The Champagne of Champaigns

Thursday we headed to Champaign, IL for a free show at Cowboy Monkey. We weren't sure what to expect, but things looked good from the beginning. The bar doubles as a restaurant, and has a nice patio. The wait staff were cool to us from the start. Joe, the soundman, had done some traveling with Brutal Juice, a band that some friends of mine from Denton played in during the mid 90's. We had fun trading stories and filling each other in on what we knew about where some of those guys were now. In addition to having great taste in punk bands, Joe is a phenomenal sound guy, and we had a terrific show, able to hear everything each other was doing. A good crowd watched thanks to the show being free, and a blurb in the local "Buzz" paper about the show from our friend Todd, who's been to our last three shows. We made a ton of friends, including Jiggsaw, the Champaign band that followed us, and Leslie, an Austin transplant who is in Champaign, and her friend Maura, who let us crash in her warehouse apartment. (I should mention that her apartment included a jump rope that was the source of some intensely funny entertainment...

Things I learned:
- Lucky has springs for leg
- Steve Garvey knows all sorts of school yard rhymes that I've never heard before.