Rob’s Blog – Page 3 – RobPRocks.com

May 6, 2020

All 50 States Day 45: Vermont!

All 50 States Day 45:

Vermont!

Another post with no pics <Price Is Right loser horn><frowny face> But I’ve been there, done shows and spent the night so it counts!

I played Lyndon State on two different occasions, oddly on the same date: October 16. Once in 2003 and again in 2008. I also did a show at Castleton State College in 2008.

In the non-college arena I did a very random show for an outdoor social organizations’s ski weekend back in 2000. The show was in Stowe in a theater right in the middle of town during ski season. Not being a skier I didn’t hit the slopes, also had to drive back the next day, either for a show in NYC or a shift at the dayjob I was working at the time. Something very glamorous either way.

May 5, 2020

All 50 States Day 44: Utah!

All 50 States Day 44:

Utah!

I’ve made a couple of trips to Utah so far, the first was in August 2007 for an orientation show at Southern Utah University in Cedar City. In the vast expanse between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, Cedar City is not only home to S.U.U. but also an annual Shakespeare festival, a fact I learned after the show when some theater people from the fest admitted they snuck into the show on campus.

For that first trip I went to Salt Lake City a few days early and did a comedy show at Moe’s Bar and Grill produced by SLC-based comedian Sina Amedson. I also had time to catch a Salt Lake City Bees minor league baseball game and even took the streetcar from downtown to the stadium.

Before heading back to SLC from Cedar City I drove to Zion National Park for a quick hike. I know I didn’t have time to see much of the park but what I did see was amazing.

I returned to Utah in May of 2008 to open a show for George Carlin at Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City. It was a run of three shows–Salt Lake City, El Paso, and Anaheim—and it would end up being the last weekend I worked with George before he died. Abravanel Hall is a beautiful concert space with amazing sound. It’s the kind of place where you’re on stage and you feel like you don’t even need a sound system to reach the back of the room.

At the time Utah law didn’t technically allow bars so any place that served alcohol had to be a private club. If you wanted to go to a bar you could buy an annual or short term membership for a few bucks so the law didn’t really discourage drinking, but it did make me feel a little extra special because instead of just a patron you were now a member. Maybe that’s what the legislators wanted all along?

Selfie in Zion National Park, 2007
Zion National Park, 2007
Hiking trail near SLC, 2007
Hiking near SLC, 2007
Creek on hiking trail near SLC, 2007
Mormon Temple selfie, 2008
Flowers in Zion National Park, 2007

May 4, 2020

All 50 States Day 43: Texas!

All 50 States Day 43:

Texas!

Texas is huge and should count for like 4 states, and I’ve been lucky enough to see a lot of it over the years. My mom has lived in the Dallas/Fort Worth area since I was in high school and I’ve spent a ton of time with extended family there. Workwise I’ve done a few college tours which took me to the hill country, west Texas stops in Abilene and San Angelo, a week in the Rio Grande Valley, Nacadoches in the east, and up to the panhandle at Texas A&M Western in Canyon, Texas near Amarillo.

Austin, Texas, has been one of my Escape From New York fantasy towns for as long as I can remember. Any time I think about leaving New York for a less intense but still artistically stimulating place Austin is near the top of the list. My first experience with the city was visiting my college roommate just after we graduated and I’ve been hooked since. I’ve played a college gig there (at St. Edwards University not the enormous UT campus) and back in 2014 performed at the Out of Bounds Festival, which was one of my favorite performance fest experiences ever.

One of my shows opening for George Carlin was in El Paso on the western tip of Texas. You don’t appreciate how far Texas extends to the west until you have to get to or from El Paso. In fact, the drive from Phoenix to Dallas, which I made a few times on cross country trips, is 1,000 miles and 620 of those miles are in Texas, from El Paso to Dallas. Needless to say I flew to the Carlin gig because the night before we were in Salt Lake City (and the day after I did my last show with him in Anaheim, CA).

