A little night music

Forty days, including today, till we say goodbye to Paris; and the goodbyes are already piling up. I’ll probably be mentioning that a bit from here on out as we see people and places and experience things for the last time in this season of our lives…

What will I miss most about Paris? I get that question a lot, and there are a lot of things on the list. But right up at the top is playing in a cover band, easily the most unexpected part of living here. (You can read all about how it came about here.)

No doubt about it, a highlight of playing in the band has been all the different venues we’ve played: The Australian Embassy and the Paris Polo Club. The American Cathedral and the American Church. A few different cafés and restaurants. Indoors, outdoors, on a boat–and last night, at La Javelle along the banks of the Seine, a fun venue with food trucks, wood-fired pizza, foosball… and us. It was underwater not that long ago, but you’d never know it now.

Yesterday was the longest day of the year, which means Fête de la Musique, which means the Doodads‘ biggest gig of the year. And yeah, it pushed us to #6 on the Paris rock band chart on Reverbnation! (I’m sure Bruno Mars will be calling any minute now to ask us to back him up.)

Getting ready to rock under grey skies. Only a few drops fell as the rainiest spring in 100 years gave way to summer.

We played a bunch of our standards, including Brown Eyed Girl and Psycho Killer, a few by the Beatles and Tom Petty, and even some songs my kids know, like Price Tag and Uptown Funk.

Getting the first set going.

Continuing with the theme of goodbyes: no one in this picture will still be playing regularly with the Doodads after this week. The guitarist on the left has already relocated back to the the U.S. and came back for this gig. The rest of us are each headed off to different countries (the U.S., the U.K., and Germany.)

It really doesn’t get much more fun than this.

Second set: playing into the night.

“You can’t always get what you want…”

I haven’t said goodbye to these guys yet; we have one more gig with most of us tomorrow night. And the good news? Former band members do tend to get back to Paris and get in on the action. Sounds good to me.