beautiful, funny, sad & true

Yann TIersen’s concert in Portland was fantastic, as I knew it would be, but I have to admit that there were a few surprises.  The first and most obvious was that he didn’t even bring an accordion.  The second was that it was an all-electric show, with the exception of the violin and melodica.  And the ukelele, which KeyboardGirl and BassPlayer each played once or twice.   There was a Moog synthesizer too, which was used by Yann and KeyboardGirl to interesting effect.  It was awesome to see Yann and the band in this electrified way, but I would imagine that fans who are only familiar with the Amelie soundtrack and his earlier work may have been disappointed with this show.

The crowd seemed to be most appreciative when something outside the realm of NormalRockBandLineup happened, such as when Yann played his violin.  He launched into Sur Le Fil, a solo violin piece, to thunderous cheers and applause.  I think after the long jams, we were all excited to hear something recognizable, and something we associate with the best of Yann’s musical abilities.  As a multi-instrumentalist myself, however, I certainly know all too well about the hassle of carrying around a truckload of weird, fragile, unruly (not to mention large) instruments in a car and a plane and a van and a trailer.  I can only imagine what it’s like to do that for months on end.  But accordions and mandolins are relatively small.  Jeez, Yann, you could have at least brought one of those, or maybe you can find a backup guitarist who also plays something else besides guitar?  I hereby volunteer my services to you.

I certainly wasn’t bored or disappointed with the show in any way, but I would have loved to hear at least a little bit of accordion, or piano, or something.  What I love most about Yann is that he’s a composer and not ‘just’ a rock band.  Or maybe it’s that he can be a rock band if he wants, but he’s so much more than that.  This was a very good rock band, but it was still a rock band.  I would have gladly shelled out much more money to see him at PCPA with a more eclectic instrumental lineup.

The things that did disappoint me about the show had nothing to do with Yann or his band.  First of all, there were signs everywhere at the venue saying “NO PHOTOGRAPHY” and everyone was told at the door, “No cameras, and no camera phones. ” This policy was strictly enforced, too, because I saw the staff guys wearing fanny packs that were stuffed with contraband cameras, and I heard him say to someone, “You can’t use your camera.  It’ll be confiscated.”  Well, crap, I thought, and dutifully left my camera in the pocket of my hoodie for the entire show.  Therefore, I have no photographic proof that I was there, which is a shame too, because I was standing in a really good spot.  Le sigh.

I had two friends come to the show, one of whom I had given my extra ticket to, but both arrived later and were unable to find me, so that was disappointing.  The good thing, I guess, is that I was able to pay more attention to the performances, but it would have definitely been nicer to have company.

The tour T-shirts wouldn’t have looked good on me, and I already own all the CD’s, so I came home empty-handed and a bit heavy-hearted to have missed out on my friends, but I was supremely glad to have seen the perfomance of a true musical genius who I never imagined I’d have the chance to hear in person, especially not without a great deal of traveling.  The Wonder Ballroom is about ten minutes’ drive from my place.  And I’ve had the opportunity to play there, too, so I know what the backstage area and everything is like.  I imagined Yann sitting on a sofa in one of the green rooms in the basement, warming up on his violin.

Here’s a picture from the previous night’s show in Seattle, which another of my friends took with her camera phone.  Apparently they didn’t have the same anti-photography regime in place, or if they did, she was able to circumvent it long enough to snap this one shot.  Anyway, here it is.

Incidentally, Yann’s the one with the longish hair, just to the right of center.

It was a really great show, overall, and I’d recommend that you take any chance you can get to see Yann.

This month has been one of the busiest I’ve ever had.  Recording and/or rehearsals wish IrishBand almost every night, and one night Andrea came to visit and rehearse a song she wrote for her wedding, which is happening on Friday.  I’ll be playing cello and her sister will be playing piano.  From there we went to dinner at Por Que No (one of the best and most authentic (and least expensive!) Mexican restaurants in town) and then went to have coffee and play Scrabble at Palio, one of my favorite little coffee shops.

She won, by the way, but it was really close.  330-something to 314.  There will be a rematch, but I’m not sure when, since we won’t have a chance to hang out again before her wedding, and then of course she’ll be going to Canada for another ceremony with her family and then back to Switzerland, where she lives.

A couple more nights of rehearsals followed, and then I headed up to Seattle on Friday to play bass with my friend Brandon’s classic rock band.  Super fun to play and hang out with him again.  In the morning we went to breakfast and then I raced the three hours’ drive home to Portland, in order that I’d be back to set up for the IrishBand show at 4:30.