I also flew to El Paso when I had a show in Alpine, Texas, which is down near Big Bend National Park. Alipne is about 3.5 hours from El Paso and that’s still the closest airport. That show in Alpine also allowed me to make a stop in Marfa, a tiny town that’s become a bit of an artist colony over the years. It’s also famous for being the location for the James Dean/Rock Hudson/Elizabeth Taylor film Giant. The Hotel Paisano in downtown Marfa makes a lot of use of the fact that big stars stayed there and they named their pricier rooms after them. I didn’t spring for Rock or James’ suites though, I was probably in the Gaffer Room.

My most recent work-related trip to Texas was debarking a cruise ship in Galveston after a December voyage in the Caribbean. I got up before dawn to debark in time to make a flight, and as I got some air and coffee on the top deck I saw a very bright Venus in the eastern sky. Below it was another planet, I guessed either Jupiter or Saturn, and to confirm I opened my Planets app. The app said that Mercury was just next to Jupiter so I looked closer and sure enough there was a very faint pinpoint of light next to Jupiter. It’s the first time I ever saw Mercury and you can just make it out on the iPhone picture I took.

Longhorn steer, 2010
Austin Food Truck, 2014
Palace Theater, El Paso, 2008
Fort Worth Cats mascot, 2006
Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury, Galveston, 2018
View of mountain through binoculars, near Marfa, 2013
Me on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas, 2003
Mural of Eighter from Decatur, 2018
B&W Polaroid of Downtown Marfa, 2014
Corpus Christie, 2005
Food Truck, Marfa, 2014
Eva Longoria, Miss Texas A&M Kingsville 1996, pic from 2005
Pre-show in Brownsville, 2002
Moonrise over Eagle Mountain Lake, 2018
Crowd at Texas A&M Commerce, 2016

May 3, 2020

All 50 States Day 42: Tennessee!

All 50 States Day 42:

Tennessee!

As a musician, Nashville is a place you have to play at least once in your life just to say you did. I suppose most musicians have in mind a gig at the Lovebird Cafe or the Grand Ol’ Opry, not at a comedy club, but such is the case when you’re a comedy music person like me. I’ve played the Zanies in Nashville a few times over the years, it’s a wonderful club and I’ve always had a good time performing there.

I haven’t done as many college shows in Tennessee as some other states but I do remember a midnight show at Middle Tennessee State in Murfreesboro, I think it was part of their homecoming week. I also stopped for the night in Memphis on my way to some shows in Missouri or Arkansas. I only had time to do one touristy thing so I skipped Graceland and went to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel. Next time through I hope to hit Sun Studios.

Approaching Nash-Vegas, 2010
Swett’s Diner, Nashville, 2010
Hanging with fellow comedy musician Kier, 2010
The Zanies in Nashville!

May 2, 2020

All 50 States Day 41: South Dakota!

All 50 States Day 41:

South Dakota!

My first trip to South Dakota I ended up spending the night riding out a blizzard in my car. It was April 1995 and I was on my way to a show at Black Hills State University which is so far west in South Dakota it’s only 12 miles shy of Wyoming. I left Chicago at noon the day before the show, planning to drive about 12 hours or so, get a hotel for the night somewhere around Rapid City and finish the drive the next day.

West of Sioux Falls it started to snow and it was looking like it could be one of those intense, heavy spring snowstorms that dump a foot of snow in about 5 minutes. As I stopped for gas approaching the middle of the state, where the Missouri River cuts across I-90, the snow started turning to rain so I filled up and pressed on. I climbed out of the valley of the Missouri River and the snow came back with a vengeance. It was piling up on the interstate and I tried to keep my tires in the tracks cut by the big trucks but my then-brand-new Honda Civic was so tiny I could only keep one side’s wheels in the tracks at a time.

