Glen David Andrews – PapaSweenBean’s Friday Night

Glen David Andrews – PapaSweenBean’s Friday Night – by Liam Sweeny.

Jill and I ate pizza at the house with a much smaller house on a prairie on the telly toting Michael Landon on his morning trek to Olsen’s Mercantile. It was a big night, which goes to say a Friday night, but a big player was in town: Glen David Andrews. A New Orleans cat known for bringing catnip and playing with mice. Rob Smittix interviewed him for the paper a while back; he was a feature. He was just then setting up on First Street in front of the Twisted Fiddler. It’s their Friday night summer thing, which makes it my Friday night summer thing on account of burgers to write home about.

We got up there, had to park on Fourth because got’damn there was a crowd to beat the band, or a band to beat the crowd, or maybe talk of beating could just be applied to the heat of the night or maybe just what was sure as shit gonna come out of the drums all night.

So from forth, Jill and I walked down Broadway and caught performers outside of the restaurants that lined the street and Second was chopped up at the monument to give a band I had never seen before an asphalt stage. Troy Night Out on Fridays is a treat.

The crowd on First was in good cheer and good number, and Glen David Andrews just commanded the evening. He walked out into the crowd and sang and got his hands up and called all to join. He talked about how Troy had no bras and Albany had no draws and how he didn’t need an ex wife to be bad because he was perfectly bad all by himself.

So check this guy Beau Sasser, keyboard player. Local, does stuff for the Fiddler Funk Nights, could be wrong, but I am a hundred percent certain he was a collection of low-yield tactical notes and chords and technique that hovered just over the launch button. Pressed it more than once. You know a keyboard player is serious when they bring a massive wooden doppler machine to chop the air of the notes into rib shaking wavelets. (Yes, I know it’s called a Leslie.)

We didn’t stay, because I never do, and I heard that Mojo’s Café and Gallery had a funk band too. We got there, and the place looks pretty cool. I liked the color scheme, purples and such if my eyes weren’t drunk, and they had Mexican Coke. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. They also had a dark roast coffee and I grabbed a pound. Jill had a Persecco. They had a patio out back, and we sat out there and I summoned my fourth wind since I’d been up since one a.m. But I didn’t have mandrake or methamphetamines, and maybe either one would’ve worked because they both come with demons.

The band was on at eight and showed up at eight, and my back didn’t feel like catching the set up or the sound check. I did a little “get off my lawn” with Jill on the way back to the car about bands playing songs when it says they’re going to start playing songs, to which she replied that maybe they were waiting for people to show up, to which I replied that the best way to get people to show up was to have sweet music wafting out the door of the place like the smell of fresh apple pie in the windowsill that draws some Disney character through the air by the nostrils. To this, Jill said I was acting my age, a double-edged compliment. Don’t know who won that.

But that was my Friday night. Oh yeah, and up in the wee hours of the morning, at the station, recording tracks. See ya next!

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