Happy Birthday, Dr. Love.
Filed Under (General) by Phy on 15-10-2007
aka, the Mike Roe solo acoustic concert in East Troy, Wisconsin, October 13, 2007
Mike Roe is a guitarist / singer. He was a founder of the 80s rock CCM band the 77s and is a member of the folk / bluegrass Christian supergroup The Lost Dogs. He played a solo acoustic show near where I live this last weekend, and this is my report (thanks to Kevin Shafer for the heads-up up this show. He told me about the last one, too, and I had a great time.):
Pictures from the 2005 Lost Dogs show
Pictures from the 2007 Mike Roe solo show
One of the perks of coming to this show was a special, limited edition, 4 song live EP from the 77s called ’99′. It was recorded 11.03.1999 at Christ’s Church, St. Louis, MO. The set list is:
* Outskirts
* Flowers in the Sand
* The Stellazine Prophecy
* Snowblind
There were 40 seats in a semi-circle around a small elevated corner stage. Jeffrey K. of lo-fidelity records read a thing Mike wrote that basically allowed us to do all the things Jeffrey doesn’t normally allow; make requests, take flash photos, banter with the performer.
Mike played a completely acoustic two hour set. He attempted everything, including ‘fleur de lis’ (which he attempted on the spot, did a reasonable job with for picking it up cold, and then bailed halfway through calling it ‘more of a piano song’. I was impressed with his musicianship. The guy seems to be able to play anything on the spot, except his own really old songs. 
A highlight for me was when somebody asked for “Tatoo” and he couldn’t remember how it started. A guy behind me produced an iPhone and handed it to Mike. It had all the cover art and he said he could have gotten the lyrics, too, if he had a little time to download it. Mike played Tatoo over the mic from the iPhone, and was impressed with the technology (Mike, himself, owns a very nice MacBook Pro, the Intel-based version of my PowerBook, only with a glossy screen and a faster CD / DVD burner). I got three pictures of Mike with Eric Bangeman’s iPhone in the 2007 Flickr set, above.
Mike was his usual gregarious self and it was a fun show. He played a variety of songs, including at least one from The Lost Dogs. He even covered a Bryan Wilson song, and figured it out as the show went along. Impressive. He finished with two different flavors of A Medley of Our Hit (no, not that one, Eddies fans). It was an all-around great show, and I really enjoyed myself very much being that close to somebody I consider a living legend.
Afterward, I chatted upstairs with a bunch of people while we waited for Jeffrey and Mike to come upstairs. They had a big chocolate sheet cake for Mike’s birthday. He’d played the night before for another guy’s birthday, and it seemed to be a little strange for him. On this night, the accolades were all for him, and rightly so. Happy Birthday, Dr. Love. The show got over at 9 but I stayed around until 11:15 chatting with the dwindling group of hardcore 7s fans and Mike and Jeffrey.
I spoke for 20 mins with Eric Bangeman, the guy who owned the iPhone, and his wife, Kerry. He’s a journalist, and I explained that I am a writer myself. Eric is Managing Editor of Ars Technica, and my jaw dropped. I said I was very familiar with it, as Ars published the best treatment of the SFWA v. Scribd flap from Labor Day. We talked shop for awhile and we both agreed that we liked the writing of Nate Anderson, the guy who wrote the Scribd story (he referenced Vogon poetry, iirc, which I thought was the funniest, hippest reference from the whole affair).
Eric introduced me to his wife, Kerry, a psychotherapist. I mentioned my adult ADD, one of her specialties. We chatted about that for another 20 mins as they prepared the birthday cake and the merchandise table (the countertop on the island in Joel Funk’s kitchen).
I picked up 4 Roe-related CDs I didn’t have. In addition, Mike said all the Dogs / 77s / DA stuff will now be made available from the artists instead of bootleg downloaders, and I asked if they were going to go through a service like iTunes for ADD people like me to restore their collection. Mike seemed hopeful that all the DA / SE / Lost Dogs-related songs might be made available sometime from iTunes. He autographed my copy of “99″ and posed for a picture with me (next time I’m bringing my own sunglasses to look cool).
Joel Funk had the 77s DVD running in the living room, and Mike could see it from the dining room. He provided a running commentary about behind-the-scenes stuff, how long this video took to shoot, how he got his hair like that, stuff like that. It was great.
All-in-all, it was a great evening, and I loved being able to hobnob a little with rock royalty.