Boy am I tired. I just got back to Boise from Florida. The EFO Cruise was an incredible rush and it never stopped. I am happy, but a bit sleep deprived.
The comment I heard most this weekend was, "Why did you come on the cruise?" You see, I had never had the opportunity to see Eddie From Ohio in concert, at least not in person. I had seen them once on public television (I believe it was on Mountain Stage, a great show if you've never seen or heard it). I own all but one of their albums (something I intend to correct soon) and love the music and the obvious fun they have making their music. Since I was coming from the other side of the country, people had a hard time understanding. Most of Eddie's fans are from the east coast where they play most of the time.
Here's the part I don't get. It seems like most of the fans thought that the show was the thing. For me the music is the thing. Don't get me wrong, their show is incredible and I'm the richer for seeing it, but the music speaks for itself. I didn't go on the cruise because I thought I was missing something having not seen them live. I went on the cruise so that I could find out what kind of people made this music (and what kind of people listened to the music). I wasn't disappointed.
The first night of the cruise I spent talking with Robbie in one of the ships bars (with a half-dozen other Edheads). He spoke about the directions of the band, their history, etc. I loved that he was interested in which songs people loved and hated, liked and disliked, and how people reacted to the evolution (or revolutions in some cases) that the band has gone through. Being relatively new to the band I didn't have strong opinions (unlike some of the others there). Liquor was a big lubricant to the discussion.
That night (actually well into the next morning) when I tried to sleep, I had lyrics and deep thoughts zooming around my skull. I didn't sleep a wink. I finally crawled back out of bed about 7 a.m. and watched Nassau waking up and some of the other massive cruise boats dock. It was going to be a beautiful day.
I won't bore you with the blow-by-blow for the whole weekend. The Saturday show was a blast and you'll find some recordings on this site that I made using my brand new Nomad Jukebox. Since I only had it for one whole day before the cruise I had some technical difficulties and didn't get as many good recordings as I had hoped. After I transferred the recordings to my computer and processed them (removing extraneous dialog and cleaning up some hissing and the occasional laugh) I ended up with 22 recordings. Most of these are pretty good (though they are all mono since I only had the one microphone), but some still have a slight hiss. I hope that it won't effect your enjoyment of the music.
I have to admit that I did feel a little like an outsider at times. There are so many inside jokes that the band shares with the fans. I know that I missed a good 20-30% of what was really being discussed at times because either I didn't have the vocabulary or I just didn't have a clue what they were talking about. For example, I had no clue what "Doin' The Joe" was all about (BTW, this is great too). Nor did I ever get the whole Schoolhouse Rock story.
The acoustic set they did on Sunday was, in some ways, better than the concert on Saturday. They were more intimate and "real." I just wish that it had been longer (and that the ship employees had figured out sooner that they were interfering with the music). You'll hear their cash register behind a couple of the tracks I recorded. I was able to minimize some of it, but some is just too intermingled with the song to get rid of. I also wish that the question and answer session hadn't been so rushed, but the ship has such a tight schedule to keep, it was inevitable.
I recorded a bunch of the question and answer session, but most of it was garbage (not the session, but my recordings, mainly because I was using a lapel mike and I was 20 feet away). One of my favorite quotes was Julie talking about "Our inter-faith band: two Catholics, a Jew, and a Trekkie." Also, here is Michael talking about "Julie's Commanding Voice," and expressing, "We would rather be with you people than with the finest people in the world." He contributed that last to some author, but frankly I missed getting it on tape. But, by far my favorite discussion was about the time, early on in their career, when Julie almost quit the band (this file is over 2Mb). Last, but not least, here is Michael talking about their, somewhat shy, sound man, "Bob McNichols."
In the end I had a terrific time. I met some wonderful people, ate a ton of great food, slept very little, and brought a cold back to share with my co-workers. Who could ask for more?
I'll see you Edheads next year on the "Eddie From Ohio, South Pole Excursion." I might even go if they do something in the Caribbean again…