I knew I had to pull over, but with so much snow on the ground it was hard to see where the shoulder was. Plus, I didn’t want to be out in the open and getting buried in the snow while the semis were still barreling down the interstate. I needed to press on to the next exit where I could at least pull off the interstate and hopefully park under the overpass. Being the middle of South Dakota, the next exit was about 5 miles away, and it felt like an eternity trudging along at about 25 mph while semis passed on the left kicking up so much snow it looked like I was driving through a car wash.

I was able to get to the exit and I pitched myself under the westbound lanes of I-90 near Reliance, SD. In front of me there was a semi parked under the eastbound lanes, which was reassuring because I figured the driver at least had a CB radio should we need assistance.

I pulled over around midnight and it snowed hard until about 10 am. Luckily with my mostly full tank of gas I was able to run the engine enough to stay warm. I listened to news radio hoping for weather updates but the only stations I got overnight were from Denver and even Oklahoma City. Super helpful. The plows showed up around noon and thanks to the shelter of the overpass no digging out was required. I headed back to Chamberlain to wait and see when the highway would reopen and to call the school and tell them I might not make the gig. We ended up rescheduling for the following September…

Which was another epic trip because it resulted in my most epic roll of film ever!

I’ve already posted one shot from that black and white roll of film that was loaded into my Pentax K-1000, it was of Carhenge in Nebraska, which I visited on after my make up date at Black Hills State. On my return trip to South Dakota my plan was to drive out a couple of days early, maybe stop at the Mitchell Corn Palace (a real thing) and, weather permitting, camp in the badlands for a night.

It was the weekend after Labor Day and the forecast called for sunny and 70s. I hit Mitchell, SD during the Corn Palace Festival when the streets were filled with carnival rides and funnel cake vendors. Then I made it to the Badlands, which was quiet at the beginning of the off season, and I set up my tent near a couple of other groups of young people: a group of 4 college age guys on a cross country trip, and two young women crossing the country to look at grad schools.

That night as the sun set in the west a full moon began to rise in the east and we went to a talk given by a park ranger. The next day we hiked around, and took a drive through an animal preserve to see a prairie dog town and a herd of buffalo up close. We all swapped info and I did get a postcard from the women, but it had no return address. It’s hard to believe in these days of social media that it’s even possible to loose touch with people but it was really easy in those days, especially in your early 20s when you moved and changed phone numbers every year or more.

I’ve done a lot of shows in South Dakota over the years, from Sioux Falls to Rapid City, from Yankton to Vermillion to Brookings to Madison… On days off in the area I would stay in Sioux Falls, which at the time was the Headquarters of Gateway Computers (which would be shipped in cowhide printed boxes) and the town had a hip, tech hub vibe and felt like a mini-Minneapolis. I even spent an off night going to a CBA game (Sioux Falls Sky Force vs. the Grand Rapids Thunder). Thanks to a food drive the team was running the admission price was a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew, which I purchased 10 minutes earlier at a small grocery.

If I ever dig up my address books and contracts from those early touring days I’ll be able to officially document all of my stops in the state. Until then, enjoy these shots from my Most Epic Roll of Film Ever!

Shots from The Most Epic Roll of Film Ever!

May 1, 2020

All 50 States Day 40: South Carolina!

In the few times I’ve been to South Carolina I’ve gotten to see a decent chunk of the state. My first show in Palmetto land was in Myrtle Beach in 2004 at Coastal Carolina University, though the show was in February so the Beach part didn’t really come into play.

The next year I had a show in the western part of the state at USC–Aiken. I remember going to a bar after the show and being intrigued when the bartender poured my bourbon from one of those mini bottles you usually see on airplanes. I thought it was this bar’s gimmick but it turned out that according to South Carolina law that’s how liquor had to be poured statewide.

In 2010 I played a really fun show at USC in Columbia. When I got to my car after the show I found that the battery was dead and was mortified to have to call my student contact for a jump. That poor car had over 300K miles on it at the time and it was doing its best. And the car trouble couldn’t harsh the good vibes of the show, the student activities board even made up credentials with lanyards for it!

