beautiful, funny, sad & true

Just got home from a gig in Whitefish, Montana.  First time I’ve ever been there, and I have to start by saying that it’s a supremely beautiful little town.  It was my first gig with ModeratelyFamousBanjoPlayer, and despite the fact that it was very loose and unrehearsed (I’d never even met the drummer before, let alone played with him before), AND despite the fact that Southwest Airlines’ baggage handlers banged up my accordion enough that it needs to be repaired now, AND despite the fact that the stage was a truck trailer which bounced around so much that my acoustic guitar fell off it and got a nice big war wound on it, AND despite the fact that we got up at 5:30 a.m. (Mountain Time, which felt like 4:30 Pacific Time!) this morning to drive back to the airport at Spokane, AND despite the fact that I got stung by a bee (how random is that?) at the rental car place in Spokane. . .it was a triumphant show.

No pictures to speak of, unfortunately, because we were on such a tight schedule the entire time, and we were always either in the car, at the gig, or in the hotel room.  Okay, well, here’s what I mean.  This is Mount St. Helens from the airplane. . .

. . .and here’s ModeratelyFamousBanjoPlayer in his solo set.

After he was done, we all ate dinner (of delicious fish tacos!) and then set up the rest of the equipment for the full-band evening show.  I have to give extra-special thanks to SoundGuyToby, who came through with an accordion for me after I found that mine had been damaged by Southwest Airlines’ rough handling during the flight over.  He absolutely saved the gig for me.  The show would have been accordion-free without Toby.

Oh yeah, and the guitar.  The stage was a truck trailer, which bounced around like crazy while we were playing.  My acoustic guitar was sitting next to the edge of the stage, and and one point it tipped right off and landed directly on the metal bar that connects to the hitch.  So it has a huge wound on it, right on the front corner, in one of the most visible places it could possibly have a wound.  I hope to gawd that it can be fixed.  I’ll never be able to sell it for anything close to what I paid for it now.  SUCKS.  It still plays fine, though, and that’s what counts, but that just sucks.  Combine that with the accordion repair and this one gig is really gonna set me back.

I also need to mention the people we met.  They were sweet, accommodating, friendly, drunken, and a metric ton of fun.  After the show, we got a lot of handshakes and “Oh MAN you guys were great.  Thanks so much for coming all the way out here!  We had a blast. . .”, etc.  We also got invited to quite a few parties afterwards (“There are bikes enough for everyone!”) which we had to respectfully decline, unfortunately.  It seems like a great town, especially if you’re an outdoorsy person.

We got to our hotel rooms around 10:30 p.m., then I took a shower and spent the next four hours watching a TV show I’d never seen before called Ice Road Truckers.  You’d think it would be the most boring show in the world, and maybe it was just my mental and physical state at the time, but I was riveted to that crazy show.  It was surprisingly suspenseful.

Oh yeah.  In the four hours during which I actually slept, I had a horrible dream in which three different friends (each of whom I know in real life) told me either to fuck off or “Y’know what?  Go fuck yourself,” and gave me some very specific reasons why they thought I should do that.  One even went so far as to add, “God, it feels so good to say that!”   It wasn’t the best dream I’ve ever had.

So I napped in the car, and then we flew home.  A very nice couple from Spokane sat next to me on the plane, and the guy was actually from Whitefish, so that was a nice coincidence.  They even gave me a copy of Rolling Stone magazine (“Would you like this?  It’s a good one. . .”) just before we landed.  It’s one of the issues with Barack Obama on the cover.

So that was pretty cool.

I’m just glad to be home.  Usually when I’m traveling, I’m much more ‘in the moment’ than I was this weekend, but it was busy enough, and with all the instrument issues it was stressful enough, that I was emotionally done last night.  I wasn’t bummed out or anything, I just wanted to be home so that I could take care of these things that need to be taken care of, and now I can do just that.

I’m going to start with myself.  First a nap, then a shower, then I’m going to a dinner party with a couple of friends.  I’ll worry about the accordion tomorrow.

Today I could barely focus on work because I had so much recording stuff to think about.  I kept thinking about how two of the bands I’m in are about to start recording new albums, and in both of those projects I’m doing the lion’s share of the production, recording and mixing.

My eyes popped open at 4:30 this morning, and I had a bunch of ideas about what to do with IrishBand’s recording, and how to go about it, and where to do it, and which songs we should do, et cetera.  I also e-mailed Breanna a bunch of times to figure out when we can go in and start on the basic guitar and vocal tracks, and what the process might be like.

