beautiful, funny, sad & true

When I was about eighteen years old, my friends and I had been writing songs for our first band.  We had about fifteen or twenty songs in various degrees of completion, and we’d been recording demo versions of them on a four-track cassette recorder.  There were lots of other short song ideas, some of which were done with our tongues firmly planted in our cheeks, but we definitely learned a lot about the recording process, and how to make instruments work together in a song.  In retrospect, it’s easy to see that that’s where I learned many of the musical skills I still use today.

What had started as a two-person group had morphed by then into a five-person group, and we felt it was time to make some professional recordings that reflected and showcased our new members.  I went to the phone book, called a studio that seemed promising, and booked some time.  The studio owner and I would turn out to be pretty good friends, but he was also one of the most enigmatic people I’ve ever known.  He has used multiple versions of his name throughout the years of his professional careers, so in the interest of anonymity, I’ll go ahead and refer to him as Enigma from now on.  He was always a jack-of-all-trades, and he dabbled in music, photography, and even acting.  In fact, here’s a recent profile picture from that online movie database.  I suspect this was taken on a film set, but that’s how he used to dress all the time, right down to the bandana.

He owned a small recording studio in CityOfAngels and had recently relocated to Yakima to take care of his aging mother, as well as to live on the cheap for a while.  I don’t mean to paint him in a negative light, or give you the impression that he was in any way a bad guy, because I don’t think he was.  He was just very mysterious, that’s all, and though we knew each other for years, I never felt like I knew him very well.  He seemed to have lots of secrets, and he liked to live off the grid.  He had inherited a bit of money, so he bought a bright red Toyota four-wheel-drive pickup, loaded his camping gear and his two white Siberian huskies, and floated between Yakima, AngelCity, EmeraldCity, and NearestLargeCanadianCity.  He kept his lifestyle simple, so that he could pack up and leave at a moment’s notice.  And he would, too.  He would disappear for months on end, and none of his friends would hear from him.  He’d turn up like nothing happened, with no explanation for his time away.  Everyone suspected that drugs were involved somehow, but he claimed not to use or sell them.  In fact, he was a very health-conscious guy and a long-time vegetarian, well before vegetarianism was de rigeur. I’m not saying that vegetarians aren’t capable of doing drugs—they certainly are—but I spent enough time with him, at all kinds of crazy hours, that I like to think I would’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary.  Who knows.

He met one of my college friends, a beautiful blonde girl, at a party one night, and asked her to be his ‘assistant’, since she already had a boyfriend.  She reluctantly agreed, and she answered phones and kept his books and all sorts of other thankless tasks, while constantly rebuffing his romantic advances.   After a few weeks of working for him, she asked me, “What does he do?  For money?  I don’t do much all day, and he hardly gets any business.  I don’t get it.  Does he sell drugs or something?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied, “but nobody really knows for sure.  He’s so hush-hush about his life.”

She gave me a conspiratorial smirk.  “I think I’m gonna try and find out.  You know, I’ll ‘get close’ to him and stuff.”   I thought the idea was hilariously diabolical, and told her so.  It just might work.  I told her I would do my part to pry information from him too, to the extent that I could, and we both pledged to share whatever we found out about him with the other person.  We both came up empty-handed, and he disappeared from town again.

Enigma was a bit of a conspiracy theorist, and a self-professed ‘huge fan’ of Area 51 and UFO’s and all that.  In fact, in the outskirts of Yakima is a top-secret NSA listening station which can be briefly glimpsed from the freeway up in the hills just north of town.

(photo taken from Creative Suggestions’ Flickr page)

Like I said, it’s a top-secret installation (one of many in the Yakima area), and if you try to drive out there, you’ll be stopped by soldiers in jeeps, with guns.  Enigma called them on the phone more than once, and when they asked who he was and why he was calling, he was shockingly candid.  “Well, I’m a big fan of secret government operations, and I’m an American taxpayer and a concerned citizen, so I was just hoping to find out what you guys are doing out there.”  As if they’re gonna roll out the red carpet for him and invite him on an all-access tour.  “No comment,” he was told, and the connection was terminated.  So he tried driving out there, with similar treatment from the soldiers in the jeeps.  “Turn around and go home,” they told him.

This entry is meant to provide context for the next couple of stories I’m going to tell about Enigma, each of which is fairly long in its own right, so I thought it best to break them up and give each one its due, rather than cram them both into one mammoth entry.  Besides, if I think of more stories, then adding them individually is definitely the way to go.  In order to tantalize you, I will say that one story involves an arson fire that destroyed the largest music store in town (Enigma’s second studio was located in the basement), and the other involves Enigma, my bandmates, myself, and a singer getting shot at.

