March 6, 2004 - The Larkin - Albany, NY - Henning Solo - with: Jimmy Atto and Breaking Laces
Henning Says: Henning Oberg at the Larkin. Saturday, I had a gig in Albany, NY at the Larkin. Lesa and I went up early in the day in the hopes of finding some kind of adventure in the Albany area. We tried to do a little research on the internet to locate somewhere to head, but we came up with hardly anything. So, we just drove right into the city blindly, on a cold and grey day. From the highway, I saw a sign that said Huck Finn's Warehouse and decided that we were going to try to find that and see what it was and eventually after taking a bunch of random turns here and there we came to it. Huck Finn's Warehouse is a big building full of overpriced crap. It was depressing. We also found a little riverside park where we got out momentarily to look at the ice floating down the Hudson under a rusty bridge. The park was dismal as well, dirty and run down without much of a view really. Oh Albany, what happened to you? Your grand architecture and hilly streets suggest that a city thrived there once, but so much of you is falling down and boarded up and filled with pot-holes. We felt that the on this particular day, the city had nothing much to offer us so we just went to the Larkin to load-in and get some dinner. This required about twenty minutes of one-way riddled parking spot searching - the whole city was deserted except for the three blocks surrounding our destination. Finally, we got a spot a ways down a side-street and carried the equipment (Guitar, Suit Case, Merchandise Tub) on our backs. The Larkin Restaurant was deserted except for the hostess and bartender who told us that they were open but they were waiting for the chef to come-in. This was at about 6:00, kind of weird. So we took a little walk down Lark Street - which the Albany website describes as being similar to the West Village. Well, there were a couple interesting looking shops, but they were all closed. Of course, they were closed, it was a Saturday at 6:00! And there were a number of little restaurant / bars that are all really pricey and strangely uninviting. But these spots of action were seperated by empty store fronts and deserted sidewalks. We went back to the Larkin and sat at the bar a bit and then sat down to eat dinner (mine was free). The food, as always, was so, so good. It's making me hungry thinking about it now. We sat and ate and enjoyed the very loud sort-of-drunk-and-getting-drunker-every-second woman sitting in the booth abutting ours. She was a regular, all right. Eventually, we went up stairs and I scattered around the Activity Sheets and set up the T-Shirts and Cds and tuned my guitar and the first act started. Jimmy Atto is traveling all around the country playing shows - hopefully, they won't all be to three people. By the time my set came up there were actually eight people in the room. One was a friend of the headliners, Breaking Laces, who were downstairs somewhere, one was a mystery guy, one was Dan who booked the show and runs the sound board, one was Lesa, One was a girl who has seen us before and plays the trumpet, I can't remember her name but she is very nice, and two were a couple who were angry that they had to wait to see Breaking Laces, and the last one was Jimmy Atto. I played well, I think, but it was tough to get too inspired, mostly because the woman from the couple who wwa waiting for the headliner would absolutely not smile ever. My guess was that her boyfriend/husband was a fan of the headliner and she was just there to be nice and go along with him - but she was in hell. All I could focus on was her scowl. She scowled all the way through One Lady Dancing, she scowled through my banter. She even scowled at her drink. I finished my set and sat back down and we watched Breaking Laces play. They are from Brooklyn. The best thing about them was how much fun the drummer seemed to be having. He was delighted by their new sampler and he seemed to earnestly be enjoying himself all around. We left before theend of their set. I had the feeling that they weren't going to finish any time soon, since a handful of people suddenly walked in. Then we drove home.