The annual “Happy Valley Showdown” at the Elevens in Northampton is a revered battle of the bands that brings in indie acts from all over the area, takes place over many weeks, and boasts some serious prizes for victors and runners-up alike. The whole thing is managed by our old neighbor Mark Sheehan, who is so contagiously passionate about music and about giving exposure to up-and-comers that by the end of the night I was kicking myself for not having befriended him when we lived next door. Mark made a point of clarifying several times that having a “battle” was more of an excuse to get people to come listen to acts they hadn’t heard of, and it certainly exposed us to some awesome local and quasi-local bands. Auyon, always wearing multiple managerial hats, managed to book one of the other acts, Leisure Colony, at his workplace, Sam’s Pizza, on February 18th. We’re really looking forward to seeing them play a full set and we think you’ll dig them too, so mark it on your calendars. Finally, we were honored and thrilled to be asked to come back for the finals of the showdown next month! Check back for more info on that soon.

On Thursday, we drove down to Hamden, CT to play a 30-minute set at The Space, a great venue owned by Steve Rodgers of the band Mighty Purple. The Space is something like an art collective meets a community center meets an indie rock venue with great food. We walked in to see Steve’s brother teaching guitar to a group of kids, were then ushered to a private room upstairs where we could relax / rehearse, given meal discount cards, and then left alone to study their collection of old arcade machines and shop in the vintage thrift store. In short, the vibe was awesome, and the short set length meant we would only be playing our best songs alongside a variety of other acts, so we were ready to, er, huff and puff and blow the house down. By the time we went on stage, about half of the audience was made up of friends and family, many of whom hadn’t yet heard us perform live, and in a way it felt like the whole place belonged to us. It ended up being one of my favorite gigs to date, even given the fact that during the first song, I unwittingly had my bass effects pedal set to modulate some ungodly fraction of an octave (the pedal was set atop my amp, so i had to just sit the song out). It wasn’t a perfect performance, but we had an absolute blast, received wonderful compliments from friends and total strangers, and Steve seemed very interested in having us back.

The following night brought us to Rebel Sound Records in Pittsfield, MA for a gig that was similar in many respects. Again we were one of five or six acts, each scheduled to play for only 30 minutes, and again it was a listening venue with no alcohol. Instead of playing in “The Space”, we were playing in “The Room”. We played the same six songs (including a new cover — but if I told you what it was, I’d have to joust you) to a largely Williamstown-based crowd, many of whom came on a bus organized by the school. Again, we were received warmly and enthusiastically both by our friends and by complete strangers (including members of the other bands, whose styles were quite different from our own), and we had an incredible evening. The other bands seriously impressed us as well, and by the time we headed back home we’d made plenty of friends and exhausted plenty of ear-drums.

These two most recent gigs taken together paint a very clear picture of exactly how lucky we are as a band to have the kind of support that we do at this stage of the game, not just from our incredible friends and family but from the entire Williams community that continues to give more to us than we could ever hope to give back. A huge thanks to everyone who showed up to the gigs! There is simply nothing I can compare to the feeling of driving somewhere an hour away, going into some building I’ve never seen before, and then watching as people I love file through the doors so that I can show them what the guys standing next to me (or sitting behind me, Sam you recluse you) can do. There are times when writing and performing music as a career can seem like a misguided and confusing struggle — simultaneously too challenging to be worth the anxiety and too much fun to be worth taking seriously — but that feeling always goes away when the people start showing up, and your mouth starts to go dry, and you know that doing anything else wouldn’t feel right.