beautiful, funny, sad & true

Friday afternoon, I drove up to Seattle (actually, it was Renton, which is the suburb most famous for being the resting place of Jimi Hendrix) to play a gig with my friend BT.   It was at a venue I was not familiar with, so when I drove into the parking lot, I was surprised to find that it was a small ‘British-style’ pub that was located next to the Department of Licensing in a strip mall.  Veeeery rock and roll.

I left my bass in the car and walked inside to check the place out and say hi to BT.  He was there, naturally, getting the PA system all set up.  The drummer was also there, and it was my first time meeting him, since he was a fill-in guy that night as well.  In fact, it was BT’s first time playing a gig with him, which can be very telling about someone’s personality.

Usually during set-up, especially between new people, there’s a lot of conversation and chit-chat about all kinds of things, but this time there was a noticeable lack of conversation, with BT over on one side of the stage, turned away and working on something, and Drummer sort of sitting behind his kit, adjusting his cymbals and whatnot.  It was weird.  I broke the ice by asking the drummer about his drum kit, which was a beautiful, custom-made kit that was much too large for such a small place.  He had about a million different cymbals, too, which were sprawled out everywhere and left precious little room for BT and me.   I moved my monitor and microphone as far forward as I could, in order that I wouldn’t have two cymbals a foot from my head.

Finally it was time to start, and it turned out that the drummer didn’t have a good ‘feel’ at all.  I’m a competent enough bass player and musician that I can lock in with anybody, and I could not lock in with this guy.  His timing wasn’t solid, and he put in lots of unnecessary flourishes throughout every song.  Yeesh.

When we took a break, Drummer went to talk with a couple of his friends, and BT and I went outside to enjoy the cool breeze.  He told me that the first thing out of Drummer’s mouth when he arrived was, “You set everything up wrong.  It needs to be further over.”  He told me that he’d talked with Drummer about how much gear to bring, and Drummer assured him that he’d keep it small.  Drummer also brought this weird headphone mixer and effect thingy and tried to plug it in, and got angry with BT for not knowing how to use it.  This all went down right before I showed up, which explains the air of tension onstage.

Rule One of being a for-hire musician; never bite the hand that feeds you.  You don’t walk in and insult the person who hired you, and you certainly don’t want to be snippy with them if they don’t know how to use your personal equipment.  If you do decide to do those things, however, you’d better be a good enough player that your musicianship alone will hopefully redeem your behavior, because if you’re not, you won’t be called again, and worse yet, you will earn yourself a bad reputation around town.

Drummers are particularly prone to this sort of bravado.  This guy also grew up in Los Angeles, and he had what I like to call the L.A. Self-Promotion Syndrome.  Everyone I’ve ever met from L.A. has a particular way of talking about him- or herself.  They always seem to be trying to put themselves ahead of others, or to drop a name in just the right way; you get the idea.  It’s very peculiar and specific.  So you can imagine what a bravado-prone drummer, who’s also from L.A., is like.   Ugh.

We slogged through about four hours’ worth of songs, and I think three songs sounded good in that whole span of time.  We just had to laugh, but after a while, BT’s laugh reminded me of a sheet pulled over broken glass (a very memorable image from a very un-memorable Ayn Rand book).  There were three or four times we actually had to stop a song because it sounded so bad.  We got through the night, though, and at two-thirty in the morning, we finally got everything packed up and out of there.  Drummer gave me his business card and went on his way.  BT actually had a gig scheduled with him for the next day.  I don’t envy BT.  I crashed in his extra bedroom, in my sleeping bag on the floor, for about four hours, and then woke up at nine to meet my brother and his family for breakfast.  That’s a story for the next entry.

The thing that made this particular gig bearable, though, was a guy in the audience.  He requested songs like “Cocaine” and walked in front of the stage drunkenly appreciating us when we played his requests.  Then he started requesting songs by Sublime, which none of us knew.  “I’m from Long Beach,” he said, about fourteen times.  “I usually listen to gangsta rap, but after I saw Sublime, it made me realize that you guys [meaning musicians in general] can really play.”

