The Long Afternoon’s bassist, Jeff Edmunds, offered the following insights regarding the group’s upcoming performance on June 17, 2023.
On Saturday, June 17th I will be performing with The Long Afternoon at the Tussey Mountain Beer Garden. The show begins at 6 p.m. and ends at 8 p.m. I will be playing a black Rickenbacker electric bass guitar with the strings tuned (low to high) E, A, D, and G. Although most of the songs we perform involve relatively few notes, it’s possible that during the two hours I will play every note on the fretboard, with the likely exception if the highest few notes, which really wouldn’t fit in with the general vibe of the music. I may sing some. We will perform original songs penned by the indomitable Eston Martz and covers by bands as varied as The Who, Prince, Dead Kennedys, The Cars, Bob Dylan, The Bangles, The Beatles, Al Stewart, Neil Young, The Knack, and Billy Idol. In addition to Eston Martz, my bandmates on stage will include the even-tempered and good-humored fellow Francophone Jean-Pierre Mulley on guitar (and possibly keyboards) and the ever-thumping Greg Elliott (aka “The Meat Hammer,” “Hammer” for short, a nickname inspired by the power of his drumming and a particularly upsetting scene from the film The Midnight Meat Hammer based on Clive Barker’s 1984 short story of the same name and directed by Ryuhei Kitamura in which a hapless subway rider is struck on the back of the head with the titular implement, causing his eyes to exit his skull rapidly in the direction of the camera). I will be standing for the entire show so as not to seem too slavish a devotee of my one-time (actually, three-time) guitar teacher Robert Fripp. There is no cover charge for this event, and you will get what you pay for. The parking is free. The music is free. The beer is not. Nor is the food, which includes, I’m told, hand-made pizza (much tastier than foot-made pizza), fresh-cut fries and walking tacos. (Note: the tacos themselves do not walk.) The venue is dog and family-friendly and presumably dog-family-friendly so you can bring your dogs, your families, and your dog’s (or dogs’) families. If the music bores or offends you, there are nearby hiking and biking trails in Rothrock State Forest, where there are presumably neither live bands nor beer nor fresh-cut fries but probably bear scat, if that’s your jam. The venue also has free games to play (cornhole, kan jam) along with activities at the Fun Centre (as opposed to the Fun Margins and the Unfun Centre) that include mini golf (for those opposed to maxi golf) and batting cages for those of you who enjoy repeatedly swatting baseballs into a chain-link fence. So tell your friends, and please ask them to tell their friends, and their friends’ friends, and so on, because since xt=x0(1 + r)t (where x0 is the value of x at time 0), that would mean a lot of people would show up, we’d have a larger audience, and their would be a greater chance that someone out there would come up to us afterward and say “Nice job.”
