Tonight I played my first gig with an Irish-style band called the Fenbi International Superstars. Hilarious and fun, and the main songwriter is Mike, the former bassist for the Young Immortals. We had the packed house singing and dancing like crazy.
And it was a good thing that the show was so much fun, too, because a surprise situation happened that really pissed me off. Again. Not as much as when it happened last time, but still. . .ouch.
Tonight was the second set of recording sessions for Sarah Castro’s new band. This is the same group that I recorded the drums and electric bass parts for a month ago. Tonight was the night for electric guitars, keyboards, and a little bit of experimental weirdness.
Or so I thought.
I got home from work and had just finished loading guitars, amps, effect pedals, bag of tricks, the xylophone, and a couple of little keyboards into the car, when I got a call from Sarah. “Hey, don’t bring any instruments. There’s been sort of a change of plans. We may have to start from scratch.”
“Uhhhhhhhh. . .okay. Is there something wrong with the drums that we already did?”
“No, it’s just that–well, I don’t really know to explain it. Sean can tell you. Just come on over, and he can tell you all about it. We might be redoing drums tonight, maybe.”
So I unloaded all my stuff from the car, and I started to feel really anxious, so I called her back. “Hey, I feel like I’ve just been thrown a huge curve ball here, and I’m feeling really confused. What’s going on? What’s the new plan? Do you really need me tonight or not?”
“Yeah, just come on over, and we’ll get you some food–Do you like ahi tuna? (YES.)–and we can tell you all about it once you’re here.” I grabbed my little bag of drum sticks, just to be safe, and headed out the door. I’ll go pretty much anywhere for ahi tuna.
By this time, I was feeling really confused, and hungry, and tired from loading a carful of instruments twice. I made a mistake with the directions on the way to the studio, and almost got hit by another car while I was turning around in a parking lot, but finally arrived at a very nice studio, located next door to the Wonder Ballroom. It was full of guitars, amps, effect pedals, electric pianos and organs, and a beautiful Allegra drum set (with surprisingly crappy cymbals! WTF?? Wish I’d brought mine…) all mic’ed up and ready to go.
Turns out that the engineer is actually a pretty well-known musician and engineer, who worked on the Shins’ newest CD, among many other things. He told me his thoughts about what we had to work with, and what we seemed to be trying to achieve, so Sarah decided to go with his suggestions. I did too, after they all got me up to speed, so we started to record some drum tracks.
We did two songs tonight. The first one has a very sparse and deceptively simple drum part, almost like a ‘looping’ pattern. After a few false starts and technical mishaps, it took about three or four tries to get a good, usable take. The second song calls for a very ‘tribal’ drum part, with big toms and dark cymbal crashes for the entire first half of the song. The second half is where I switch to regular drum sticks, and pretty much just rawk out as hard as possible. Total blast, and it took just three takes to nail it. The end of the third take had a particularly good feel to it. After the cymbals faded out, in my headphones I could hear Sarah and GuitaristJimmy in the control room, laughing and clapping at the same time. “Todd B—–, everybody!” They ran into the drum room, saying, “Oh, man, that was IT. That was the one!”
The thing about playing drums is that the more I do it, the more I want to do it. I keep thinking about creating opportunities so that I’ll be able to do it more often. I keep thinking about what I need to do to my drum kit to achieve the sound that matches what I hear in my head. I keep thinking about what kind of band matches my playing style, and would give me the opportunity to play at my best. It’s really exciting to think about that.
So now it’s looking like tomorrow is the day for keyboards and experimental weirdness. There will be guitars and amps there already, so I’m bringing the xylophone, the Omnichord, the Casio SK-1, the toy piano, the amp that’s the size of a pack of cigarettes, and the cello. I have no idea what we’ll end up using; maybe all of those things, maybe none of them.
I can’t wait for you to be able to hear some of this stuff.
I think the best thing about living in this building full of musicians is the incredible amount of diversity represented, and the caliber of the musicianship. Right now, the Portland Cello Project is rehearsing upstairs, and I’m sitting down here listening and thoroughly enjoying it.
From the apartment next to mine, I often get to hear the Pete Krebs Gypsy Jazz trio, or the Stolen Sweets (1920’s and 30’s jazz with three-part vocal harmonies).
From the apartment in front of mine, I get to hear classical flute, sometimes in duet with another flute, or with other instruments as well. Sometimes I take my cello over there and participate.
From the apartment upstairs in the front of the building, I get to hear alto sax parts from Vagabond Opera songs, as well as piano playing and singing.
From my apartment, the people in the rest of the building get to hear people like Breanna and Susie, and sometimes Stephanie.
The Portland music community is very well-represented by this one building alone.
In other news, Joan and I went out clothes shopping at a whole bunch of places yesterday. I totally scored:
black hoodie – YAY! The five-month search for a black hoodie is finally over.
two orange thermal T-shirts, each with a different ‘pattern’ of stitching and thickness. Plus, one’s medium-sized and the other is small. And it was $10 for both of them, so why the heck shouldn’t I buy both?
button-up dress shirt from J. Crew. White, green and black pinstripes. If you look from a distance, though, it just looks like a really cool green.
brown corduroy jacket, also from J. Crew. This was the score of the year. It’s a $200 jacket, on clearance for $50, then another 25 percent off, for a total of $35. $35!! For a two hundred-dollar jacket! I can wear it whenever I want to look like a university professor or something. It has patches on the elbows, and it even has a pen pocket inside.
