WICKER brawls in the Big Apple!

Ok. Back to WICKER in NYC.
So this was an EVENTFUL trip.
Here's what happened.

The first night, Max and the band went to dinner with 'the label'. So Izzy and I joined forces with Jeremy and his wife, Dana. Odd foursome, really.We had dinner together while Jeremy was obsessing over some football game he had money on in his office pool. Mr. Normal Guy. I mean, who do we know who even GOES to an office - let alone has money in an office pool??!!! It was really fun, though. And at dinner, Jeremy and Dana told us about this place they went to that was like an old fashioned speak easy.
"You have to call and make reservations at 3pm - and it's really popular, so we had 5 people all calling at once. Then you go to this hot dog place - this tiny hot dog joint - that smells amazing - and you call a number in an old school pay phone - you know, in a booth, and a secret door opens up in the back of the booth and lets you into this secret bar!" Jeremy explained.
"Yea. I don't believe you." Izzy said. "You go THROUGH the PHONE BOOTH?"
"YEA!" Jeremy declared as Dana shook her head,'yes'.

So they took us there. Izzy and I waited in this tiny hot dog joint, not buying anything - we had just eaten - until some woman finally came in, and after a couple of failed attempts, was ushered through a secret door in the back of an old school phone booth - just as Jeremy had described. The bar - the SECRET bar is called PDT - stands for Please Don't Tell. I can't remember what the hot dog place is called - but it looked pretty darn good on it's own.

The second night in the big old crazy prohibition obsessed Apple was the showcase. WICKER playing downstairs from Dashboard Confessional at Webster Hall. It looked grim at first, audience- wise, but soon enough, our people started flowing in. And one in particular who we all thought was MIA - Uncle B. Founder and Godfather of WICKER. I was so damn mad at him right up until he walked through the door. I mean - how could HE miss it? Uncle B and max were the ORIGINAL 2 founders, writers, homeboys of WICKER - back when Max was just a puppy - a teenager. Uncle B is MY age. He doesn't act it (nor do I for that matter) - but he is. And without Uncle B all those years of month long and 3 month long and 6 month long visits playing and writing with Max on the sunporch...WICKER might never have been born.
But he did come. Sauntered right in with his pretty girlfriend which made me scream in happiness! I knew damn well what a source of good energy he would be to Max especially.

Then Doug came. Cousin from my X's side. Great, cool guy - East Coast business style. And Tweak came - another scream from me. An x-boyfriend of mine that I love to death - AND a great musician. Then Lauren, and Lo-lo, and Janine! And fans, and friends, and Jeremy's cousins, and Zoe, and Jive people, and lawyers....the place was filling up. It was good. None of us knew what a WICKER crowd in NYC would look or feel like - they've built up a STRONG following here (LA), but this was really their first show on the East Coast. And, the thing is - when you've already sold out the House of Blues in LA, and have TONS of jumping,dancing singing fans that know ALL the words to all the songs - it can be really different in a new city.

But you know what? The weird thing is that the crowd in NYC was pretty similar to the crowds here. Not as big (of course) - and lots of people didn't know any of the songs - but I have to say that the WICKER crowd is an awfully good looking one. There are always just GREAT looking people at his shows. LOTS of HOT girls wearing very nice things....it's a fashionable crowd. I always take a look at that at concerts. Don't you?
Like, for instance, my X-husband and I used to be really amused at all the Elvis Costello concerts, because so many guys came wearing those thick rimmed black glasses - that crowd had a very definite LOOK. As do goth crowds, etc. WICKER's crowd is pretty unreasonably GORGEOUS. The young ones, the old ones, guys and girls - you look around the room and the show looks like it's been cast for a video or something.

OK. So - the show went well. Really well. They sounded great, they looked great, 3 lawyers came up to me afterwards and shoved cards into my hand saying they wanted to represent my kid.
"How do they even know who I am?" I wondered. I'd never met any of those people.

A group of up to 30 people all wanted to hang out - get drinks and a bite - after the show. So we walked down the street en-mass, looking for a place that could take us all. Burt (the band manager) found some joint advertising cheap shots, and I ducked in first because I really had
to pee. When I came out, after waiting in line, etc - a huge fight seemed to have broken out between our party and the GIANT bouncer at the place. I came out to see Tyler's petite and gorgeous mother being held back by her son from pummeling this giant black man! Then Step was yelling at him. Then Tyler. Then the police came.
Tyler's mom, Kim, was still yelling "You don't hit a GIRL, you fucker!" and things of that nature as the police moved in. Then Tyler was being held back from punching the guy. I didn't know what had happened - but the police were instantly on the bouncer's side and told us move along.

As Izzy and I walked down the street with the gang of people - the entourage - it was explained that this bouncer had grabbed Step by his neck and thrown him out over a misunderstanding, had bullied Max, and finally had pushed this tiny little girl in her FACE. Crazy.

Three bars and lots of Ray's pizza later, I found myself sitting next to another lawyer who told me he wanted to represent Max and WICKER. He must have talked to me for an hour - maybe more.He told me he came up to Max right after the show and said, "Whose dick do I have to suck to represent this band?"
Max said, "Mine."
It must be so much more fun to be a music lawyer than so many other kinds. Just to SAY stuff like that and it's perfectly in step with everything in that world.

We were out until 4:30 or 5am. It was really fun. Really,really,really fun.

When the boys got back to their hotel room - the Sheraton at Times Square - they had a little surprise waiting for them.

There was a 6ft, 4 naked man in Tyler's bed. No one they knew.
The guy was BEYOND drunk. Believe me - I've seen the footage. Max filmed the whole thing.
He wouldn't leave, and was being a little crazy - so Tyler punched him in the mouth. The guy tried to swing back, wouldn't put his clothes on - and as they were calling hotel security, he wandered out into the hallway in is birthday suit, bleeding all over the place.

It turns out, the guy was a Rhode Island detective, and it was all the hotel's fault that he was in there, drunk and naked. Hotel SECURITY had given him the key to Tyler's room. In that super drunk condition. They didn't ask for his ID or anything. Crazy.

And one of the best parts of the whole trip (for me) was the text I got from Izzy when I was at JFK waiting to board my flight home. It said, 'I love you so much,mamma. You are the coolest,grooviest,hottest mamacita around! remember that! safe flight.'

Needless to say, I will never erase that text.