Friday, Sept. 17. Omaha, NE. The Slowdown.

This was a fantastic show. We played with The Chiara Quartet again, and also with Noah Sterba and the Cocktails, an eleven-piece joyful junk-pop band. The quartet sounded incredible with the Slowdown’s cadillac sound system. Gary joined in on drums and percussion when I played those two songs with the quartet. I felt so chill after seeing the quartet perform. The room was full of people and they were into us. It went great.

Noah Sterba and the Cocktails all dress up when they play. The quartet and most of their crowd were dressed up too, and in the Slowdown with its shiny black tile walls, everyone was looking fancy.

The first time I saw Noah Sterba and the Cocktails was at a house show we played together about a month ago in Omaha with Ed Gray and Simon Joyner. Ed and I were confused at first that night because everyone who came into the house was wearing a white shirt and a tie. Ed said he figured they must all work restaurant jobs. I said I’d heard the band was dressing up, but that it couldn’t be true because there were way too many of them, that it must be some kind of party theme we didn’t know about. Nope, there are just a lot of Cocktails. They made me smile at the house, and they did at the Slowdown, too, where they opted not to use the sound system at all, but played in front of the stage on the floor with just one vocal mic for Noah. All the players howl the choruses together, and there were countless tambourines. I love the songs “Insomnia” and “The Riot Must Go On.”