Carter: We went to Philly earlier in the day to go to the Academy of Natural Sciences. I had free tickets to it, courtesy of WXPN from when I called in to Kids' Corner one time and won them as a prize. It was very fun. We saw the live butterfly exhibit and I got to do a simulation of an archeological dig and look for fossils.
Mama: I like going to shows in Philadelphia. Since we can get there in under two hours by car or about an hour from the Lancaster train station, it's easy to plan around the shows and do other things while we're there.
Carter: Then we had dinner at Barbuzzo on South 13th Street, the neighborhood where my aunt and uncle used to live. We had a lot of tapenade. I loved it so much I wanted to bathe in it. It would be cool if I had a shower that sprayed tapenade and I had a towel made of bread...
Mama: That's kinda gross.
Carter: Not if you love tapenade as much as I do.
Mama: We really did have an amazing meal.
Carter: Maybe we should just make this blog post the "Tony Lucca and Tapenade" post. Because that was really a highlight of the trip for me, too.
Mama: Maybe not. After we ate, we still had some time to spend in the city before the show since it didn't start until 10 p.m. So we visited some of our favorite shops, walked down Walnut Street so Carter could try to find a copy of a book about Banksy that I thought I'd seen at Urban Outfitters, and even though we were saving room for hummus at World Cafe during the show, no trip to Philly would feel complete to us without a visit to Capogiro for gelato (convenient that it's right across the street from Barbuzzo).
Carter: Then we went to World Cafe Live. It's set up like a restaurant with a bar on one side. So you sit at tables like a restaurant while you watch the show. That's the upstairs venue. The downstairs venue is bigger, and can be set up with or without tables.
Mama: I think that Sara Bareilles show might have been the first time we ever went to World Cafe Live, but I've seen tons and tons of shows there over the last few years.
Carter: They have really good hummus (Mama, can you please make "hummus" in all capital letters and underlined and lots of exclamation points?). I love hummus.
Mama: Yeah, so I suppose it goes without saying that we ate hummus while we watched Tony Lucca. When I called to get tickets and make a seating reservation, I requested a table in the front half of the room. Because they also offer dining, I find that people tend to talk more than they might if it were a venue without seating, and I think it's easier to hear if you're not in the back of the room.
Carter: When they took us to our seats, our table ended up being pretty much on the stage. We couldn't have been any closer...while we ate our huummmuusss!
Mama: He played pretty much all the songs we wanted to hear -
Carter: Except for "True Story."
Mama: Yeah, that's a great song. He makes reference to his time on the Mickey Mouse Club in that song.
Carter: What's the Mickey Mouse Club?
Mama: Nevermind. Anyway, he played most of the songs I wanted to hear, including some newer ones I've only ever gotten to hear via YouTube, like "Take Me Home" and "Fight Song."
Carter: "Take me home, country roads, to the place I beloooooong..."
Mama: That is NOT a Tony Lucca song. The song I'm talking about is one that I've also heard referred to as "The Bus Driver Song." As the story goes, it was inspired by an early-morning comment from a tour bus driver.
Carter: I was really tired that whole night from walking around Philly all day. So I ended up almost falling asleep during the show. I felt bad.
Mama: What is it with you falling asleep at concerts? One of these days, we should do a blog post about all times you've fallen asleep in the middle of shows. I have photos from quite a few of them.
Carter: Even though I was really tired, I loved the show.
Mama: I liked seeing him play with other musicians, since we saw him solo the last time. It gave him a chance to play more of his rock & roll stuff, and I really enjoyed watching him wail on an electric guitar. But I was still glad when he played a few songs solo acoustic. It shows off his style of songwriting so well.
Carter: I liked seeing him play the piano. It sounded beautiful.
Mama: Me too. One of the songs he played was a cover - "Vienna," by Billy Joel. After that, he picked up a guitar again and talked about how there are always those songs out there that are so perfect that you wish you'd written them. He said the next song was one that felt that way for him, and that he'd discovered it on YouTube last year. Do you remember what it was?
Carter: The "Bed Intruder Song." [giggles] "...we gon' fiiiiiiind you, we gon' fiiiiiiind you..." I would even think it was funny if my cat meowed and I turned it into an auto-tuned remix. That song makes me laugh really hard. When a real musician plays one of the viral video songs, it's either a total backfire or a total success. In Tony Lucca's case, it was a success and it was funny.
Mama: I guess it's a song he's played pretty often this year, but I didn't know about it, so it caught me off guard and really cracked me up.
Carter: After the show I got to meet Tony Lucca and then we went to bed because I was tired from eating so much hummus. (Exclamation points.)
Carter meeting Tony Lucca (and wearing his Hoots & Hellmouth shirt!)
