I loaned Hattie some cash in Mount Pleasant because they wouldn’t take her Discover card, and she text messaged me yesterday to let me know she had my dough. We agreed to meet at Backroads.

I got home from a late and lazy trip to the grocery store around 9:30. Brett and I put groceries away and chatted, then I invited him to town for a cocktail. He declined. By 10:30 I was driving Hwy 34 again.

Bottomfeeders were playing when I arrived, and man were they loud. They’re a good band, loud and fun, but the Backroads is a cavernous barn and everything sounds like it’s in a giant tin can in there. I approached the bar and yelled at the bartender, “MAKE ME A COCKTAIL!” and she screamed, “A COCKTAIL? ALL RIGHT!” and proceeded to serve me something fruity in a martini glass. I never did find out what the hell it was, but I enjoyed it enough to have another.

It was so old school in there! Corby was there, Emo was there, WINK was there. (I didn’t even know Wink was in town.) Bo was there, Mazza was there, Noah was there, Farmer Doug (and his sidekick, Adam) were there. The ever-gorgeous Mr. J was even there, for the love of God, and he only goes out if there’s gonna be naked women. All kinds of old school folk were there, I absolutely loved it. And I got lots of hugs, which is nothing to shake a stick at.

I hung out mainly with Hattie, Chloe, and Jana. I took a picture of five naked feet, but it came out too dark to bother posting. Suffice it to say that at one point Adam, Hattie, Chloe, Jana, and I all had our right shoes off and I used my camera phone to snap a picture of our five feet. This is not significant in any way, but we thought it was amusing as fuck at the time.

The Reaction was good. I really enjoyed the (more danceable) first third of their set. The next two thirds got kinda jam-bandy, and you know that while I love being in jam bands, I don’t particularly love listening to them. This is entirely a style judgement; the band was actually pretty tight in most ways. (Personnel were Puffer, Joe, Jimmy Moore, and D. Murphy, who grew up just as sexy as I predicted he would when we were in Bye, Bye Birdie together when he was but a wee pup.)

Joe’s mom was there. (Apparently the one and only time she’s ever seen him play, and the man’s approaching his mid-thirties any minute now.) At one point, she approached me and indicated the band and smiling, asked, “So what do you think? Are they any good?”

I shrugged and said, “Eh, sure. Whatever.” I paused, squinting at the bandstand. “Yeah. I’d fuck ’em!”

She just blinked at me, half-smiling.

So to qualify I said, “Well, some of them, at any rate.”

Overall, though, it was a strong show. I danced a lot. In fact, I closed the bar, which is easy to do when you don’t arrive until eleven. And I did not get drunk, which shows that even late bloomers (read: total retards) like yours truly do eventually learn not to get fucked up every time they stay out past their bedtimes.