Three or four music friends had recommended this venue, Monk’s Kaffee Pub, in town, so we decided to spend an extra day in Iowa to check it out. We took a ride in the elevator cable car—the steepest in the world!The cable car station has an elf exit (we didn’t ask).
The town is full of beautiful brick buildings. We visited a chocolate shop and a funny duplex that was home to a gift shop and an antique shop, each half run by an elderly woman, at least one of whom was cranky (she yelled at me for taking photos). But her antique shop had a fascinating obsession with the alphabet! I got a dozen photos anyway, and a video of a funny “fountain” that I’ll post here once I have a minute to edit videos.
The town was having some kind of street festival called “All That Jazz,” though everything sounded like blues rock to us. We guerilla-flyered all the porta-potties and split back to the kaffee pub. The venue was a two-level affair with beautiful furnishings, including this comfortable-looking platform in a secluded corner.
Here's Bryan by this weird free-standing door that's behind the stage, in a hat he found behind the door.
The performance space was downstairs. We didn’t discover that our set was being broadcast live to televisions watched by the upstairs patrons until after our sound-check, when we were all goofing off in a big way. Oops. The show was fun. Two ladies were watching the set and drinking Irish coffees. One of them showed me a nifty t-shirt-folding trick.
We had a late-night drive to sleep at Bryan’s parents’ house in Decorah. So dark out, soaring bluffs and bright stars.
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