Most recently I played a corporate gig in Charleston in June 2017 and I got to see a bit of that lovely city. I got a view of the port, stayed at an older hotel right in downtown, and hit a rooftop restaurant for a reception before entertaining employees of a wire company.

Kickin’ it in Charleston, 2017
Old brick building in Charleston, 2017
Lanyard for show at U.S.C., 2010
State line, 2010

April 30, 2020

All 50 States Day 39: Rhode Island!

Rhode Isand is neither a road nor an island, discuss!

Whelp, we’ve hit upon another state for which I can’t find any personal pictures and again it’s because most of my work there was before the smartphone era of having a camera on your person 24/7. But I have performed there! I’ve done shows at Johnson & Wales University in Providence at least twice. I also did a show at Salve Regina in Newport, a town so damn fancy I was afraid to touch anything for fear I’d accidentally break something and wind up in debtor’s prison.

I did find a photo taken on a day I was flying to Rhode Island, so that’s about as close as I can get. I was at O’Hare airport for this pic dated Feb 23, 2008 and I took it because the tail of this USAir jet had the PSA logo on it. I remembered Pacific Southwest Airlines from long ago trips in California and hadn’t heard about it in years. According to my calendar I had a show at Bryant University that night between midwestern shows the previous weekend and a show in Dickinson, North Dakota two days later. Which means I flew back to Chicago and then drove 13 hours over the next day and half. Classic road itinerary!

The PSA logo an a USAir jet, 2008

OK, actual Rhode Island pic, of one of the ridiculous buildings on the Salve Regina campus

April 29, 2020

All 50 States Day 38: Pennsylvania!

All 50 States Day 38:

Pennsylvania!

As I’ve mentioned in my Ohio and Michigan posts, my first really busy season touring colleges was 1996–97 after showcasing at the Great Lakes NACA Conference, a region that included the western half of Pennsylvania. I must have played a dozen Pennsylvania schools in that initial run, and over the years I’ve probably played a dozen more. From small Penn State and Pitt extensions to private schools in every corner of the state. My favorite satellite campus? Pitt–Bradford, home of Zippo Windproof Lighters! Even went on the factory tour.

The first college gig I did after moving to NYC was at LaRoche College in Pittsburgh, and since I was living in a Manhattan sublet at the time and without my car, I took Amtrak from Penn Station to the gig. At one point west of Altoona a Park Ranger came aboard to lead a sightseeing tour, which included Horseshoe Curve and stories of the Johnstown flood as we passed.

Three of the shows I opened for George Carlin were in Pennsylvania. The first one that was officially scheduled—which turned out to be my second gig for him after a last-minute fill in at a show in New Hampshire—was at the Warner Theater in Erie. While I was doing my soundcheck the power went out. We thought it was the theater but it turned out to be all of downtown Erie. The crowd milled about outside, city and electric company workers came to figure out the problem, and eventually we got the show started. I had my DV video camera with me and used its Super Night Shot setting to get some grainy black-and-white video of a darkened downtown Erie, looking like I had entered a 1940s Noir film.

And like Ohio, I knew the 310-mile Pennsylvania stretch of I-80 incredibly well during my first years in New York. I made the drive from New York to Illinois more times than I could count, it was 840 miles door-to-door and I could do it in about 14 hours with breaks for food and gas.

Selfie in Pittsburgh and for some reason I’m displaying a modest wad of cash, 2008
Warner Theater marquee in Erie during blackout, 2007
Sepia toned Polaroid of friends at Rohman’s Inn in Shohola, 2012
Street view of York, the mini Baltimore! 2009
Crowd outside Warner Theater, Erie, 2007
Tow truck towing a tow truck at Arcadia University, 2009

April 28, 2020

All 50 States Day 37: Oregon!

All 50 States Day 37:

Oregon!

