Sorry, This is It

Dear friends

First, please ignore my last blog post (which I actually ended up deleting). As it turns out, no matter how much I try to delete old posts to free up space on this good ol’ blog I’ve been keeping up with for the past 2 years, I’ve just reached my limit on how much free content I can upload. So, I need to start a new blog, simply continuing on with posts. I’m calling this new blog, appropriately, Part 2.

I hope you’ll redirect yourself there from now on to see any updates I post in the future. The link for the new blog is: http://elizabethjjancewicz.wordpress.com/

Sorry for the inconvenience.

The Black Door, Montpelier, VT

Well, Eric and I woke up outside Holyoke, MA on Friday March 23rd by the side of the highway. Sleeping in the car can make you a bit stiff, so we try to stretch every morning to keep us healthy…

We made our way slowly north to Montpelier, VT for our Pocket Vinyl show that night at the Black Door, a venue three stories up!! It was a lot of stairs to carry a piano up…

We were scheduled to play two separate sets that night, once starting around 8:30 and another at 10:30. The venue had a dinning area a floor below and they offered us some really delicious vegan salad & bean stew.It’s always so wonderful getting free vitamins when we’re on the road; it’s hard trying to eat well. The didn’t have a mic stand so Eric duck taped the microphone to an old vacuum cleaner to a chair. It worked pretty well.

At 8:30 the only one there was Sam, our really awesome British bartender. The girl who set things up recommended we wait until more of a crowd gathered. Apparently there was a film festival going on in town that same night. We waited until about 10:00, when a small handful of people trickled in.

Because of the low attendance we decided to just play the one set, but it went really well and everyone seemed to enjoy it! I painted a bit of a “mountain man” during the show…

Everyone there was so awesome and friendly, and I think we made some pretty great connections. After our set we decided to get in the car and drive on to Burlington, VT. Jacqueline, our good friend Dave’s sister (who we met on another tour in Burlington) had offered up her apartment for the entire weekend, and after our previous night of hardly any sleep, we figured we really needed it…

 

The Foodening: Onions

(I have this friend who pointed out recently how annoying it is to see blogs full of food, and I agreed with her… But our show tonight got pushed back an hour so I figured, why not? I’ll post a little food blog.)

Since we hit the road yesterday, I decided we needed to use up a bunch of leftover food we had hanging around. Like onions, a bit of soy milk, a handful of flour, and some vegetable oil… And I made vegan onion rings! They are seriously the simplest things ever.

When I was little one in a while my parents would get a particularly large onion from our teeny little grocery store, slice it up, and make onion rings. Making these always reminds me of that.

So, you slice up some onions…

Mix up some flour & milk (in this case wheat flour & soy milk)…

Heat up an inch or two of veggie oil on the stove top in a pan (if you on’t have a fryer, which I don’t), and let the battered onion rings sit until they float. Flip them with tongs and let them sit a bit longer until they’re golden.

Take them out, place them on a paper towel, & salt ‘em. Boom Bang Bon Jovi: delicious onion rings!

By the way, doing this to mushrooms is amazing!!! Try it. Seriously.

We Pray for Adventures

Last night Pocket Vinyl hit the road…

…for our first away show of the tour, in Northampton, Massachusetts, at the Elevens.

We were the last on the bill after two separate and very unique acts. The first was a band calling themselves And the Kids and the Pirates. They were an incredibly talented act, the entire time Eric and I were both so engaged and fascinated. Definitely check them out, they were awesome.

They were followed by a burlesque troupe. We have never played with such an act before, and it was really so interesting. We talked a whole bunch with their members afterwards; just really fascinating people.

We played last, and the bassist from the first band won the bid on my painting from our set.

It was after midnight by the time we finished our set. Hannah from And the Kids and the Pirates invited us back to “the studio” to possibly spend the night. Here place is crazy; she lives in a sectioned off area of a giant empty warehouse/factory, it was extremely surreal. There were a whole bunch of people there, and the party started after 1 am.

