Re: Lud & Speed Stick at The Cave
452 1/2 West Franklin Street
Chapel Hill North Carolina

First of all, we’re really pumped about playing a show with our friends Speed Stick. It’s been a weird week here with Bowbarr taking final bows, the May Day protests and the general early spring daze. Can’t think of any band better to knock all of that out of our brains for a while.

My guess to the perpetual question of when things start is ‘I don’t know exactly, but I’d be in place by 9:30.’ Speed Stick doesn’t play long sets so don’t be too casual about it. I really really don’t know when we’ll play except after the smoke clears and we set up.

Our sets are usually an hour, but we tend to go longer at The Cave. We played about an hour the other night at Shadowbox, although this will be a different set.

One thing for sure is that we’ll play Street Waves, which we used to play a lot back in the early Oughts. We played it at Shadowbox for fun and then last week David Thomas died.

Pere Ubu is without a doubt one of the most influential bands for me and the band and how we do things, so much so that we came up with a sloppy southern-fried arrangement of the version of Street Waves on 390 Degrees of Simulated Stereo. Tonight maybe a dirge, more likely a loud lament. I hope people dance.

About the poster

Whenever I ask Ron Liberti to do artwork for a show, it’s far more about a lasting image, a commemoration, than advertising. I almost never make a suggestion, but this time in our text exchange I noted that May 3 is my dear departed mother’s birthday. I then sent him a picture of her riding a bison in a two piece bathing suit sometime in the late 1940s. Long story.

It’s a really nice poster. We’ll have some available tonight and, as always, whatever we make from them we split with Ron.

We’ll also have some of our recordings available. I’ll set up a free/pay-what-you-want thing at the merch table up front or just ask me.

About Lud & The Cave

In the last 30 years we’ve played well over 100 shows at The Cave. Like a lot of folks, it’s the first place I played music in Chapel Hill thanks to the encouragement/goading of Bryon Settle, Paul Price and Randy Pelosi who insisted we take our Monday afternoon jams sessions at the Yellow House to bar across the street. Late 80s, date uncertain, but there is photographic evidence thanks to John Flinchum.

By then, Bryon had played there numerous times in different post-Pressure Boys ensembles. Tim played The Cave with The Sames and other projects in the Oughts and, of course, with us for the last 14 years. Sara’s experience is by far the earliest as her mother played in an Irish music group in the hippy band era. She recalls pounding down a few sodas and then sugar crashing in a booth at an early age.

There are a lot of videos of us playing at The Cave. One that is near and dear to our hearts is when Paul Price, who was back in town visiting from New York , jumped up to play bass after Sara had to go move her truck, which was about to be towed. (a reminder that all good rock bands are part physical comedy). In this video Paul’s playing Eritrea, which our good friend TM calls “feeling it.” Lee Waters is on drums. This was the last time we all played music with Paul. Thanks to Betsy Harris for recording the moment.

Here’s a strange one from November 2000 for Live at The Cave with Lee on drums and Aaron Oliva on bass. There’s a brief cameo of hand-mixer guitar at the beginning.

And here’s the most recent, which was filmed by John Guerin from just a few feet away. This is a song we haven’t recorded/released yet. I just realized I’m wearing one of Paul’s old shirts. Such is Lud — kmr