For those of you who either don’t love or haven’t seen many 80’s movies, this picture is a parody of the classic scene from the movie Say Anything, in which John Cusack holds his boom box (back then, however, it would’ve been called a ‘ghetto blaster’) aloft and blasts the song In Your Eyes into the window of his sleeping ex-girlfriend, with the intention of waking her up and winning her back. Great movie, by the way. It may look a bit dated by now, but the story is excellent.
In the interest of full disclosure, you can buy the ‘Jesus loves you’ T-shirt here, but be warned. Most of the shirts on the site are much more R-rated, as well as being less funny and more crass than this particular one is.
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.
My friend and I went to see the movie Tell No One tonight. It was a really good murder mystery, clear up until the ending, when it suddenly turned into a Scooby Doo episode. One of the characters started doing that thing where he points a gun at the main character and starts talking at him and revealing everything. You know; ‘I did it. It was ME. That’s right, ME. I’m gonna spell out exactly how and why I did it, too, because I love the sound of my own voice.’ Yawn.
The real event of the night happened after we left, and I turned my phone back on. I had a text message waiting for me, saying that the community access TV station in Yakima had just played a concert video of my old band. And by ‘old’ I mean twenty years old.  The person who texted me was another member of the band, who lives here in the Portland area now. I called him right away, and we laughed about the whole thing. Turns out that his brother, who still lives in Yakima, saw the video and called my bandmate to tell him about it. I’m amazed that the station even has any of those old tapes anymore, let alone still plays them. Pretty hilarious, although we WERE described as a ‘juggernaut’, and ‘Central Washington’s rockin’ machine.’ So there.
This is another one of those times when I wish I had a way to get videos onto my computer, because I’d love to be able to share some of that stuff with you, but I have no way to copy VHS tapes to video files.  Argh. Well, I may not be able to share that particular video, but I can share a picture from our very first show. I was about seventeen in this picture, working on Mullet Number One.
You’re welcome.
I really wish I still had that guitar, by the way. That was my first one, and it turned out to be pretty decent, although I didn’t know it at the time. One of my friends joined the Navy and bought it from me. That was the idea, anyway, because he never did send me the check. Thanks, David Lowry. Two hundred bucks down the crapper.  Hope you had a good time with my guitar.
Actually, y’know what? I should probably go easy on him. For all I know, he always meant to send the money, but got deployed overseas and lost my address or something.  It’s all water under the metaphorical bridge, anyway, but it would sure be great to get an out-of-the-blue check for two hundred dollars one of these days, especially with times being the way they are.
There’ll be plenty more to come on this subject, because this is the twentieth anniversary of our band’s rise to the heights, and our plunge to the depths. Okay, I may be exaggerating just a little bit, but I CAN promise that there are good stories to come about the band.
I was going to say ‘stay tuned’, but A) that’s cheesy, and B) that’s the name of one of our songs, the lyrics for which were written by my high school Spanish teacher, who had some music written and actually asked me if we’d be interested in collaborating on a song with him. We agreed, because he was the cool teacher, and the group of us created a pretty dang catchy song. In retrospect, it’s very reminiscent of Bon Jovi. We played it twice; once at a school assembly, and once at one of our regular shows, too, which was a lame ‘battle of the bands’ with a forgettable rival band, which I’m gonna go ahead and say that we won, even though it wasn’t a big deal at all, but this is my blog, dang it, and history is told by the winners, as Howard Zinn would say.
Wow. Nothing like using Howard Zinn to bolster the reputation of the band you were in twenty years ago. If HZ was dead, I’m sure he’d be rolling over in his grave right about now.
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.
It’s been quite a year, I have to say. Going through and choosing entries was particularly difficult this time around. I always enjoy looking backwards. So much has happened this year that it had become a bit of a blur, quite frankly, and it was fun to revisit some of those experiences. Others, however, weren’t nearly as much fun. I could have made this entry about twice as long as it is. There will be another separate entry for the ‘best pictures of 2008’ coming soon.
Yakima trip, part one – This was quite possibly the worst Yakima trip ever, in which I lost a friend.
Tinkle – Tinkle is the name of a fictitious product; this entry describes a hilarious parody my friends and I made of sports drink commercials from the early 90’s.
on tour, day 3 – This was one of the best and most memorable days of my entire life.
my dinner with Andre – We read the screenplay in the play-reading group, and there are also some ruminations about why this movie meant so much to me.
please ban more books – The school district in the town in which I grew up turns out to be responsible for upholding a ban on a very famous book. Glad I left that town.
litany – This was a hilarious repartee my friend and I shared.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for your support throughout this last year. In case this somehow wasn’t enough for you, here’s the entry for the best entries of 2007.