The show was a complete blast.  It featured a pair of dancers, an aerialist, a ukelele player, a sword swallower/fire breather, a martial arts/juggling/comedy group (Nanda; check ’em out.  They’re the coolest group ever, I promise you.), then IrishBand finished up with a set.  Oh, and then there was dancing for an hour or so after that.  It was a great time.  I’m not even going to attempt to describe everything, cause it would take too long, but my modus operandi is that if people do cool things in front of me while I’m holding a camera, it’s my duty to capture those moments.  Behind the scenes is where the real show always happens, anyway.

After partying for a few hours everything was set up and ready, we went out front and mingled a bit.

This picture is fuzzy (or was it just me?  har har) and terrible as far as quality goes, but at least you can get a sense of what the people and the main room were like that night. . .

. . .and then I handed my camera off to Whit, who took some pictures of the actual event while I climbed upstairs and sat in the balcony with the rest of IrishBand to stay out of sight of the audience and watch the show.

After Nanda were finished, we set up and rocked the house for about an hour.  Oh yeah. . .and then I danced.  Yes, believe it or not, it’s true.  I did some moonwalking (both forwards and backwards. . .dang right!) and a whole bunch of ‘normal’ dancing too.   A good time was had by all.  Those of us who were left at the end of the night had the pleasure of helping clean up the place and empty all of the risers and seats and everything out of it by loading them into trucks, but even that somehow ended up being a good time.

In other news, I’m going to see Yann frickin’ Tiersen (you know, who wrote the frickin’ Amelie soundtrack!) on Wednesday night here in little old frickin’ Portland.  And he’s not even playing at a huge venue, either, but the frickin’ Wonder Ballroom, which has about a 400-person capacity, and where I MYSELF HAVE PLAYED.  I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about this.  I play the accordion because of him.  It’s true.

Le sigh.

Friday, after spending the day playing and recording drum tracks for my own version of one of Breanna’s songs from her previous band, I walked to the store to get ingredients for dinner.  Walking back up my street, arms full of groceries, I found that the police had all of the streets blocked off, and there were people standing on the sidewalk watching, all the way up the street.  I asked someone what was going on, and she said that it was drug-related, and that they were trying to get into the house of a person who was both selling and using drugs.  I continued walking on MyStreet, and a cop stopped me and told me that I wouldn’t be able to get through on MyStreet for a while.  I asked which way he’d recommend I go to get home, and he said I could walk up NextStreet and be out of harm’s way.  I thanked him and took the opportunity to quickly survey MyStreet in the process.  There were officers with rifles, and a SWAT team with an armored vehicle of some sort parked a block from my building, on the other side of the street.  I walked home quickly and grabbed my camera.

The neighbor lady across the street saw me and called laughingly to her husband, “Hey, he’s taking photographs!”  Someone walked over and asked the plainclothes policeman what was up, and according to NeighborSusan, “Apparently it was actually shooting-related. They located, or at least thought they’d located, a suspect for a shooting that occurred elsewhere at some previous time.”  The cop was telling people to stay inside for about half an hour.  I did, and listened with my window open.  I heard no gun shots, and the multitude of cars drove away half an hour later, so I’m assuming that means the incident ended well enough.

I guess you could say the jury’s still out on what really happened, (I’m gonna go with the shooting scenario rather than the drug scenario; drug busts don’t usually involve that many big guns and vehicles, unless it was a huge operation) but that was certainly not something you see every day in this neighborhood.

I can NOT believe how busy life has been for these last two weeks.  I had two huge shows, both of which required tons of preparation and rehearsal with the various groups.  The first one was on St. Patrick’s Day with IrishBand. . .

. . .which was a total blast.  We played for four hours that night, with a couple one-hour breaks while another band played in between our sets.  We kept people there, singing and dancing and rockin’ out until 2:00 a.m.   Since then, we had a smaller (but just as fun) show and started doing more recording at my place.  We finished the drum tracks for one song, and started them on a second.

The next huge show after St. P’s Day was the CD release party for Susie Blue, which took place at the new-and-improved Mississippi Studios.  That was already one of my favorite places to play, but now it’s been revamped and enlarged, turning it into quite possibly the best of the medium-sized venues in Portland.

