Kerrigans, Chicago, IL

Setlist: False Witness, Water Carrier, Nowhere In Line, Now I Disappear, Eleventh Hour, Anonymous, new song #2 (break) It Won't Be Long, I Fly When I Don't Dream, Nightrain, Freedom Sting, Appolonia James Encores: All Tomorrow's Parties, Transpacific Phone Call, Noise Lullaby, Paint May Peel

I had a feeling that we would be either really nervous or really bad at this show, seeing as how we hadn't played a show in just over two months. But the whole night went well. How well? Let's put it this way: I drove into the city and I didn't get lost. And that's before we even get to the performance, which we dedicated to Gene Siskel, who had just passed away that weekend.

We had another nice crowd, maybe a little smaller than the last Kerrigan's show but with more folks that hadn't seen us play before in the audience. Also, the sound was excellent- a welcome relief to those who were in attendance at Thurston's and wanted to know what our songs sounded like with words. We tried three new songs. #1 (Nowhere in Line) and #3 (I Fly When I Don't Dream) are louder and more forceful and went well. #2 is a little less angry, but it has a bunch of weird time changes, so it didn't come off as well as the others. We also dipped into the older songs at the end, playing the Velvet Underground's All Tomorrow's Parties and Noise Lullaby/Paint May Peel, which were two of the very first songs Melodie learned when she joined. The only thing that would have made the evening better would have been a second round of jukebox wars with my sister- I swear I never got so many dirty looks as when I put "Hava Nagila" on the sound system!