There are some emotions that only a child can experience. They are the same ones we occasionally are lucky enough to catch remembered glimpses of as adults. I can best describe the one that poked me in the side a few minutes ago as rapture/wonder. It's the one where you are swept away and transported to another world in which you are simultaneously the ultimate ruler and most indistinguishable speck of dust which can only float in awe of its own power or absolute lack thereof. Sometimes it comes from a hyper-specific place, like the sense/memory of listening to "Sgt. Pepper's" on 8 track in my dad's car (van?). Sometimes it's a feeling you don't even know you have inside you. I felt one of those just now.
I haven't read "Where the Wild Things Are" since I was a kid. I couldn't tell you what it's about; and while I can remember what the pages look like as clearly as the day I saw them first, I recall little else. While I have walked by copies in the kids' section at many a bookstore while Melissa and I have been last-minute shopping, and have often flashed back to a specific page while standing in the guest room in my sister's house (as it corresponds to "my" room in the similarly designed "Cape Cod" we grew up in), I have never picked it up or read it since I was a little little kid. I have almost avoided it because it is a truly perfect memory which a revisit could only destroy.
I have read a ton about the clusterf*ck that is/has been/will be the Spike Jones live action film adaptation of this book. I secretly even hoped it would never see the light of day. It would surely only serve to either kill one of my few remaining "perfect" and intense memories and/or would raise the most presumptuous bullshit ire in the hipster indie-retro-fuckbag community. Both of those propositions scare the shit out of me. The memory one is obvious, but if you think that Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" flickers brought the crazies (sorry, guys) out of the woodwork, wait 'til we are subjected to one man's vision (revision?) of a book that I am almost positive most of the 20 and 30 somethings around would attach similar sentiments to my own. So I clicked on the trailer skeptically.
Maybe it was my already too-sentimental attachment to the Arcade Fire song used in the trailer (I had a particularly special choir sing it a few years ago). Maybe the weather has me confused on the inside. Either way: I felt that feeling. For 20 seconds in the middle of the trailer I was a child. I was reminded that there are beautiful places and things and indescribable feelings in this world and the worlds that only exist inside our heads. So, while I hate to be the guy who just posts videos on his blog every other day, this one made me feel special. Maybe it will do the same for you.
I am having some vid problems. If it won't load, just try here.
25 March 2009
The Garden King (Part I)
I didn't have the most traditional college experience. Sure, I gained weight, grew facial hair, and tooled around in my parents' absence, but I wasn't into drinking, drugging, being overly promiscuous, or staying up all night to participate in any of the preceding vices. That all being said, I did go to college in a "college town" (Princeton), so I got to mingle, for better or worse, with local merchants, students from other colleges nearby, and, most important to this story, "townies". For those of you who went to college in a big city or didn't go to college at all, a "townie" is, quite simply, a resident of a college town whose day to day existence has nothing to do with the university or college with which that town is associated. In light of its usual negative connotation, townies have been portrayed as stoners, dullards, or curmudgeonly types in most movies and television shows in which they have appeared, but those who I chose to spend my time with were nothing of the sort. (as a matter of fact, the aforementioned connotation makes me feel bad for even using the term, but other words like "locals" or "natives" just don't have the same pizazz) It might have been because Princeton was a fairly well-off, artistically-minded, and liberal town, but all of the locals I befriended were incredibly kind and interesting. I guess that's why, to my wife's continual confusion, I knew so many and actually maintained active friendships with those who were often considered personas non grata to the other students at the surrounding colleges.
My ability to meet my townie friends was, in no small part, thanks to my friend CJ. Performative, charming, and gregarious - nay - socially fearless, he allowed me to essentially be his sidekick and eventually "partner in crime" on our adventures "into town" at the dawn of our college experience. With the Princeton Coffee House, probably the least hip coffee house in town in retrospect, as our homebase, we would essentially hold court for fellow Westminster students on their way into town or back to campus, all the while improvising the rules to backgammon and flirting with Donna behind the counter. We used an evening hang there as an informal and unwritten social litmus test for anyone who wished to become part of our little crew. These having been the days before cell phones were widely owned, it was tough to keep tabs on people or make last-minute plans, but if you wanted to find or make plans with me or CJ, you could simply head to the Princeton Coffee House and we'd start from there. This was the place I learned to enjoy coffee (starting off with kiwi lattes - I KNOW!), would come to wash dishes for free as a way to clear my head, and, due to its somewhat odd location and the number of other more popular cafes in Princeton, our own little hangout. It's where we met, and befriended a large number townies. I count the evenings spent there among my most dear college-era memories.
We often stayed until Steve, the owner, closed up shop - a signal that it was either bedtime or, depending on the amount of caffeine we'd imbibed, a starting point for any number of real or imaginary collegiate adventures. On one evening in particular, we met and befriended a townie named Nam. I had (and still have) the strong sense that we knew him prior to the evening in question, but as that's the first specific memory I have of Nam, and since I am telling the stories here, we'll just go ahead and say that's when we met. We had obviously become acquainted shortly before closing as I vaguely remember still doing introductions as we ambled out of the shop as Steve locked the door and settled on the floor right outside. One (or more) of us had a guitar and we immediately started swapping songs as it was apparent that everyone in our crew was a musician. Lucas (who was along for the evening), CJ, and I were already generally familiar with songs that one of us had written and/or were comfortable playing in public and it appeared that Nam, his friend Steve (not the same Steve who owned the coffee shop, but this guy did play a mean guitar and sitar and worked at the record exchange. Whereas Nam had shorter hair and a seemed to be, at root, of a very "suburban" type, Steve reeked of the stereotypical "townie"), and another friend or two of theirs seemed to have something of a collective songboook as well. To this day, I always come off foolish in these situations as I never feel as though my serious songs are up to snuff with the stuff others present (the continual manifestation of this complex has recently led me to believe that my songs are, indeed, not as good as I think they are) and, thus, resort to the comical. I played "The Squirrel Song" (a spoof lament for a dead decapitated squirrel I had written with my then band, The Gravity) and some other silly little tunes in an effort to keep my ego and newly forming reputation afloat, but the death knell continued to toll with each song my new friend Nam played. Fingerpicking with a precision and rhythmic fluidity I still can only aspire to, he rolled off whimiscal songs in a beautiful baritone about the posters on his wall and a "slow motion" girl. While only a few minutes prior, these new friends seemed to be roughly our age, perhaps a year older, as their collective and intimate knowledge and ties to a town which were only then becoming a part of emerged and, more importantly, as Nam unfurled his brilliant songbook, I suddenly felt childish - not young - but juvenile in my understanding of community, musical narrative, and lack of earnesty. While the floor we sat on was grey cement, the walls and ceiling were made of 12" brown matte ceramic tile. Coupled with the odd design of the building (a multi-business, split-level-like affair wherein it was all open and mall-like - as in you would enter the confines of the physical structure but still be in the open air, and would need to either go up a few steps or downstairs - still outside - to enter individual businesses like our coffee house upstairs or the 24 hr. Kinko's downstairs), these tiles made for a particularly pleasant reverb. His beautiful and simple performances and inherit warmth of his songs rang out in a way that made them seem simultaneously intimate and gigantic in that space. After stumbling upon the one song we all knew well enough to sing along to (The Beach Boys' "Vegetables"), I retreated - not only returning to campus, but also sticking my guitar in a case and not touching it for a few days.
Despite my laying low in fear of bumping into my new idol-cum-nemesis, one of the songs that Nam had played that night stuck with me for weeks. It was a cute number (though faaar more clever than any of my "cute" tunes) sang from the perspective of a "Super Villain" to a girl he's holding captive. "...And you and I will rule the world, a Super Villain and his girl", went the chorus. While not very harmonically or melodically inventive in retrospect, the almost vaudevillian chord progression and melody coupled with the lilting rhythm was incredibly appealing to me. Having only begun to break out of the pop/rock formula I was compositionally tied to, the song seemed like something of a breakthrough. I almost resented its freedom. I honestly thought that my going to fancy-schmancy conservatory and studying Mozart and the boys would somehow (be it through intense scholarship or osmosis) inject a new level of quality into my budding catalogue of songs, yet here was some townie! (with none of the musical pedigree I had recently bestowed upon myself and seemingly little of the training to which I was beginning) who could write me under the table. I was simultaneously presumptuously furious with my own inflated sense of ego and lack of songwriting chops and curious as to how I could write on that level. I had to go to the source.
So rather than avoid town all together, I decided I was better off just befriending the guy. He was sweet as hell and didn't intend to make me feel "small". After all, I was in college and I wanted "experience life" or something. Reading back over those sentences, it sounds as though I aspired to some sort of usury. That really wasn't the case, but I truly did put this cat on a pedestal and always did hope that he I could glean some info on his creative process. So over the next several months I spent time with Nam in dribs and drabs, often playing music or talking about music and art and whathaveyou. I found him to be infinitely interesting and incredibly curious and sincere. He always wanted explanations and he always seemed to want you to go deeper. In turn, he was always incredibly philosophical in his own ideas and explanations of them. His speech was always slow and measured (not to be confused with sounding rehearsed) and his aforementioned silky baritone made each statement he made seem some how important or "true" in a larger sense. His curiosity was also astounding. If I or one of my choir college chronies made some reference to a composer or piece of music that he knew nothing about, Nam, still quiet and contemplative, wanted to know everything we could tell him about the subject. I found his aura of absolute wisdom/authority and his lack of shame about his childlike enthusiasm to understand all the things he didn't know created a larger picture of coolness. There were even times that I thought one of the two sides of this juxtaposition was some sort of put-on, but his intense sincerity continually reminded me that this was the real Nam I was dealing with. I honestly cherished every moment we shared.
Here's the interesting thing: I never made plans with Nam in all the years that I hung around with him. I never knew his address, or his phone number, or his email address. We always just sorta found one another. Now: this has nothing to do with fate or anything "bigger" - or does it?! ; ) - it actually speaks more the community of young, non-Princeton University students who bummed around downtown Princeton in those days. I don't want to paint it as though it was like Haight-Ashbury in 1967, but there were plenty of late high school/early college aged kids who wandered aimlessly and harmlessly around town in their thrift shop clothes with books of poetry in their hand or guitars on their backs. Nam and I were both cut of that cloth, so we often bumped into each other (usually me with CJ and him with a friend or two as well), and would spend the rest of the day "experiencing life" together. Some days we would head back to my campus and play around on pianos and organs in the basement practice rooms. Some days we would just sit in the coffee house and chat. I vaguely remember some more adventurous trips into the the $1 bins at the Princeton Record Exchange or out to "the battlefield", an old, uh... battlefield-cum-park where people would laze about, drink wine, and play music... or frisbee.
