Next Tuesday I, with the help of the Chaos Band, am going to be putting on the fourth installment of "Adam's '70s Show" at the tiny westside Americana joint known as the Cinema Bar.
For those not in the loop, the idea is to bring together various people in the roots and pop communities in L.A. and invite them up with the band to sing a '70s song of their choice. They can pick any song they like, as long as it's not ridiculously complicated (e.g. ELP or Zappa), and provide us with an mp3 if we don't have it.
It took people a while to catch on the possibilities of this concept, but they've caught up now. We have something like 20 guests on tap for Tuesday, and most of them have been very -- um, creative about their song choices. Since the band has roughly four two-hour rehearsals to learn 17 or 18 new songs, some of them quite complicated, that along with the heat has created a pleasant little Chaos Band pressure cooker in our little garage, as we blast through these songs as fast we can, making sure we get to all of them before the time runs out. Together with retuning songs from other shows, my solo set, and Chaos-performed '70s covers, we figure there will be upwards of three dozen '70s songs performed.
As I posted on my Facebook page, one guest requested a Steely Dan tune that turned out to be quite simple. Another guest requested a Partridge Family tune that turned out to be ridiculously complex (and never mind those six-part harmonies). In terms of difficulty of the material, this is easily the most challenging '70s show yet, but the band is making a pretty fair first of pulling it all together. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you actually have to.
It always fascinates me the songs people pick out for this thing, stuff I would never think of. There's not a lot of country music chosen...the closest thing this time is a pretty fingerpicking singer-songwritery hit, where I get to further expand my newly developed fingerpicking skills (I learned for the first time at the Alex Chilton show). There's yet another Van Morrison tune, but no one's complaining about that. Shockingly, Supertramp, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones were requested for the very first time. But my favorite of all of the requests, for the second show in a row, came from Brian Whelan. Last time he picked out an obscure Fleetwood Mac tune, "I Know I'm Not Wrong." This time it was an absolute classic of Memphis soul. Every time we play the midsection of this song, everyone in the band smiles and starts to relax. I said to Evie, "every time we hit the bridge I remember why I started playing music" and she grinned, "yeah! Me too!"
I love the challenge of learning new material. It seems all I do these days is learn songs, but I don't mind. I play so much now that I surprise myself at what I can do (and sometimes what I can't...I had to woodshed for a day or so to be able to play one electric piano lick by that great prog rock pianist, Richard Carpenter), and what makes certain songs tick.
In the midst of all the '70s show activity, and me looking with some grimness at my dwindling bank balance, an unexpected though very cool opportunity has come up. Unfortunately, I won't be able to say what it is for about three weeks. But if it comes to pass, I think it will be a surprise to quite a few people.
In the meantime, don't miss Adam's '70s Show next Tuesday at the Cinema Bar....
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
A Tale Of Two Compliments
I got one of those major confidence boosters in an e-mail the other day. Adam Exler, my last client at the Karma Frog studio, had passed on the CD I produced for him to one of his tennis students, a recent Grammy-winning producer/artist with a lot of highly respected cutting edge work to his credit, one of those heavy hitters who actually makes good music. Adam reported that:
"He said the CD is fantastic! He has it on loop in his car and has listened to the whole CD over twice already. He said the songs, production, vocals, arrangements are great...He said that he usually only likes the music he does, but was more than pleasantly surprised by this CD."
I felt very pleased reading that...this was, after all, the first album I recorded and mixed entirely on my own, as well as playing about 70% of the instruments, and to get that kind of praise (albeit indirectly) from a guy of that stature felt pretty cool. But after the initial reaction, I started to feel a little down about it.
It's just that I've gotten these kinds of props before. I've had all kinds of back-channel communication that has left me feeling validated, knowing that successful and talented people think I did good work, and benefiting from the self-confidence and trust in one's own judgment that that inspires. The problem, though, is that's usually all the real practical good it does. You acquire a sense that you're talented, that your ideas are sound, that you don't suck, and that enables you to move forward.