It’s been a while since I’ve been to Oregon but I got there early in my touring career, after showcasing at the Pacific Northwest NACA conference in late 1996. That showcase landed me a lot of shows throughout the region and I went there for a couple of big tours in the spring of ’97 and thereafter.

On one of those first trips to the area I met up with a high school friend who was living in Portland, who asked me to meet him at Powell’s Books. Meeting someone for coffee in Portland at the “world’s largest independent bookstore” is Peak 90s Northwest!

Thanks to the college gigs I’ve had the chance to see some different parts of the state, playing Portland State and University of Portland in Portlandia, Willamette, Linfield, and Western Oregon in the northwestern corner of the state, and Eastern Oregon out in Le Grande in the high desert eastern part of the state.

I also vividly remember driving to a show in Bend because for about an hour (or what felt like it) I had no idea what highway I was on. There were some turns and forks on a reservation that weren’t clearly marked and I wasn’t sure I was on the right highway. I kept waiting for a sign that would indicated 197 North, or 26 South, or whatever, but I was out in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t any other traffic. It was desolate. This is the pre-smart phone era when we all had GPS in our pockets.

I finally saw a sign that said “Criterion Summit” so I pulled over at a little gravel pull off area on the side of the 2-lane undivided highway to take a look at my Rand McNally Road Atlas. I found Criterion Summit on the map, I was on the right highway. Then I looked at the little parking area and realized it had plaques in the ground with arrows pointing to the various peaks of Cascade mountains, which were all around. It showed the name of the peak and the elevation, and through some google map street view sleuthing I was able to figure out which peak was which in the photos I got there.

Criterion Summit with Mt. Adams in the background, 1997
Rainbow near Portland, 2004
Mt. Hood, 1997
Wider shot of Mt. Hood, 1997
View of Mt. Jefferson from Criterion Summit, 1997

April 27, 2020

All 50 States Day 36: Oklahoma!

All 50 States Day 36:

Oklahoma!

I had been through Oklahoma several times on cross country trips, since the route from my mom’s place near Fort Worth to my Grandma’s place in northwest Arkansas would take me through the eastern section of the Sooner State. I also performed there early in my comedy career, playing a show at Oklahoma State when I was still based in Chicago, which would mean it was in 1995 or ’96.

For one of my shows at Oklahoma State (I believe I performed there twice) I was told after the show that they had had Adam Sandler perform there the year prior and liked my show better. It was a point of pride at the time because Sandler was on SNL and getting all kinds of attention, and since I played guitar in my act I kept getting compared to him. They also said his show cost them $25K, and I think I made $800 for mine so maybe they just felt my show was more economical.

Other shows in the state have been at smaller schools like Cameron University in Lawton, and Phillips College in Enid, (which is no longer there) and I played one other big university—Tulsa—back in 2008.

On one of my early cross country trips I even got an alternator belt somewhere around Eufala when I was driving to my grandma’s house. The belt broke while driving and the battery was soon going to die, and I was lucky enough to find a service station with an available mechanic on a Sunday! Oklahoma, you really are OK!

OK state line, on my to a show at Cameron University, 2002
Rainbow near Tulsa, 1990
Hwy 69 sign, pic taken for purely juvenile reasons, 1990

April 26, 2020

All 50 States Day 35: Ohio!

All 50 States Day 35:

Ohio!

I went to Ohio early and often in my touring career, first hitting the state as a feature act at Connextions 2 in Toledo (you know the shows are funny because of the saucy spelling). I was based in Chicago and the booking agent in Grand Rapids, MI called to ask if I could pick up the headliner at Midway Airport to ride to Toledo with me. That headliner was ‘Wild’ Bill Bauer, an energetic and funny veteran comic who’d been a headliner since the comedy heyday of the 1980s. He was pleasant and supportive throughout the weekend and though I hadn’t seen him since the mid-90s during a week at ACME Comedy Company in Minneapolis, I was sad to hear of his passing in 2012.

