Here are a few pictures from the play reading the other night.
The guy with the beard is the playwright.
The guy with the accordion and no beard is me.
This is Todd Sabel, the director. In the world of The Theatah, however, he’s known as T. Austin Sabel.
These readings are great fun, and I’m tremendously honored to have the privilege of attending them. Thank you, Todd, for giving me the opportunity!
Yeah, that last one was funny and everything, but now it’s time for a more ‘real’ entry.
I’ve been feeling a little strange all week; a little bit lonely, a little bit sad, and a little bit exhausted from work. I’ve even thought about writing to Kelly again lately, but I still don’t think that’s a good thing for me to do, so I’ve resisted that impulse.
In a way, I’ve been so busy these last few weeks that it sort of kept me from feeling the loss of that relationship, but now that my schedule has eased up a bit, I’ve had more time to feel it, and I’m not gonna lie; it’s been hard lately. Luckily, I have friends I can call to talk about it with, and who understand. But there are still some quiet times when I find myself missing her.
Tonight I went to another play reading with Todd Sabel and his theater group. The play they read was called “Dirty Water”, and I took my accordion and provided improvised background music and sound effects (WATER sound effects, no less. Who knew?). The play was written a couple of years ago by a local playwright named Devon Granmo for his college thesis. Hilarious and strange play, and even though it’s been performed before, it seems like it might actually be a work in progress. The playwright was there at the reading with us, which was really interesting. He stopped the group once or twice during the reading to say, “Oops. . .I forgot to change this part. Start HERE and then go BACK and start at this OTHER section.” He also asked for feedback from the group afterwards. If some pictures float up to the surface–and I have a feeling they will–I’ll be sure to post them here.
Oh yeah. . .there was something else interesting that happened at the reading. There was a woman there who wasn’t at the last reading I was at, who apparently plays the cello. When Todd introduced us, she asked how I found out about the theater group, and I told her Todd invited me to come play at one of them a month ago, and that I played cello the last time. She said, “You play cello? How would you feel about playing with twelve other cellists?” “You mean the Portland Cello Project?” I asked. “I’d LOVE to. I’m friends with Skip and a couple other people, and I’d love to come play.” “Well, they’re looking for new members; you should come down.” “Count me in, DEFINITELY.” The Portland Cello Project, if you haven’t seen them before, is an amazing group. I’ve been wanting to go and play with them for almost a year now, but so far I’ve been too busy with the bands I’m already in. Now that it’s fall and I have a little more free time, I’m going to take that opportunity, for sure. Groups like PCP are the reason I started playing cello in the first place.
The rest of the week has been pretty uneventful, quite frankly. I’ve spent much more time than usual at home, cleaning my apartment (which was long overdue) and trying to relax and deal with the hundreds of different feelings I’ve been feeling lately.
The moral of the story is that I think I could use another hug.
Today I heard two strange and memorable things.
I should warn you that this entry may be a little bit. . .uhh. . .well, let’s just say that if your sensibilities lean toward the delicate, then this may not be a good entry for you. There’s no bad language or anything, but there’s plenty of talk about bodily functions. Did I say ‘plenty’? I should’ve said ‘all’, I suppose, because that’s pretty much the entire subject of this entry.
You’ve been warned.
Still with me? Okay, then you must be the kind of person who knows that sometimes you have to sink low to catch the really big fish, so here we go, hand in virtual hand, down to the literary and blogospherical depths.
Around ten o’ clock this morning, I took a break from work and went to the restroom. While I was standing at the urinal, I heard someone in the stall doing some text messaging while they were going Number Two. Now I don’t know why that bothered me so much, but it did. Taptaptap–PFFFT–taptaptap–(gruuuuunt)PLOP/SPLASH(exhale)–taptaptap. The images that came to mind were just not good ones. I hope he washes his hands like a maniac, and I also hope that none of his friends ever has an emergency and needs to use his phone. Okay, so that was Part One.
