Don't Use the Stars to Find Me, Don't Expect Them to Align

So those are lyrics from the song 'Only Skin' on the album yellow // gold by the amazing band The Spring Standards.

Why the introduction? Yesterday (8/7/13) I attended a house concert at my aunt and uncle's house in Dormont. And yes, this is the same aunt and uncle who let me go see JayScribble and KDKA and introduced me to WYEP.

The term 'house concert' sounds like some sort of stuffy thing for like crazy rich people who want to enslave classical music artists in their basements for personal concerts at each whim. However, this couldn't be further from the truth. The Spring Standards came because of some sort of deal they struck with my aunt and uncle through kickstarter or something... I don't know the details, but bottom line I was invited and I went.

Granted, unlike the Tally Hall excursion, I had about a week and a half's notice and actually did my homework and knew some of their songs (yay forward thinking!).

Half of the documentary film Crew

We walked in and were some of the first people there, and were immediately introduced to the fantastically nice James Cleare, Heather Robb, and James Smith, as well as Noah (the guy that plays drums but due to space limitations couldn't) and two documentary filmmakers.

I spent a long period of time talking to the documentary filmmakers about what they do, how it works, and what it's like being on tour with a band.

After a while we all sat down (we including the daughter of my former GATE teacher and Suzanne from WYEP) and the trio indulged us with a 16 to 18 song acoustic set. It was fabulous. They have a great sense of humor and were playing with a large cutout of Joe Biden (the story of which I learned later) for a bit:

Joe Biden!

The story behind the Joe Biden head involved a guy who's now in Boston but used to work at KDKA, Jim Lokay (follow him on twitter, he's hilarious!). He sent my aunt this for her birthday and the band got a hold of it, so that was fun.

After they were done with their set, they let us know that they could send us the entire recording of the night directly to our emails (I totally did that!) so we could remember it, and have the musics.

L-R: James Smith, Heather Robb, James Cleare
(I think I have that right...)

This is again the thing that I love about music. It brings awesome people together, and those of us who are musically challenged can really appreciate what these people can achieve with two guitars, and some harmonica-accordion thing (it looks like a kid's piano that had a kid with like a kazoo... it's bizarre, but sounds awesome.

Anyway, afterwards we got to talk to the band and I bought their latest album yellow // gold and they signed it, and obviously noticed how long I spent talking to the documentary filmmakers:

And like I said, they have a sense of humor. the one James (Leftmost James) told me that the photographers should be paying me to A) talk to the underlings and B) hold their lenses. Obviously Heather (the one who wrote the message) didn't mind too much. You should look them up, or better yet, buy their music, it's like the Lumineers meets the Band Perry meets Mumford & Sons, with less country and more folk...

Listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoLEvg9QrGg&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLC189635CAA8D4E29

Meh, so goes the life of me. I was no doubt the youngest one there, but I loved it. Thanks to Aunt Marie and Uncle George for letting me come, and the Spring Standards for being great people.

Really Post-Post: My Aunt Marie also wrote about the evening from the hostess point of view. You should check that, and the rest of her blog out: http://blame-it-on-being-a-girl.blogspot.com/2013/08/in-which-some-thursdays-are-far-more.html