At some point it stopped being about my idolizing and wanting to learn from the guy, but the days I ran into him and got to spend time with him still exist in my most exciting (the kind of exciting only freshmen in college can understand) and exquisite watercolor meories that tell me it was always spring when I hung around with Nam.
At some later point during my freshman year, Nam recorded a four-song demo and either sold or gave me a cassette copy. While it was long ago swallowed by the sarlac bit that was my best friend Luke's then-girlfriend Wendy's dorm room (she loved this tape almost as much as I did), I remember the black and white, grainy, photocopied insert/cover featuring my friend Nam (using the pseudonym William Ether) holding a mirror up to a mirror so that the cover image itself was blasted into infinity. It might have been the folky leanings of the songs or the added "record player" effect on my aforementioned fave, "Super Villain", but it surely sounded not only old, but instantly timeless. While I knew people that had recorded stuff in studios and given me copies before, this was not only the most professional looking and sounding independent music project I'd yet come into close contact with, but this was certainly the most artistically sturdy. To be quite honest, I don't remember all four tracks on the tape, but I know that in addition to "Super Villain", it also closed with (I think it was last) an absolutely haunting track that I had not heard Nam play before. Beginning with an ostinato almost baroque in its conception and ending with a sound collage made up of a rain storm and electronic effects, "The Garden King" was a revelation to me. "Come out creatures of the night. The Garden King is in the clearing...", is an opening lyric that I count among my all-time faves.
These two songs alone were enough to change my life and direction as a musician. Not only had they been produced independent of pie-in-the-sky dreams like record companies and whatnot, but they had been done so without so much as an ounce lost in artistic weight and quality. The very fact that I had a physical artifact representing Nam's artistic vision - one that I could pour over and suck dry of musical marrow - was priceless to me. Suddenly, Nam, like the Beatles, Weezer, and Elvis Costello before him was emulable.
To be continued... stay tuned for "The Garden King (Part 2)"!
(I intended to include an mp3 to accompany this blog, but I gotta get me some hosting and then I can start doing so. In the meantime, you can check out some of Nam's stuff here.)
My ability to meet my townie friends was, in no small part, thanks to my friend CJ. Performative, charming, and gregarious - nay - socially fearless, he allowed me to essentially be his sidekick and eventually "partner in crime" on our adventures "into town" at the dawn of our college experience. With the Princeton Coffee House, probably the least hip coffee house in town in retrospect, as our homebase, we would essentially hold court for fellow Westminster students on their way into town or back to campus, all the while improvising the rules to backgammon and flirting with Donna behind the counter. We used an evening hang there as an informal and unwritten social litmus test for anyone who wished to become part of our little crew. These having been the days before cell phones were widely owned, it was tough to keep tabs on people or make last-minute plans, but if you wanted to find or make plans with me or CJ, you could simply head to the Princeton Coffee House and we'd start from there. This was the place I learned to enjoy coffee (starting off with kiwi lattes - I KNOW!), would come to wash dishes for free as a way to clear my head, and, due to its somewhat odd location and the number of other more popular cafes in Princeton, our own little hangout. It's where we met, and befriended a large number townies. I count the evenings spent there among my most dear college-era memories.
We often stayed until Steve, the owner, closed up shop - a signal that it was either bedtime or, depending on the amount of caffeine we'd imbibed, a starting point for any number of real or imaginary collegiate adventures. On one evening in particular, we met and befriended a townie named Nam. I had (and still have) the strong sense that we knew him prior to the evening in question, but as that's the first specific memory I have of Nam, and since I am telling the stories here, we'll just go ahead and say that's when we met. We had obviously become acquainted shortly before closing as I vaguely remember still doing introductions as we ambled out of the shop as Steve locked the door and settled on the floor right outside. One (or more) of us had a guitar and we immediately started swapping songs as it was apparent that everyone in our crew was a musician. Lucas (who was along for the evening), CJ, and I were already generally familiar with songs that one of us had written and/or were comfortable playing in public and it appeared that Nam, his friend Steve (not the same Steve who owned the coffee shop, but this guy did play a mean guitar and sitar and worked at the record exchange. Whereas Nam had shorter hair and a seemed to be, at root, of a very "suburban" type, Steve reeked of the stereotypical "townie"), and another friend or two of theirs seemed to have something of a collective songboook as well. To this day, I always come off foolish in these situations as I never feel as though my serious songs are up to snuff with the stuff others present (the continual manifestation of this complex has recently led me to believe that my songs are, indeed, not as good as I think they are) and, thus, resort to the comical. I played "The Squirrel Song" (a spoof lament for a dead decapitated squirrel I had written with my then band, The Gravity) and some other silly little tunes in an effort to keep my ego and newly forming reputation afloat, but the death knell continued to toll with each song my new friend Nam played. Fingerpicking with a precision and rhythmic fluidity I still can only aspire to, he rolled off whimiscal songs in a beautiful baritone about the posters on his wall and a "slow motion" girl. While only a few minutes prior, these new friends seemed to be roughly our age, perhaps a year older, as their collective and intimate knowledge and ties to a town which were only then becoming a part of emerged and, more importantly, as Nam unfurled his brilliant songbook, I suddenly felt childish - not young - but juvenile in my understanding of community, musical narrative, and lack of earnesty. While the floor we sat on was grey cement, the walls and ceiling were made of 12" brown matte ceramic tile. Coupled with the odd design of the building (a multi-business, split-level-like affair wherein it was all open and mall-like - as in you would enter the confines of the physical structure but still be in the open air, and would need to either go up a few steps or downstairs - still outside - to enter individual businesses like our coffee house upstairs or the 24 hr. Kinko's downstairs), these tiles made for a particularly pleasant reverb. His beautiful and simple performances and inherit warmth of his songs rang out in a way that made them seem simultaneously intimate and gigantic in that space. After stumbling upon the one song we all knew well enough to sing along to (The Beach Boys' "Vegetables"), I retreated - not only returning to campus, but also sticking my guitar in a case and not touching it for a few days.
Despite my laying low in fear of bumping into my new idol-cum-nemesis, one of the songs that Nam had played that night stuck with me for weeks. It was a cute number (though faaar more clever than any of my "cute" tunes) sang from the perspective of a "Super Villain" to a girl he's holding captive. "...And you and I will rule the world, a Super Villain and his girl", went the chorus. While not very harmonically or melodically inventive in retrospect, the almost vaudevillian chord progression and melody coupled with the lilting rhythm was incredibly appealing to me. Having only begun to break out of the pop/rock formula I was compositionally tied to, the song seemed like something of a breakthrough. I almost resented its freedom. I honestly thought that my going to fancy-schmancy conservatory and studying Mozart and the boys would somehow (be it through intense scholarship or osmosis) inject a new level of quality into my budding catalogue of songs, yet here was some townie! (with none of the musical pedigree I had recently bestowed upon myself and seemingly little of the training to which I was beginning) who could write me under the table. I was simultaneously presumptuously furious with my own inflated sense of ego and lack of songwriting chops and curious as to how I could write on that level. I had to go to the source.
So rather than avoid town all together, I decided I was better off just befriending the guy. He was sweet as hell and didn't intend to make me feel "small". After all, I was in college and I wanted "experience life" or something. Reading back over those sentences, it sounds as though I aspired to some sort of usury. That really wasn't the case, but I truly did put this cat on a pedestal and always did hope that he I could glean some info on his creative process. So over the next several months I spent time with Nam in dribs and drabs, often playing music or talking about music and art and whathaveyou. I found him to be infinitely interesting and incredibly curious and sincere. He always wanted explanations and he always seemed to want you to go deeper. In turn, he was always incredibly philosophical in his own ideas and explanations of them. His speech was always slow and measured (not to be confused with sounding rehearsed) and his aforementioned silky baritone made each statement he made seem some how important or "true" in a larger sense. His curiosity was also astounding. If I or one of my choir college chronies made some reference to a composer or piece of music that he knew nothing about, Nam, still quiet and contemplative, wanted to know everything we could tell him about the subject. I found his aura of absolute wisdom/authority and his lack of shame about his childlike enthusiasm to understand all the things he didn't know created a larger picture of coolness. There were even times that I thought one of the two sides of this juxtaposition was some sort of put-on, but his intense sincerity continually reminded me that this was the real Nam I was dealing with. I honestly cherished every moment we shared.
Here's the interesting thing: I never made plans with Nam in all the years that I hung around with him. I never knew his address, or his phone number, or his email address. We always just sorta found one another. Now: this has nothing to do with fate or anything "bigger" - or does it?! ; ) - it actually speaks more the community of young, non-Princeton University students who bummed around downtown Princeton in those days. I don't want to paint it as though it was like Haight-Ashbury in 1967, but there were plenty of late high school/early college aged kids who wandered aimlessly and harmlessly around town in their thrift shop clothes with books of poetry in their hand or guitars on their backs. Nam and I were both cut of that cloth, so we often bumped into each other (usually me with CJ and him with a friend or two as well), and would spend the rest of the day "experiencing life" together. Some days we would head back to my campus and play around on pianos and organs in the basement practice rooms. Some days we would just sit in the coffee house and chat. I vaguely remember some more adventurous trips into the the $1 bins at the Princeton Record Exchange or out to "the battlefield", an old, uh... battlefield-cum-park where people would laze about, drink wine, and play music... or frisbee.
At some point it stopped being about my idolizing and wanting to learn from the guy, but the days I ran into him and got to spend time with him still exist in my most exciting (the kind of exciting only freshmen in college can understand) and exquisite watercolor meories that tell me it was always spring when I hung around with Nam.
