So what’s been going on since I could last be bothered to throw something up on here? I played another gig in town which went over pretty well. The kiddo has gone to two camps, each which ended in a very cute performance. I was most excited about Rock Camp, where they all got to try out different instruments, learned how to do power slides, and performed an original song about buying a time machine at Best Buy to go look at dinosaurs. Their band was called The Smudgies, which was changed from Smokey House Hot Bread which I thought was a much better name.

And speaking of rock and instruments and such… this Saturday I went on one of my usual weekend trips to Guitar Center. I’ve been hearing good things about some of the newer stuff that Squire has been putting out, and I thought I’d check out some of their basses. I’ve been really wanting a Jazz or Precision Special (Precision body, Jazz neck, both pickups) for a while. I played a few of the Jazzes, but didn’t really feel that it would be an upgrade from my heavily modified Fender Musicmaster. And then I saw a Fender Standard Jazz in the used area for about a third of what they go for new. I played it and loved the sound, versatility and feel. And it would definitely be an upgrade!

I ran back home and went digging through my closet for my dad’s old Ovation acoustic/electric. He gave it to me after he discovered Taylor guitars. I don’t play much guitar, but for a while it was nice to have an acoustic around just in case. But I hadn’t played it in several years and the strings and frets were rather crusty. I brought it to a friend who buys beat up guitars to clean up and sell for a lot more, and he helped me get this one all nice. We crowned the frets, oiled the fingerboard, tightened up the strap pegs and made it look beautiful. I brought it back to Guitar Center and they traded it for the bass, a case and a new set of string!

But here’s the hard part… because the bass was brought to them used, they have to wait 30 days before letting it out of the store. They call that the pawn shop law, so in case it’s reported stolen, they can return it to the rightful owner. So I have to wait until the middle of August before I can bring it home, giving me only two rehearsals with it before I play a gig with it. Barely 10 minutes goes by without me daydreaming about playing it!

We scrambled to try to get somebody to fill in, but keyboard players are few and far between, not to mention ones who can play the complex music that we play. Although our keyboard player is back, we are still looking for another one to come in and make the sound bigger as well as to make sure that last minute changes in health conditions won’t mean having to cancel a gig. We’ve been asking our friends and trolling Craigslist for new members, and we’ve gotten some interesting (and some hilarious) replies as well as responses from people who are into the music we’re playing and just want to be on our mailing list.  We also heard back from this amazing sax player who was in our very first jam session before we were even a band. At that point we were not up to his level but he was a great sport and had a lot of fun playing with us. Now that we’re practiced and gigging, he’s into playing with us from time to time which would be a really sweet addition.

So last night we were practicing. We have a show in 3 weeks and we’ve been working as hard as we can without having any keys. Our keyboard player did manage to get there last night, though a bit late. He called me from outside so I could let him in. When I opened the garage door, I noticed that the entire block was sealed off inside a police line. A cop came over and asked that we all stay inside since somebody just got shot around the corner and they were looking for the shooter, whose car was parked with the door wide open right behind my guitarist’s car. I told him that we were just doing a quick load in and he was cool about it. And then, like the egotistical self involved musician I can be sometimes, I asked a guy who is working on immediate issues of life and death how we sounded from out there. He smiled, gave a thumbs up and said “alright.” We got back upstairs and dedicated the next song (Deep Purple’s Child in Time – definitely apropos of the situation downstairs) to the boys in blue outside, and by the time we were done all that was left on the street was a little bit of broken auto glass where the shooter’s car was parked.

Here’s a blurry cellphone shot of the police tape right over the hood of my car.

By the way, in case you were wondering, we sounded great! Our next gig is going to be a lot of fun – Friday, June 18th at the Baltic in Point Richmond.

We all really like Genesis, though not the Genesis most children of the 80′s know. Before they were a pop band fronted by Phil Collins, they were a prog band fronted by Peter Gabriel. And that’s just how we like them! There are three brilliant chapters in American Psycho where Patric Bateman takes a break from all the killing to talk about music and wax philosophically about his incredibly pedestrian musical tastes. The one on Genesis is hysterical. He pretty much says that their old stuff sucked, but they finally achieved greatness with Invisible Touch. So when it was suggested that we try a song from the first post-Gabriel album, Trick of the Tale, I was a bit skeptical.

But Squonk rocks. According to wikipedia, it’s Genesis’ attempt to sound like Led Zeppelin. Most of what I’m playing is just basic thumping on open D and A strings, but there are all sorts of places where we need to anticipate and come in a little bit ahead of the beat. Having worked on it all alone during the week between rehearsals, there were some spots where I just could not figure out what I was supposed to play, but last night it all came together in practice. We spent about 2 hours on the song and by the end it was damn near respectable. We went over the transitions, and over them, and over them, and over them, and it paid off. I can’t wait to debut this song in a little over a week! And now, for your listening pleasure…

We had a projector set up to show things behind us. For the first set, we had Reefer Madness playing. For the rest of the night, we had a loop that I put together of random public domain oddities. I also tried to set up my flip camera to shoot us, but it was really difficult to get a good angle without really being able to see the screen. So the videos I have show people sitting around in a dark room listening to us play.

A few songs into the first set, two friends of mine from back East who I haven’t seen in over 5 years walked in. They had just flown in from Baltimore that morning and fought the jetlag to hear me play. I also had a couple of other friends there, one of whom brought my former boss (the one who laid me off right before the holidays) who was rather complimentary but wound up bailing shortly into the second set. Everyone was really complimentary. The audience really liked what we were doing, and we kept them well engaged.

