Brainwash Cafe is a strange confluence of hipsters, laundry doers, beer aficionados, drunk bums, great musicians, good food and intimate coffee-drinking space. Such was the scene of last night’s cafe show with Mitch Park and Bray. Bray’s fans showed up early and were super kind and supportive of all the music. In classic Brainwash fashion, two pop rock acts had a metal opener. Mitch Park presented an energetic set of solid metal songs before a member of his band ( I believe it was the guitarist and secondary singer) threw up from the stage. Yes, I said from. None landed on me or anyone I know. The cafe made them clean it up. I was going to refrain from writing about it, but it’s just so rock and roll and one really needs to have a sense of humor about these things to keep gigging!

Anyway, after that, Bray’s drummer Steve was kind enough to let Whitney use his drum set, so it was almost a full band gig, which is always a fun surprise. We played a bunch of originals (just one Ben Folds cover) and were happy to be out performing again after the wedding shenanigans. Bray’s band played the cafe with the energy of a stadium show, in great honor of their fans.

In band news, we’ve been playing consistently with our new bassist, Achille. He is from Italy and he is one of the directors of the San Francisco Mandolin Orchestra. He got his degree in music from Milan, plays every type of bass you can imagine, and also sings and plays mandolin. We also have a couple guitarists we’ve been playing with who we will introduce once we get a couple gigs under our belt with them.

The songs for the new album are pretty much chosen and we have selected a local producer- a fantastic talent who can also accommodate our indie budget thus far. We have some stars in a our eyes about planning a trip to South by South West in March and other than that, we’ve just started gigging a lot again. I continue to take singing and songwriting lessons and Whit is taking some heavy theory classes so we’re always reading each other’s material and sharing new tid bits. Considering how often we travel to gig, Martinez isn’t all that different than Berkeley. I cook, clean and drive more. A lot of people (some of them family members) are moving out of the city to make their dreams happen as opposed to moving to the city. I look forward to watching these stories unfold. As always, thanks for listening.

-Grace