To be continued.

Sorry for the silence on the blog front.  I’m sure that those of you who’ve been checking in here at BFS&T know by now that when I don’t write anything for a while, it usually means that I’ve been experiencing a deluge of activity in real life, which leaves precious little time for reflection, let alone writing.  This time has certainly been no exception, with lots of out-of-town gigs, lots of recording, and lots of gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest at all hours of the day and night.  Here’s the view from the cabaret venue where PolishCellist and I played in Seattle a week ago:

IrishBand played in Astoria, Oregon last weekend, as part of a poetry festival that brought in the likes of Bill Carter.  There was a freak snowstorm that night, and we somehow found ourselves in the midst of a snowball fight or three, always with random people.  That was probably my favorite memory of the trip.  Also, should you find yourself in that neck of the woods, you owe it to yourself to pay a visit to Clemente’s restaurant.  Their food is incredible, and they treated us like royalty during our stay there.  We became fast friends with the owners and staff.

In the midst of all this, my friend and I started a new band in which she sings and writes lyrics and melodies, while I write the music and play all the instruments on our recordings.  So far, I’ve been playing acoustic guitar at our gigs, but the recordings have lots of other instruments, so naturally, the subject of finding more band members arose.  I’ve been involved with the singer-songwriter scene for the last ten years, in which the members may change many times.  I’ve also been invited to join existing bands, whether to replace a member who has left, or to bring my own particular type of musicality to the band.  It’s been a really long time since I’ve played an active role in recruiting band members for a project of my own.  It’s exciting and daunting at the same time, and that calls for a story.

For about four years, I was the lead guitarist and producer for a woman who, for the pseudonymic purposes of this blog, will be called Bird.  Our original plan was for me to be the bass player, since good bass players are so hard to find, but after auditioning a few guitarists (and realizing that the overwhelming majority of guitarists play in the exact same blues-based way, which was of no interest to us), we decided that I should have that role and that we should seek a bass player instead.  We auditioned a couple of bassists, one of whom bragged about his ability to play the upright bass, but as soon as he pulled it out, it was obvious to us that he was clueless about it.  We finally did find a really good player, who had actually auditioned for us as a guitarist first, but was still interested even after he found out about our change of plans.

Once that hurdle was behind us, the search was on for a drummer.  The three of us knew that this would pose the biggest challenge, since good drummers are already scarce enough, and a newly-formed band has precious little to offer, financially speaking.  We started by posting an ad on ListByCraig, which turned up the usual suspects of tire-kickers and carless (sometimes even drumless!) slackers.  We then posted a free ad in MessengerGodAlternativePaper, which yielded us a couple of interesting prospects.  ProspectOne, in his late twenties, showed up with an endless series of stories about bands he’d been in and tours he’d been on, and the layers of stickers adorning his drum cases lent credence to his stories.  His playing, however, did not.  He was horrendous, and if you closed your eyes, you’d have thought that a seven-year-old was behind the drums.   We slogged through three or four songs (he’d driven clear across town to play with us, after all), then thanked him and told him we’d let him know.

Not long after that fiasco, we drove out to BeaverSuburb to play with ProspectTwo, a guy in his mid-forties who was becoming overwhelmed by his career as a doctor, and who wanted to spice up his life by reconnecting with his love of playing the drums.  He had a beautiful house, and a beautiful drum kit, and a beautiful PA system to sing through.  He cooked beautiful frittatas for us (I had to check the spelling of ‘frittatas’ just now) and squeezed beautiful fresh orange juice for us by hand.  He was a great guy, and extremely intelligent, and we quite enjoyed his company.  His drumming, like that of the previous guy, left a bit to be desired.  His skills were not nearly as lacking as the other guy’s, certainly, but his playing was far from solid, and despite all the positive qualities he offered, we knew he would never be able to meet our drumming needs.