But the word, at least in my own experience, doesn't tend to spread. It's an idle thought that's there and gone. It's kind of like when NPR/Entertainment Weekly writer Ken Tucker -- a heavy hitter in his field for sure -- told the president of Big Deal that Cockeyed Ghost's "Disappear" (which I wrote) was the greatest driving song ever written. From a writer of that statute and taste, that was a wonderful thing to hear. Except that Tucker never told anybody else, never wrote about it or talked about it on air. So no one ever heard that opinion and I couldn't put it in the press kit. In fact, I don't think I've ever mentioned it anywhere other than this blog right now. What would have been the point? If I say it, it just sounds like I'm bragging on myself.
Now, yesterday the casino tribute gig -- the one I was complaining about last week where I had to work out a song from "Funny Girl" by ear -- came and went, and it was an exceedingly good time, other than having to get up at 7 a.m. to drive to San Bernardino. I was part of a four-piece pit band (along with the ubiquitous track) that backed a succession of tribute artist imitators who ranged from very good to spectacular. In the words of the bass player, "we got derailed a few times but there were no trainwrecks," and a good time was had by all. As for the nature of the gig itself, the quote of the week was the MC's acerbic recap of his own introduction from the stage: "Ladies and gentlemen, Rod STEWART! (pause) O-47. B-11."
Speaking of whom, the Rod Stewart imitator was awesome. For the first time I understood how good a tribute act could be -- the guy was all over the stage, a ball of energy, interacting with the crowd AND the band, looking and sounding so much like Rod the Mod that it really was like having the same experience (until we got offstage, where the incongruous Midwestern drawl of his speaking voice gave the game away).
The best thing about this gig for me was that I was surrounded by people that are working ALL the time, and for someone who's suffering through a slow summer, I was extremely happy to have an opportunity to show off what I could do and give away some cards. Quasi-Rod was highly complimentary about the band, singling me and the bass player out for praise, and in the dressing room he talked excitedly and at length about bringing us into his backing band to replace long-standing members who had decamped for better job prospects in the midwest.
So here's my point. You would think that, between getting props for my production and arrangement work from a Grammy award winning producer at the absolute top of the heap, and getting props for playing along to a track by a Rod Stewart imitator, I'd be more excited by the former than the latter.
But I'm not. Every artist who's been working for a long time knows that he or she may be just one good break, one high profile gig, one big shot of media exposure, from mass recognition. But the basic fact is most of us that are half-decent and have been around awhile have a collection of these "near misses" on our resumes. It's great for your ego and sometimes, it keeps you going a little longer. But 99% of the time, that big break that you know is possible doesn't come to pass, and unless this producer happens to need an apprentice or someone to do demo work for him (assuming he even computes that someone else produced the album), it will probably be the same in this case.
The good words from notRod, however, sound like they may lead to real, paying work. And that's the beauty of becoming a working musician first and an artist second. Knowing you're good, and that people think you're good, is wonderful. But you come to learn that translating that into a tangible payday is the real trick.
"He said the CD is fantastic! He has it on loop in his car and has listened to the whole CD over twice already. He said the songs, production, vocals, arrangements are great...He said that he usually only likes the music he does, but was more than pleasantly surprised by this CD."
I felt very pleased reading that...this was, after all, the first album I recorded and mixed entirely on my own, as well as playing about 70% of the instruments, and to get that kind of praise (albeit indirectly) from a guy of that stature felt pretty cool. But after the initial reaction, I started to feel a little down about it.
It's just that I've gotten these kinds of props before. I've had all kinds of back-channel communication that has left me feeling validated, knowing that successful and talented people think I did good work, and benefiting from the self-confidence and trust in one's own judgment that that inspires. The problem, though, is that's usually all the real practical good it does. You acquire a sense that you're talented, that your ideas are sound, that you don't suck, and that enables you to move forward.
But the word, at least in my own experience, doesn't tend to spread. It's an idle thought that's there and gone. It's kind of like when NPR/Entertainment Weekly writer Ken Tucker -- a heavy hitter in his field for sure -- told the president of Big Deal that Cockeyed Ghost's "Disappear" (which I wrote) was the greatest driving song ever written. From a writer of that statute and taste, that was a wonderful thing to hear. Except that Tucker never told anybody else, never wrote about it or talked about it on air. So no one ever heard that opinion and I couldn't put it in the press kit. In fact, I don't think I've ever mentioned it anywhere other than this blog right now. What would have been the point? If I say it, it just sounds like I'm bragging on myself.
