"2/3rds of the Talking Trees"
So aelfsciene and I did, in fact, make it down to the Smoke Tiki Lounge tonight for the "2/3rds of the Talking Trees" benefit gig I mentioned in yesterday's post.
And I couldn't help myself from taking crappy cell phone pics.
My six measley pics
The benefit was for the widow and son of a local man who drowned a few weeks ago. $30 admission got you in for the gig, dinner at the buffet, and a free limited number of drinks. Except, holy crap, the free drinks included mai tais, amaretto sours, and midori sours. Sweeeeet.
We got down there mega early, at the time they said the doors were going to open, because we didn't know how insane it might be. (It wound up being crowded but not insane, which was nice). Because we got there so early, we got to watch Smitty do his own set-up, with the help of a guy we later deduced may be his brother (because OMG, he looked so much like Smitty). We drank rum drinks, I had cleverly pulled a trick out of callunav and juliansinger's book and brought a deck of cards so we played a hand of crazy 8's while waiting for the food to come out, and managed to get a nice table behind the bar so it was kind of out of the way, and yet ten feet from the stage.
Smitty's still got the dual hairstripe thing going on: one white, one colored. Tonight, it was what we decided was 'kelly green'.
The other surreal moments was having Sharks assistant coach Tim Hunter show up, and running into an ex-co-worker who I found out was a friend of the man who died.
My only real complaint was the sound quality was such that I couldn't make out the lyrics. But the music was nice, and by the end, especially, it had my foot a-tappin'. You can totally tell he's doing this as a sideline gig of something he loves and not trying to make his living at it, because as a showman, he sucks, and there were not a few times that either the bass guitar was out of key or Smitty's singing was or both. But that, and the fact that he had a big knot of friends and family there egging him on made it a lot more fun, a lot more organic.
I told Aelf that I started out the concert with "OMG, that's Mark Smith, San Jose Shark!" and by the end it was just "he's just this guy in a band playing a show." Okay, not *entirely* so, but some of the mystique had worn off.
Also? It strongly looks like he smokes. That was weird. I didn't think pro-athletes did that anymore.
And I couldn't help myself from taking crappy cell phone pics.
My six measley pics
The benefit was for the widow and son of a local man who drowned a few weeks ago. $30 admission got you in for the gig, dinner at the buffet, and a free limited number of drinks. Except, holy crap, the free drinks included mai tais, amaretto sours, and midori sours. Sweeeeet.
We got down there mega early, at the time they said the doors were going to open, because we didn't know how insane it might be. (It wound up being crowded but not insane, which was nice). Because we got there so early, we got to watch Smitty do his own set-up, with the help of a guy we later deduced may be his brother (because OMG, he looked so much like Smitty). We drank rum drinks, I had cleverly pulled a trick out of callunav and juliansinger's book and brought a deck of cards so we played a hand of crazy 8's while waiting for the food to come out, and managed to get a nice table behind the bar so it was kind of out of the way, and yet ten feet from the stage.
Smitty's still got the dual hairstripe thing going on: one white, one colored. Tonight, it was what we decided was 'kelly green'.
The other surreal moments was having Sharks assistant coach Tim Hunter show up, and running into an ex-co-worker who I found out was a friend of the man who died.
My only real complaint was the sound quality was such that I couldn't make out the lyrics. But the music was nice, and by the end, especially, it had my foot a-tappin'. You can totally tell he's doing this as a sideline gig of something he loves and not trying to make his living at it, because as a showman, he sucks, and there were not a few times that either the bass guitar was out of key or Smitty's singing was or both. But that, and the fact that he had a big knot of friends and family there egging him on made it a lot more fun, a lot more organic.
I told Aelf that I started out the concert with "OMG, that's Mark Smith, San Jose Shark!" and by the end it was just "he's just this guy in a band playing a show." Okay, not *entirely* so, but some of the mystique had worn off.
Also? It strongly looks like he smokes. That was weird. I didn't think pro-athletes did that anymore.