At some later point during my freshman year, Nam recorded a four-song demo and either sold or gave me a cassette copy. While it was long ago swallowed by the sarlac bit that was my best friend Luke's then-girlfriend Wendy's dorm room (she loved this tape almost as much as I did), I remember the black and white, grainy, photocopied insert/cover featuring my friend Nam (using the pseudonym William Ether) holding a mirror up to a mirror so that the cover image itself was blasted into infinity. It might have been the folky leanings of the songs or the added "record player" effect on my aforementioned fave, "Super Villain", but it surely sounded not only old, but instantly timeless. While I knew people that had recorded stuff in studios and given me copies before, this was not only the most professional looking and sounding independent music project I'd yet come into close contact with, but this was certainly the most artistically sturdy. To be quite honest, I don't remember all four tracks on the tape, but I know that in addition to "Super Villain", it also closed with (I think it was last) an absolutely haunting track that I had not heard Nam play before. Beginning with an ostinato almost baroque in its conception and ending with a sound collage made up of a rain storm and electronic effects, "The Garden King" was a revelation to me. "Come out creatures of the night. The Garden King is in the clearing...", is an opening lyric that I count among my all-time faves.
These two songs alone were enough to change my life and direction as a musician. Not only had they been produced independent of pie-in-the-sky dreams like record companies and whatnot, but they had been done so without so much as an ounce lost in artistic weight and quality. The very fact that I had a physical artifact representing Nam's artistic vision - one that I could pour over and suck dry of musical marrow - was priceless to me. Suddenly, Nam, like the Beatles, Weezer, and Elvis Costello before him was emulable.
To be continued... stay tuned for "The Garden King (Part 2)"!
(I intended to include an mp3 to accompany this blog, but I gotta get me some hosting and then I can start doing so. In the meantime, you can check out some of Nam's stuff here.)
20 March 2009
This makes me very happy...
It's been a while since we've heard anything new from one of my FAVOURITE (yes, that's all caps and bold) bands - and composers of Oklahoma's new "official state rock song" - The Flaming Lips.
If for some reason, the embedded vid won't play, try here.
If for some reason, the embedded vid won't play, try here.
18 March 2009
Go Me!!!
I am in the middle of putting together two massive posts complete with mp3's and tall tales of my college days, but seeing as both are wrought with storm und drang and self-effacement, I figured I would drop a tidbit of a pleasant experience while it's fresh on the brain.
As I am sure friends and readers have come to find out, I am highly confident in matters of musical conception, often having excellent arrangement ideas or good instincts on album or setlist continuity and the like, but often stall out of the gate when it comes to execution. Be it due to my lack of commitment to one instrument, lack of serious practice time on any instrument, or even my favourite new excuse, my lack of innate fine motor skills (apparently because I never crawled as a child), I am not an exceptionally deft technician on any of the tools on which I portend to be an "official" user. Upright bass is certainly my weakest suit by far. The other folks in The Whistlin' Wolves seem immensely patient with my lack of technical facility and I make up for it with my other skills and ideas, but every now and again I find myself in a place where those other things aren't enough to save me from winding up with proverbial gunslinger egg on my face.
Last night, The Whistlin Wolves played our first radio appearance. We played as part of a sort of radio hoedown on WKCR, wherein the house band sorta hosted us as special guests to the show. Like so many of the musicians on the traditional scene in NYC, the core members of this house band were incredibly kind and gracious and laid back - so laid back that they shared another trait with the rest of the scene: a general lack of rehearsal. Now let's be clear: I am not dogging anyone who can do a performance at their level (that level being "very high") without much rehearsal, but this laissez faire attitude leaves a lot to chance; like who will actually be in the band that night, for example. The show was due to start at 10 PM, and as of 9:15 they were still unsure as to whether or not their up-til-then-unnamed bassist was going to show, so I started learning a few tunes in the event thay I would need to sit in.
At some point during said rehearsal, the band's just-arrived fiddler asked the leader who I was - not in a "who's THIS guy?!" kinda way, more like a "hey, who's our new friend sitting in on bass?" kinda way. The leader looked up from his beautiful old Martin guitar and said something to the effect of, "This is Trip's bassist. These guys might sit in (referring to me and Spiff, mandolin in hand). Skip Ward was supposed to be here..." I use the ellipses here not because the rest of what he said was unimportant, but the fact that I even heard the five words after "Skip Ward" is miracle in and of itself. "Why?", you ask. Well... go ahead and Google "Skip Ward", or maybe even plug it into YouTube. For those of you without the time or interest in doing so, I'll just go ahead and tell you that Skip is one of the go-to bassists in New York. He's played with some heavyweights like Belá Fleck and Tony Trishcka. He studied with Jaco Pastorius for chrissakes! The first time I heard of Skip was when I found out he would be sitting in with us at a Woody Guthrie tribute we played a few months ago. Prior to said gig, I emailed Trip just making sure that our sit-in bassist would be able to learn our tunes on the fly. He simply responded with a couple of links to video clips of Skip playing on Letterman and Conan. Yeah. So I was basically shitting my pants. Here I am: Captain Butterfingers on the double bass, already nervous about playing on the radio and in front of people who know a lot more about "this music" than I do, and now you're telling me that I may have to do so in front of one of the best bassists in town. While I was nervous about sitting in with this other band, I was even more nervous about the prospect of their bassist actually showing up, because then I would have to play my set in front of him - almost surely to the embarrassment of me and the rest of The Whistlin' Wolves.
Well... as luck would (or would not depending on perspective) have it... Skip did show up, and here I was without a change of clean underwear. To be clear: while an absolute monster player, Skip is also the nicest dude in the world. We checked out one another's moods and instruments like two dog's circling and sniffing ass and silently established that we were both cool with two bassist being there. Despite the fact that I was in the middle of learning a song, I quickly deferred to him and put my bass in the corner so they could run a few more tunes before the show started. I spent the next hour (with a short break to work out our setlist and watch Trip play doctor on a harmonica) pacing the hallway strumming a ukulele and wondering how I was going to play in front of this guy.
Our set rolled 'round and we set up to play. While I would love to spin off all the details of the show (which went quite well), for this story's purpose the important thing is this: I didn't suck. While our tempos were generally a little rushed, I was fairly effective in holding back an all out stampede; and while I didn't play too conservatively, my cautious attempts to not embarrass myself in front of one of the best bassists around lead to my being more focused and making better choices. Let's be reasonable: I didn't rewrite the book on bass playing last night, but when the other band came back in the room to share the last third of the show with us all hootenanny-like, Skip actually suggested we both play bass. He might have just been polite, but it felt like a nod of approval. Nonetheless, I opted to grab Emily's guitar as, in my mind, I had just dodged an ego bullet and didn't want to push my luck.
It might not have been my best gig ever, but I was beaming inside as we packed up because I ussually wilt in situations like the one from last night. I was thrilled to have held my own. I confessed to Spiff as we got into the car to head home to Brooklyn that I hadn't thought much about how our band sounded as I had spent too much time mentally patting myself on the back for a job fairly well done. He was happy for me too and said as much, contextualizing it within how I feel after all of our other gigs (with all the bands): bad. I am blessed to work with three great bands and, more often than not, am pleased with our shows, but it's rare that I come home from a gig so pleased with how I played personally. Considering the odds, this one felt extra special. Mornings after nights like that lead me to want to play more and, perhaps more importantly, play better. Maybe I should call Skip and take a few lessons.
As I am sure friends and readers have come to find out, I am highly confident in matters of musical conception, often having excellent arrangement ideas or good instincts on album or setlist continuity and the like, but often stall out of the gate when it comes to execution. Be it due to my lack of commitment to one instrument, lack of serious practice time on any instrument, or even my favourite new excuse, my lack of innate fine motor skills (apparently because I never crawled as a child), I am not an exceptionally deft technician on any of the tools on which I portend to be an "official" user. Upright bass is certainly my weakest suit by far. The other folks in The Whistlin' Wolves seem immensely patient with my lack of technical facility and I make up for it with my other skills and ideas, but every now and again I find myself in a place where those other things aren't enough to save me from winding up with proverbial gunslinger egg on my face.
Last night, The Whistlin Wolves played our first radio appearance. We played as part of a sort of radio hoedown on WKCR, wherein the house band sorta hosted us as special guests to the show. Like so many of the musicians on the traditional scene in NYC, the core members of this house band were incredibly kind and gracious and laid back - so laid back that they shared another trait with the rest of the scene: a general lack of rehearsal. Now let's be clear: I am not dogging anyone who can do a performance at their level (that level being "very high") without much rehearsal, but this laissez faire attitude leaves a lot to chance; like who will actually be in the band that night, for example. The show was due to start at 10 PM, and as of 9:15 they were still unsure as to whether or not their up-til-then-unnamed bassist was going to show, so I started learning a few tunes in the event thay I would need to sit in.
At some point during said rehearsal, the band's just-arrived fiddler asked the leader who I was - not in a "who's THIS guy?!" kinda way, more like a "hey, who's our new friend sitting in on bass?" kinda way. The leader looked up from his beautiful old Martin guitar and said something to the effect of, "This is Trip's bassist. These guys might sit in (referring to me and Spiff, mandolin in hand). Skip Ward was supposed to be here..." I use the ellipses here not because the rest of what he said was unimportant, but the fact that I even heard the five words after "Skip Ward" is miracle in and of itself. "Why?", you ask. Well... go ahead and Google "Skip Ward", or maybe even plug it into YouTube. For those of you without the time or interest in doing so, I'll just go ahead and tell you that Skip is one of the go-to bassists in New York. He's played with some heavyweights like Belá Fleck and Tony Trishcka. He studied with Jaco Pastorius for chrissakes! The first time I heard of Skip was when I found out he would be sitting in with us at a Woody Guthrie tribute we played a few months ago. Prior to said gig, I emailed Trip just making sure that our sit-in bassist would be able to learn our tunes on the fly. He simply responded with a couple of links to video clips of Skip playing on Letterman and Conan. Yeah. So I was basically shitting my pants. Here I am: Captain Butterfingers on the double bass, already nervous about playing on the radio and in front of people who know a lot more about "this music" than I do, and now you're telling me that I may have to do so in front of one of the best bassists in town. While I was nervous about sitting in with this other band, I was even more nervous about the prospect of their bassist actually showing up, because then I would have to play my set in front of him - almost surely to the embarrassment of me and the rest of The Whistlin' Wolves.