Now, yesterday the casino tribute gig -- the one I was complaining about last week where I had to work out a song from "Funny Girl" by ear -- came and went, and it was an exceedingly good time, other than having to get up at 7 a.m. to drive to San Bernardino. I was part of a four-piece pit band (along with the ubiquitous track) that backed a succession of tribute artist imitators who ranged from very good to spectacular. In the words of the bass player, "we got derailed a few times but there were no trainwrecks," and a good time was had by all. As for the nature of the gig itself, the quote of the week was the MC's acerbic recap of his own introduction from the stage: "Ladies and gentlemen, Rod STEWART! (pause) O-47. B-11."
Speaking of whom, the Rod Stewart imitator was awesome. For the first time I understood how good a tribute act could be -- the guy was all over the stage, a ball of energy, interacting with the crowd AND the band, looking and sounding so much like Rod the Mod that it really was like having the same experience (until we got offstage, where the incongruous Midwestern drawl of his speaking voice gave the game away).
The best thing about this gig for me was that I was surrounded by people that are working ALL the time, and for someone who's suffering through a slow summer, I was extremely happy to have an opportunity to show off what I could do and give away some cards. Quasi-Rod was highly complimentary about the band, singling me and the bass player out for praise, and in the dressing room he talked excitedly and at length about bringing us into his backing band to replace long-standing members who had decamped for better job prospects in the midwest.
So here's my point. You would think that, between getting props for my production and arrangement work from a Grammy award winning producer at the absolute top of the heap, and getting props for playing along to a track by a Rod Stewart imitator, I'd be more excited by the former than the latter.
But I'm not. Every artist who's been working for a long time knows that he or she may be just one good break, one high profile gig, one big shot of media exposure, from mass recognition. But the basic fact is most of us that are half-decent and have been around awhile have a collection of these "near misses" on our resumes. It's great for your ego and sometimes, it keeps you going a little longer. But 99% of the time, that big break that you know is possible doesn't come to pass, and unless this producer happens to need an apprentice or someone to do demo work for him (assuming he even computes that someone else produced the album), it will probably be the same in this case.
The good words from notRod, however, sound like they may lead to real, paying work. And that's the beauty of becoming a working musician first and an artist second. Knowing you're good, and that people think you're good, is wonderful. But you come to learn that translating that into a tangible payday is the real trick.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
I was never a slut because I didn't want to find the one right person. I was a slut because I wanted to find the one right person, and never could.
...with no apologies to James Joyce. He talked too much.
...with no apologies to James Joyce. He talked too much.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
First Impressions
For various reasons, the last five years have been isolating for me. First I got sick, then there seemed to be a new drama to deal with every ten minutes, and then being a full-time musician meant spending a lot of time alone in my house in the not-so-bustling creative hub of the West San Fernando Valley. The last several months I've been on a tear to try new things, explore socially, and go out of my way to meet new people.
This has mostly been great, and I've got enough new acquaintances from various walks of life that I've become fond of, and don't get to see often enough, that I'm considering starting back up the long-dormant parties at my house. What used to make these so great was bringing people from different scenes and social circles that would have things in common but would never meet each other and getting them in one place to interact. The '70s Shows have been doing this a little, too. It's something I seem to be able to do well and it's rewarding to see people making connections they otherwise wouldn't make.
The thing that's been a bit awkward for me, though, is finding my social groove in a lot of these situations. I'm out of practice and my inner Bill Clinton ("hi how are ya!") doesn't always surface when I want him to, and it doesn't always help that a lot of the places I'm hanging out are full of "normal" (e.g. non-musician/acting/bohemian) people, and my mere presence, a tall, bleach blond guy of indeterminate age, seems to put some of them ill at ease, which then puts ME ill at ease.
I've always been kind of a quirky guy, and I've gotten used to the fact that it just takes a while to get to know me and these things take time...but if you're in a new situation with a bunch of people you don't have a lot in common with you have to take some kind of a tack. Sometimes you get lucky and find your tribe and it's all good, but if not, you're left with an interesting choice: do you just be yourself and let others deal with it as they may, or do you put on your mask and try to fit in and wait 'til people get used to you.
