Monday, Sept. 6. Milwaukee, WI. The Sugar Maple.

After another nice breakfast and a little early morning classical guitar serenade by Luke, then we headed to Milwaukee. On the drive out of town we saw a place called The Mainstream Boutique right across the street from a florist’s shop called Avant Garden. Funny. Bryan played an early show as Eloine at the Borg Ward with Bryce Beverlyn II, Peter J. Woods and some other folks. The Borg Ward looked great.













I couldn’t stay for the show, though, because I got an in-studio at WMSE.

Gary, Chris and I went to the wrong building first but made it to the studio eventually. What a cool station. The DJ’s name was Andre and he was so cool. His DJ name is Andre the Alien and he plays music about paranormal stuff. I told him to check out Lucia Pamela. He kept saying my songs were “tasty.” I think the session is archived on their website.













The show was at the Sugar Maple, which is one of the prettier bars I’ve seen. About a million beers on tap.














Dave from Ron Wax texted me demanding a review of the beer and sausage, which was pretty funny, seeing as he’s a vegetarian who doesn’t drink. Well, we didn’t end up eating any sausage because we went to a place called Café Lulu, which served no sausage, but we had amazing sandwiches there and the best piece of blueberry pie I’ve ever tasted. The café had lots of cool show posters on the walls.































I did try the Milwaukee Brewing Co. Baltic Porter at the Sugar Maple. It was delicious and smooth and the hops (or something) seemed to keep bursting on my tongue for a long time after each sip. I’m not a beer nerd so not sure what to say! But it was really good.

The show went all right, took place in a gorgeous small listening room at the back of the bar. The Sugar Maple is owned by Bruno and his wife Adrienne. We commented on the good design of the place and Bruno, who is a big guy, gave all the credit for that to his artist wife, stating a couple of times that his job is to “sell beer and scare kids.” I thought he was kind and that his bar was classy. If it weren’t for another late night drive we wound have had time to try many more of those beers. We listened to Henry Rollins' Black Flag tour diaries on the way to Chicago.