Well... as luck would (or would not depending on perspective) have it... Skip did show up, and here I was without a change of clean underwear. To be clear: while an absolute monster player, Skip is also the nicest dude in the world. We checked out one another's moods and instruments like two dog's circling and sniffing ass and silently established that we were both cool with two bassist being there. Despite the fact that I was in the middle of learning a song, I quickly deferred to him and put my bass in the corner so they could run a few more tunes before the show started. I spent the next hour (with a short break to work out our setlist and watch Trip play doctor on a harmonica) pacing the hallway strumming a ukulele and wondering how I was going to play in front of this guy.
Our set rolled 'round and we set up to play. While I would love to spin off all the details of the show (which went quite well), for this story's purpose the important thing is this: I didn't suck. While our tempos were generally a little rushed, I was fairly effective in holding back an all out stampede; and while I didn't play too conservatively, my cautious attempts to not embarrass myself in front of one of the best bassists around lead to my being more focused and making better choices. Let's be reasonable: I didn't rewrite the book on bass playing last night, but when the other band came back in the room to share the last third of the show with us all hootenanny-like, Skip actually suggested we both play bass. He might have just been polite, but it felt like a nod of approval. Nonetheless, I opted to grab Emily's guitar as, in my mind, I had just dodged an ego bullet and didn't want to push my luck.
It might not have been my best gig ever, but I was beaming inside as we packed up because I ussually wilt in situations like the one from last night. I was thrilled to have held my own. I confessed to Spiff as we got into the car to head home to Brooklyn that I hadn't thought much about how our band sounded as I had spent too much time mentally patting myself on the back for a job fairly well done. He was happy for me too and said as much, contextualizing it within how I feel after all of our other gigs (with all the bands): bad. I am blessed to work with three great bands and, more often than not, am pleased with our shows, but it's rare that I come home from a gig so pleased with how I played personally. Considering the odds, this one felt extra special. Mornings after nights like that lead me to want to play more and, perhaps more importantly, play better. Maybe I should call Skip and take a few lessons.
06 March 2009
The Whistlin' Wolves?
I will get back to this blogging thing in earnest soon enough, but I thought I should drop a little one here and now.
Since I joined up in June, my band with Emily, Trip, and Spiff has forever waffled about our name. Initially on the fence between Whistling Rufus and The Whistle Pigs, we played our first few gigs unsure of who we were and, thus, unable to further promote ourselves and whatnot. When last fall rolled in and brought with it many many bookings, we decided there and then that we needed an actual name. For reasons still unclear to me (but by no means problematic), we decided to go with Whistling Rufus.
Now listen: Trip knows traditional American music better than just about anyone I know, and he made us fully aware of the racist implications of the old fiddle tune after which we had just named ourselves; but assuming that this would continue to be a very informal band, in addition to the fact that we had gotten the "go-ahead" from one of the foremost African-American interpreters of this style of music, we went ahead and started promoting our gigs as Whistling Rufus. People in the know seemed to let it slide (after all, there are lots of other trad. groups going by that same name) and people who didn't know of its derivation simply thought it sounded cute or funny.
So as the months and gigs flew by we realized that this band is actually pretty good and we should probably start bragging about it. As we all move in a few different musical circles we figured we would have the word out in no time, but we quickly came across a hitch in said plan. Emily realized it first as she began preparing a resumé for her latest round of auditions and grant applications. In an effort to show off her musical abilities in a variety of styles, she prepared a list of projects she is currently a part of. Surveying what she had typed out, and, I am guessing, noting that we had no web presence to speak of, she quickly realized that someone might feel the need to google "Whistling Rufus" in an effort to find out more about us. Therein lay the problem. If you're curious, you can go ahead and do this yourself, but I assure you that if you hit Google up with the same query it will take you less than five hits to come across the word "nigger" more than once. uuuhh... yeah. NOT. COOL.
It's odd how difficult it was coming up with a new name seeing as we had cared so little about our original collective alias just a few months prior. Nonetheless we discussed and bickered and pandered and waffled. In an effort to highlight Emily's incredible whistling talent (she has won several international championships), we wanted to keep "whistling" or "whistlin" in the name, but, as the rest of us are men, and, thus, always concerned about not being macho enough, we needed the other part of our name to make up for the "cutesiness" of "Whistling...". Now: anyone who has been in a band before knows this, but I will state it here again for those of you not in the know: NAMING A BAND IS FUCKING DIFFICULT. While I fully recognized that my ex-rock/striving-for-the-big-time band, Joanie Loves Trotsky, belabored almost all of our collective decisions, I will never forget the hours we spent in our singer Cliff's living room debating the merits of names such as "Pol Pot Pie", "Ninjavitis", "Gonhorrea Perlman", and another hundred or so pun-tacular names in addition to the silly one we wound up choosing. I mean: this was serious business... and I guess some things never change. To be fair: we never came to strong words or blows over deciding what to rename that artists formerly collectively known as Whistling Rufus, but it took us several weeks to even come up with something we could all tolerate, let alone be truly proud of. So after much hemming and hawing we decided to borrow our new name from an old Rose & The Maddox Brothers tune we had recently added to our repertoire and now call oursevles The Whistlin' Wolves.
I don't know that any of us love it, but we are committed to it - for the time being :) - and have invested a little actual energy into promoting ourselves and whatnot. We have a ton of gigs coming up and have even scored a radio appearance later this month! More immediatley for youse, you can actually see and hear us online! We have stepped boldly into 2004 and set up... wait for it... a MYSPACE PAGE!!! (I know!) So welcome to the world of the Whistlin' Wolves. Check out the tunes online and I hope to see some of you at one of our many upcoming shows!
Since I joined up in June, my band with Emily, Trip, and Spiff has forever waffled about our name. Initially on the fence between Whistling Rufus and The Whistle Pigs, we played our first few gigs unsure of who we were and, thus, unable to further promote ourselves and whatnot. When last fall rolled in and brought with it many many bookings, we decided there and then that we needed an actual name. For reasons still unclear to me (but by no means problematic), we decided to go with Whistling Rufus.
Now listen: Trip knows traditional American music better than just about anyone I know, and he made us fully aware of the racist implications of the old fiddle tune after which we had just named ourselves; but assuming that this would continue to be a very informal band, in addition to the fact that we had gotten the "go-ahead" from one of the foremost African-American interpreters of this style of music, we went ahead and started promoting our gigs as Whistling Rufus. People in the know seemed to let it slide (after all, there are lots of other trad. groups going by that same name) and people who didn't know of its derivation simply thought it sounded cute or funny.
So as the months and gigs flew by we realized that this band is actually pretty good and we should probably start bragging about it. As we all move in a few different musical circles we figured we would have the word out in no time, but we quickly came across a hitch in said plan. Emily realized it first as she began preparing a resumé for her latest round of auditions and grant applications. In an effort to show off her musical abilities in a variety of styles, she prepared a list of projects she is currently a part of. Surveying what she had typed out, and, I am guessing, noting that we had no web presence to speak of, she quickly realized that someone might feel the need to google "Whistling Rufus" in an effort to find out more about us. Therein lay the problem. If you're curious, you can go ahead and do this yourself, but I assure you that if you hit Google up with the same query it will take you less than five hits to come across the word "nigger" more than once. uuuhh... yeah. NOT. COOL.
It's odd how difficult it was coming up with a new name seeing as we had cared so little about our original collective alias just a few months prior. Nonetheless we discussed and bickered and pandered and waffled. In an effort to highlight Emily's incredible whistling talent (she has won several international championships), we wanted to keep "whistling" or "whistlin" in the name, but, as the rest of us are men, and, thus, always concerned about not being macho enough, we needed the other part of our name to make up for the "cutesiness" of "Whistling...". Now: anyone who has been in a band before knows this, but I will state it here again for those of you not in the know: NAMING A BAND IS FUCKING DIFFICULT. While I fully recognized that my ex-rock/striving-for-the-big-time band, Joanie Loves Trotsky, belabored almost all of our collective decisions, I will never forget the hours we spent in our singer Cliff's living room debating the merits of names such as "Pol Pot Pie", "Ninjavitis", "Gonhorrea Perlman", and another hundred or so pun-tacular names in addition to the silly one we wound up choosing. I mean: this was serious business... and I guess some things never change. To be fair: we never came to strong words or blows over deciding what to rename that artists formerly collectively known as Whistling Rufus, but it took us several weeks to even come up with something we could all tolerate, let alone be truly proud of. So after much hemming and hawing we decided to borrow our new name from an old Rose & The Maddox Brothers tune we had recently added to our repertoire and now call oursevles The Whistlin' Wolves.
I don't know that any of us love it, but we are committed to it - for the time being :) - and have invested a little actual energy into promoting ourselves and whatnot. We have a ton of gigs coming up and have even scored a radio appearance later this month! More immediatley for youse, you can actually see and hear us online! We have stepped boldly into 2004 and set up... wait for it... a MYSPACE PAGE!!! (I know!) So welcome to the world of the Whistlin' Wolves. Check out the tunes online and I hope to see some of you at one of our many upcoming shows!
25 January 2009
"Hold on. I'm Comin!"
Sorry to duck out for the last two weeks. I have plenty to report on, but it's been nice to live my musical life without thinking too hard (in an effort to have shit to write about). Nevertheless, I hope to have something up here in the next few days. In the meantime: one of my bands, The Randy Bandits has a new album dropping on Feb 10. Make sure to DL a copy from iTunes or Amazon.mp3 (link on sidebar) and lemme know what you think.
13 January 2009
One down... not so up.
This is being written at the end of night 1 of 5 consecutive nights in which I have either a rehearsal or gig with any one of three different bands.
It's 12:19 AM, and, while it only took me fifteen minutes to find parking, I am faced with another of my common post-gig dilemmas: I am fucking starving. It happens all the time: I get home from gigs at midnight having just expended a ton of energy performing and focusing on driving home while very tired, am hungry as hell, eat a small meal, and then go to bed. That is why I am in the shape I am in. Ugh. Well... perhaps I can distract myself from eating with a small rundown of what happened tonight. It is against my better judgment as I have another long one tomorrow, but I should get doing while the memories (and feelings) are fresh.
