Wed 11^th August – Gig at Cath Coffeehouse, Indianapolis.

Arose determined to do what everyone has to do when they go to Indianapolis – get out to the Speedway. Fortunately the 24hrs rental period for the car wasn’t up till the end of the day, so I was going to try and make the most of it, as beyond that I would be permanently fixed in “The Ripple” (Indianapolis, for those of you who are considering a trip, is not blessed with the world’s greatest public transport system…).

The speedway was interesting enough – unfortunately the retirees behind the desk were not to keen on me attempting to crack the lap record in my Ford Focus (and, for that matter, I guessed the construction workers who had ripped up half of the track for repairs would probably have a problem with it too…).  The museum was standard museum stuff – video about the start of the speedway etc etc, but I found the most entertaining part of the Speedway experience was on the bus tour.

The normal track tour was not available this day due to the repairs, we the rabble had to be content with the “Behind the scenes” tour. Interestingly enough, the people running the tour must have figured that with buses departing at 15-minute intervals ALL DAY that the old fellas behind the wheel wouldn’t be too keen on parroting the same information over and over again, and so the audio accompanying the tour was pre-recorded (struck me that the old guy, who was about 102, probably didn’t need the challenge of having to co-ordinate voice and hand movements at the same time anyway….). The tour will take “approximately 14 and a half minutes” he said. I wondered if he’d done this much before...

Conscious of a executing another “perfect run” (ie “Thank you for taking the tour” coinciding with the return to the carpark), the old man began to fret, when way off in the distance, he could see a golf cart on the road around the infield (Indianapolis speedway has a golf course in the middle). As the bus approached, and the audio continued to roll, the driver began to blow the horn furiously whilst still maintaining that perfect run pace. Seconds later, his worst fears were realised when he had to ........um…..slow down. Only briefly, but now the smooth running of the tour was suddenly in Jeopardy, and despite the golf cart eventually moving out of the way of the bus, the Driver, who had greeted us so warmly only moments ago, let fly with a barrage of abuse at the group of golfers the likes of which Speedway touring co has never seen, before thrusting his foot to the floor in a desperate attempt to get back on schedule. With a few tight turns coming up, this was beginning to really feel like the real deal (we were, by this stage, on the infield formula one circuit…). Fortunately a short burst was all that was needed and the tour returned to normality not long after (in time with the Audio tape) – I expect the old driver, however, may well have taken the rest of the day to recover…

Leaving the speedway, I had enough time to check out a few more bits and pieces and drop my things off at “Cath Coffeehouse” back at Broad Ripple, before heading downtown to return the car. Still plenty of time, and somehow I fluked a bus connection back to Cath from the downtown, so I was well on track by the time I got there (which, I assure you, is a dramatic departure from the Standard practice for gigs in Australia…)

Now upon hearing of a “Coffeehouse” gig, I was a little apprehensive. I have had a few bad gig experiences, and I wasn’t sure whether this one was headed in the same direction. Earlier when I had dropped my things off, the guy working there hadn’t expressed a great deal of interest in seeing me, and the place was set up in true “Coffeehouse / Arts community” fashion, complete with couches and tree-hugging promo flyers all over the place. The night before I had seen an advertisement for my show on the Indianapolismusic.net website – which I thought was pretty cool, but having said that I still wasn’t sure if that was actually going to make people come to the show.

Fortunately, I had contacts. That’s right, all the way over here – in the middle of Indiana, I had contacts. Andrew (Bass player from the band) had met a guy in South America whilst travelling that now lives in Tampa, Florida, but who grew up in ……wait for it…..Broad Ripple, Indianapolis. Incredible. So thanks to some emails doing the rounds and some word of mouth activity around the traps, there were about 15 people who came to see the gig, which was a nice turnout for a quiet Wednesday evening in a pretty small café. Turns out this is actually a really great place to play – pretty intimate setting and a nice feel to the room. Plus the people didn’t have any Fox Sports to watch, so they listened to what was going on, which was nice as well. (Some of them even brought me a beer from across the street, cleverly concealed in a plastic cup – thanks Josh and Pat!).

Admittedly I was a little rusty – at 2 hours this was my longest ever solo originals gig -, and I must have looked a bit strange, as despite the 30-day money-back guarantee on the keyboard I wasn’t able to score a stand to go with it and had to be content with sitting on a couch and delicately balancing the keyboard on two thin cane chairs. That said, the set seemed to go down pretty well, and I was happy with this my first full-length originals gig in North America. Thanks to Nora at Cath for having me play, and to everyone who came along on the night for making me feel welcome – had a great time.

There was now a need to celebrate this successful show with some trusty Budweisers and savoury (?!) Mexican bar food (unconfirmed reports that the latter came back up later that night). Fortunately I had found a place to stay – a friend of Matt’s (Andrew’s mate in Tampa) had a spare room not more than 5 minutes walk from the main street in Broad Ripple! Josh – you legend – didn’t even know me and had me crash there for 5 nights! Thanks a ton!

Ended up being out past closing time with a few Broad Rippleans, This seemed the right thing to do after the first show in Indianapolis. I am guessing I found my way home around 3am, being careful not to trip into the Canal which was right next to the path to the place I was staying. Too many Buds? No, we’ll put it down to jet lag… :)