Jeremy Porter Road Blog

Road Blog: Sunday May 17, 2015 - Ferndale, MI

Tour Blog - Show 7 - Ferndale
May 17, 2015

I was home for a grand total of about 60 minutes before it was back in the truck and off to Ferndale for some eats and load in for our show last night. Ferndale is a city just north of Detroit known for a couple great rock & roll venues, a couple cool bars and some great restaurants. Zeke's Rock & Roll BBQ is a newer place co-owned by Mike who also owns Small's in Hamtramck, which is one of the coolest music venues in the Detroit area. He's and the other people at Small's (Melody, Dave, Kat, etc) have always been so good to me and I was really looking forward to checking out his new place. The food was awesome! BBQ with a little twist, full of flavor and juicy to perfection. So good.

It was great to see the Two Cow Garage guys who I've known for years, starting somewhere in Ypsilanti about 13 years back (Elbow Room?) then back at Small's when I was in The OffRamps and we played together, and on and off in the many years since. Such genuinely nice, Midwestern guys who write great songs and play `em hard with everything they have. They probably get tired of hearing it, but they are criminally under-appreciated by the masses, even though they have a huge following of dedicated fans that are really more like family. I could go on forever, but just read up on them and buy their records and go see them. If you're not blown away, send me the bill.

We loaded in and set up as the dinner crowd was gradually replaced by people coming in for the show. Bill Kozy was doing sound, a guy I sorta casually know from seeing him at shows and hanging out at The Loft Recording Studio where we made our records, and also behind the soundboard the dozens of times I've seen Cheap Trick in the last many years. I knew right away sound would be great. We hit at 9pm sharp and it was the best show we've had in (metro) Detroit in a long time. We always feel like we could have played better, and that stands for last night too, but people were so great - hooting and hollering, raising their PBRs, and not giving us that "local-opening-band-for-a-couple-touring-bands-cold-shoulder" that usually comes with gigs like this. It was a serious blast, and as tired and drained as we were from the long drive and insanity in Dubuque the night before, we seriously were on could 9 for 30 minutes. Thanks so much to everyone there who made that happen! Nights like these are why we don't give up.

Two Cow Garage followed us with their usual ball of energy, guts and melody. My Pal Todd Farrell is playing with them now which just makes it that much more awesome. I could write a whole buncha paragraphs about their set but let's just leave it at this - they were great as always. After them the headliner Tim Barry came up and completely owned the room. The whole crowd was singing along to every song and just glued to the stage. I chatted with him for just a few seconds before his set, and offered to get some of my stuff moved if it was in his way, and he said it wasn't in the way at all, and besides it was raining so no one should be moving gear out then anyhow. Stand up dude right there.

Ferndale last night (and Dubuque the night before) was a great end to a good run of shows for us. There were a couple rough ones in there but in general we seem to be playing to more people, selling a few more records and making more friends as time goes on, which is all we can ask for - and all we really want. Huge THANKS to everyone who was a part of this last run - if you came to see us or one of the bands we played with, if you own/manage/bartend/run sound/book at one of the clubs, if you bought a shirt or a CD or a drink for us, or if you just came in a and checked out a song or 2 - big thanks and please know that we appreciate it a million times over. See you next time!