“Well thanks, man,” BT said diplomatically.  “We’d sure play some Sublime if we knew any.  I’ll try and learn some for you by next time.”

“I’m from Long Beach,” the guy repeated, with significance.

“That’s cool,” Drummer said.  “I’m from L.A. too.”

“Yeah, man, so you know.  Sublime, man.  That’s where they’re from too.  You guys sure you don’t know any Sublime?”

This conversation happened three different times.  And for the record, why is someone who ‘normally listens to gangsta rap’ hanging out in an English-style bar, anyway?  Hilarious.

I’m really glad none of our friends were there to see that show.  The bar owner guy said, “Hey, guys, sorry there aren’t more people here for you.  Usually Friday nights are pretty crazy around here.   I don’t know what’s going on.”

“That’s okay,” I said, laughing and casting a glance over toward BT.  “Tonight that’s probably a good thing, at least as far as we’re concerned.”

Every once in a while you have gigs that just don’t work out.  It’s totally normal.  I look back on that show as being fun, though, if only for reasons other than it was supposed to have.  It certainly wasn’t stressful or anything.  We just laughed our way through train wreck after train wreck, which has its own special form of appeal.

After being mildly bummed out all week, I went on an excellent day trip with a couple of friends yesterday.  We saw the house from the movie The Goonies, went to the top of the hill overlooking the town, and then just walked around the town, by way of a couple of local brew pubs. The pictures came out. . .okay.  It was overcast and misty all day, which makes photography a bit challenging.

This morning I got up early to meet a Seattle friend, her son, and two of her friends for breakfast at my favorite breakfast place in town, which was also a really good time.  Now I’m home listening to Kathleen Edwards and getting ready for an IrishBand gig, which is at a house in Northeast Portland.  The owners brew their own beer, and each year they have a big blowout of a party to celebrate the release of this year’s batch of beers, which they distribute at local restaurants afterward.  A friend and I went once before, and we were the only two quasi-hipsters in attendance.  The attendees were basically thirty-year-old frat boys (and girls).  Well, here’s an example of what the conversations were like.

When you walk in the door, you are encouraged to make a name tag.  I wrote my nickname, “Mr. T,” on mine and slapped it onto my T-shirt.  When I stepped up to the bar to order a beer, a guy saw my name tag and said, ” ‘Mr. T’, huh?  With a name like that, I’d expect you to be black and have a bunch of gold chains and a mohawk.”  He laughed, and I said, “Right, that’s the jo–. . .yup.”  I’ll probably go by my nickname again this time.   What am I saying?  Of course I will.

So what does the title “Contagious” have to do with anything?  Well, I saw this drawing on Artemis Wilde’s web site, and loved it, and felt that it’s apropos to how I’ve been feeling the last couple of days.

Sure, I could have stayed home and been a crankypants all weekend, but instead I choose to encourage better behavior than that, both from myself and from others, and a smile is the best way to do that.   So the title of this entry is shamelessly copied from her, as is the picture.  You can find out more about Artemis Wilde here.  I just love her simple, direct, touching style.

And now I have to pack up my bass and everything and get to the gig.  I just have to remember to bring my smile with me, and turn that frown upside down or whatever.

Portland just got hit by the craziest storm.  We had 40-mile-per-hour winds, torrential rain, thunder and lightning like I’ve never heard (something like two hundred strikes in the last couple of hours), and now it seems to have passed, as if to say, “Enh. . .I’m done with you now, Portland.”

Really weird.

I was supposed to have a gig tonight, but I decided to give it a miss because of the weather, and the traffic, and the fallen trees, and all of that.  If I thought we’d have had an audience, I’d have happily made the trip out there, but the newscasters were telling everyone to stay home, and I could imagine driving an hour out to the gig, only to be playing for an empty room.  Not worth it.

We had reports of a funnel cloud over the area that my gig was supposed to take place, but luckily the golf-ball-sized hail never did materialize.  I moved my car underneath a tree in my neighborhood to keep it safe, which seems to have been an unnecessary precaution, but we do still have plenty of thunderstorms on the way tonight.  A tornado was reported just off of the Oregon coast, near Lincoln City, which is pretty mind-boggling.  That NEVER happens.

