next show-1/10/09 @ D.S. Humphreys in Oswego,NY…weather permitting.
Thanks everyone & keep rockin!
WAYNE