I left early (as always), sat in BQE traffic (as always), and parked only a few feet from the entrance to Parkside Lounge (as always). The routine of these Whistling Rufus weeknight gigs at Parkside has been nice. I get into the city ridiculously early, hang with Spiff (he's the early type too), and then either watch the preceding band's set or grab a seat at the bar out front and read. Tonight I opted for the latter and enjoyed (sort of) a Harpoon IPA and a few pages in my book. The band option was promising as they were a (somewhat) Traditional duo with a great lead singer on tour and heade for a gig in Pittsburgh tomorrow night, but I was feeling a little of sorts having had a nap earlier in the evening. In terms of sanity and health, the surprise opportunity to see Melissa at home and take a nap will probably serve me well in the long run (and by long, I mean the distance between here and Friday), but I wasn't quite as focused on the music as a result of them. Ah, yet another conflict to reconcile. My skipping the prior band seemed to matter little however, as one of the guys (Sam) from the group was still nice enough to lend us his guitar when Spiff and I found out we needed to do an impromptu set of originals as a duo. It seemed Trip and Emily were stuck at a WNYC event and wouldn't be there until some 45 minutes after gig time. Eek! So Spiff and I, fueled by collective deperation to keep contained the decent-sized crowd (honestly, you guys need to start coming 'cos we usually play to the furniture at Parkside Lounge) and my new-found desire to perform my material solo, decided that we would do a few tunes on our own.
I will spare you some the details, but I will tell you this: I have a ways to go before I can do solo shows with just me and the guitar. While there were no trainwrecks and I didn't completely embarrass myself, I am far from proud of my performance this evening. There were a few things working against me here: my lack of preparation for this happenstance and my lack of experience doing shows on my own. I don't blame myself too much for my not being prepared to do this, but I froze. I couldn't think of what songs to play, and, as I do not play the tunes I chose all that often, flubbed some chords and lyrics which snowballed into rather sloppy and sheepish performaces of some decent tunes. Quite frankly, I think the songs I chose to play were, from a songwriting standpoint, as strong as those that Spiff chose to play, but, while not a competition by any means, Spiff, having been doing solo gigs for some time now, came off far more polished and confident. As far as a lack of experience goes, I feel like it is worth noting that despite my years of writing songs and playing them with bands, I have only ever had two solo gigs in my life. I have done little one-song performances and open mics (though not in years), but the number of full solo shows I have done is a mere two. I guess the only way to get better is to go out and do 'em, but first I should learn the words, chords, and break the horrible habit I discovered this evening. Apparently, when I am either nervous or not getting the audience repsonse I am looking for or am feeling a general lack of confidence about the acutal composition of the song, I fuck with the phrasing of the song and wind up doing this weird speak/singing thing. Were I to do this in front of a crowd that had heard these tunes a million times, it would appear to be an interesting anamoly or a creative choice, but tonight (and all the other times that the audience doesn't already know the songs - which is roughly all the times) it just came off sounding like I didn't know what I was doing. I was nervous as hell as the cats that played before us were in the audience, as was my good friend, and Panda Cam bassist, Chris Cummings. Chris is my musical foil of sorts and we have a strangely antagonistic artistic relationship, but it tends to make us both better and I hold his musical taste and skills in the highest regard. This all could have been solved if I were in a place where I have an aresenal of originals in every mood, key, genre, etc. at the ready at all time, but I am not there yet. Looks like I have another thing to practice...
Emily actually only showed up about fifteen minutes late. Once she settled in and got tuned, she, Spiff, and I picked out some tunes we could "pull off" without Trip and set forth entertaining the ever-dwindling crowd. I played like shit from the moment we started. I knew my voice was not 100%, but my playing was even worse. I guess my confidence was pretty well-shaken by my unsuccessful portion of our impromptu solo set, because it took me a good deal of time to even fully focus on making music. This sort of situation is especially sticky when it comes to my playing upright. While I did have some formal training back in the day (7th and 8th grade), I have only recently started playing upright and it is evident in my shoddy tuning and technique. The interesting quandary, however, is that my actual possession of an upright bass in addition to my overall solid skills as an all-around musician score me more gigs than I probably deserve on the thing. Now I know what to play, but I don't do such a great job of it. You'd think that this would inspire me to practice more... No. It doesn't. Because I am stupid.
Emily, Spiff, and I did an okay job up there. One of the tunes I lead seemed to finally click tonight, and we seemed to lock into a solid groove on one of Spiff's numbers. This second positive was bolstered by Trip's entrance into the room, and, within a verse and half into the song as well. Things got better with Trip up there. Despite our becoming slowly more of a collective, we are still Trip's band. In addition to his being a little older (this matters the least but is still worth noting), he also knows much much more about this repertoire than we do and has a lot more experience performig it and making connections on the scene. It was honestly as though the kids were up there playing cops and robbers, and then dad showed up whipped 'em into a team of crack Krav Maga assassins. But despite Trip's calming and centering effect on the whole thing, my playing was still embarrassingly bad. Wrong notes abounding and no sense of time, I, at some point, decided I would go into auto-pilot on the tunes and instead focus on technique. In addition to my recognizing that this is a wholly shitty, unprofessional, and insensitive thing to do, Chris (our final audience member) confirmed it by saying I that looked as though I was in pain up there. Emily seemed to think I played well, and I tried my best to take her compliment, but the damage was done. This is not to say there weren't some nice moments up there tonight, but I am a sad to say that I played like ass - a fact unforgivable for a band full of such great musicians, and larger issue for a band which rehearses as little as we do.
So, due to tonight's failures, I have learned that in addition to my already ridiculous schedule, I need find time to learn how to and then practice performing the songs I have written until I can call upon any of them (with confidence) at any time, AND I need to spend a lot of time practicing the upright bass.
Anyone have any spare hours in the day? 26 or 27 might be nice. Wish me luck tomorrow.
(sufficiently distracted - and tired as hell - I may actually go to bed without snacking)
It's 12:19 AM, and, while it only took me fifteen minutes to find parking, I am faced with another of my common post-gig dilemmas: I am fucking starving. It happens all the time: I get home from gigs at midnight having just expended a ton of energy performing and focusing on driving home while very tired, am hungry as hell, eat a small meal, and then go to bed. That is why I am in the shape I am in. Ugh. Well... perhaps I can distract myself from eating with a small rundown of what happened tonight. It is against my better judgment as I have another long one tomorrow, but I should get doing while the memories (and feelings) are fresh.
I left early (as always), sat in BQE traffic (as always), and parked only a few feet from the entrance to Parkside Lounge (as always). The routine of these Whistling Rufus weeknight gigs at Parkside has been nice. I get into the city ridiculously early, hang with Spiff (he's the early type too), and then either watch the preceding band's set or grab a seat at the bar out front and read. Tonight I opted for the latter and enjoyed (sort of) a Harpoon IPA and a few pages in my book. The band option was promising as they were a (somewhat) Traditional duo with a great lead singer on tour and heade for a gig in Pittsburgh tomorrow night, but I was feeling a little of sorts having had a nap earlier in the evening. In terms of sanity and health, the surprise opportunity to see Melissa at home and take a nap will probably serve me well in the long run (and by long, I mean the distance between here and Friday), but I wasn't quite as focused on the music as a result of them. Ah, yet another conflict to reconcile. My skipping the prior band seemed to matter little however, as one of the guys (Sam) from the group was still nice enough to lend us his guitar when Spiff and I found out we needed to do an impromptu set of originals as a duo. It seemed Trip and Emily were stuck at a WNYC event and wouldn't be there until some 45 minutes after gig time. Eek! So Spiff and I, fueled by collective deperation to keep contained the decent-sized crowd (honestly, you guys need to start coming 'cos we usually play to the furniture at Parkside Lounge) and my new-found desire to perform my material solo, decided that we would do a few tunes on our own.
I will spare you some the details, but I will tell you this: I have a ways to go before I can do solo shows with just me and the guitar. While there were no trainwrecks and I didn't completely embarrass myself, I am far from proud of my performance this evening. There were a few things working against me here: my lack of preparation for this happenstance and my lack of experience doing shows on my own. I don't blame myself too much for my not being prepared to do this, but I froze. I couldn't think of what songs to play, and, as I do not play the tunes I chose all that often, flubbed some chords and lyrics which snowballed into rather sloppy and sheepish performaces of some decent tunes. Quite frankly, I think the songs I chose to play were, from a songwriting standpoint, as strong as those that Spiff chose to play, but, while not a competition by any means, Spiff, having been doing solo gigs for some time now, came off far more polished and confident. As far as a lack of experience goes, I feel like it is worth noting that despite my years of writing songs and playing them with bands, I have only ever had two solo gigs in my life. I have done little one-song performances and open mics (though not in years), but the number of full solo shows I have done is a mere two. I guess the only way to get better is to go out and do 'em, but first I should learn the words, chords, and break the horrible habit I discovered this evening. Apparently, when I am either nervous or not getting the audience repsonse I am looking for or am feeling a general lack of confidence about the acutal composition of the song, I fuck with the phrasing of the song and wind up doing this weird speak/singing thing. Were I to do this in front of a crowd that had heard these tunes a million times, it would appear to be an interesting anamoly or a creative choice, but tonight (and all the other times that the audience doesn't already know the songs - which is roughly all the times) it just came off sounding like I didn't know what I was doing. I was nervous as hell as the cats that played before us were in the audience, as was my good friend, and Panda Cam bassist, Chris Cummings. Chris is my musical foil of sorts and we have a strangely antagonistic artistic relationship, but it tends to make us both better and I hold his musical taste and skills in the highest regard. This all could have been solved if I were in a place where I have an aresenal of originals in every mood, key, genre, etc. at the ready at all time, but I am not there yet. Looks like I have another thing to practice...
