Shaun Lewis: the Man, the Myth, the Legend

It’s Monday afternoon.

Well, it’s another nice day outside. I woke up with the sun shining in my eyes (not metaphorically, it was literally in my eyes) and Oscar at my side. He is quite the trusty companion sometimes. Not all the time, mind you. He has a tendency to forget I exist if someone else in the house has food. I’ve actually considered tieing cuts of meat to my clothes so that Oscar will always want to be with me. I suppose that’s not such a great idea because 1) I don’t WANT Oscar always with me and 2) meat gets rotten pretty fast.

Good thing I haven’t put my plan into action yet, I suppose.

Last night was a pretty fun night. During the day, I didn’t do too much so that was semi-boring. Actually, I took a 3-hour nap at 5 o’clock or so. I was pretty bored (also tired because I didn’t sleep a lot that night). Anyway, I woke up from my nap @ 8 and I immediately starting getting ready to leave because I had to be out my door by 8:30 at the latest. Jacki is in Texas now and she wanted me to go to a concert as her representative. The concert was in Dayton and started at 9; leaving at 8:30 would’ve put me there exactly at 9.

I ended up leaving the house at around 8:15 or so. A solid 10 minutes of that was spent looking for my hat, which I had misplaced. I found the hat and promptly left my house headed for Canal Street Tavern.

I had never been to Canal Street Tavern before and I must say that I thought it was a fantastic-looking place. It has a nice feel to it. I really felt like I should come there more often and, in fact, I probably will now. The band Jacki wanted me to hear was Over the Rhine. For those of us familiar with Cincinnati geography, you will take notice that Over the Rhine just happens to be not only a band, but an impoverished area of the city.

That was just a little sidestory.

Despite their name, Over the Rhine was actually an excellent band. I’m getting ahead of myself though. There were a few details before Over the Rhine started performing that I need to mention.

When I walked in the door, I noticed there was no smoke in the room. That was because the event was smoke-free (score!). That made me pretty happy because I hate the vile evil that is cigarette smoke. Also, that means I can wear the same pants I did last night because they aren’t covered in smoke smell.

Fantastic.

The Canal Street Tavern is not set up like a typical bar. It is on the corner of a really old Dayton building near the baseball field. When you first walk in, the bar is in the far righthand corner. To your immediate right is wooden stadium seating. It’s old wood too. There really wasn’t too much in there that was new. On the left there are long tables arranged in a way that makes them resemble church pews. All the chairs face the stage, which is dead center on the left side.

Because I had gotten there semi-late (it was 8:50. I was hoping to arrive earlier to get a good seat), the only seat I saw that was open was at the bar. I headed over there, sat down and ordered a drink because I was quite parched. After what seemed an interminable period of waiting, the opening act began. It was Kim Taylor. She’s a lone singer with an acoustic guitar. She was pretty good. After she stopped singing, another long wait began. This wait seemed to last EVEN LONGER than the first wait. I made it though and ended up getting treated to Over the Rhine at around 10 o’clock.

Originally, they were only going to play one set because it was a Sunday night (they were sold out on Saturday, in case you were wondering). They ended up playing two fantastic sets and a double encore. I was told the encores were something even more special because Over the Rhine usually doesn’t do encores. Hmm… interesting.

The show itself was probably one of the best live shows I’ve seen in a long while. Because it was in a bar, it was extremely casual and relaxed. The crowd was surprisingly mixed. Everyone from 60 years-old to 18 was represented. I would say the crowd was predominantly people my age. That was probably because it was a Sunday night. College-age people usually don’t mind staying up late on Sundays.

OH! I almost forgot about one of the weirdest things to happen during the show. Towards the end of the first set, Over the Rhine paused for a second and introduced a man onstage who was from Dubuque, Iowa. His name was Jack Finn. They had met Jack when they were the first band to play at his new pub in Iowa called The Busted Lift. Jack was probably around 55 years old and was what you would expect when you saw a Iowan. He had on denim jeans with a denim button-up shirt that had an eagle embroidered on each side of the chest. He was a portly man and you could see the Irish ancestry in his facial characteristics. Anyway, Jack came on stage and recited some poetry. Also, I think Jack was slightly hammered because he forgot a couple of his lines during the performance.

Yeah… I don’t really know what the whole deal with that was, but apparently it was a Sunday night only thing. His poems (there were 2 of them) were actually quite insightful. One was a 1400 year-old Irish poem; the other was one he “envisioned during a dream.” It was all I could do to refrain from laughing really hard during his poems. Not because they were bad or he sucked or anything like that.

Aside: I actually felt REALLY bad for him because he was EXTREMELY nervous. The crowd was very kind to him though and he ended up relaxing as he went through his whole spiel.

I wanted to laugh because the whole situation just caught me off guard. Here was this guy from Iowa delivering poems in a bar during a band’s performance. Also, he gave a lot of history leading up to the Irish poem. That was funny because you don’t usually hear history lessons in bars.

Maybe he knew I was in the crowd?

That was pretty much my night though. I must say that I was impressed. I was apprehensive about the whole ordeal when Jacki first told me about it, but I’m glad that I went. It was a lot of fun. Despite the fact that I went, I’m still worried I’ll be chastised by Jacki for forgetting my camera. Forgetting my camera is enough to make me sad in and of itself.

I do enjoy my camera very much.