Isaac playing at the heorot

Last Friday night we went to Muncie to watch son Isaac play at the Heorot Pub and Draught House. I think he plays in several bands - playing different instruments from time to time - but this night he was playing with the band Greasebucket, and he plays drums with them. It was a great time, and I was impressed with how much he has improved as a drummer.

Jane and I had never been to the Heorot. Muncie is the home of Ball State University - which is kind of known as a party school, I think - and we had only been to Muncie once or twice. The Heorot isn't on campus, but appeared to maybe be in the "old" part of downtown. It was a neat area, with lots of old brick buildings. It is housed in a long, narrow brick building itself. Downstairs is a long bar on one side, and some long bench tables on the other side. They offer 100-some kinds of draught beer. It is said to be a rather eclectic bar, catering to a somewhat "intellectual" crowd. It was a neat old place. The band played upstairs. It was equally narrow. You wind your way up a staircase and enter a room with wooden picnic tables and church pews along the sides, then in the middle are restrooms, and at the far end is where the band plays with about a 20' area for people to squeeze in and watch/listen. I'm pretty sure the pictures are from there.

Anyway... we arrived early and chatted with Isaac and the bartender for a bit. We also saw lots of Isaac's friends from Anderson there, and a couple people from church came down. Greasebucket was supposed to start at 9 pm, and they started right on rock-n-roll time at about 9:33-ish. I really liked their sound, and as I said earlier, was especially impressed with Isaac's drumming. They played for about 45 minutes.

After they were done the Joel Levi Band played. I think that's the name of the band. Anyway, it was Joel, with Andrew Camp on guitar, and 2 other guys I didn't know. Joel and Andrew did the music for Carrie's wedding. They were very good too. I was shocked and surprised to hear that Joel is just working in a Christian bookstore. I thought he was probably doing music full-time now. He has such a stage presence. He just looks and acts like a rock-n-roll front man. I know I've linked to some of his stuff before. I'm sure you can find it by googling his name if you're interested. I also like Andrew quite a lot. He has been touring with some bands, playing guitar. Such a nice guy.

There were a lot of things going through my head while at this place. I LOVED the building. It was also nice to be at a show again. I like watching bands - bands that I know, anyway - in small places like this. It was also nice to be around some young people. We definitely stood out as someone's "parents." There were a couple other people our age there, and they were either parents or friends of the parents. But this was a nice group of young people. All of Isaac's friends said hi to us.

One thing that really caught my eye was, later on, there was this one guy there who seemed to be pretty drunk. He was older, but maybe not as old as us, and he had a backpack - like he could have been homeless, but I don't know that he was. Anyway, he was really drunk. One time I had went downstairs and when I came back up he was kind of harassing Jane a little. He was nice enough when I stepped between them though, and we shook hands and whatnot. When he asked for a sip of my beer I just smiled and told him I didn't think so. He left me alone after that. Well, pretty soon he started eyeing this group of younger girls/women standing by the bathroom. He went up and was trying to talk to them, and you could tell they were trying to be nice but they were really annoyed. Well, the singer in Isaac's band was standing in the back, and pretty soon he comes up and rescues all those girls. He put his arm around the drunk guy and asked if they could sit down and talk. And then he did... he sat down with him and they just talked for the rest of the night. I just thought it was pretty cool how this guy had the decency to not only help these girls out (rather than trying to hit on them himself), but he also treated the drunk guy with such respect. It was a really nice gesture.

Well, we stayed until the end of the night. I think Joel even ended up proposing to his girlfriend at one point. I suppose we must have left around 12:30 or so, and we got back home around 1:30 or 2 am. And I forgot that on the way there the road we had directions for was closed in 2 different places in Muncie. When we left we had no idea how to get back to the interstate. Someone we must have found our way. Then I had to be at church by 8 the next morning for a budget meeting. Argh. I wasn't near as tired as I thought I might be though.

It was a good time. Here is a pic of Greasebucket from the show (and Isaac on drums).