the lost onion rocks the house

yup, i'm bragging--i was there. not sure there's a thousand-word photo that'll ever say enough, but this one is my favorite from the evening, and i hope you like it. carl johnson was trading it but good with claire finley all night long, who was turning out pete maclean's smile like christmas, and when you put it all behind mark mullins' trumpet and jen kearney's keys, you have extra special sauce to pour all over your monday evening, and even tuesday morning on short sleep seems like bliss. the room was on its feet demanding they send us off with some zeppelin, and carl and claire and pete and mark and jen did not disappoint. the end of jen kearney and the lost onion's year-long monday night residency at toad in cambridge coming to an end is perhaps what is and what should never be, but for nights like last you still feel good about the whole circle of life and love, as hard to predict and follow as it may be.

the moment of my evening was during the break when the din from the crowd and the patsy cline from the house system was putting the buzz right inside everybody's heads, and the warmth of the room and the crowd and the musicians wading out into everything was like being at home in front of a fire with 100 of your very best friends. i fall to pieces, indeed, and, yes, i can't help it if i'm still in love with every note. and exactly like that scene in buckaroo banzai across the eighth dimension, when buckaroo cuts through everything to get us to the sound of penny priddy's tears at the back of a full-tilt rock and roll room, carl noticed something and stepped back up onto the stage to turn the volume knob on claire's bass down just enough to cut a low feedback hum that, apparently, no one else could hear, though, once he'd adjusted the control, it became obvious to all us mere audio mortals what had been going on. which just made every other sound in the room all that much more clear, like someone had put a projector into focus, and everything was crystal. i swear he even touched exactly the one string of the five (pentabuzz, people!) to diagnose what was needed...

can't say enough so i won't go on any longer than to say jen kearney and the lost onion are a musical artifact in my life's anthropology that i will always remember as they were last night. the perfect music with the perfect set of perfectly-matched musicians to bring it to life, and beer to boot. (sierra nevada, please!)