I’m thinking of going on a picture-taking excursion here in a little while, since the weather’s so nice. I’m not going to spend such a beautiful day sitting inside. I did, however, want to fill you in on the clothing ‘scores’, and say how much fun the rest of the weekend has been. Good birthday party on Friday, and good gig on Saturday.
Funny thing about the gig on Saturday was that CellistSkip, who I play with in various incarnations of both Susie’s and Stephanie’s groups, was actually in the audience (first time I’ve ever seen him in the audience) while I played the cello with Susie. She came up to me near the end of our set and said, “Skip just got here. No pressure.” I was a bit nervous at first, with one of the best cellists in town sitting right up front and watching me, but after the first cello song, he smiled and applauded, then ran up and stuffed a couple of dollar bills down behind the tailpiece. It was a hilarious and supportive thing for him to do, and I was completely relaxed after that.
Well, time to get in the shower and out the door to start the day ‘frealz, yo.’
Peace, out.
Well, I made it through the rough patch.
I don’t know why it hit me so hard, but there was a combination of factors that led to that little meltdown. Add a few sad dreams–I’ve had a few brutal ones lately–and a liberal dose of exhaustion, and that makes a perfect recipe for depressive episode.
I walked to work three days this week. It’s about a half-hour walk each way, so I get a pretty decent amount of exercise when I do that, and it’s a great way to wake up, too.
Luckily, my dreams have also been more normal. Well, okay; normal for me. The one last night involved a friend of mine who was selling a brand new BMW (but it looked more like a swoopier, sportier SmartCar) to a guy he met online. My friend needed me to go over with him to help drive it over. The guy lived in a town that was perched on the edge of a cliff that overlooked the ocean, like Big Sur or something, so we drove through a curvy, mountainous road, and through an old mining area with a water slide (I don’t know, it was a dream!). When we arrived at his house, I saw that he had a drum set, but it wasn’t like any that I’d ever seen before, so I was trying to figure out if I could jump back there and play it while the guy was testing out the car. There, you see? Completely normal dream.
Tonight is RockShowGirl’s birthday, the third of the three Capricorn girls I know. I could barely keep my eyes open at work, so I’d love to take a nap before heading downtown, but I don’t know if I’ll actually do it.
My friend Maddy has been raving about a book called The Unhooked Generation for weeks now, and I finally made it to the library today. Coincidentally enough, it turned out that today was the perfect day to go, because there was a woman working there who seems to be exactly my type, who I’d very much like to ask out when I go back. I normally wouldn’t share that here, but I did for the simple reason that I’m a little bit shy, and I’m more likely to do it if I’ve told someone about it.
I also checked out some DVD’s; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Mondovino, an excellent documentary which I’ve actually seen before. It’s about the wine industry, and it compares the ‘new’ practices of the industry–led by American companies, naturally–with the more traditional, mostly European ones. It runs the gamut from the super-ultra-mega-producers like Robert Mondavi to a tiny French vineyard run by a single octegenarian gentleman, and everything in between. Alyssa and I saw the movie about a year ago, and I think you can probably imagine which we preferred, and found ourselves rooting for.
Tomorrow night is a Susie Blue gig, and although I’ve played accordion or keyboards with her for two years now, this will be the first time I play cello with her, and I’m very much looking forward to it. Our rehearsals have felt great.
The rest of the weekend is wide open. Here’s to some wide openness!
Man, yesterday was rough.
Work was the usual; boring and stressful, and I pretty much sleepwalked through the entire day. Got home to find an e-mail inviting me to listen to some early mixes of some songs that I played on a month or so ago. I listened, to find that half of the stuff I’d played had been either deleted completely or otherwise pretty well buried in the mix.
I decided to watch a movie to try and cheer up, but that didn’t help. I realized that I’d left my phone in my bag, and when I went to get it, there was a message from my dad. He asked me to please return his call, because they’re leaving the country on Friday, and he wanted to check in with me before they go. As tuned out as I felt, I figured it was the perfect time. I laid on my bed in the dark, only half-listening to his braggadocio and stories. We ‘talked’ for about twenty minutes, and then he had ‘stuff to do, and I’m sure you do too’, so I told him that I hope they have a great trip, and that was about it. I came away from the conversation feeling even worse.
I went in and dinked around online for a while longer, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I decided to go to bed early, and read or something. Even that didn’t work. I couldn’t focus on the book at all, so I put it down, shut the light off and laid there, on the verge of tears.
When I fell asleep, I had a dream that involved MostRecentExGirlfriend, in which she invited me to a party with a bunch of her friends. You’d think that would be a fun dream, but things didn’t exactly go as we planned, and we ended up either arguing or trying to avoid each other the entire time. It was a very sad and frustrating dream.
I feel worse this morning than I did yesterday, but I have my fingers crossed nonetheless. If you’ve been trying to get in touch with me lately, I apologize. I’ve been feeling very strange for about two or three weeks now. I’ve been avoiding phone calls, for the most part, and wanting to be alone a lot more, to a degree that is unusual even for me. This last weekend was great, though, and the dinner/movie/conversation with Joan last night was great also. I’m sure this weirdness will pass, but I haven’t felt this listless in years.
It’s below freezing today, but it’s supposed to be sunny and nice again, so I think I’ll bundle up and walk to work, which is a great way to wake up, and it always makes me feel good. I walked yesterday too.
I hope this listlessness passes soon; this is not my idea of living.
