Strange, yet cool, surprising and a funny, memorable night…
Kristen and I went down to Bourbon St. (a bar with music in San Diego) this last weekend and saw a female singer/songwriter named Ashley Matte perform some acoustic excellence. She has opened for huge acts such as Chris Isaac and Linda Perry (4 Non Blondes) to name a few, and was a great vocalist and solid guitarist. I would describe her as Sheryl Crow meets Avril Lavigne meets Sarah McLaughlin with an extra pinch of magic and soul. She really had a strong full sounding voice with a huge range. The brand new $3,000.00 Taylor sponsored guitar sounded pretty awesome too!
Kristen (my fiancee, for those of you who don’t know) has recently been hired as the Entertainment Editor of a new magazine called Avenue San Diego and so she was really excited to interview her first artist to write about after watching the show… and I got to tag along for the ride… it was strange, yet cool, surprising and a funny, memorable night…
After arriving with Kristen at the club the two men at the door asked us for our IDs and after we gave them to the doormen one of the guys said to Kristen, “I really like the way you changed your hair.” Not something you’d normally hear from a security guard/doorman but she said “Thanks”, (we looked at eachother with a funny smile) and then we walked in the club to get some seats.
We were one of the first couples to arrive and as couples started entering the Pub we realized that everyone who entered the club came in pairs of the same sex! Ha ha, we looked at eachother and laughed- we were in a gay bar! She was glad I came with her because we both just weren’t used to being in this type of scene, especially to be alone in this type of scene and getting hit on!
It was a ton of fun though,(mostly girls with girls, probably 90%) the gay community is a very loving group! Kissing, hugging, friendly-ness all around. Not what you see at a normal straight bar where everyone has their game face on and trying to act cool. Anyways, we definitely stood out as the “straight couple” in the room and we got a lot of funny but friendly looks. When Kristen went to the bathroom she said she overheard these two guys talking about me as I was sitting alone. She sadi they said: “Who’s that?” the other one said- “He came in with a girl…” then Kristen said they both looked at eachother and said in soft voices, “eeewww” -That made me laugh out loud when she told me.
We met a couple of really cool girls who took our picture and invited us to another Ashley Matte show next week. They said that the show next week would be just as fun and also that it “was a bit more of a straight crowd”. All in all Kristen and I had a great night. She interviewed Ashley after the show who was really pretty and really cool to talk to. We found out that she had New Orleans roots but was enjoying the So Cal scene. You can read Kristen’s article about Ashley next month in Avenue San Diego’s first issue! 40,000 glossy copies of the magazine will run in April! So look for it everywhere in San Diego! (It will have a similar look to 944 Magazine in San Diego if you know that one and is defined as “News Week meets Rolling Stone”.)
Hope everyone is doing well,
Free Willie!!!