Emily actually only showed up about fifteen minutes late. Once she settled in and got tuned, she, Spiff, and I picked out some tunes we could "pull off" without Trip and set forth entertaining the ever-dwindling crowd. I played like shit from the moment we started. I knew my voice was not 100%, but my playing was even worse. I guess my confidence was pretty well-shaken by my unsuccessful portion of our impromptu solo set, because it took me a good deal of time to even fully focus on making music. This sort of situation is especially sticky when it comes to my playing upright. While I did have some formal training back in the day (7th and 8th grade), I have only recently started playing upright and it is evident in my shoddy tuning and technique. The interesting quandary, however, is that my actual possession of an upright bass in addition to my overall solid skills as an all-around musician score me more gigs than I probably deserve on the thing. Now I know what to play, but I don't do such a great job of it. You'd think that this would inspire me to practice more... No. It doesn't. Because I am stupid.
Emily, Spiff, and I did an okay job up there. One of the tunes I lead seemed to finally click tonight, and we seemed to lock into a solid groove on one of Spiff's numbers. This second positive was bolstered by Trip's entrance into the room, and, within a verse and half into the song as well. Things got better with Trip up there. Despite our becoming slowly more of a collective, we are still Trip's band. In addition to his being a little older (this matters the least but is still worth noting), he also knows much much more about this repertoire than we do and has a lot more experience performig it and making connections on the scene. It was honestly as though the kids were up there playing cops and robbers, and then dad showed up whipped 'em into a team of crack Krav Maga assassins. But despite Trip's calming and centering effect on the whole thing, my playing was still embarrassingly bad. Wrong notes abounding and no sense of time, I, at some point, decided I would go into auto-pilot on the tunes and instead focus on technique. In addition to my recognizing that this is a wholly shitty, unprofessional, and insensitive thing to do, Chris (our final audience member) confirmed it by saying I that looked as though I was in pain up there. Emily seemed to think I played well, and I tried my best to take her compliment, but the damage was done. This is not to say there weren't some nice moments up there tonight, but I am a sad to say that I played like ass - a fact unforgivable for a band full of such great musicians, and larger issue for a band which rehearses as little as we do.
So, due to tonight's failures, I have learned that in addition to my already ridiculous schedule, I need find time to learn how to and then practice performing the songs I have written until I can call upon any of them (with confidence) at any time, AND I need to spend a lot of time practicing the upright bass.
Anyone have any spare hours in the day? 26 or 27 might be nice. Wish me luck tomorrow.
(sufficiently distracted - and tired as hell - I may actually go to bed without snacking)
11 January 2009
Microphone Check! 1,2,3,4,5!
When I moved to Brooklyn nearly 7 years ago, it was because my girlfriend (now wife) and I realized that we a) we wanted to be with each other all the time, and b) could actually save money by living together and forgoing our weekly traveling odyssey involving New Jersey Transit, no less than two interstate highways, and no less than two bridges and/or tunnels, tolls, gas, etc. But the reason all of my friends, family, and colleagues assumed was driving me toward the "city of homes and churches" was certainly part of the allure as well. Nearly every time I would tell someone I was up and leaving the incredibly comfortable and stable suburban existence that I had carved out for myself in North Jersey, they would hem and haw a bit, but eventually come to terms with it and say something along the lines of, "well, New York City is where all the music is", or "better go now so you can become a rock star before it's too late", or something to that effect. Like I said: Melissa was my main motivation (though I didn't need much as I had fallen in love with Brooklyn on my first trip there a few years prior), but the access, as both a provider and a patron, to the music scene in NYC certainly sweetened the pot. I had had a whiff of it at the time, as my then current band regularly played gigs in the city, but I figured that once I came ashore in the Boro of Kings, I would hit the ground running and be either seeing or playing a show every night in no time! Well... it wasn't all that simple. Sure: I have had a decent couple of years as musician in this city, seeing as I already have a full time day- job. I have played some big name venues like the Knitting Factory, the Mercury Lounge, and the Living Room, but I have also seen my share of shit-holes and basments. I have played for hours on end for no pay, but I have also made some decent bank as part of the backup band for an acrobat in under an hour. It's been a mixed bag to say the least - and I have loved every minute of it.
I really thought I was the busiest I could ever be, musically speaking, a few years back. I was rehearsing once (or twice) a week and playing two gigs a month with the Randy Bandits, rehearsing once a week and playing one or two gigs a month with the Company Picnic, and picked up some freelance singing and bass gigs as well. It was crazy, but fabulous, and my abilities as an all-around musician were more highly-highly developed than they had been to date (but I guess if I can't say that at any point in time, I am doing something wrong). But when grad school rolled around, I needed to cut it back to one regular gig; and for lots of reasons (maybe another post someday), I chose the Randy Bandits. That worked out fine for a while, but, as I have mentioned before, I tend to get antsy. I also don't like to be limited to doing just one thing, so over the last several months my rehearsal/gig calendar has started to fill up quite nicely. And that leads us to this coming week...
Beginning tomorrow, this will be my first full week of living two lives ever. While I don't have anything on Saturday or Sunday, between rehearsals and gigs with three different bands, I am booked every night this week from Monday to Friday. Now, all you pro musicians out there may giggle to yourselves as many of you do 12 or 13 nights in a row and often do doubles (2 gigs in one night) on half of them, but riddle me this: how would you feel if after each gig, you needed to wake up early (and by early I mean 6 or 7 and not "before noon") the next morning in order to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed enough to motivate/contain/inspire/incite/incarcerate several successive groups of 25 to 30 eleven to fourteen year olds? Sound like fun?! Well, I will let you know. I am looking forward to this challenge as it has been my (thanks to this blog, not so) silent 2009 resolution to take my life as a performing musician more seriously, but I think this week is going to be something of a test for me. I forsee the following possible hindrances:
I really thought I was the busiest I could ever be, musically speaking, a few years back. I was rehearsing once (or twice) a week and playing two gigs a month with the Randy Bandits, rehearsing once a week and playing one or two gigs a month with the Company Picnic, and picked up some freelance singing and bass gigs as well. It was crazy, but fabulous, and my abilities as an all-around musician were more highly-highly developed than they had been to date (but I guess if I can't say that at any point in time, I am doing something wrong). But when grad school rolled around, I needed to cut it back to one regular gig; and for lots of reasons (maybe another post someday), I chose the Randy Bandits. That worked out fine for a while, but, as I have mentioned before, I tend to get antsy. I also don't like to be limited to doing just one thing, so over the last several months my rehearsal/gig calendar has started to fill up quite nicely. And that leads us to this coming week...
Beginning tomorrow, this will be my first full week of living two lives ever. While I don't have anything on Saturday or Sunday, between rehearsals and gigs with three different bands, I am booked every night this week from Monday to Friday. Now, all you pro musicians out there may giggle to yourselves as many of you do 12 or 13 nights in a row and often do doubles (2 gigs in one night) on half of them, but riddle me this: how would you feel if after each gig, you needed to wake up early (and by early I mean 6 or 7 and not "before noon") the next morning in order to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed enough to motivate/contain/inspire/incite/incarcerate several successive groups of 25 to 30 eleven to fourteen year olds? Sound like fun?! Well, I will let you know. I am looking forward to this challenge as it has been my (thanks to this blog, not so) silent 2009 resolution to take my life as a performing musician more seriously, but I think this week is going to be something of a test for me. I forsee the following possible hindrances:
- Illness - lack of sleep + shitty diet inherent in this sort of schedule = better chance of getting sick. sickness = weak/shitty voice. bad voice = bad gigs.
- Poor Marital Performance - that sounds more like a symptom that can be cured by Viagra than I intended it to. :) Seriously: despite my warning and her promise of patience, I am nervous that at some point this week, either Melissa or I will crack. We love having quiet down-time together. It is not only restorative, but necessary in keeping both of us sane. this week's schedule will allow for very little time together, let alone its being quiet.
- Poor Day Job Performane - every once in while, my kids at school (who know about my musical life outside of school) ask me about what would happen if I were to somehow become a big famous rock star. Would I still teach them or leave them in a lurch for fortune and fame? My rather lengthy, yet inconclusive, answer tends to unravel as follows: 1) I pity them for having a rather naïve understanding of the way the music industry works on any level below "Jay-Z", 2) I rail against said industry for allowing skinny boys like All-American Rejects hit the big-time while fatsos like me are denied the brass ring based on our waistlines (I know), 3) I tell them that I love them, 4) (and they can never make sense of this one) I try to explain that I probably make more as a teacher than I could as an entertainer as my being featured on a Jay-Z or All-American Rejects (or any other hyphenated musician's) track is not likely this century, and 5) I tell them I don't know because I have never been presented with the opportunity to work as much doing "that" (playing out) as i do "this" (teaching them). It looks like I might have an answer by the end of this week.
- Burnout - all marital, employment, and general well-being aside (whoa), I just might not like this sort of thing. Perish the thought, but this just might be too much.
07 January 2009
Top 7 Albums of '08
I have already devoted a facebook group to this, but figured this might be a good place to post this as well."Why a top 7 list?", you may ask. Well, according to some people over at mahalo.com there were either about 800 or 37,o00 albums released in 2008. Either way, I think it's safe to say that very few of us listened to more than a negligible portion of these recordings. At last count, I purchased/listened to a mere 48 of them, so I think it would be a bit presumptuous to come up with a list of my "top 25" or even "top 10". 7 seems to feel right. Here's the list:
1. Dungen - 4
2. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
3. Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - Real Emotional Trash
4. Kanye West - 808's & Heartbreak
5. Blitzen Trapper - Furr
6. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
7. The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound
(Very) Honourable Mentions:
Guns n' Roses - Chinese Democracy
Dr. Dog - Fate
Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
What were your faves?
05 January 2009
Resolve
Like most other public school teachers in America, today I was faced with the rather foreboding prospect of returning to school after a long, long break. Don't get me wrong, I really dig my job, but I had gotten accustomed to leading another life over the last two weeks. And while I knew that a life consisting mainly of playing the guitar, snuggling with my wife, and drinking coffee was not likely a sustainable one, it was nice to live the dream if only for a little while. I can't remember the last time I didn't get to bed before 3 AM for three nights in a row.
But it wasn't just about sleeping in. It was about seeing what life might be like if I were only a performer. I probably put more time in practicing the guitar over these last two weeks than I had in the entire two months prior. I wrote a few new tunes. I spent some time and money on my home recording setup. These are the things I just never get around to during my average school week. Some of that may change without the impending threat of grad school hovering over my every time related decisions, but I also know myself better than to believe I will devote all of that new-found time to being a better musician - but who knows? Y'see: I am not one for outwardly making New Year's Resolutions, I think I did make some significant decisions about life over Winter Break.
