We rocked Astoria!

Last night I performed in a special "ladies night" of music at The Shillelagh Tavern in Astoria, NY. It was added to my schedule kind of at the last minute, but it turned out to be one of the best shows of the summer so far. With the tight backing work of Mike Salina on bass and Steve McCluskey on drums/vocal harmonies, my songs sounded tight and we even had the audience singing along to our rendition of Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire.

Astoria has been gaining a reputation lately as a growing music and arts community, with The Shillelagh known as one of its best live music venues. It was a nice feeling for this Eastern Long Island girl to be welcomed with such open arms by the natives in attendance, as well as by bar owner Rusty - who said he really digged our sound - and the impeccable sound work of Miles behind the board. I will definitely reach out again to them for future bookings!

On a personal note, it was a rare parents night out for my husband and I. Usually, he's the one watching the baby while I'm off doing shows. But as I'm not one to drive into "the city" by myself, I arranged for my mom to watch the baby so he could drive me, and catch a show for a change.

We left early (and beat traffic!), the GPS didn't get us lost, and we found parking - after only a half hour of looking, but that was good considering how impossible parking looked at first. It was a beautiful night, not too hot nor chilly, which made the short walk to the tavern worth it. We enjoyed hearing the acts that came before me - and wished we could have stayed longer to hear the rest - but mom had to get up early the next day, so we left shortly after my set was over.

The only damper of the night was I should have planned better for dinner before heading to the city. Halfway through the show, we were starving from only grabbing some sandwiches in the late afternoon. I thought we'd have to resort to finding a 711 on the way home, as many gigs have ended with him buying some chocolate frosted Entennmann's doughnuts to hold us over. Not wanting to walk all the way to the car in my weakened state, my husband went to fetch the car so he could double park it while I loaded my gear in. And luckily, on his way to the car he stopped at the Chinese food restaurant next door and placed an order of egg rolls and fried cheese wonton (my fav!), which was ready by the time he got the car and drove up to the tavern. Next time we go out that way, I'll research some restaurants in the area for a pre-show dinner, but the Chinese food was a pretty good anyway.

Next week is the always awesome Sayville SummerFest. Can't wait to play there next Sunday with the band - and there's plenty of food vendors there, so we definitely won't leave starving!