Hot and Sour Soup
Eggy Festival Meeting at T.ROOTS, Jan 2025
This was, indeed, the meeting before the meeting before the meetings.
But there was hot ‘n sour soup, so who am I to complain? By my estimation <takes our abacus, flips sand in hourglass> there will be 211 meetings, and 9,000 hours+ ahead of us. So, well, you are damn right there’s hot ‘n sour soup, how else could you possibly cope?
Setting a meeting time with a band should be a challenge; if it were too easy you’d have to wonder if they were spending enough time on their music. Frankly, I’d secretly hoped they would pick one location and show up at another, or should up an hour late a day early, or a day late an an hour early, or show up thinking it was for a haircut or maybe to take the weird bend out of the neck of their guitar. But, no, alas, they were on time at the right location.
Drat.
Allow me some OCD, if you will: I’m a fan of places that take reservations. Nothing worse than awkwardly milling about for 15 minutes at the hostess stand, like cows stuck in a feed bunk with no corn and barley and sorghum. But Jake hears T.ROOTS is good and they aren’t the reservations sort, so fate’s draw it is.
Luckily I arrive at T.ROOTS early, where they explain the downstairs is closed, and there are only 7 tables upstairs, all of them full to the brim. I offer my best concerned citizen routine to the hostess, Kyra, who stares blankly, and offers ‘we don’t take reservations’ over and over and over as if I were pulling a string on her back.
I explain we have exactly twenty minutes to figure something out and, hey, shhhh, like, don’t say anything but it’s for, like, a really important group, a band actually, a big band that is coming through town, it would mean a lot to me, more to them, probably kinda cool for you, too, Kyra (eye contact, maybe a slight head tilt) so maybe hop to it and see what you can do, Kyra? Nothing.
I’ll tip heavy. That seems to get her attention.
I wait next door in the bookstore, pretending like I’m trying to find my Great Aunt Mandy a birthday present.
Werlin arrives at the bookstore; there’s no hello, no handshake, no smooth greeting, there’s just, “there’s no fucking way all 6 of us are going to get a table in that place.” I explain that Kyra is my bestie; Dave doesn’t buy it.
Here’s who is at this big meet: Eggy Guitarist Jake and his wife, Katie. Eggy Keyboardist Dani and his girlfriend, Heidi. And, of course, Balter and Werlin (two Dave’s, but much more fun to just hit last names so we can be like a band ourselves — one should note if we merged names it would be Ballin’ which, well, is something to consider for later). The ladies are present, I consider, because they are artist’s muses, offering input to decisions of importance; but it is probably much more likely there’s just a free excellent lunch to be had. So be it.
The meeting is to sort the following:
- Discuss the production of an Beta Eggy Festival, Summer 2026; in Vermont, on the Saskadena 6 ski mountain (used to be Suicide 6 but the woke mob felt the name brittle, so now everyone mainly calls it S6, but still really Suicide 6, just like everyone calls Mansfield, MA, Great Woods or TD North Bank Center the Garden. Sigh.)
- Also, discuss the Eggy Family private party on Balter’s 30-acre Farm (6 min from Suicide 6), Summer 2025 — sorta the alpha before the beta.
- But mainly the meeting is to introduce Werlin into the fold. Werlin, who produced seven Phish festivals from the inaugural Clifford Ball in 1996 to the millenium celebration at Big Cyprus in FL to the musical trainwreck that was supposedly the end of Phish, Coventry, 2004. Werlin has since retired, having already *”seen the top of the mountain,”* — but he’s still got the fire in his belly and can smell something big and rare and very interesting with these Eggy cats.
There is really a much bigger point to all of this.
I can bring the funding and Werlin can bring the experience, but the Ballin’ team can’t really do much without Eggy. Being. The. Driving. Force.
Jake needs to tell management, “I want to do this. We should do this. We should all do this together.”
Mick Management needs to agree it’s a good idea. They need become partners in the process. Then, they need to impress upon the Booking Agent, Wasserman, that we should commit to the right dates — yes nearly 18 months in advance.
And. All this needs to happen. Like now. Time is ticking. We gotta get going, there’s too much to do.
So, lunch is happening. And everyone is nodding.
But, this is a band and this type of urgency isn’t their art. And, well, it’s entirely possible everyone is nodding because, possibly — and we won’t really know until later — the hot ‘n sour soup is good, like real good and, well, there’s not a lot of cost in a free lunch and spending an hour eating it.