Here’s a video of IrishBand, which is a total of about one second in length, from the show last weekend. Incidentally, I’m the guy on the right, with the bass and the black fedora with the peacock feather. Enjoy!
What can I say? I think it’s funny to post stuff like this. FYI, you can double-click on the video to make it play again and again and again. You know you want to.
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.
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!
After three parties, two rehearsals, and two recording sessions, I caught a nasty cold this weekend, just in time for another crazy week of three gigs, each of which is important enough that I can’t even think about thinking about missing one. The good news is that I don’t have to worry about working or anything, because every day’s a sick day when you’re unemployed.
One thing about being sick is that I’ve spent much more time in bed than usual, which has provided the opportunity for many more dreams than usual too. Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn this into an all-dreams-all-the-time blog, but they’ve been unusually long and detailed. The one in the previous entry (the one with the ‘coherent narrative’) has actually been the shortest of the three. Last night’s involved a meeting and long conversation with my girlfriend from college, who I haven’t talked to since right after I moved to Portland, and who doesn’t seem to be on any of the usual social networking sites, either.  I’d actually really love to see how she’s been doing. I’ve looked her up from time to time, so far to no avail.
The night before last, I dreamt that I was in this building full of not-quite-humans (something was different about their eyes, and some of the ‘people’ were very reptilian-looking) who kept trying to assimilate me and entrap me in their building forever. I kept trying to escape, and they kept catching me and bringing me back. They even created a ‘perfect’ girl for me, in the hopes of seducing me into their group, but they spent all their time on her face and her legs, and left the rest of her body slightly unfinished, which. . .let’s just say, didn’t have the desired effect that they had hoped for. Once, I actually escaped and saw a friend of mine outside the grounds (C, my filmmaker friend who lives in SaintFrancisCity), but realized that I’d forgotten both my shoes and my pants, so I told him I’d just go back in and grab them and that I’d be right back. Naturally, however, they caught me again.  At one point, they realized that I play guitar, which gave them the idea to create a big stage and a band, whereby I could teach lessons and put on rock shows to my heart’s content, but I said, “That’s nice, but I’m probably just going to try and leave again anyway.”
Very strange dream, and I woke up and then went back into it at least fifteen or twenty times, which is also extremely rare.
I think that may be enough dream talk for now, quite frankly. I only write out and share the ones that I think make compelling enough reading, and these two were far too long and detailed to do that. The previous one ended up being almost three thousand words, and I realize that’s an awful lot to ask y’all to read. Dream-sharing in blogs is not always the most entertaining thing for readers, either, so I try to be judicious about doing that.
Moving on.
Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and despite being sick and feeling hellish, I’m playing (and singing; I sing backup, which means lots of high harmonies) tonight with IrishBand until two o’clock in the morning, then packing up and driving at least one other person home, so it’ll probably be like three before I get home myself.
Hope you have a great St. P’s Day. If you have a shot of Irish whiskey for me, I’ll have a shot of TheraFlu for you in return.
As I promised, here are my favorite pictures from this past year, in no particular order.
The landscape between Utah and Idaho is vast, and seems quintessentially American somehow.
This picture was taken outside the studio when we were mixing Andrea’s CD. There had been a freak snowstorm overnight, and we all woke up to this beautiful scene. Amazingly, the snow was all gone by the afternoon. We finished mixing the songs, and then I drove back to Portland and went on a great first date. That was a good day.
Andrea had just read and been inspired by the book Blue Like Jazz, and she wanted to take a little hike around the campus of the college here in town in which the book is set. Though it has changed in the decades since the book was written, this was and still is a beautiful place to hike and explore.
This is one of my favorite locations to take pictures. It’s an abandoned cannery town along the Columbia river. Sorry about the small size.
When Breanna and Justin and I were on tour in Reno, Justin was getting his CD mixed in Portland, and the guy would send Justin mixes via e-mail, for him either to approve or to request some small changes. After our show, he and Bre were listening to the final mixes, so I left and walked around for an hour, and took about a million pictures of the city at night. Came back and listened for a while, and when they went to bed, our host and I stayed up talking for another hour and a half afterwards. That was my favorite day (and night) of the tour.
ViolinistKarlee, me, Breanna and Justin on our tour, after our show in Redding. This picture just puts a smile on my face every time I see it. Karlee is such a lil thug.
This is my car, all loaded up with instruments to go to the studio and record my parts for Andrea’s CD. I’m always amazed at just how much stuff this car can carry, despite its diminutive size.
ChefDave, in an instantly classic pose. I love the way the light is gleaming off the knife. Incidentally, you owe to it yourself to eat at the Sego Lily Cafe in Bountiful, Utah, by the way, next time you’re there. Dave’s food is phenomenal.
There are lots of abandoned military bunkers outside Port Townsend, Washington, and I could easily spend a weekend just taking pictures of them. I love the way the light interacts and contrasts from room to room.
Ah, beautiful Astoria, Oregon, seen from the highest point in town. That’s another place that provides an almost endless supply of photographic opportunities.
This picture I didn’t take, but it’s such a classic that it warranted inclusion on the best pictures of the year. It’s the Cinemagic theater here in Portland, when they were in transition from the movie Hancock to the Dark Knight, and this was the sign change, in progress.
I love looking back over the year in this way. Even though this was a particularly difficult, painful, and challenging year, there were certainly plenty of good times too.
Here’s to a better 2009, though.
