On our way out the door, we stopped to take a picture in the mirror that is next to our front door.
We brought the small camera, unfortunately, because they wouldn't allow "professional" cameras at the concert. I am definitely no professional but I figured I was better off leaving the larger one at home. I hate built-in camera flashes, but have to play with this one a little bit so I can figure out if it will take less grainy photos without the flash.
Anyway, it was a good thing that we paused to take a few photos there, because before we left the building I remembered that we didn't have the tickets. Oops! Why is that so easy to do?
Before the concert, we headed out to dinner at another place we had a coupon for. Savor NY was AWESOME. I highly recommend them! The atmosphere was very nice, they have only a few tables. It was a romantic place.
They had small-ish dishes, kind of Spanish style but I think I saw they are listed as New American. Whatever - everything was delicious. We started with a bottle of wine, and they had many bottles that were reasonably priced.
We each chose 2 dishes, and split everything. We had tuna ceviche (Chris has majorly been craving ceviche since we left Peru!), grilled vegetable samosas with coconut curry sauce, spicy duck wontons, and braised pork belly with mandarin sauce and peanuts. All were very, very good! My favorite was the duck wontons. Everything was perfectly flavored, not too much food or too little. And everything we read about the place recommended the ricotta cheesecake, so we had to try some.
We split it, and we were fighting over every bite! YUM!!
Then we were ready to head to the concert. Blind Pilot is a group out of Portland, and I heard them mentioned on one of the top ten lists on NPR at the end of 2008. I have been loving their album, and a couple weeks ago I saw that they were coming to New York, and the tickets were only $15! You can't do anything in NYC for $15!! On top of that, there were still tickets available! I was more than happy to take advantage of this opportunity. I haven't been to a concert for years.
The warm-up band was this one guy who was finishing up when we arrived at 9 or so. He sounded good but I didn't get his name.
One drawback to the show - the doors opened at 8pm, and there were 2 opening bands. So I knew my band wouldn't take the stage till 10 or 11! This is way past my bedtime already. But I knew it would be worth it.
The next band was called Local Natives, and they are out of LA. They were awesome because they have a female violin player!
They were great to listen to, and seemed to be having a lot of fun onstage.
After their set, they came off stage from the front. That is one really cool thing about this show - I love small concerts where the bands just sort of chat with people afterward. I looked for the girl fiddle player between their set and Blind Pilot, but I didn't see her. Darn!
I have to add that the Bowery Ballroom was a really, really cool place to see a show. We would definitely like to go back there. It was very neat inside, very intimate feeling. It was cool because there is a lounge area in the basement that has the bar and the bathrooms. And they had Blue Point on tap, a beer out of Long Island which is very good.
The beer was $7, which by NYC standards is not bad - you could pay that in any bar in the city. And of course you could hear the whole show from downstairs too.
Blind Pilot came out and started with my favorite song!
I like that picture because it got the whole band in it. (Again, sorry about the graininess!)
It was cool to see that they had a female too. Both of the girls in the bands played multiple instruments. This one started with a banjo and later had this instrument... I don't know what its called.
The guy in the back seems very talented. He was playing the accordion (sideways?) and the keyboard and the trumpet, often all 3 in the same song. Who knows what other instruments he had stashed back there that I didn't catch.
Chris got some cool photos of the band.
The show was AWESOME. They also covered Whiter Shade of Pale, by Proco Harem. You may not recognize the title but you would definitely know the song if you heard it.
After the show, we left through the basement. While Chris went to the bathroom, I saw the girl violin player from the Local Natives and went and said hi to her! She thought it was cool that I played violin too.
And apparently their bass player is from Golden! He said hi too, but he was anxious to get to the bathroom. :) I looked for the girl from Blind Pilot to say hi to her, but she wasn't down there. We didn't especially want to wait around for them to come out, it was already 1230am. So we headed out to grab a cab, buying the Local Natives EP on the way out. And outside, we did see the keyboard player (in the big plaid patterned shirt and the hat) outside, and told him we enjoyed the show so that was cool.
It was a SUPER SUPER SUPER fun night! I was exhausted at work the next day but it was so worth it!!
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