After that round of auditions, we were starting to become disillusioned, and (if I’m going to be completely honest) even a bit jaded.  We tried a new tactic, which was to actually pay money and place an ad in the Musicians Wanted section of the main weekly alternative paper in town, which provided us with a distinctly higher caliber of applicants.  The next person we auditioned was amazing.  He had just moved to Portland, he was a great player, and he had a great personality as well.  We felt like the four of us gelled as musicians, and we sounded like a real band for the first time.   After we had played through our list of songs, we sat around and chatted about Life In General, and about Music, and about Other Stuff too.  Before we knew it, another hour had passed.  Then, the subject of Money came up, and the atmosphere in the room completely changed.  He turned quiet and weird and defensive, and blurted out something about how he needed to be compensated for this and that if he was going to be in the band, and that he was used to making so much money in his other bands back in Colorado or wherever, and that if we couldn’t guarantee that much, he’d have to look elsewhere.  We had no delusions of grandeur, and we made it clear to everyone potentially involved that this was a brand new band, and we might never make money, but we believed in what we were doing, and we expected all of the members to feel the same way.  He made an awkward getaway, and the three of us were left scratching our heads.  Years later, he became a well-respected drummer around town, but I daresay that most people will remember him for being robbed and assaulted in the middle of the night while riding his bike, then being run over by TWO different cars driven by drunks who were friends caravanning home after a night of partying.  Both of them fled the scene.  Drummer did not survive, and the one driver that was convicted was sentenced to an insultingly small fine, a few days in jail, and a short time in a drug treatment program.  In a strange twist of musical fate, I was invited to play cello and accordion on a song that was written by a friend of mine a few months ago as a tribute to him.  The song has recently been released, and I just saw an update on SocialNetwork that said it will be played on a local music ‘spotlight’ show tonight.

The final guy we met had also just moved to Portland from Yakima, which is where I grew up too.  He asked lots of pertinent questions about the songs, and played very tastefully and dynamically.  He even commented on Bird’s blue guitar, which he said matched his blue drum set, and meant that he was ‘in.’  He was our guy, and we all knew it.  The lineup was complete.

The four of us played together for the next few years, until the electric version of the Bird band split up and morphed into an acoustic lineup that didn’t involve the three of us.  But we’re all still friends, and Bassist and Drummer are still out and about.  They even play together in a new incarnation of a really great band that’s been around for a while.  Drummer was lucky enough to tour with the Canadian band The Paperboys, which was a tremendous opportunity, not least of which because they were his favorite band.

We tried out a keyboard player for a month or two, but he could never make time to rehearse with us or learn the songs, and he was going to Australia, and he always wanted to come to my place and videotape my hands when I played the parts, so that he could learn them exactly.  He always seemed to have a reason why he didn’t know the songs.  To be fair to him, he was a genuinely nice guy, and he even came to watch a couple of our early shows, but it didn’t quite work to have him in the band.

This is what the audition process is like, ladies and gentlemen.  It’s challenging, and grueling, and fun, and interesting, and frustrating, but ultimately rewarding, and it’s a necessary part of the musical life.  The good news is that I’m not just starting out anymore, and I know a bunch of people, and I have lots more experience under my metaphorical belt, and I have a MOSTLY good reputation, but it’s still going to be a tough process.  Who knows; I may even end up being the drummer in this new band.  For now, the biggest news is that the two of us submitted a song to the annual compilation of up-and-coming Portland bands, and we’ll find out this spring if we make the cut or not.  IrishBand submitted a song too, and both songs are very unusual in the overall Portland ‘scene’, which I believe will help our chances immensely.

Naturally, I’ll keep you posted.

2010 has been very strange.  At the beginning of the year, I was still on blogging hiatus, so it took a while to get back up to speed.  Springtime was crazy, with lots of great musical endeavors and memorable trips.  By the summer, both my life and this blog went into overdrive, when I really started writing again, and found my full stride while sharing a bit too much about my childhood.  Suddenly it was October, which is the month of my birth, but this year was also the month of my stepdad’s death, which has sent everything into a tailspin since then.  A surreal trip to Yakima for the funeral was followed by multiple trips to Seattle, both for gigs and for family functions.

There were some standout moments from this last year that didn’t manage to make it into the blog, for various reasons.  For example, here’s a video of a particularly interesting recording session that I was lucky enough to be involved with, albeit in a small way.  A local singer-songwriter, who is also a friend, put the word out on SocialNetwork that she wanted to create a cacaphony of 50 pianos, all playing an F chord at the same time.  I jumped at the chance.  She rented a piano showroom downtown, and my friend and I (and forty eight or so other people) joined in to participate.  I brought my camera to capture a bit of the action.

Another memorable moment from this last year was Trek in the Park.  This theater group gets together every year to re-create a famous episode from the original Star Trek television series.  This year’s was Space Seed, in which we meet the infamous character Khan (who returned in the movie The Wrath of Khan).  It was a very well-done production, with live music and everything. . .and it was all free of charge.  Here’s the climactic fight sequence between Kirk and Khan.