Part Two was when he started going Number One, and it suddenly sounded like he turned a faucet on in there. I’m talking about a big faucet. I thought to myself, ‘Man, that guy must have a huge urethra!’ Then I thought, ‘IT’S TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING; I DON’T WANT TO THINK ABOUT URETHRAS, ESPECIALLY IF THEY’RE NOT EVEN MY OWN.’ I washed my hands quickly, left the restroom and walked back to my desk.
Normally this is where the blog entry would end. But not today; ohhhhh no.
This afternoon, in another trip to the restroom, I was standing at the urinal when a guy walked in, talking on his cell phone. That in itself is a little weird, but then he turned, walked into the stall and started urinating loudly, WHILE HE WAS STILL ON THE PHONE. I mean, come ON, dude, not only does your girlfriend have to listen to you peeing while you’re on the phone with her, but I have to listen to you peeing AND talking on the phone to your girlfriend. Do us all a favor next time and call her back when you’re done.
SHEESH.
People, man. I’m tellin’ ya, they drive me crazy.
I have a whole bunch of things I’ve been wanting to write about, but they’re all very disparate and random, so I think I’ll have to settle for an update, at least for now.
Wednesday night I was invited to record some guitar parts and maybe other things too) by BassPlayerChris who plays in Breanna’s band. One of the other people he plays with is named Matt Vrba (yes, that’s spelled correctly; it’s pronounced VERB-uh), and Matt wrote a Christmas song, and he and the band were recording it. They needed some other textural instruments, so Chris called me. I ended up playing electric guitar, xylophone, and Casio keyboard on the song. It was a blast. First time I’d met Matt, but he’s a great guy. Can’t wait to hear how the song turns out. We recorded at Opal Studios with a guy named Kevin Hahn, and everything sounds really great. I’d recommend him without hesitation. It wouldn’t surprise me if our paths cross again.
Last night, Stephanie’s band played at the Hawthorne Theater. We played well, but it was kind of a tough gig. We opened for a well-known band from Canada, but I think we all kinda felt like we’d been jerked around, from the minute we walked in the door. The show was scheduled to start at 8:00, so we all arrived about 6:45. Well-Known Canadian Band was just starting their soundcheck. Someone came and told us that the show was scheduled to start at 9:00, but we’d been telling everybody to be there at 8:00. In addition to that, we were originally scheduled to play first, then a DJ would play for a half-hour or so, and finally Well-Known Canadian Band would play. This seemed like an odd choice of ‘flow’ for a show, so we asked if the DJ could play first. This was agreed to, but we still needed to have a soundcheck too. Fifteen minutes before the doors opened, Well-Known Canadian Band finished their soundcheck, and we were finally allowed to set up our instruments on stage. Luckily, their drummer invited DrummerDrew to use his drums, which cut down dramatically on set-up time, but we still had precious little time to test the vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, and accordion. Plus, can I just take a minute to mention that the sound guy was a complete amateur? Thank you; because he was. Steph’s acoustic guitar kept feeding back during the show, and I didn’t even get to test my accordion’s microphone before the show started. These things are all pretty much unheard of in professional venues. In any decent-sized venue where there are multiple bands on the bill, each band usually gets a half hour or so to test everything, so that the sound crew knows what they’re dealing with and they can make the groups sound as good as possible.
All that aside, the venue was also very strange. It’s an all-ages place, so what they’ve done is divide the room in half; front and back. The front (by the stage) is all-ages, and the back half is the bar area. While we played, it was still early, so everyone was still in the bar area, which meant we were playing to a great big hardwood floor and a half-empty room, which felt a little bit insulting. As performers, all we have to gauge our performance is the audience. If we feel like they’re distant and unresponsive, it’s a bummer, because we either feel like they aren’t enjoying themselves, or that we’re not doing a good enough job.
So all that, combined with the showtime issues, made for a frustrating experience.