My first big years performing at colleges were 1996–1997 and Ohio was a big part of that. I showcased at the Great Lakes NACA Conference, performing a 20-minute set for the student activities boards of colleges in Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania. I booked so many shows after that conference there were some weeks where I’d have 9 shows in 5 days, doing a noontime show at a community college then another show that night at a school within a couple hours’ drive.

I had no idea how many colleges of one- to two thousand students there were in the state. I played everywhere from schools in cities like Capital University in Columbus, Xavier in Cincinnati, and Case Western in Cleveland, to schools in small towns like Muskingum University, Ashland University, Denison, Wilmington, Mt. Union. The list goes on.

There was a fun show at Kenyon College, a beautiful idyllic campus of old stone buildings atop a hill. I arrived early so I poked around the grounds and saw the game of Lacrosse in person for the first time. It seemed so New Englandy and preppie to me. I also remember staying in the lovely Kenyon Inn on campus, and that the show was well attended and opened by a campus improv group.

I also remember a show at Shawnee State in Portsmouth because I was fascinated that a small town had such a large area of mid-19th Century old buildings. The historic district struck me as something that should have been in a much larger city. Apparently Portsmouth, at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, had been a big, bustling city back in the 1800s when commerce flowed along the rivers and not by rail.

See? You learn things by traveling!

Ohio Turnpike sign, 2010
On stage at Ohio University, 2006
Case Western University, 2010
Blimp in Cleveland, 2010
Country road near Lancaster, 2006
Arthur Treachers, Lancaster, 2006
Opining at a gas station in Ohio, 2006
Kenyon College, 1996?

April 25, 2020April 25, 2020

All 50 States Day 34: North Dakota!

All 50 States Day 34:

North Dakota!

Holy cow! We’re two-thirds of the way through the country! To celebrate I found a picture of a giant cow! She’s called Salem Sue and the billboards promoting her claim she is the “world’s largest Holstein cow.” Turns out Salem Sue is the world’s largest statue of a Holstein cow, a distinction that would have and should have tempered my expectations.

I also grabbed a selfie—which, in the days of non-phone digital cameras was way more challenging—in front of what was at the time the world’s largest structure. It’s just a TV station’s broadcast antenna, but at 2,063 feet it was the tallest manmade thing in the world until the Burj Khalifa surpassed it. It now ranks 4th after the Tokyo Skytree and Shanghai Tower hit 2nd and 3rd, respectively.

And lest you think North Dakota is all World’s Largest Things, I’ve done some work in the state too, playing UND, ND State, Valley City State, Minot State, and Dickinson State. I’ve spent some days off in Fargo when I was between gigs in Minnesota and North Dakota and have driven to and through just about every corner of the state. The east is mostly flat prairie and in the west, around Teddy Roosevelt National Park, you get some very Badlands-like terrain. There’s lots of space out there, and driving through the state gives you lots of time to ponder the big questions. Maybe even the world’s biggest questions…

Salem Sue! 2008
On the edge of Minot, 2007
Kickin it in Fargo, 2007
Fargo Theater, 2007
World’s tallest structure at the time, a TV antenna, 2007
Backstage at Valley City State University show, 2007
Polaroid of Fargo Theater, 2007

April 24, 2020

All 50 States Day 33: North Carolina!

All 50 States Day 33:

North Carolina!

My first comedy interaction with North Carolina was with a booker there that ran a comedy club and booked other clubs and dates in the South. I was starting to feature on the road, performing the 30-minute middle slot of the typical opener-feature-headliner format, and a comic in Chicago suggested I contact the North Carolina booker. “They’ll love you,” he insisted. Apparently this club was an early booster of Carrot Top, who in the mid-90s was one of the top grossing comedians in the country.

The club charged $25 to review a comedian’s tape, a suspicious and unsettling policy, but I sent in my tape and a check and waited to hear back. Months passed. Then more. I started going on the road and doing a few colleges, all the while writing new material and improving my act.

