On Thursday night I finally got out to see Lisa and Dave’s Sweet Wednesday full band show play at Sally O’Brien’s. Sweet Wednesday after more than three years of work, probably a lot more actually, just released their first CD as a band. The CD is called Wherever You Go and the tracks are available for listening through the web site as well as an option to buy the CD online.

The show included some great moments. I heard the song that they wrote for Madeline for the first time and it was a rockin’ tune that I’m sure Madeline will come to love along with plenty of other folks. Unfortunately I don’t have a recording of the song yet but I am hoping to get one shortly from a live set. Sarah would have loved it when the band played “Take a load off of Annie” later in the evening including a strong showing from the audience, at least me, singing along. The Sweet Wednesday band shows are a ton of fun and anyone who is missing them is just missing out. American Idol was playing on the television behind the bar with nobody wanting to watch it while a real band, with songs written by the people playing the music was standing on a small stage making a lot of great sound. America needs to dropkick the synthesized Nick Lachey pop idol crap and start getting out of their homes to see some real people play music at their local bars.

That song from Hustle and Flow (Whoop that trick) has been stuck in my head since I watched the film. The basic notion from that movie was that this pimp puts his time into making music and creates a demo tape to show to a rapper who was successful. The rapper doesn’t give him much help but one of his prostitutes does promote the tape and it becomes a hit. So this is where Sweet Wednesday is now. They have the music mixed perfectly and it needs to get fed into the media machine so that people can realize that it is just some great music that needs to be put onto the radio play lists.

We also watched The Hotel New Hampshire on Friday night, probably the eighth time I’ve seen that movie. I never before noticed that the actor playing the younger brother named Egg was Seth Green. The story line has the father chasing after his dream of running a hotel only to have two failed ventures. He is described as wanting to start a hotel no matter what happened because he was a Gatsby, someone who chases their dreams even when they are failing over and over again. So being a musician or an entrepreneur like my sister and myself are puts us into that category of the American’s who keep trying and failing despite the more conservative folks providing sage discouraging advice to get a real job. It’s a long, suffering, depressing road full of nos and occasional maybes.

Why do we do it? What keeps us coming back despite the discouragement?

To find out listen to the Sweet Wednesday CD. Buy a copy for yourself and ten copies for each of your friends for birthday and holiday gifts. Get the barrista to play the music in your local coffee shop. Tell your friends they need to hear this music. Request Wherever you go from your local radio station. Complain that the CD isn’t in the shelf for local musicians at your local record store. Review the songs and put your comments in a podcast. Do something to get this CD heard and then drop me an email and maybe I’ll give you a hand the next time you have something that needs to be heard.