Without getting too far into geek-out territory, after the second song, I looked down to find that the lights on my big keyboard were off.  I had accidentally set the accordion on the power strip switch and turned it off, which meant that I lost all of the good sounds I had loaded into it specifically for that show.  I had a nice little freak-out moment onstage, and told Susie, “I lost power.”  “How long will it take to re-load everything?” she asked.  “It’d take way too long.  I’ll figure something out.”  Luckily I had my tiny Casio (which you can see on top of the big keyboard) there for one song, because I ended up using it on lots of songs.  It totally saved the day, and the show went off without another hitch.  For an eleven-piece band (most of whom were not onstage during the song that was being performed when this picture was taken), that’s quite a feat indeed.

Incidentally, here’s a song from Susie’s new CD called “Fading” on which I play accordion and drums, and also was part of the hand-clapping and cheering.  I play accordion on a bunch of the other songs, as well as piano and Omnichord.  If you’re interested, you can check out our web site, and listen to or buy some songs from CDBaby.

Three days ago, my life got overtaken by a project that a bass player friend of mine called me to fill in for.  There’s a dance group in town called Bodyvox, who created dance interpretations to a bunch of Tom Waits’ songs, with a live band and a handful of opera singers.  The guy who’s playing accordion and electric guitar (as well as saxopohone and slide guitar) can’t make it to the show on Saturday, so my bassist friend, who is the musical director for the show, called me in a panic on Tuesday.  Since then, my life has been thrown into a frenzy of learning songs, as well as attending rehearsals and performances as an understudy of sorts.  The show I’m playing is the matinee show on Saturday afternoon, and I’m feeling confident about it.   I’m listening to the CD as I’m writing this, as a matter of fact.  I’m on the song Hoist That Rag, which features one of my favorite guitarists, Marc Ribot.

Add to that the recording sessions I’ve had at my place recently, both for money and for IrishBand, and you get a very busy Todd.  SO busy, in fact, that this is the first time I’ve had to write anything at all, aside from the occasional link to a video or something.  I almost added a clip from “Girl on the Bridge” an amazing French movie which I watched last night.  It just came out on DVD, which is strange because it’s only about ten years old, and I can’t imagine why its DVD release was held up for such a long time.   Well, what the heck, here’s a link to what is probably the most famous scene.  I love this movie, because it never quite goes in the directions you think it’s going to go.  Very similar to Angel-A.

The song (sung by Marianne Faithfull) is also amazing.  If you’ve ever seen “City of Lost Children”, you may recognize it from the ending credits; that’s the movie for which it was originally written, but it’s since appeared in many others as well.

Well, that’s what’s been going on with me lately.  I know it’s a lot to handle in one blog entry, from songs to pictures to movie links and clips and everything else, but. . .well. . .welcome to my world these days.  I had a lot to share, and it may be another few days before I have another chance to write again, so there’s that.

Hope all in your world is well!

Well, it finally happened; I and at least ten other people got laid off on Friday.

It wasn’t at all a surprise.  There have been many rounds of layoffs over the last six months, so we lasted quite a bit longer than most.  Two or three months ago, the company was taken over by another, and the new company seems to have decided to simply dismantle much of the original, and send the work elsewhere in the country, leaving us high and dry in the process.

I’m not bummed about this at all.  If anything, it’s a relief not to have to wonder what’s going to happen anymore, and I can put it all behind me and move on toward the future now.  I’m going to go on unemployment, like so many others are right now, and sort out my life while I figure what to do next.  I have a fairly simple and ‘low overhead’ lifestyle, and I also have friends, resources and talents that I haven’t had before.  I also know that it’s possible to survive on extremely meager means–I’ve certainly done that before–so that won’t slow me down much.  I’m not being a Pollyanna about it, either.  I think any of my friends could tell you that I’m good at assessing situations, and that I’m nothing if not a realist.  I think the glass is neither half-empty nor half-full, but that it’s twice as big as it needs to be.

I know; I’m clever.

I’m going to reach out and promote myself more for musical work.  I’m going to ask my friends and colleagues to refer me for producing, recording, mixing, et cetera, and I’ll also be available for playing with more people too.  I’m looking forward to all of this.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, and send me good thoughts throughout this transitional time, and don’t hesitate to ask me about musical endeavors, or refer me to people you think would appreciate my talents.

Thanks!

This whole getting-laid-off thing is going to be a blessing, I can just feel it.

p.s. – Now I’ll have much more time for blogging!