We don’t go out to concerts super often, but there’ve been some real winners in Portsmouth. Galactic, Bela Fleck, Allen Stone, Pinback. All were great. Our most recent was the band of Montreal at the 3S art space (where Sarah is going to be performing in a multi-media yoga event soon!).

Excellent show, but the craziest part of the evening was after the opening band finished when I went to get a couple of beers at the bar. On my way back, I saw a familiar looking face. When I got to Sarah, I leaned close and said, “That dude back there looks a lot like Bird [a friend from back in Potsdam].” She turned around and said, “Holy shit, he DOES look a lot like Bird!” I turned around again and the guy was frowning at us, so I said “OK, we have to stop staring at that guy.” Couple minutes later, the frowning guy is right behind us. He taps my shoulder and says, “Are you guys from Potsdam?”

Unbeknownst to us, Bird and his family moved out of Potsdam too! They live about fifteen minutes away from us!

We also saw Jonathan Richman at 3S a few weeks earlier:

He was, as expected, wonderful and charming. But he only played for less than an hour. 🙁

We saw him and drummer Tommy Larkin walking out of the Portsmouth Library the next day. I had half a mind to park the car and pretend to run into him, but decided that would be weird.