Review: Eliza Rickman and The Insurance Salesmen Live in My Living Room
So last September it was my distinct privilege to have Eliza Rickman perform a set in my living room. Counting Eliza and myself, 20 people rocked out to her music that night.
Well, time passes and Eliza came out with a new album called O, You Sinners. As we all know, a musician who has a new album goes on tour, and Eliza was no exception. Once again she loaded up her Prius and hit the road. I readily agreed when she asked if she could play my living room again, but I also suggested that she should play out somewhere in town. The problem of course was that most venues in Cleveland don't have a piano, which Eliza kind of needs. Fortunately, a chance remark from someone reminded me that The Barking Spider has a grand piano and shows live music every day. Eliza was able to get herself booked there as the first round of the night.
The week before the show, Eliza's new album hit pretty high on the CMJ charts, in large part propelled by the six WRUW programmers who were at the first house concert. She arrived on May 12 and was quickly fed before we headed down the Spider. The Spider proved to be an inspired choice. The piano was in great shape and the bartender / impresario / sound woman took good care of Eliza prior to show. The Spektron, Lazybones, zodarzone and bec76 were in attendance, as were assorted other bystanders. By the end of the show, many of those bystanders had turned into fans. Many CDs were sold, including one by a guy who walked up in the middle of Eliza's merch speech and loudly declared "you do it just like this people" as he exchanged cash for a copy of O, You Sinners. Perhaps most impressively, several people were peeled off the large birthday party and the pile of kids on the patio for extended periods of time to listen to her set.
Then we headed back to my place for an encore performance. As a special bonus, we had an opening act! The Spektron is also a band called The Insurance Salesmen and he performed a short set on acoustic guitar with occasional harmonica and piano. This was the debut live performance of The Insurance Salesmen, and for the first time out he was pretty good. His songs were overly reliant on lyrics and not enough on hooks, thereby proving that I'm not the only person who spends a lot of time listening to lyrics. All in all, very enjoyable.
After that, Eliza came on with songs on toy piano, horribly out of tune big girl piano, accordion and assorted other noisemakers. The set was completely different from the one she played at the Spider, as well as being different from last year's. A good time was had by all. All, in this case, was:
WRUW People:
gieves from Exploding Plastic Inevitable
Ed from Chasing Infinity, plus Mrs. Chasing Infinity.
Colleen from Museum without Walls (left early)
Adam from The Spektrum
Lazybones from Sweet and Lowdown (left early to do her show)
Emma from The Occasional Detour
undertheivy99 from The Spandex Years and mysterg
Adam (my old AP)
Charles, owner of My Minds Eye and occasional host of Splatter Rock (arrived late, had to leave early)
Coworkers:
Maria & Adam
Friends of The Insurance Salesmen:
Julie
Jeff
Burt
Paul
Renee (very late)
Andy
Assorted Other Friends Who Don't Neatly Fit Into Other Categories
EJ
Throw in myself and Eliza and that gets us to 22. Two more than last time, oh yeah! When she becomes hugely successful we can all say we knew her back when.
Oddly, Eliza's only rock star demand was a request for a container of chocolate milk to drink, which is eminently reasonable. I still have the voice mail she left asking for it, which is pretty hilarious.
The next day she appeared on my radio show, and did a sweet live cover of Ring of Fire on her accordion. I really need to figure out how to pull that out of the MP3 of my show for easier consumption. Eleven days later she had the NPR Song of the Day with "Pretty Little Head", which is pretty awesome.
Eliza hopes to tour next year with her string section, and will probably have a Kickstarter project to try to fund that. I'll be sure to post info if that happens. If they do come back, I promised to get the piano fixed, but that was before I found out how much piano repair costs, so we might try gieves's house instead, which has a much nicer piano. We shall see.
Well, time passes and Eliza came out with a new album called O, You Sinners. As we all know, a musician who has a new album goes on tour, and Eliza was no exception. Once again she loaded up her Prius and hit the road. I readily agreed when she asked if she could play my living room again, but I also suggested that she should play out somewhere in town. The problem of course was that most venues in Cleveland don't have a piano, which Eliza kind of needs. Fortunately, a chance remark from someone reminded me that The Barking Spider has a grand piano and shows live music every day. Eliza was able to get herself booked there as the first round of the night.
The week before the show, Eliza's new album hit pretty high on the CMJ charts, in large part propelled by the six WRUW programmers who were at the first house concert. She arrived on May 12 and was quickly fed before we headed down the Spider. The Spider proved to be an inspired choice. The piano was in great shape and the bartender / impresario / sound woman took good care of Eliza prior to show. The Spektron, Lazybones, zodarzone and bec76 were in attendance, as were assorted other bystanders. By the end of the show, many of those bystanders had turned into fans. Many CDs were sold, including one by a guy who walked up in the middle of Eliza's merch speech and loudly declared "you do it just like this people" as he exchanged cash for a copy of O, You Sinners. Perhaps most impressively, several people were peeled off the large birthday party and the pile of kids on the patio for extended periods of time to listen to her set.
Then we headed back to my place for an encore performance. As a special bonus, we had an opening act! The Spektron is also a band called The Insurance Salesmen and he performed a short set on acoustic guitar with occasional harmonica and piano. This was the debut live performance of The Insurance Salesmen, and for the first time out he was pretty good. His songs were overly reliant on lyrics and not enough on hooks, thereby proving that I'm not the only person who spends a lot of time listening to lyrics. All in all, very enjoyable.
After that, Eliza came on with songs on toy piano, horribly out of tune big girl piano, accordion and assorted other noisemakers. The set was completely different from the one she played at the Spider, as well as being different from last year's. A good time was had by all. All, in this case, was:
WRUW People:
gieves from Exploding Plastic Inevitable
Ed from Chasing Infinity, plus Mrs. Chasing Infinity.
Colleen from Museum without Walls (left early)
Adam from The Spektrum
Lazybones from Sweet and Lowdown (left early to do her show)
Emma from The Occasional Detour
undertheivy99 from The Spandex Years and mysterg
Adam (my old AP)
Charles, owner of My Minds Eye and occasional host of Splatter Rock (arrived late, had to leave early)
Coworkers:
Maria & Adam
Friends of The Insurance Salesmen:
Julie
Jeff
Burt
Paul
Renee (very late)
Andy
Assorted Other Friends Who Don't Neatly Fit Into Other Categories
EJ
Throw in myself and Eliza and that gets us to 22. Two more than last time, oh yeah! When she becomes hugely successful we can all say we knew her back when.
Oddly, Eliza's only rock star demand was a request for a container of chocolate milk to drink, which is eminently reasonable. I still have the voice mail she left asking for it, which is pretty hilarious.
The next day she appeared on my radio show, and did a sweet live cover of Ring of Fire on her accordion. I really need to figure out how to pull that out of the MP3 of my show for easier consumption. Eleven days later she had the NPR Song of the Day with "Pretty Little Head", which is pretty awesome.
Eliza hopes to tour next year with her string section, and will probably have a Kickstarter project to try to fund that. I'll be sure to post info if that happens. If they do come back, I promised to get the piano fixed, but that was before I found out how much piano repair costs, so we might try gieves's house instead, which has a much nicer piano. We shall see.