The club had cashed my check, I had a record of that, but as the one-year mark arrived I hadn’t heard anything back from the club. So I sent them an anniversary card.

I wrote lovingly of my year of anticipation and waiting for a reply. I did my best to balance my tone between lighthearted ribbing and “OMG, F you so much!” Whatever I wrote, the gambit worked and I got a reply.

After a year of waiting they gave me a modestly positive review, what felt like a B- to me. They told me to start sending in my avails (schedule and bookings) and maybe they’d find me some feature work. I had developed a lot as a comic over that year and the 15-20 minutes on the tape they had reviewed was no longer representative of my act so I felt that when I got booked at one of their clubs I’d improve in their estimation.

That chance never came since that booker never booked me, but I have played several shows in North Carolina over the years, from big universities like Wake Forest, UNC–Asheville, UNC—Charlotte, to smaller colleges like Elon and Greensboro College. I had a very unique show in an outdoor amphitheater at the Raleigh Little Theater back in 1999, part of a Comedy Central live event, and I once did an open mic in Asheville when I was passing through in 2010.

On a different trip to Asheville I spent a few extra days there when my car broke down only 40 miles into my drive back to New York. My engine shut off as I was coming down a mountain—just cut out completely—and I coasted to the bottom of the hill, down an off-ramp and onto the grass. The car wouldn’t restart. It was Sunday and people were starting to return home from church and several people stopped to check on me. One guy called his cousin who was mechanically inclined to ask for advice. I think I met everyone who lived in that holler, a diverse bunch and they were all very friendly, and eventually they helped me call a tow truck (it was the distributer).

I had my car towed to a Firestone that would open in the morning, I checked into a motel within walking distance, and took it as a good omen when my motel TV was playing a Cubs game on WGN.

I have few pictures of North Carolina but apparently plenty of stories! There was that other time in Asheville…

Selife with the crew at Wake Forest, 2010
Polaroid of the Blue Ridge Motor Lodge, 2010
Polaroid of the Mount Vue Motel, 2010
State Line!

April 23, 2020

All 50 States Day 32: New York!

All 50 States Day 32:

New York!

I guess it’s obvious that I’ve been to New York since it’s the state I’ve lived in for half of my life and most of my adulthood. There were a couple of family trips to New York when I was a kid where we’d visit my aunt and cousins just across the river in Weehawken, NJ, and come in to the city for sightseeing and Broadway shows. My dad and I also visited between my freshman and sophomore year of college.

But my New York life began in earnest in 1996 when I flew in to town and sublet an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen for the summer. I knew about 6 people in town, some friends from Chicago who had made the move before me like Joanne Morrison, Bill Chott, and John Bongiorno, and my sister’s college roommate Nancy, without whom I’d have had a harder time moving to the city because she found the summer sublet for me.

After being introduced to the concept of “bringer shows” I got turned off of the comedy clubs in town and found myself in the performance scene of the Lower East Side where the performers and shows were wildly creative, covering genres from poetry, music, comedy, performance art, burlesque, and everything in between. The support from the community and small theaters like Surf Reality and Collective Unconscious allowed me to try wildly different things, like solo shows, sketch comedy, and collaborative efforts like The Sacred Clowns. I even wrote the music for the St. Reverend Jen’s theme song, which is still near the very top of my list of 1990s Lower East Side bona fides.

I moved to Brooklyn in the fall of that first year and I was still on the road a lot for the next several. In 2000, when I hit a lull in my college touring schedule, I found my first day job in town in the production department of a catalog company. It turns out the years of designing and printing flyers for bands and shows taught me my best marketable skill. I’d go back and forth between day jobs and touring, a few years working in town, a few years on the road, and I’m grateful for my experiences with each. The day jobs not only helped me pay the rent but also introduced me to new friends, different neighborhoods in Manhattan, and the rhythms of New York daily life.