I think it was Adam Levy's doing...
I had known his name for a few years. In addition to seeing it in the credits to Norah Jones albums (as a guitarist and songwriter) and on posters up on the walls as Banjo Jim's, my wife was actually in Marie Ponsot's poetry workshop with him last year. I also knew that he was one of those guys Russ always talks about. Now: you need to understand something about my friend Russ. In addition to being a killer keyboard player and great composer, Russ is one of those cats that knows about the "guys behind the guys" - or "the guys that so-and-so listen to when they're not busy being so-and-so". You know: those musicians (and I am guessing that this goes for all other art forms) who aren't quite famous enough for your square sister-in-law to have heard of them, yet still has an unbelievably strong rep. amongst hip (not to be confused with hipSTER, they never know of these types) musicians and the like. Anyway: I know that last year when I would pull off a particularly tasty guitar fill (with a bit of tight delay), Russ would compliment me for doing some of "that Adam Levy shit". Yeah. Adam Levy is that guy.
As it goes, my buddy CJ (college roomie, fellow musician/teacher type, the Elwood to my Jake) was in town during break to celebrate his birthday. We decided in addition to catching dinner with friends, we would spend the remainder of the evening bar-hopping in Manhattan. Since I am a bit OCD and generally need a game plan before I go anywhere, I suggested that rather than chase cheap booze, we should look for free music as the Village, East Village, Lower East Side trifecta is rife with free music these days. (side note: At these gigs, musicians only get paid by "passing the hat" during their set, though, strangely, my bands tend to make more money at these gigs than at those for which the audience has been charged a cover, however, I would like that tradition to continue, so please take care of the entertainers.) I purused ye olde interweb and targeted a couple of options, reminding CJ that the places with free tunes charge the same drink prices as those without, and threw together a mental list of who was playing where and at what time and reported back to the birthday boy (who was sitting on the couch across from me). In the time it took me to wrangle up some free entertainment options, CJ sured up the dinner side of things and, in the process, found out our friend Ryan was playing a free show at an Irish bar on MacDougal at 9 PM. This was strangely limiting as we didn't figure to get out of dinner until 7:30ish, but Ryan is the man, and shit was free, so we figured on making it happen. If we played our cards right however, I still figured we'd be able to catch Adam Levy (of Russ reference and poetry class fame) at 8 PM at Rockwood Music Hall. This place has quickly become my favourite spot for gigging and seeing live music and I was looking to show it off to CJ. It's small, has impeccable sound, has a "quality" to "less than" music ration of 85:15, and there is never a cover charge. When CJ texted Ryan back about our plans, he echoed these sentiments as he figured on catching the early part of Adam Levy's set before heading out to his own 9 PM gig.
Dinner was set for 5:30 at Otto. This place is borderline touristy, as it's co-owned by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich (son of Lydia from my fave PBS cooking show), but it's crazy affordable, came highly recommended by CJ's friend Brooke, who was joining us for dinner, and has a wine list (some four times longer than the menu itself) featuring wines ranging in price from $29 to $1600. In addition to CJ, Brooke, Melissa, and I, my friend Soo and her fiance John came along. Soo and I were mad tight back in college. She and I even road-tripped it up to CJ's folks' house in the Birkshires back in the day. We listened to Leon Redbone and, despite the fact that she had no clue as to what she was communicating, she read the baseball box scores aloud to me along the way. Yeah, we had fun. We never dated, never even considered it, yet drifted apart some time after my wife and I got serious. I never fully understood this (still don't), but after seeing her again I have high hopes of rekindling this friendship. I also remembered how much I dig her man, John. In addition to his picking up (and throwing down) some Old School references, he is also a public school teacher, and seemed to be knit of something of the same cloth as me and some of my dopey friends. Here's to seeing Soo and John in '09! John split after dinner and, sadly, so did Melissa. I was hoping she would come along as I just knew she would dig Adam Levy and we hadn't actually seen a show together in some time. We kissed goodbye at the 8th St. R-train station and Soo, Brooke, CJ, and I marched onward through the rather mild winter evening.
We showed up just in time. Rockwood is small and fills up quick, but due to the latenick nature of so many New Yorker's, you can generally find a place to stand if you get there as sets are turning over. We got a great spot in the corner where the bar meets the window, said our hellos to Ryan and his crew, and grabbed a drink. Now, I should confess: While not a heavy drinker, I am generally a beer drinker; yet on this evening, I had already had two glasses of wine, and without even giving it a thought, the phrase "So-Co and Diet with a lime" tumbled from my lips when the bartender asked what I wanted to drink. While this story should generally extol the virtues of great music and camaraderie, I am fully willing to admit that the amount of Southern Comfort imbibed may have had some effect on my enjoyment of the music that night.
I learned a lot about "sitting in" that night. I don't do nearly enough of it. This is partially because I don't have the confidence or the stomach to schmooze my way into gigs, but it's also because I have built myself a rather insular circle of musical conspirators. I mean: I truly love playing with the people I do so with on the regular, but there is a part of me that would love to have my skills tested (and hopefully appreciated) with another group of players. In addition to giving me an excuse to play more and, in turn, learn more about collaborating, it could potentially open me up to an entirely new universe of players and gig/venue opportunities. I might even make a little scratch, as the circle I run in doesn't tends to play for love and love alone. Maybe I should get some business cards made... I bring all this "sitting in" stuff here, because, in addition to getting to see one of the better guitar players in town play, Shawn Pelton was sitting in on drums. He is one of the, or perhaps, THE go-to session/gig guy in NYC. He's also the house drummer on SNL. I had first heard of him from my friend Vinny - who, having been on tour with Smokey Robinson and Muse and done live sound for several high-profile events like the VMA's or NBA all-star week, only talks about top guys. While I certainly didn't recognize the face (Ryan actually pointed it out), I was certainly familiar with his playing. He understands groove like no one else. He is a master of subtlety. He is one of the biggest names in the world of professional drumming, and there he was: sitting in with Adam Levy. Before the band even hit, I knew we were in for a real treat.
Adam Levy is a little older than your average Rockwood entertainer. He is a little chubbier (though not fat) than your average guitar hero. He is far more soft-spoken than your average frontman. As a not-so-skinny, not-so-young, not-charismatic-enough-to-really-front a band type of guy, I found his mere presence downstage center incredible reassurring, appealing, even inspiring. While I have long since given up on my rock n' roll dreams, I was finally able to mentally recast myself in a different light. Leave it to Neddy Naricissism, yours truly, to go so far, but I couldn't help but think, from the moment I laid eyes and ears upon this guy, that I too could pull this thing off. The music certainly helped. See: he writes decidedly solid songs. They are by no means remarkable, but therein lies their charm. They are compositionally very strong, highly melodic, a bit formulaic (but I am a junkie for that), a little clever, but never mind-blowingly awesome. There's no evidence of literary pretensions one might find in much of today's indie rock, nor any of the musical fussiness you might find in the same scene. He writes consistently stalwart and soulful tunes about love lost and found. Don't get me wrong: I loved these songs! They far better than most of what I churn out, but tunes of this quality (as opposed to those from the McCartneys, Zappas, Waits, and Stevies of the world) felt somehow attainable - and he played a whole set of them! Tune after tune, SoCo/Diet/Lime after SoCo/Diet/Lime, I was memerized not only by his middle-of-the-roadness but by the fantasy that I too could play a set of sturdy tunes on a tuesday night at Rockwood with two of my friends just sitting in! The bass player was playing off charts for chrissakes! AND LEVY'S TONE!!! In addition to only playing right notes (more in a minute), the actual sound he was able to produce was phenomenal. It sounded exactly like am electric guitar should sound. Furthermore, while he did have great gear to work with (what appears to be a stock vintage Gibson ES-335 (Sunburst finish) played it through the house guitar amp - a Bogner Shiva that I can't seem to get to sound right without turning it up to 11), Levy proves it's all about that touch. I am guessing he could milk quality tone from a toy banjo. Timbre was only part of the picture, however. What he chooses to play is the other piece of the puzzle. For a guy with a rep. like his, he never plays more than is necessary. As a matter of fact, his guitar playing is so good that you don't notice it until he pops out of the larger texture to throw in a tasty lick or brief solo. It's all about subtlety - something the younger wanna-be-rockstar in me could have never appreciated. It's the kind of thing that now makes guys like Robbie Robertson, Izzy Stradlin, and Mick Taylor some of my faves. These guys (and Levy is certainly right up there on my faves list now) always play for the song and not for the solo. Equally influenced by country, jazz, blues, and R&B guitar playing, Adam Levy demonstrated in one set exactly the style I had been aspiring to for the last two years - I just couldn't yet put my finger on it.
Wow! Do I just wanna be Adam Levy?! Weird. I know: I do shit like this all the time. Every few months, I discover or rediscover some musician, draw some imaginary parallel between and me and him or her or them, and then make it my "life's work" to model my every musical decision on said connection. Who out there remembers when I though I was Elvis Costello? Dave Grohl? Chris Connelly? Ben Folds? or The Rolling Stones? Shamefully, I do. But this feels somehow different. It feels not only attainable but SUStainable. If I could revamp some old tunes, come up with some new clever, solid ones, write out some charts so people could sit in, and practice guitar a bit more, I could play a tuesday night slot at Rockwood. I could probably do that in perpetuity and be, for the first time I can think of, completely musically satisfied. Lofty Goals, eh? :P I know: there are songwriters of various qualities that do this every night. It's no big deal, right? Wrong. Despite my years of experiences playing live music, I have done exactly...wait for it... two solo sets. Maybe I should stop hiding behind my friends and my fat excuses (literally: excuses about my weight) and start playing shows on my own. Anyone wanna book me?
Towards the end of the set - sometime after I noticed what appeared to he the bassist's seven year old daughter cheering excitedly when Levy introduced band members - sometime after Levy bought the entire bar a round of Maker's Mark (I wisely declined) - I turned back to CJ and said something to the effect of, "you just saw an incredible set for free at the best venue in town and the band bought you a drink... remind me why you don't live in New York City?" He laughed a knowing laugh - but I wasn't talking to CJ. I was reminding myself of how lucky I am to have nights like that - nights that literally (and I know this sounds corny) can change the course of your life.