IrishBand released our self-titled EP this year, as well as an amazing animated video that a friend created for us.  I would post that here, but our band name is very unusual, hence the pseudonym.  To celebrate, we went to Port Townsend, Washington (the hometown of three of the band members, and an adopted home away from home for the rest of us) to play a CD release party and catch the Rhododendron Festival and parade and everything.  It’s always a huge party weekend for PT, and this year was the tenth reunion for PT High School, which included Violinist and a bunch of other friends, so I actually went to the reunion barbecue in Chetzemoka Park during the afternoon, since I knew so many of the people there.  (God forbid that I actually go to any of my own class reunions; I haven’t yet.)  I also performed in the parade, in disguise, as an honorary member of Nanda.  I’m the guy with the Mexican wrestling mask, playing the bass, miming along to the dance music that was blaring from the speakers in the back of the truck.

I had the opportunity to see the Oregon Symphony perform many times this last year, with some pretty big-name performers.  Violinists Midori and Hilary Hahn, violinist Pinchas Zukerman and his cellist wife Amanda Forsyth (who, incidentally, gave a cello master class at the Old Church that afternoon, which I also attended, even though I’m far from being a cello master) who performed Brahms’s Double Concerto together, and a number of others.  This month, I have a ticket for pianist Emanuel Ax’s concert, which I’m very much looking forward to.  Yo-Yo Ma performed here a month or so ago, but his concert was sold out in the spring, only a few weeks after tickets went on sale.  Curses.

So it’s been a good year, overall, but I’m really hoping that 2011 is better, or less confusing at the very least.  I have lofty goals for the upcoming year, which include finding a job, finding love and a real relationship, taking care of some things that have been dogging me for a while now, and producing more CD’s.  I have a bit of news on the music front, actually.  A friend of mine hurt her arms a year ago, and has since been unable to play the piano, but that hasn’t stopped her from singing, or from writing lyrics and melodies, or from having tons of ideas.  She e-mailed me at some point to ask what people in her position do in the music business.  I told her I don’t know about ‘the music business’, but I’d love to give the songs a listen, and that maybe I could put music to them.  She sent me some mp3’s, and I instantly felt like I knew where the songs should go.  They felt familiar without being predictable, which is always a good sign.  That was about two months ago, and we already have five or six collaborations in the works.  Pretty awesome and exciting.

In other news, December is the fourth anniversary of this blog, so it seems appropriate to have a little birthday party, no?  Come on, let’s have some sis-boom-bah.

So anyway, on to the Best Of.  Here are the lists of what I consider to the best entries BFS&T has to offer from this past year, which naturally includes a list of the most interesting dreams, as well.  Enjoy!

THE ENTRIES:

SteamCon – the steampunk convention in Seattle in which PolishCellist and I played, and had a total blast doing so

tragedy – the death of Stepdad

struggle – the early aftermath of the death of Stepdad

sitting here thinking about the Holocaust – one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard on the radio

folk festival fun – Portland Folk Festival, starring IrishBand, Dan Bern, Roll Out Cowboy, etc.

I’m kind of an a-hole – see for yourself

birthday present – prostitute schmostitute

the unicorn code – love it, learn it, LIVE IT

no one’s laughing – a peek into our family dynamics

d̩ja vu Рwhat it feels like, and a friend who claims to never have experienced one

the truth is out there – interesting UFO story, I promise

it’s not for shaving – Occam’s Razor, and how it applies to recording music

what if it is? – a very memorable and touching moment from the show Six Feet Under

THE CHILDHOOD STORIES:

shuttlecock

love and curiosity

he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

the final innocent tryst

synchronicity

THE DREAMS:

lights, camera, dream

festival dream

shape shifters

inimitable and imitable

subconscious and libido

this needs a name

frozen

Just in case this wasn’t enough for your insatiable appetite for blog entries, here’s the Best of BFS&T 2009 entry, for your gluttonous pleasure.

Thanks for being here and reading all this, and for supporting this blog for such a long time now.  I really appreciate it.  I hope we all have an excellent New Year’s Eve, and Day, and that 2011 allows us to learn, and to grow, and to change for the better, a little bit each day.

Happy New Year!

The other day, I did something I would never normally do; I used my little video camera during a recording session.  I was working with two guys who have been long-time friends and collaborators, a bassist/singer and a guitarist.  The bassist was up here visiting from the Beast (my personal favorite nickname for the East Bay of California), so they wanted to collaborate on a couple of song ideas together.  I owed the guitarist a recording favor, so that’s how I got involved.