The good news about the show was that BoringFish was there. It was great to see her, even though conversation was a little difficult; shouting over a band isn’t the most conducive environment. But she’s great, and shouting at each other is infinitely better than not seeing each other at all.
The other good news about the show is that the band played well. DrummerDrew and BassistWill are really fun to play with, and they’re getting comfortable and stretching out in a great way. Last night was also the debut gig for my new guitar amp (not to mention the new amp stand that I bought while I was on my lunch break), and it sounded fantastic. So that was really nice, but the gig itself was still really frustrating, overall.
This week at work has been infinitely more stressful than usual, too. Normally there are two other people (or sometimes even three) who work in my department, but this week one of them had her grandmother die, and the other has a daughter who just had her first baby. So Wednesday, Thursday and today I was alone. It was totally crazy, and I’m totally exhausted, which is why I’m sitting here writing in my blog and doing laundry on a Friday night, despite a couple of offers to go out.
In other news, I’m going to a Music Business workshop tomorrow afternoon, to learn about contracts, distribution deals, production deals, and all that sort of stuff. There’s a guy here in town who’s an entertainment lawyer, and he’s given workshops and lectures about these issues regularly (but not often) for two or three years now. He’s a really great guy, and I’ve wanted to attend one of his workshops for quite a while. This comes at the perfect time, too, because I’ve had lots of good opportunities come my way recently, and I hope to be able to capitalize on them.
And now I’m going to get off the computer, because I’ve spent all day using one at work, and I’m starting to get sore. Plus, I bought a DVD today called “The Legend of 1900”, which my friend Leila told me I need to see. I stumbled upon a used copy at Everyday Music, so I decided to go ahead and buy it. I think I’m going to go watch it now.
I hope all’s well with you.
You’ll be glad to know that I’ve pretty much been laying low this whole weekend, so I’m feeling much more like myself again.
Saturday morning, I rode the MAX downtown to meet my dad and stepmom at Jake’s Grill for breakfast. It went…okay. Uhhh, it’s complicated. After they left, I went and looked for a new pair of shoes, but couldn’t find any that I liked. Came home and ended up doing laundry, dishes, boring stuff like that. Shelby and I were going to go to MusicFest NW, but the only bands we wanted to see we’d already seen before (for the most part) or were friends with or whatever, so we decided to give it a miss. Plus it would have been ridiculously late–the last band, Derby, didn’t start until 1:00 a.m.– and she had to work at 8:00 the next day. As I’m sure you can imagine, I sure needed the rest, so I was quite happy to stay home. I ended up watching “I Heart Huckabees.”
Today, Joan and I went to see “La Vie En Rose” in the theater. We both thought it was excellent, and the girl who played Edith Piaf is an incredible actress, but be warned. Her life story is an e x t r e m e l y tragic one. We were both feeling really sad afterwards, so we went for a walk through my neighborhood and then went for gelato.
After that, I drove way out to Beaverton to get another guitar amp, like this one. Since Steph’s band has been playing so many big shows lately, I’ve been using my bigger amp more. It’s forty-five years old now, and it’s the best-sounding amp I’ve ever heard in my entire life, but it’s a little bit too old and fragile to use day in and day out. It gets ‘tired’ on long gigs, and it loses a little of its edge. So I found one on Craigslist that will be perfect. I almost didn’t get it because one the aftermarket speaker had a problem, and the guy had also swapped the original power tubes for lower-output ones. (This just means it wasn’t nearly as loud or as clear-sounding as it would normally be.) We tried lots of different things, and he ended up putting back the original speaker and the high-output tubes, and suddenly the amp completely came to life again. It sounded loud and and pristine; just the way it’s supposed to. I can’t wait to use it at the show on Wednesday night, which I’m really looking forward to because Steph’s band is opening for the Paperboys, who are pretty big-time. If you live in Portland, please come see us!
So.
I’m feeling much better tonight than I was on Freaky Friday, just two short days ago. Amazing what a little rest can do for a person.