We eventually met up with my buddy Chris and moseyed on over to Ryan's gig where I drank a few more SoCo/Diet/Limes and learned even more about sitting in - but that feels like a different story. Maybe next time...
But it wasn't just about sleeping in. It was about seeing what life might be like if I were only a performer. I probably put more time in practicing the guitar over these last two weeks than I had in the entire two months prior. I wrote a few new tunes. I spent some time and money on my home recording setup. These are the things I just never get around to during my average school week. Some of that may change without the impending threat of grad school hovering over my every time related decisions, but I also know myself better than to believe I will devote all of that new-found time to being a better musician - but who knows? Y'see: I am not one for outwardly making New Year's Resolutions, I think I did make some significant decisions about life over Winter Break.
I think it was Adam Levy's doing...
I had known his name for a few years. In addition to seeing it in the credits to Norah Jones albums (as a guitarist and songwriter) and on posters up on the walls as Banjo Jim's, my wife was actually in Marie Ponsot's poetry workshop with him last year. I also knew that he was one of those guys Russ always talks about. Now: you need to understand something about my friend Russ. In addition to being a killer keyboard player and great composer, Russ is one of those cats that knows about the "guys behind the guys" - or "the guys that so-and-so listen to when they're not busy being so-and-so". You know: those musicians (and I am guessing that this goes for all other art forms) who aren't quite famous enough for your square sister-in-law to have heard of them, yet still has an unbelievably strong rep. amongst hip (not to be confused with hipSTER, they never know of these types) musicians and the like. Anyway: I know that last year when I would pull off a particularly tasty guitar fill (with a bit of tight delay), Russ would compliment me for doing some of "that Adam Levy shit". Yeah. Adam Levy is that guy.
As it goes, my buddy CJ (college roomie, fellow musician/teacher type, the Elwood to my Jake) was in town during break to celebrate his birthday. We decided in addition to catching dinner with friends, we would spend the remainder of the evening bar-hopping in Manhattan. Since I am a bit OCD and generally need a game plan before I go anywhere, I suggested that rather than chase cheap booze, we should look for free music as the Village, East Village, Lower East Side trifecta is rife with free music these days. (side note: At these gigs, musicians only get paid by "passing the hat" during their set, though, strangely, my bands tend to make more money at these gigs than at those for which the audience has been charged a cover, however, I would like that tradition to continue, so please take care of the entertainers.) I purused ye olde interweb and targeted a couple of options, reminding CJ that the places with free tunes charge the same drink prices as those without, and threw together a mental list of who was playing where and at what time and reported back to the birthday boy (who was sitting on the couch across from me). In the time it took me to wrangle up some free entertainment options, CJ sured up the dinner side of things and, in the process, found out our friend Ryan was playing a free show at an Irish bar on MacDougal at 9 PM. This was strangely limiting as we didn't figure to get out of dinner until 7:30ish, but Ryan is the man, and shit was free, so we figured on making it happen. If we played our cards right however, I still figured we'd be able to catch Adam Levy (of Russ reference and poetry class fame) at 8 PM at Rockwood Music Hall. This place has quickly become my favourite spot for gigging and seeing live music and I was looking to show it off to CJ. It's small, has impeccable sound, has a "quality" to "less than" music ration of 85:15, and there is never a cover charge. When CJ texted Ryan back about our plans, he echoed these sentiments as he figured on catching the early part of Adam Levy's set before heading out to his own 9 PM gig.
Dinner was set for 5:30 at Otto. This place is borderline touristy, as it's co-owned by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich (son of Lydia from my fave PBS cooking show), but it's crazy affordable, came highly recommended by CJ's friend Brooke, who was joining us for dinner, and has a wine list (some four times longer than the menu itself) featuring wines ranging in price from $29 to $1600. In addition to CJ, Brooke, Melissa, and I, my friend Soo and her fiance John came along. Soo and I were mad tight back in college. She and I even road-tripped it up to CJ's folks' house in the Birkshires back in the day. We listened to Leon Redbone and, despite the fact that she had no clue as to what she was communicating, she read the baseball box scores aloud to me along the way. Yeah, we had fun. We never dated, never even considered it, yet drifted apart some time after my wife and I got serious. I never fully understood this (still don't), but after seeing her again I have high hopes of rekindling this friendship. I also remembered how much I dig her man, John. In addition to his picking up (and throwing down) some Old School references, he is also a public school teacher, and seemed to be knit of something of the same cloth as me and some of my dopey friends. Here's to seeing Soo and John in '09! John split after dinner and, sadly, so did Melissa. I was hoping she would come along as I just knew she would dig Adam Levy and we hadn't actually seen a show together in some time. We kissed goodbye at the 8th St. R-train station and Soo, Brooke, CJ, and I marched onward through the rather mild winter evening.
We showed up just in time. Rockwood is small and fills up quick, but due to the latenick nature of so many New Yorker's, you can generally find a place to stand if you get there as sets are turning over. We got a great spot in the corner where the bar meets the window, said our hellos to Ryan and his crew, and grabbed a drink. Now, I should confess: While not a heavy drinker, I am generally a beer drinker; yet on this evening, I had already had two glasses of wine, and without even giving it a thought, the phrase "So-Co and Diet with a lime" tumbled from my lips when the bartender asked what I wanted to drink. While this story should generally extol the virtues of great music and camaraderie, I am fully willing to admit that the amount of Southern Comfort imbibed may have had some effect on my enjoyment of the music that night.
I learned a lot about "sitting in" that night. I don't do nearly enough of it. This is partially because I don't have the confidence or the stomach to schmooze my way into gigs, but it's also because I have built myself a rather insular circle of musical conspirators. I mean: I truly love playing with the people I do so with on the regular, but there is a part of me that would love to have my skills tested (and hopefully appreciated) with another group of players. In addition to giving me an excuse to play more and, in turn, learn more about collaborating, it could potentially open me up to an entirely new universe of players and gig/venue opportunities. I might even make a little scratch, as the circle I run in doesn't tends to play for love and love alone. Maybe I should get some business cards made... I bring all this "sitting in" stuff here, because, in addition to getting to see one of the better guitar players in town play, Shawn Pelton was sitting in on drums. He is one of the, or perhaps, THE go-to session/gig guy in NYC. He's also the house drummer on SNL. I had first heard of him from my friend Vinny - who, having been on tour with Smokey Robinson and Muse and done live sound for several high-profile events like the VMA's or NBA all-star week, only talks about top guys. While I certainly didn't recognize the face (Ryan actually pointed it out), I was certainly familiar with his playing. He understands groove like no one else. He is a master of subtlety. He is one of the biggest names in the world of professional drumming, and there he was: sitting in with Adam Levy. Before the band even hit, I knew we were in for a real treat.
Adam Levy is a little older than your average Rockwood entertainer. He is a little chubbier (though not fat) than your average guitar hero. He is far more soft-spoken than your average frontman. As a not-so-skinny, not-so-young, not-charismatic-enough-to-really-front a band type of guy, I found his mere presence downstage center incredible reassurring, appealing, even inspiring. While I have long since given up on my rock n' roll dreams, I was finally able to mentally recast myself in a different light. Leave it to Neddy Naricissism, yours truly, to go so far, but I couldn't help but think, from the moment I laid eyes and ears upon this guy, that I too could pull this thing off. The music certainly helped. See: he writes decidedly solid songs. They are by no means remarkable, but therein lies their charm. They are compositionally very strong, highly melodic, a bit formulaic (but I am a junkie for that), a little clever, but never mind-blowingly awesome. There's no evidence of literary pretensions one might find in much of today's indie rock, nor any of the musical fussiness you might find in the same scene. He writes consistently stalwart and soulful tunes about love lost and found. Don't get me wrong: I loved these songs! They far better than most of what I churn out, but tunes of this quality (as opposed to those from the McCartneys, Zappas, Waits, and Stevies of the world) felt somehow attainable - and he played a whole set of them! Tune after tune, SoCo/Diet/Lime after SoCo/Diet/Lime, I was memerized not only by his middle-of-the-roadness but by the fantasy that I too could play a set of sturdy tunes on a tuesday night at Rockwood with two of my friends just sitting in! The bass player was playing off charts for chrissakes! AND LEVY'S TONE!!! In addition to only playing right notes (more in a minute), the actual sound he was able to produce was phenomenal. It sounded exactly like am electric guitar should sound. Furthermore, while he did have great gear to work with (what appears to be a stock vintage Gibson ES-335 (Sunburst finish) played it through the house guitar amp - a Bogner Shiva that I can't seem to get to sound right without turning it up to 11), Levy proves it's all about that touch. I am guessing he could milk quality tone from a toy banjo. Timbre was only part of the picture, however. What he chooses to play is the other piece of the puzzle. For a guy with a rep. like his, he never plays more than is necessary. As a matter of fact, his guitar playing is so good that you don't notice it until he pops out of the larger texture to throw in a tasty lick or brief solo. It's all about subtlety - something the younger wanna-be-rockstar in me could have never appreciated. It's the kind of thing that now makes guys like Robbie Robertson, Izzy Stradlin, and Mick Taylor some of my faves. These guys (and Levy is certainly right up there on my faves list now) always play for the song and not for the solo. Equally influenced by country, jazz, blues, and R&B guitar playing, Adam Levy demonstrated in one set exactly the style I had been aspiring to for the last two years - I just couldn't yet put my finger on it.
Towards the end of the set - sometime after I noticed what appeared to he the bassist's seven year old daughter cheering excitedly when Levy introduced band members - sometime after Levy bought the entire bar a round of Maker's Mark (I wisely declined) - I turned back to CJ and said something to the effect of, "you just saw an incredible set for free at the best venue in town and the band bought you a drink... remind me why you don't live in New York City?" He laughed a knowing laugh - but I wasn't talking to CJ. I was reminding myself of how lucky I am to have nights like that - nights that literally (and I know this sounds corny) can change the course of your life.
We eventually met up with my buddy Chris and moseyed on over to Ryan's gig where I drank a few more SoCo/Diet/Limes and learned even more about sitting in - but that feels like a different story. Maybe next time...
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