I do love it I do I do I do!

My love of New York is well established. The only person who is still shaky on the committment I've made is my mom and I guess that's understandable. Here's another in the long list of reasons why.

My friend, Carolann , is a member of a new band, Red Molly . They don't play in New York very often and they were playing last night, doing a song in a group show. I didn't really pay attention to what the evening was all about, I just wanted to hear the new group so I headed down.

First, it was at the Parkside Lounge . You know the biker bar in the beginning of Terminator 2 ? Parkside was probably the model for that. There's a performance space in the back where they have comedy and music most nights. I've been there before to see the Brian Mitchell Band with Pony Express.

Turns out that it was an evening of Bluegrass dedicated to singer/songwriter Jimmy Martin . I didn't expect to see a ton of people there. Neither did Carolann. She and the rest of Red Molly had expected it to be a very low key event so they arrived in jeans, boots and cowboy shirts.

Um, no.

I've never been to the Grand Ole Opry so I'm really only going by what I've seen on Hee Haw and in Coal Miner's Daughter , but I'm pretty sure that this evening was a really well done replica of the Opry. The women wore big skirts with crinolines, the men wore hats or fancy vests or full suits. And MAN could these people play! BanjoBen , The Dixie Bee-Liners, Sherriff Good Times, The Cobble Hillbillies , Astrograss Astrograss and, of course, Red Molly.

I had so much fun, and it was great to hear people who can really play and sing. Red Molly was wonderful. I know it's not the sound they generally sing but they can sing like nobody's business!

And what makes it an I Love New York story is that the place was fucking PACKED. People were waiting to get into the back room, were squeezing into bench seats and they kept on coming right up until I left around midnight. A little while before we left Carolann turned to me and said, "Would you ever have believed there was a scene like this in New York?" And I'd been thinking the exact same thing. You really can get everything in New York, stuff you didn't even know you wanted.