Now, before you give me the knee jerk "just be yourself", think about this a second. Every time we meet new people we don't tell them every innermost secret we have. We say "hi, my name is Joseph Blow" and that's that. There's an expectation in any social situation that you play it cool until you suss out the situation, and then slowly work your way in.
The problem I run into is I can play this game, but after a while it gets so boring. It may just be that I'm hanging with the wrong crowds, but it winds up being really unsatisfactory to play it safe socially a lot of the time. People are afraid to initiate conversations, or get the wrong impression when you initiate them yourself, or when you do get talking, a lot of the time you're not really saying anything (or just listening without being asked to offer much more than a "hmm, OK, I understand"). If you do get down to an interesting topic, it's not long before you're venturing very close to the boundaries of someone's comfort zone...which brings us back where we started.
When I was younger sex used to be one of the main ways I connected with people. Don't get me wrong, I still like sex, but sex without a connection of some kind gets old and feels weird. And I find making a connection can be a lot harder than getting sex ever was.
What do you think? When you're plopped in a crowd of strangers, what's your play?
This has mostly been great, and I've got enough new acquaintances from various walks of life that I've become fond of, and don't get to see often enough, that I'm considering starting back up the long-dormant parties at my house. What used to make these so great was bringing people from different scenes and social circles that would have things in common but would never meet each other and getting them in one place to interact. The '70s Shows have been doing this a little, too. It's something I seem to be able to do well and it's rewarding to see people making connections they otherwise wouldn't make.
The thing that's been a bit awkward for me, though, is finding my social groove in a lot of these situations. I'm out of practice and my inner Bill Clinton ("hi how are ya!") doesn't always surface when I want him to, and it doesn't always help that a lot of the places I'm hanging out are full of "normal" (e.g. non-musician/acting/bohemian) people, and my mere presence, a tall, bleach blond guy of indeterminate age, seems to put some of them ill at ease, which then puts ME ill at ease.
I've always been kind of a quirky guy, and I've gotten used to the fact that it just takes a while to get to know me and these things take time...but if you're in a new situation with a bunch of people you don't have a lot in common with you have to take some kind of a tack. Sometimes you get lucky and find your tribe and it's all good, but if not, you're left with an interesting choice: do you just be yourself and let others deal with it as they may, or do you put on your mask and try to fit in and wait 'til people get used to you.
Now, before you give me the knee jerk "just be yourself", think about this a second. Every time we meet new people we don't tell them every innermost secret we have. We say "hi, my name is Joseph Blow" and that's that. There's an expectation in any social situation that you play it cool until you suss out the situation, and then slowly work your way in.
The problem I run into is I can play this game, but after a while it gets so boring. It may just be that I'm hanging with the wrong crowds, but it winds up being really unsatisfactory to play it safe socially a lot of the time. People are afraid to initiate conversations, or get the wrong impression when you initiate them yourself, or when you do get talking, a lot of the time you're not really saying anything (or just listening without being asked to offer much more than a "hmm, OK, I understand"). If you do get down to an interesting topic, it's not long before you're venturing very close to the boundaries of someone's comfort zone...which brings us back where we started.
When I was younger sex used to be one of the main ways I connected with people. Don't get me wrong, I still like sex, but sex without a connection of some kind gets old and feels weird. And I find making a connection can be a lot harder than getting sex ever was.
What do you think? When you're plopped in a crowd of strangers, what's your play?
A Whole New Reason to Hate Barbra Streisand
I may be, according to some of my lesbian friends, "queer," (personal to straight folks and gossip hounds: it doesn't mean what you think it means) but ambiguous definitions of sexuality notwithstanding, I can't get in touch with my inner gay man in one key respect: I am hating me some Barbra Streisand right now.
It's a slow month, and one of the gigs on the calendar is with a show band at a casino. This means I have to come to grips with something I've managed to dodge 'til now: show tunes.
I like most kinds of music, but show tunes -- or basically anything that reminds me of the post-Vaudeville Dixieland stuff I was forced to watch as a tyke in an endless stream of '70s variety shows that aired in prime viewing time -- leave me as cold as an icicle. Still, a gig's a gig.
