Pandemic? What pandemic?
On June 9th, 2021, King Dutch played a real live rock show for the first time since March, 2020. There were no masks. There was no social distancing. There were about 40 people packed into a small Bushwick club. Even if everybody had to show proof of vaccination at the door, it felt like life was normal again.
It’s been a long, strange road since March of 2020. For awhile there, it seemed like the lockdown life was never going to end. And at one point it looked like the band might break up, when we lost our drummer and a guitarist (not to the virus — to geographic relocations and musical differences).
We kept working. Caleb and I wrote an album’s worth of new songs, and then locked ourselves in our rehearsal studio for 24 hours, emerging on Easter morning like Jesus from the tomb—if Jesus had just recorded demos for a bunch of new grunge songs. I did a 30-day busking challenge to keep up my chops in live music performance, which ended with a nasty case of tonsillitis and a pretty good YouTube video.
All of which brings us to June 9th at Our Wicked Lady (O.W.L.). We played a 45-minute set, opening for Brooklyn bands The Planes and Karabas Barabas.1 On drums for King Dutch was Dmitri Petreanu, the Romanian Rapscallion, while Caleb played guitar and I played bass. Our set consisted of 11 songs, including 6 brand new tunes that will appear on our next album.
It was great. People cheered. We banged our heads and sang our songs. We blew up the O.W.L. sound system (or something) for about 5 minutes and then, once it was fixed, exploded into the coda of “Hideaway” like nothing happened (h/t Dmitri for the good idea). We danced and made merry while the other bands played. We met new friends. We got paid.
And nobody died. Well, not yet. Everybody dies eventually. But the point is life was normal and that’s the way it should be and you should burn your masks and we are moving on.
Join us, won’t you?
Funny story about how we got the gig: The guitarist for Karabas Barabas also sings children’s music at day care centers, including the one next to my apartment. I heard him occasionally this spring, singing kids songs for the toddlers, but didn’t know who he was. One day I was working at my computer and noticed he was singing Nirvana songs for the tots — I heard “Heart-Shaped Box,” “All Apologies,” and, wait for it, “Rape Me.”… For children…. In his defense, he gave the kids little shakers and changed the words to “Shake me,” but still. I couldn’t decide if I was really disturbed or really impressed, but figured I had to meet the guy anyway. Long story short: I dropped a King Dutch business card at the daycare, Karabas Barabas reached out to say “hello, hello, hello, how low,” and later invited us to join them for the 6/9 gig.