I like not knowing what the process is going to be like, truth be told.  I like to sit with a song and let God (or whatever) tell me what to play.  Production is spiritual for me, and it drives me crazy when people sit there and tell me what to play, because I always think, “Shut your piehole. . .I’m trying to listen to GOD here.”

SHORT GEEK-OUT #1:  Last week I bought, with a great deal of help from IrishBand, a Digi 002 recording interface, but it has a slight design flaw with its power supply, which Digidesign is aware of.  If you own one of these units, and you have a problem with it, relax. . .all you have to do is call Digidesign and they’ll send you the replacement part (for free!) along with a little instruction booklet on how to install it correctly.  That’s what I did tonight, and then I spent the next hour opening up old sessions and listening to them.  Good times.

SHORT GEEK-OUT #2:  I use a program called SiteMeter here on BFS&T to tell me where all y’all are coming from, and their site was down this weekend because they were migrating to a newer version of their software.  Well, after all their and our (meaning the collective group of users around the world) hard work, they released a ponderous, worthless program which they must have received an endless stream of complaints about, because later that day they had already changed back to the original version.  God bless ’em.  I can’t imagine Apple doing that.  Thanks, SiteMeter!  I love the original!

Here ends the geek-out.  We now return you to your witty, insightful blog, already in progress.

OneYearAgo

. . .this is awesome, and beautiful.  I want a Stylophone like you cannot believe.

OneYearAgo

This morning, I had a dream that I kept waking out of (thank you, alarm clock!) and going right back into every time I hit the ‘snooze’ button (thank you, brain!).

* * * * * *

My friend Andrea, one of her female friends and I are hanging out and walking around downtown Portland somewhere, late at night. We walk into a mall, which is closed. There is a huge, lighted fountain in one section of the mall, and there is a grand piano in the section that is located behind the fountain.

We walk to the piano, and Andrea starts to play something totally random and cool, with lots of banging and dissonance mixed with beauty (in A minor!). Then she steps on one of the pedals, and it repeats the phrase that she ended with. She stands up and smiles, and her friend and I start laughing and clapping. The piano is still making sound, and I sit down and play octave A’s up high, kinda slowly and rhythmically around Andrea’s loop. Then the loop fades out, and I morph the piece into a little something in A minor, and then change it into 7/8 time. I have a little cello exercise I made up, and it was based on that exercise.

After I finish, the sound of the fountain sounds like a crowd of people clapping, so I laugh, stand up from the bench, face the fountain and say, “Thank you! Everyone! Thank you!” The three of us laugh, and then turn away and walk out of the mall.

The setting for the dream changes, and we are now standing in a short line of people waiting to get into a movie theater. Once we walk through the door, however, we realize that it is actually a movie set. It is a large, wooden room, with bright lights in the ceiling. The filmmaker (who, incidentally is DrummerScotty, who I play with in IrishBand in real life) is shooting a scene involving a guy and girl making out on a chaise longue. The two are doing their thing valiantly, and Andrea seems exasperated with the whole thing. She says something like, “I hate acting. It seems like anybody could just be making out with anybody else.”

Boy, was this trip to Yakima a weird one. Quite possibly the weirdest one yet.

I was planning to go see DrummerAdam play with Chuck Prophet. Turned out that I was mistaken, and Adam’s band was OPENING for Chuck Prophet. That’s still very cool, and well worth the drive. The band he was playing with was a person whose CD I played on, and on Wednesday I got a text message from the band leader which said, “I heard you’re going to be in Yakima. Want to sit in with us?” I agreed on the spot.

This was not a band I normally play with, except one other time, and I played cello at that show. This time I decided to play lead guitar, so I spent the next two days learning all the songs by listening to them on my iPod at work and in my car on the way down. I was the first to arrive at the venue, which was the Yakima Sports Center. Those of us who grew up in Yakima know that it used to be one of the sleaziest places in town, second only to the infamous (and now nonexistent) Blue Banjo, at least in my book, but it was completely refurbished in the late 1990’s, and now it’s a perfectly respectable restaurant and music venue.

Most of my friends from Yakima have long since moved away, but I do still have some friends there, and they were all planning to come to the show. Two of them weren’t able to make it, but DrummerTy was, and he actually brought my guitar teacher with him. I took guitar lessons for about six months when I was fifteen years old, and I’d only seen my teacher a few times since then. He was a great guy back then, and he’s still a great guy now. It was an amazing surprise to see him again.