But that's not what's irritating me about ol' Babs, nor is it her making liberals look bad or that she beats up on her maid or her duets with Barry Gibb, or whatever her sin du jour is these days. It's the simple fact that her songs are all almost impossible to work out by ear. Nine zillion piece orchestras, key changes, songs that have so many discrete sections you just about use up the alphabet trying to keep track of them, not a single instrument playing the fundamental or even being able to discern what the hell the root is. I don't feel particularly bad about admitting this because even the musicians who played it were reading sheet music. They didn't know it either! I can barely read, but even I would prefer the little back dots on a page to trying to reduce this mass of blowsy counterpoint to something resembling a coherent piano part.
Not that it matters anyway...at this gig we're playing to tracks, so it's really a cut above lip syncing...but even so, I have to be able to get through the song if the tape takes a crap, and I have to play something that's not going to clash with what's there. So it just means the stakes are lower if I screw up. But it's not any less work.
At least Liza Minelli has the decency to pick songs with a discernible repeating chord pattern. Ah, but Barbra, it all has to be larger than life with you, doesn't it?
It may get me banned from some of my favorite haunts on Santa Monica Blvd., but Babs, I hate you.
It's a slow month, and one of the gigs on the calendar is with a show band at a casino. This means I have to come to grips with something I've managed to dodge 'til now: show tunes.
I like most kinds of music, but show tunes -- or basically anything that reminds me of the post-Vaudeville Dixieland stuff I was forced to watch as a tyke in an endless stream of '70s variety shows that aired in prime viewing time -- leave me as cold as an icicle. Still, a gig's a gig.
But that's not what's irritating me about ol' Babs, nor is it her making liberals look bad or that she beats up on her maid or her duets with Barry Gibb, or whatever her sin du jour is these days. It's the simple fact that her songs are all almost impossible to work out by ear. Nine zillion piece orchestras, key changes, songs that have so many discrete sections you just about use up the alphabet trying to keep track of them, not a single instrument playing the fundamental or even being able to discern what the hell the root is. I don't feel particularly bad about admitting this because even the musicians who played it were reading sheet music. They didn't know it either! I can barely read, but even I would prefer the little back dots on a page to trying to reduce this mass of blowsy counterpoint to something resembling a coherent piano part.
Not that it matters anyway...at this gig we're playing to tracks, so it's really a cut above lip syncing...but even so, I have to be able to get through the song if the tape takes a crap, and I have to play something that's not going to clash with what's there. So it just means the stakes are lower if I screw up. But it's not any less work.
At least Liza Minelli has the decency to pick songs with a discernible repeating chord pattern. Ah, but Barbra, it all has to be larger than life with you, doesn't it?
It may get me banned from some of my favorite haunts on Santa Monica Blvd., but Babs, I hate you.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
OH. MY. GOD.
You know how someone else just completely sums up something that you've experienced so perfectly, you don't have to say a word?
Behold:
Behold:
Hey Mr. Bass Man, Now I'm A Bass Man Too
So last night was the big British Invasion shindig down at the Cinema Bar. This is one of those nights where a bunch of musicians get together and trade off on a particular thing at this musician-friendly dive bar on the west side, and after spending a lot of time watching the musicians from the audience, it was cool to be invited to be a part of it. In fact, much to my surprise, I think I wound up playing more than anybody else did with the exception of the drummer and guitar player (the very talented Stephen Patt, who was the de facto music director for the evening), I got to do a couple of songs on my own (two Elton John numbers, since I knew the dearth of keyboard players meant no one else was going to go there), played some mellotron patches for Mark Davis, did guitar for Rich McCulley, and played bass on a very cool freakbeat number for Susan James by a '60s artist I'm not familiar with named Sharon Tandy, with a very impressive backing by Les Fleur Des Lys, British contemporaries who I had heard some stuff by. Check this out:
Anyhows, my little turn on the bass went fine I guess, because after I'd done all I was scheduled to do Steve came up and asked if I was going to be hanging around. I said sure, and he asked me if I could play bass for the closing set. I did, and it was a blast. I wound up being up there for about an hour, functioning as house bass player for the remaining acts, following the changes, reading charts, and just holding things down, even adding a harmony when I knew the tune. I haven't played much bass live over the years for various reasons, and in fact I only just learned how to play with my fingers during recording for GO WEST, and I played bass on most of the Adam Exler album. Since going pro, I hadn't really tried very hard to get bass gigs for myself just because I'd never actually sat down and done it...there's a lot more to being a good bass player than just playing the notes in time. There's also the ability to b.s. well when you get lost, because if the bass drops out the entire band falls apart. You don't know how good you are at making a vague rhythmic sound on the bass while you're trying frantically to find the root until you're onstage in the thick of it and you absolutely have to do it.