This being only our second show, and our first in many months, we debuted a few songs which we’ve never played live before and that we’d been working on for months. We had two solid hour-long sets prepared. After the second set, we took a break and Breakfast, one of the guys who runs the club, hopped onto his keyboard and started regaling us with some ragtime standards, Tom Leher tunes, and an interesting take on Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Then we got back on for a third set of completely improvised stuff, mostly in E. To conserve space, our drummer brought his electronic kit which comes with a lot more sounds than just your standard drums, and this really ads to the jam in new and exciting ways. And then just as we’re really hitting our groove, I hear a sax. I looked at my keyboard player wondering if he had that realistic of a sax sound, and then in walks Breakfast blowing a sax. A sax always kicks things up a notch, and this time was no exception.

We wrapped up around midnight, and as we were tearing down the gear and cleaning up the room, Breakfast was playing Beatles songs on an acoustic as our singer and a friend of ours sang them in perfect harmony. It was an incredible evening and I can hardly wait just a few weeks until our next gig.

Below is some YouTube from the second set. Like I said, the video is just people sitting on the couch and walking by, but you can at least hear what we sounded like.

No Quarter:

Child in Time:

At that point, we had procured ourselves a large jam room downtown. It used to be a yoga studio and was not being used and we were lucky enough to get to use it for free. We had a small PA and sometimes a loaner drumset. At this point the Tuesday playgroup/jam was becoming more of a practice where our kids were distracting us. Then there was a Thursday night jam which was getting to the point where there were 5 guitars and 3 basses all playing at once and it was very straight ahead and bluesy.

As the festival was getting to be 2 months away, my friend told me that he didn’t think I’d be able to learn his songs in time for the festival and he had found a guy with a real upright who also plays in an orchestra, and I was really bummed for a bit, but I realized that playing a gig just for the spotlight rather than for love of the music was not really the right motivation.

So, I was without a band and not really loving what was happening with the open jam and I decided I needed to organize my own thing. I put out an ad on craigslist looking for people into progressive rock. I heard back from a guitarist, a sax player, and a guy who plays pretty much everything.  We jammed a bunch of King Crimson songs, a little bit of Pink Floyd, and some improv stuff. The following week the sax player did not return, but the three of us left formed the core of what is now our band. A few weeks later we took out an ad looking for a drummer. We had one respond who has his own warehouse jam space in Oakland and a wife who sings and also plays bass. After playing with him in our jam room once, we moved it all to his place and the band was formed in August of ’09. Shortly thereafter, the jam room got rented out and was no longer available for anyone. We made it all happen at the right time and it was meant to be.

Shortly thereafter, it was announced that my town was having a fall festival and all the bands in town were invited to play, so we had our very first gig. That was last October and the last time we played live. After such a long wait, we’ve got 3 gigs lined up now, and the first one is this Friday!

The venue is a medical marijuana clinic, so it’s going to be an unusual show. Since it’s not a bar zoned for live music, we’re going to keep the volume low. We’re bringing electric drums and small amps. We’ve added a few tunes to our repertoire since the October gig, and we’re also going to do a lot of spacey improv jams. It’s going to be a lot of fun. For more info, to see some videos from our last gig, and to get onto our mailing list, click here.

So, what’s been going on, you ask? Oh who am I kidding? Nobody is asking. The only comments I seem to get around here are spam. And the comment spammers seem to have gotten a bit more advanced since my last forray into the blogosphere. I do get a little chuckle every time I get these vague comments about how intriguing my subject matter is and how they would like to know more about it. But it’s my own damn fault for taking such a long hiatus from blogging and not really doing a whole lot to let people know I’m back.

So where was I? Oh right, general life updates and whatnot. So last Sunday there was a going away party for a friend of mine who is on a plane bound for Boston O’Hare as I type. It was an open jam session on the back deck of a restaurant in town and it was a great deal of fun. I brought Stella (my 4 year old daughter for those who don’t know) and a bunch of my other friends brought their kids too. The kids played their kid games while we played rock and roll for a solid six hours! We had a great group of players, many of us dropping out sometimes mid-song to tend to the little ones and many songs drummed softly with a child in the lap. At one point, Stella picked up a harmonica and played right in tune and on time. Did I mention she’s only 4?

After a long cold rainy winter, spring has definitely sprung and there’s a lot of music happening! Besides this fun jam, I now have 3 gigs lined up! The first two are only a couple of days apart. On April 16th, we’re going to be doing a loose, stripped down set at the Pacific Alternative Health Center in Point Richmond. Then that following Tuesday, we’re playing at an as of yet to be determined venue in San Rafael. Why a Tuesday night gig? because that Tuesday is 4/20. What St. Patrick’s Day is to drinkers, 4/20 is to pot smokers, and both of these gigs are being put on by medical marijuana dispensaries. Since we are purveyors of heavy progressive and psychedelic rock, it’s the perfect audience! The third gig is at the historic Toot’s Tavern in Crocket on Fri, May 7th.  For all info on my band, I’ve got a page with dates, clips and a way for you to join our mailing list here.

And last but not least, I’d like to make a quick shout out to some friends of mine who have blogs. I haven’t seen Karen since a few Christmases ago. We were friends in DC and she produced my first film. She was halfway across the country, and now she’s halfway across the world and blogging about being an expat mom. And my old buddy Sam has a great blog which covers the full spectrum of pop culture that you should really check out. OK, that’s it. Comment spammers, have at it!