Goodbye Static, Hello Goats

Jennifer O’Connor Tour Diary, Entry #2

Monday, October 23, 2006

We’re in St. Louis, Missouri and this is our first night with the Mountain Goats. We just finished playing to a packed room of college kiddies here at The Gargoyle at Washington University.

But let me back up. When I left you last, we were in a pumpkin patch. And let me introduce you to Matt Sutton (on guitar) and Arabella Kauffmann (on bass). Here’s a pic of them driving us away from the pumpkin patch which you can see reflected off the driver side window:

After leaving the pumpkins in VA, we headed down to Durham, NC where we played a rousing set with Portastatic at the Duke Coffeehouse. It’s always awesome coming to this area because my friend Darren Jessee (Hotel Lights) and Debora Francis (an awesome lady and friend who took the cover photograph on my new record) live here and we stay with them. The next day I recorded a song at Brian Paulson‘s home studio for an upcoming eMusic EP. The ep will have some songs that didn’t make the record and a Bob Dylan cover. He was amazing and we had the track done in under 2 hours. Here’s me and my new pal Brian:

South Carolina was pretty fun, if very, very smoky. I am constantly in a battle to not smoke, so this was annoying for me as I’m currently in the “not smoking” portion of the battle. It sorta looks like Jon has a neon beer sign halo in this photo taken outside the Village Tavern.

The next day was in Atlanta at the Earl for our final night with Portastatic. I used to live in the ATL, so I always love coming here. Ms. Chan Cat Power was in the audience so it was nice to say hello to her as well. Here’s a group pic of our final night with the Portastatic boys (and girl)…

Ok, I’ll get more to you soon about the Mountain Goats leg of the tour. Until then……

xoxo

JO’C (and jon langmead, margaret white, arabella kauffman, matt sutton)