The guys were both so intense and animated (the singer, especially) that my arm reached for my camera before I even knew what it was doing.  I took a few other videos before this one, actually (by this time I had their approval), but this is definitely my favorite.  I promise you that he was not doing this for the camera, or for the open windows, or for my benefit; it was absolutely his megalomania personality and energy shining through.

Enjoy this while you can.  If I end up feeling even more like an unprofessional a-hole later, I may decide to take it down, but for now I just felt I should let you behind one scene of the recording process.

Well.

This is the infamous Super Bowl Sunday, and I for one could not care less about that.  In fact, if it wasn’t for Twitter, I wouldn’t have known that today is the day.   That’s how little I follow sports.

I know what I said a couple of weeks ago about how ‘the hiatus is over’ and all that, but life seems to have gone into overdrive since then, and I haven’t had two minutes to rub together to write anything new.

Two weekends ago, I went to Waldport, Oregon to spend the weekend with a childhood friend whose job is about to end, which will force him to move away from that pretty little town.  (Photos to come, as soon as I get the chance to go through them.)

IrishBand has a friend who’s creating an animated video for one of our songs, and it’s tremendous!  It should be done within a couple of weeks, and then I’ll be able to share it here.  It’s been quite a process, and very exciting to watch it all come together.  We needed to create an ‘intro’ section for it (you’ll see what I mean) that featured the sound of the band setting up their instruments and tuning up and whatnot.  Since two of the band members are busy in school, we weren’t able to schedule a rehearsal, so I set up the instruments (drums, bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and cello played up high to simulate a violin) in my living room and recorded them using one microphone to simulate a camera person walking in and recording us that way.  (Photos to come, once I have a chance to go through them.)

I spent last weekend in Seattle to see a pipe organ concert at my brother’s church and to celebrate BabyNiece’s first birthday.  It was really fun, and super cute, and a bit stressful all at the same time.  (Photos to come, as soon as I get the chance to go through them.)  I drove back late Saturday night so that I could attend the Oregon Symphony the next afternoon.  They were featuring Jean-Philippe Collard performing Ravel’s beautiful Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, which I love and didn’t want to miss.  (Extra-special thanks to Kelly V. for making it possible for me and my companion to go!)  Hmm. . .’companion’ makes it sound like I’m gay, which I’m not.  For the record, my companion was a girl.

Anyway.

I couldn’t find a video of Collard playing the Left Hand, but here’s one of  him playing a similar piece by Ravel, for solo piano.

It was an incredible and beautiful show.  The orchestra started with a piece by Thomas Adés called “Powder Her Face”, which was very colorful and enchanting.  Next up was the Ravel concerto, followed by Gustav Holst’s “Egdon Heath” and one of the lesser-known Mozart symphonies, number thirty four.   The Ravel was the only piece either of us (and I daresay the majority of the audience, as well) was familiar with.  I love the way the conductor, Carlos, Kalmar, chooses music for his programs.  This is the second one I’ve seen so far this season, and he likes to blend the familiar with the unfamiliar in an intriguing way.

Speaking of the Oregon Symphony, next season promises to be world-class.  Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Hillary Hahn, Emmanuel Ax, Lang Lang. . .and that’s not even close to a complete list.  We are in for a treat multiple treats!

I had the opportunity to play with two nationally-known songwriters this week, in the same venue, on different days.  The first was Tony Furtado (a friend with whom I play fairly regularly) and the second was Dan Bern, who I had just met earlier in the day, when I helped my friend John by engineering and sort of co-hosting a podcast for KZME Radio called Hello Cruel World.  This was the second time I’ve had the opportunity to do that, the first being a couple weeks prior, when we interviewed an excellent new songwriter from Seattle named Tamara Power-Drutis.  Anyway, we were talking with Dan about the times we’ve seen him in concert.  John mentioned to Dan that I play accordion and multiple other things, and Dan asked if I know his music.  “Yes, I do,” I answered.  He asked, “Do you want to come play at the show tonight?”  “Absolutely!”

This picture was taken during the song God Said No.

So yeah, between the multiple out-of-town trips, the stellar gigs, the birthday parties and the nights out, it’s been quite a fun couple of weeks.  Now I’m off to meet a friend for dinner, and tomorrow I’ll be mixing some more songs for IrishBand.

I’m off of blogging hiatus, but we’ll see how long it takes before I have time to write again.  I don’t imagine it’ll be this long.