The Stanhope House

So we played the first "Free-for-all" Sunday at the Stanhope House in (you guessed it!) beautiful Stanhope, Nj. If you don't know where that is, I don't blame you, it's right around the intersection of 206, 46, 80 aaannnndd 287.  I had played there a few time while Matt "fat" Angus was running it into the ground with Brian Molnar & the Naked Hearts (look you got a plug!), but it's currently under new management and is definitley better than ever. I knew the place was old but it's actually 220 years old (that means 1790 it was est.), and I got a quick history from our friend Adam. It was a brothel, it's haunted and Babe Ruth drank whiskey in the basement during Prohibition (they even found some hundred year old bottles of whiskey but i guess they weren't what you would call 'drinkable'), how cool is that!?

We started off with 25cent wings, which were smothered in homemade bbq/buffalo sauce, cooked and then smoked! I would say they were brilliant. I washed em down with a Railbender Ale from Eerie brewing company, one solid, dark, full bodied ale.

 We played for about 40 minutes, no one was really there but here's the setlist anyway^

After us Mike Ambrose's band, Les Trois Chaud, played for about the same and played a killer Belle & Sebastian cover! My pictures are terrible but take a look!

Then a group played two songs about pirates, then Mike, Colleen (from Les Trois Chaud), and myself played some blues with a dude on trumpet (I'm sorry I forgot your name!). After that a band from New Brunswick called The Grains played. They had a cool 90's rock n' roll feel to em and did the hell out of 'White man in Hammersmith Palias' by The Clash.  Turns out the singer had played with my old band 'Where's Alaska?' when he was in a band called 'Broom vs. Combine' and after talking to him it turned out that his first show ever was also with 'Where's Alaska?' at the Crossroads in Garwood, Nj, how wierd is that?

 They were also lucky enough to have additional help from our drunk-ass pirate song writing friend:

One of my favorite things there was a SIGNED portrait of Pinetop Perkins in the men's bathroom, and if you don't know who that is look him up or take a blues & rock history class.

We had a blast and it looks like we'll be back there Wednesday, Feb. 16th to play on Al's bday! Hope to see ya there!
-Daver