Anyway.

I guess if you want a Portland weather report, you’ll have already been reading elsewhere, but I’m okay, and the power stayed on the whole time (unlike the homes of fifty thousand other people in the Portland area), so the worst is over.

So.  Yeah.  The trip to Port Townsend.  Finally.  Sorry it took a while to get around to this.  PT trips always end up being big stories.

Good times, as per usual.  Our IrishBand show was on Friday night, and we spent the entire rest of the weekend partying, and eating, and walking, and talking.  PT is small enough (and pretty enough) that you can just walk everywhere in the downtown area.   Singer and I arrived in town first, and we walked from place to place, and I had my camera ready for a few of them.

it seemed that everywhere we went we met someone Singer knew, who was brimming over with interesting stories.  We met his first grade teacher, and a couple of other friends, and his uncle (Ex-step-uncle?  Not biological, anyway. . .isn’t this interesting?), who wore an ascot and drunkenly talked our ears off in a comic way.  He was quite the character.

We met up with some of our friends from Portland (who also moved from PT), walked downtown to buy a huge bottle of beer each, and then walked to the pier to sit and relax for a while.  The sitting and relaxing (and, of course, the picture-taking) was already in progress, when an unhappy-looking guy walked up, took his shirt off, and stood at the end of the pier, staring down into the water.  We called out to him, “You okay, dude?”

He didn’t look at us, but instead hopped over the rail and dove into Puget Sound.  We called to him a few more times, and told him there was a ladder on the other side of the pier, but he didn’t respond to us in any way.  It was pretty freaky.  He sat there treading water for a long time. . .

. . .and then swam back over to the dock and climbed out, walked clear around where we were sitting, and never once acknowledged our presence.  Luckily everything turned out to be okay, but I think we were all fearing the worst, or at least preparing ourselves to dive in after him.  Situation averted, we finished our beers and walked back up to get food.  Before long, it was time for IrishBand to play our show, which was pretty awesome, and the venue was packed with people.  Finally rolled into Violinist’s parents’ house at around three in the morning.

The next morning Violinist’s parents fixed us a glorious breakfast of the heartiest French toast you can imagine, with a delicious array of toppings (I chose the homemade berry sauce) and veggie sausage on the side.  Suddenly it was time for the Rhody Festival parade, so we drove into town in time for that.  I had my camera, but all parades look the same, so I didn’t feel the need to capture this one for posterity.  It was fun, though, and we met up with another of Singer’s friends (a former recording studio owner, which was interesting), and went to lunch with him after the parade was over.

Y’know what?  I’m gonna change the plan for this entry, because really, the whole rest of Saturday was spent eating and drinking.  Singer had to go to his ten-year high school reunion, so Drummer and I got dropped off at a party with some people we barely knew.  One of them was very drunk already (this was around 3:00 in the afternoon), and he wanted to watch the soccer game.  He stood in front of the TV, yelling horrible things like, “I knew you were gonna miss that, you f**king queer!”  and “Jewbag!  What the f**k was that?!“  A couple of people tried to stop the flow of insults, but you can’t reason with people who are that drunk and belligerent, so I decided that I needed to make myself scarce for a while.  I walked out of the house and down the hill (I could still hear the strings of obscenities from three long blocks away) into town and over to the beach, where I sat quietly on the rocks for a long while, before walking the length of the beach to a small rocky point to collect some mussel and oyster shells, which were everywhere.  I must have been gone for about an hour or so, when I got a phone call from Violinist saying, “Hey, noticed you weren’t around.  Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.  I just needed to be away from the verbal abuse.  I also wanted some quiet anyway.  I’m down on the beach.”

“Really?  You walked clear over there?  By the fort?”

“No, the marina.  I’m sitting on a log as we speak.  I’ll be back before too long, but I’m kind of enjoying being here by myself for a while.”

“Oh, really?  Cause we were gonna walk down there after the game is over.”