We were the opening act, but for some reason, our set was only a half hour long. We also played a few weird cover songs. I asked, “If our set is only a half hour, why are we playing ANY cover songs?” Apparently, there was some sort of promotion going on at the venue called “Guilty Pleasures”, so each of the three bands was expected to play a few songs that everyone would know, and would never admit to liking. I found out about that when we were on stage; I certainly didn’t see it coming. The ‘guilty pleasure’ songs we played were “Human Nature” by Michael Jackson, “I’m a Believer” by the Monkees, and “Night Moves” by Bob Seger. I was a bit embarrassed, to be honest, because my friends who hadn’t seen me play in at least thirteen years were there watching me play these ridiculous songs that I didn’t know. I was a little bit nervous, but the band is very good, and we all played well together, despite having no rehearsals beforehand, and despite those weird other songs. I wouldn’t say it was the best gig I’ve ever had, but I’ve certainly had plenty of worse ones.

After we were done, I packed my stuff off stage and went to talk to DrummerTy. We sat at the bar and unsuccessfully attempted to order a drink from the aloof waitress. Probably a good thing in retrospect, because Ty was already very drunk. He was silent for a few moments and just sat there looking at me. Finally, he said, in a strange voice, “You’re the best musician I’ve ever known.”

I sensed that something was up, and said, “Thank you. . .I think. I’m expecting a ‘but.’ ”

He looked away, looked back and said, “What the fuck are you doing? There was nothing entertaining about that. It was lame.” Suddenly the band leader appeared from behind me with a beer and set it on the counter in front of me, then disappeared back into the crowd. “LAME,” Ty repeated, to me.

“This is not my normal thing,” I said, “It was also a weird gig, because our set was only half an hour, which I didn’t know beforehand, and I certainly didn’t know we were playing all those crappy ‘guilty pleasure’ songs.”

Ty replied, “Are you trying to be a pop star? You’re not even a pop musician. You live in the abstract.”

“I’m not a pop star, I’m trying to be a producer. This was just one gig, on one night. I don’t know what you mean by ‘living in the abstract.’ ”

He rubbed his eyes, which seemed to be bothering him. “I listened to all the songs on your web site, and I don’t even like them.” That’s nothing that concerns me, so I didn’t say anything. Just then, his friend and friend’s girlfriend arrived. He didn’t introduce me. They talked among themselves for a minute, and then Ty said, to no one in particular, “I’m too drunk. I need to get outta here or I’m gonna get in a fight.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. They started to head toward the door, so I said good night, and then went over and gave my old guitar teacher a hug, and they all drove off. I went outside, feeling like I’d been sucker-punched. After a few minutes, Adam came outside, saw me, and noticed that I was bummed out. I told him what happened, and he said that he’s seen Ty like that pretty often. He goes out, drinks too much, and then gets belligerent. After having a few days to think about it, I feel like this conversation was Ty’s version of ‘tough love’ or something, but that’s certainly not the way to go about it.

This all happened during the second performer of the night, who is a songwriter from here in Portland who I’ve seen a couple of times before, and who I’m not particularly impressed with. Between my conversation with Ty and walking outside, I pretty much missed his entire set. I wanted to leave, but I also wanted to stay and see Chuck Prophet, who was absolutely awesome. I got a glass of wine and talked with our various band members for a while. I also saw a musician friend of mine from college, who went on to open a recording studio, which later closed down after a few years. I went and talked with him for a while, and it was okay, but not as much fun as I expected. He had to leave after about fifteen minutes, so I went back to hang out with the band. The show ended soon after, so I packed up my car, gave hugs all around to the band members, and left. I was still feeling really angry, and I was also exhausted after the three-hour drive to Yakima. I had come directly from work.

Around 1:30 a.m., I arrived at my mom’s empty house (she and my stepdad were in Seattle visiting my brother’s family), and when I was bringing my instruments in from the car, I noticed that I was missing my amp stand, so I had to drive clear back downtown to retrieve it. Finally, I was able to go to bed. Didn’t sleep too well, either, because my mom has three dogs, all of which wear clanky chain collars and walk around barking in the middle of the night.

This entry is getting a bit on the long side, so I think I’m going to turn this into a two-part entry.

You’ll be glad to know that Saturday was great. The second part of this story isn’t negative at all.

OneYearAgo