Long Winters at the Doug Fir

The Long Winters played at the Doug Fir tonight. I chatted with (and by "chatted", I mean "stalked") John when I heard he was at the merch table. He had a cool black Long Winters t-shirt on display, but John said he forgot to grab the box that they were in. Sigh. I picked out a pink (PINK!) penguin t-shirt instead.

After the opening band (Norfolk & Western )finished their set, I wandered over to the stage and struck up a conversation with a woman standing next to me. We get into a rather boisterous conversation about their music, John's recent interview on KEXP, his beard (me: "Yay beard!"; her: "Shave it off!"), etc, etc. So we get to talking about holiday plans and I tell her I'm heading up to Seattle the next day. She says that she's from Santa Barbara and is heading up to Seattle right after the show because (she casually mentions) she's John's sister.

No way.

I instantly hug her out of pure love. She mentions that mom's there too, sitting in the back. I have a mad burning desire to run back to mom and give her a hug too, but I refrain. I've already maxed out my stalker points.

Anyway, a few songs into the set, by sheer dumb luck, I turned my head around at the exact moment some drunk guy threw his drink at the stage, and took it smack dab between the eyes. John's sister not only ran back to the bar to get me some napkins, but also performed the follow up assist after I managed to smear mascara all around my eyes while mopping up the mess. She deserves mad props for being so cool.

And in the interest of remembering them, here's the other Long Winters shows I've seen:

May 23, 2003 with They Might Be Giants at Aladdin Theater. This was an all acoustic show with just John and Sean. Pure magic. They sang Cinnamon and I immediately placed them on the list of people I want to sing in my bedroom.

July 18, 2003 with Clem Snide at Berbati's Pan. Sean was looking particularly mad genius-y that night. Yum.

May 27, 2004 with The Decemberists at the Aladdin. This was a great show, although Sean was no longer in the band. My sweetie and I didn't stick around to see The Decemberists, although now I wish we had. We made up for it seeing them at the 2005 Bite of Oregon.

Btw. There's some great pictures here from a series of performances they did in Seattle in 2003. I'm adding a few to the already lengthy Long Winters/Harvey Danger desktop slideshow on BabyMac.