So I walked around on the beach for another half hour or so, then headed back, clear around the marina and the condos, and then up the hill to the party house.  The soccer game was just about over, so we all started looking for the next distraction.  It came in the form of a cooler that someone had ingeniously attached wheels, handlebars, and an electric motor to (you’d have to see it to believe it) to create a miniature electric scooter, so we each took a couple of turns riding it around the block.  My pictures didn’t come out, but I think Violinist may have some.  It was pretty dang funny.  When the batteries started to lose their charge, we put the scooter away to charge it up again, and then all walked down to the park near the beach.  ObnoxiousDrunk was up to his usual antics, so the rest of us were pretty much trying to keep as much distance between him and ourselves as we could.

Drummer and I walked down to the beach for a little while, and I told him about the multitude of shells that were down there, so he wanted to grab a few for his lady friend, and also get a temporary reprieve from ObnoxiousDrunk.  This post is getting long, so I’ll just say that there was Thai food involved, and more walking, and lots more drinking, and then around midnight we walked back down the hill to see a punk band (who will remain nameless) play.

They were pretty good (unlike my pictures from the show!), but the general concensus was that eight or ten years ago, everybody thought that they were the coolest band anywhere.  These days, however, their lifestyle of excess is starting to take its toll on the band members, and apparently it’s really starting to show.  Luckily, we had snuck into the show for free, by way of a side door near the bar in the front of the buildng.  Don’t tell the band.

Did I mention that after the show, it was around one-thirty in the morning?  Naturally, that meant we had to go back to the party house to continue the festivities before heading back to Violinist’s house at around three.  Apparently our car got egged on the way back, but I don’t even remember it, quite honestly, because my body was already beginning to shut itself down.  We got to Violinist’s house and I just kinda collapsed on my bed.  I started to check my text messages and voice mails, but I ended up falling asleep right away and snoring really loudly.  So loudly, in fact, that Singer walked by the room I was in and poked his head in the door to check on me.  He laughed and ran downstairs, telling the other guys, “C’mere, you have to see this!”

This was all unknown to me, obviously, until the next morning when I woke up to find that I had some messages saying things like, “Ha ha” and “We’re watching you!”  Apparently I’d fallen asleep with my glasses on, and they’d fallen halfway off my face, and my phone was sitting on my chest.  Hilarious.  No pictures of that, thank gawd.   It was as if my body was determined to stop me from doing absolutely any other movement that day.   And no wonder, too; it was a crazy day.

In the morning we woke up to another amazing breakfast and conversation with Violinist’s parents, then after a few hours said our goodbyes and headed to a friend’s house, where there was yet another barbecue and party happening.  We were all still stuffed from our enormous breakfast, so we gave the food a miss, but a couple of the guys did have a drink.  I gorged myself on cup after cup of water, which my poor little body was so thirsty for.  We hung out there for an hour or two, and then slowly made our way out of town.  Drummer was really impatient to get back home, and sat fuming silently in Violinist’s car while the rest of us ran a few more errands.  Manager needed to buy some parts for his motorcycle, and then had to make a few small repairs on it.  Then we needed to stop for gas, and made another stop at a hardware store.  Drummer practically had steam coming out of his ears by the time we left Port Townsend, and Singer and I (in Singer’s car) could only imagine how frustrated Violinist must have been with him on the four-hour drive back to Portland.

So there you go; another crazy trip to PT under our metaphorical belts.

The rest of this week has been a blur of activity as well, which is why it took me so long to write this entry in the first place.

Spent the day doing laundry and packing for another trip with IrishBand to the beautiful seaport town of Port Townsend, Washington.  I’ll be there all weekend, and The Plan is to come back with a bunch of stories and pictures.  Here are some links to the entries from our previous trips:

IrishBand Goes to Port Townsend

A Great Weekend in PT

No Strings to Hold Me Down

Those should tie you over until I get back and have time to share the New Adventures of IrishBand.

In other news, we had a fun and slightly drunken gig tonight, and then I came home and had a nice long phone conversation with BoringFish.  Afterwards, I gave myself a haircut; my first time ever doing that.  And now, it’s almost 3:00 a.m., and time to go to bed.  Singer is picking me up at 9:30, which is the earliest I’ve had to get up in the last two months.  Yikes!  Wish me luck.

Off to sleep (perchance to dream) and then bright and early to PT.  See you when I get back!