Anyway, I had plenty of opportunities to test these skills last night and I found out I'm just fine at it. It's the first time I did a whole set on bass in years (Nelson Bragg: "I've never seen you play the bass." Me: "I know how. Just no one ever asked me before"), and it is so much more fun to play bass with your fingers than with a pick. It really locks you in to the music, and roots you...you're not a guitar player playing bass anymore, you're playing bass. It's also good that I've been doing so much bass in the studio lately, because that's a much more exacting environment than playing live, so it was a lot easier than I thought.
Bass also suits how I feel about music really well, because it's such a fundamental, background instrument. It's the "do your duty" position in the band. If you have a huge ego, chances are you will be a bad bass player. If you want to be a bass player, you have to care about the groove and the music first and foremost. And that's the right mental place to be.
And as a pleasant reminder of my four-stringed excursion last night, my right forefinger has a huge blister on it. But seriously, I live for this stuff now. Making a living as a full-time musician has forced me to step out of my comfort zone and try my hand at all kinds of things, and I love the challenge and the learning of it. There's nothing I like better than being onstage with a bunch of seasoned musicians and my job is to keep up. And the best part is, it gives me one more potential avenue of work, and I need all of those I can get!
It was a great night of music -- kudos to Bill for setting it up and all the acts that played and made it such a friendly and fun evening -- and lots of fun for me getting to try out different roles and also helping other people sound better. That's my favorite thing about sideman work -- focus on the fundamentals and on the music and on the communal part of being a musician, and ironically, I got way more props from the crowd for just doing my job than I usually do when I'm the front guy. I think that's really cool. Having said that, ironically, the one instrument I didn't wind up playing last night was the drums, and the only potential work to immediately follow out of the evening was a possible fill-in drumming gig! How weird is that?
Anyhows, my little turn on the bass went fine I guess, because after I'd done all I was scheduled to do Steve came up and asked if I was going to be hanging around. I said sure, and he asked me if I could play bass for the closing set. I did, and it was a blast. I wound up being up there for about an hour, functioning as house bass player for the remaining acts, following the changes, reading charts, and just holding things down, even adding a harmony when I knew the tune. I haven't played much bass live over the years for various reasons, and in fact I only just learned how to play with my fingers during recording for GO WEST, and I played bass on most of the Adam Exler album. Since going pro, I hadn't really tried very hard to get bass gigs for myself just because I'd never actually sat down and done it...there's a lot more to being a good bass player than just playing the notes in time. There's also the ability to b.s. well when you get lost, because if the bass drops out the entire band falls apart. You don't know how good you are at making a vague rhythmic sound on the bass while you're trying frantically to find the root until you're onstage in the thick of it and you absolutely have to do it.
Anyway, I had plenty of opportunities to test these skills last night and I found out I'm just fine at it. It's the first time I did a whole set on bass in years (Nelson Bragg: "I've never seen you play the bass." Me: "I know how. Just no one ever asked me before"), and it is so much more fun to play bass with your fingers than with a pick. It really locks you in to the music, and roots you...you're not a guitar player playing bass anymore, you're playing bass. It's also good that I've been doing so much bass in the studio lately, because that's a much more exacting environment than playing live, so it was a lot easier than I thought.
Bass also suits how I feel about music really well, because it's such a fundamental, background instrument. It's the "do your duty" position in the band. If you have a huge ego, chances are you will be a bad bass player. If you want to be a bass player, you have to care about the groove and the music first and foremost. And that's the right mental place to be.
And as a pleasant reminder of my four-stringed excursion last night, my right forefinger has a huge blister on it. But seriously, I live for this stuff now. Making a living as a full-time musician has forced me to step out of my comfort zone and try my hand at all kinds of things, and I love the challenge and the learning of it. There's nothing I like better than being onstage with a bunch of seasoned musicians and my job is to keep up. And the best part is, it gives me one more potential avenue of work, and I need all of those I can get!