By about 4:00 am Eric was ready to pass out but everyone else was still planning on going for quite a few more hours, so we decided to take off. The guy who got the painting gave us a tip on a scenic parking area off the highway just a few miles north, so we spent the night sleeping in the car there. We do love and pray for adventures, and our first night definitely did not disappoint. Not a bad start to the tour I’d say.

“I Hear Colors” Official Music Video

We’ll, Eric and I leave for our spring Pocket Vinyl tour (the Sister Tour) in about a half hour. To celebrate this kickoff, we uploaded a brand-spankin’-new music video!! You can read a little about the behind-the-scenes making-of here. We premiered it at one of the main stars’ (Chris) Birthday bash on the first day of spring two days ago, and finally, here it is up for everyone to see! We are so proud and happy and excited; I think I can speak for both Eric and I when I say this is our favorite video to-date! We hope you like it!

It’s Showtime

I don’t usually update on a show the same day, but I want to make sure I stay on top of this and not let things pile up… Also, Eric is up working on taxes still (dumb Canadian/self-employed/newly married taxes) so I’m up anyways.

The first Pocket Vinyl show of our two month tour happened tonight! We played at Bean & Leaf in New London and had not a bad turn out. Chris was there, taking some video footage of the show. And Sandy, Eric’s band mate from Raise the Rent helped us out some with sound. A couple teachers from my old middle school came too! And my 8th grade art teacher once again won the painting bidding. (She got the painting at our last Telegraph show a little while back.)

As we were cleaning up and chatting with people, Don showed up! The poor guy had not only just missed our show, but he’d walked the entire way across town and apparently had a really rough time of it too (he has to walk with a cane because of his accident a while back). We were so disappointed he’d missed getting to see the show, so we talked with him a while and offered him a ride home. He invited us in and we talked and he showed us his wood projects and the sayings and doodles he had scrawled all over bits of cardboard on his walls and his table. He’s such a fascinating person. As a gift he gave me a few bits of bamboo lashed together with thin orange rope. I was sad we had to run home to get these taxes straightened out, but we’ll plan on visiting Don again when we come home from our tour. Not a bad start to these next two months.

We’re Coming to Your Town

Most likely. If you live on the east coast. Pocket Vinyl is hitting a lot of towns and cities between Vermont and Georgia, and as far west as Oklahoma! I’ll try to update on here where we’ll be going each week, but you can always check out our complete schedule on PocketVinyl.com.

I already mentioned tonight’s show, but just in case…

Wednesday, March 21 – New London, CT - Bean & Leaf  (13 Washington St, New London, CT 06320)  7:30 PM

Thursday, March 22 – Northampton, MA - The Elevens  (140 Pleasant St. · Northampton, Massachusetts · 01060) 8 PM

Friday, March 23 – Montpilier, VT - The Black Door   (44 Main Street Montpelier, VT 05602) 8:30 PM and 10:30 PM

(Two shows in one night!)

Saturday, March 24 – Burlington, VT - The Skinny Pancake   (60 Lake St., suite 1A, Burlington, VT 05401) 8 PM

Sunday, March 25 – Burlington, VT - Radio Bean (8 N. Winooski Ave., Burlington, VT 05401) 9 PM

Tuesday, March 27 – Lancaster, PA - Annie Bailey’s   (28-30 East King Street, Lancaster, PA 17602) 9 PM

Wednesday, March 28 – Philadelphia, PA - The Grape Lounge  (105 Grape Street, Philadelphia, PA 19127) 9 PM

Friday, March 30 – Baltimore, MD - Joe Squared  (133 W. North Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21201)  10 PM

Saturday, March 31 – Colesville, MD – Community Concerts at Transfiguration  (13925 New Hampshire Ave, Silver Spring, MD) 8 PM

 

Hope to see you on the road!