I’ve also seen a fair amount of the state outside of New York City. College gigs have taken me from the finger lakes to the northern reaches, the Catskills, the Hudson Valley, the Southern Tier, and the western edge (I think I got a muffler replaced in Jamestown once). Upstate New York is huge, and lovely, and is full of small towns mid-sized cities, and vast ruralness. It’s like if you took Wisconsin and fused it to a super-sized Chicago (and then took out the Midwestern niceishness and replaced it with East Coast brusqueness).

OK, enough yakking, let’s get to some pretty pictures! (click on an image for the carousel and captions, too many to list!)

Rob on rooftop with in-construction 1 World Trade in background

bridges, east river and statue of liberty

So many pics! Click on the carousel to enlarge and read captions. There are too many to list!

April 22, 2020

All 50 States Day 31: New Mexico!

All 50 States Day 31:

New Mexico!

My first experiences with New Mexico were traversing I-10 along the southern edge of the state on road trips to and from California. I finally landed a gig and spent a night in the state in 2002 when I played Eastern New Mexico University in the town of Portales (por-TA-lace), which was so far away from the main cities of Santa Fe and Albuquerque that I flew to Lubbock, Texas and drove. I also drove the extra 180 miles round trip from Portales to Roswell to check out the town and of course the UFO museum.

Three days after that show at ENMU I had a show at the University of Alaska Anchorage, which I flew to from Denver. That gave me about a day and a half to take a scenic route from eastern New Mexico to Denver. I drove up to Santa Rosa, along I-40 and old Route 66, stopped at a classic diner (I think I had a patty melt), and then continued up to Taos to poke around and take in the crunchy artsiness.

I know that I took Hwy 64 from Taos up to Colorado because I have a picture from Cimarron Canyon State Park, which Hwy 64 travels through. The name Cimarron had always stuck in my head and I remember stopping to see a scenic cliff along the drive. I knew somewhere I had a picture of it, and in 2002 I had my first decent digital camera, the Canon PowerShot 110, but I couldn’t find the picture I remembered. I finally tracked it down in a roll of prints from my travels that month, a roll that included New Mexico, Alaska, and a run of shows stretching over a 1500 mile loop in Montana and North Dakota.

It took some internet searching to find the spot where I took the picture, and it turns out to be the Palisade Sill in Cimarron Canyon State Park. So even though I was only in the state for all of two days I did get to see a nice representation of it.

Diner Selfie! Santa Rosa, 2002
Palisade Sill in Cimarron Canyon State Park, 2002
Getting some kicks, or at least a selfie, on Route 66, 2002
Rio Pecos Truck Terminal, Santa Rosa, 2002
Diner on Route 66, Santa Rosa, 2002

April 21, 2020

All 50 States Day 30: New Jersey!

All 50 States Day 30:

New Jersey!

Jersey is so close I can see it from my roof! I can take public transit there for gigs and recreation! And back when I had a car I would hit “one-nighters” in Jersey in exciting places like the basement of a barbecue restaurant and the corner of a bar and grill! There were also some fun weekend rooms like Catch a Rising Star in Princeton and Uncle Vinnie’s on the Jersey Shore.

I also have a life-long family connection to New Jersey, my aunt, who came over from the Ottoman Empire with my grandmother in the 1920s, lived in Weehawken, just across the river from Manhattan. Back in the early 60s when my dad was getting his masters degree at Montclair Teacher’s College he and my mom lived in Weehawken. She commuted to an office job in Manhattan and my dad worked on his masters and also studied acting with the renowned Bobby Lewis.

The family visited New York at least once when I was a kid, about 5 years old, and I got dragged along to Broadway shows and sight seeing in Manhattan. I visited again with my dad around 1989 or 1990 and we stayed with my aunt and cousins in Weehawken, near the park named after Alexander Hamilton, on a bluff with an amazing view of the Manhattan skyline.

I’ve also played some college shows in New Jersey (of course), in including the Stevens Institute in Hoboken, Farleigh Dickenson, College of New Jersey, and more