It was a great night of music -- kudos to Bill for setting it up and all the acts that played and made it such a friendly and fun evening -- and lots of fun for me getting to try out different roles and also helping other people sound better. That's my favorite thing about sideman work -- focus on the fundamentals and on the music and on the communal part of being a musician, and ironically, I got way more props from the crowd for just doing my job than I usually do when I'm the front guy. I think that's really cool. Having said that, ironically, the one instrument I didn't wind up playing last night was the drums, and the only potential work to immediately follow out of the evening was a possible fill-in drumming gig! How weird is that?
Friday, July 2, 2010
#1,000,000 With A Bullet
I just made a new video for the HELLO CLEVELAND album! And it's pretty funny!
I'm glad Teresa and Jon look so good in this video, because I look like shit...we did it the last day of tour in March and I had about ten pounds of road fry and paunch, which I've since shed, thank heaven. Vanity aside, though, isn't this cool? We did it on location, as they say, in beautiful Bethlehem, PA, as is appropriate for such an east coast-centric album.
This is the second official video from HELLO CLEVELAND, and the fifth song from the album to be represented on youtube. Despite this, the album is now ranked at #1,000,000 on amazon. (I'm serious! Check it out!) The irony is you'd think an album with a song called "A Town Called Asshole" on it would fly off the shelves, but I've learned since then that a lot of people didn't realize I had another album out after GO WEST. Not surprising since it appeared out of nowhere and it's not like I did much to promote it...I wrote all the songs in the van while in a pissy road mood and we recorded them all in a studio in the Ohio 'burbs in the space of eight hours...but it's gotten pretty high marks from those folks that possess it, somewhat to my surprise, but I don't argue with what people like.
I've been thinking about new ways to get my music out there, and I'm thinking that once I get the hang of the video thing, I'd like to do film of the whole GO WEST album. Like, a video for each song. Just start at the beginning and work my way to the end. There's not a song on the album I can't get behind, and I feel like when that album came out, it was just too much for people to process. If I made 23 videos for the album, and they were good, that would give people a chance to take it one song at a time, and it would keep the album alive for a long spell. What do you think?
To dry run this theory, here's a playlist of songs from HELLO CLEVELAND I just put up on youtube. If you feel motivated to pick up a copy, I offer you the choice of two websites:
Adam Marsland website
amazon.com
End of shill. :) Hey, I do have a job besides blogging.
I'm glad Teresa and Jon look so good in this video, because I look like shit...we did it the last day of tour in March and I had about ten pounds of road fry and paunch, which I've since shed, thank heaven. Vanity aside, though, isn't this cool? We did it on location, as they say, in beautiful Bethlehem, PA, as is appropriate for such an east coast-centric album.
This is the second official video from HELLO CLEVELAND, and the fifth song from the album to be represented on youtube. Despite this, the album is now ranked at #1,000,000 on amazon. (I'm serious! Check it out!) The irony is you'd think an album with a song called "A Town Called Asshole" on it would fly off the shelves, but I've learned since then that a lot of people didn't realize I had another album out after GO WEST. Not surprising since it appeared out of nowhere and it's not like I did much to promote it...I wrote all the songs in the van while in a pissy road mood and we recorded them all in a studio in the Ohio 'burbs in the space of eight hours...but it's gotten pretty high marks from those folks that possess it, somewhat to my surprise, but I don't argue with what people like.
I've been thinking about new ways to get my music out there, and I'm thinking that once I get the hang of the video thing, I'd like to do film of the whole GO WEST album. Like, a video for each song. Just start at the beginning and work my way to the end. There's not a song on the album I can't get behind, and I feel like when that album came out, it was just too much for people to process. If I made 23 videos for the album, and they were good, that would give people a chance to take it one song at a time, and it would keep the album alive for a long spell. What do you think?
To dry run this theory, here's a playlist of songs from HELLO CLEVELAND I just put up on youtube. If you feel motivated to pick up a copy, I offer you the choice of two websites:
Adam Marsland website
amazon.com
End of shill. :) Hey, I do have a job besides blogging.
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