Friday the 30th

This Friday's show was a pretty good one. The highlight was of course the appearance of steve's mom. She is what one might call a firecracker. My favorite part of the night was when we finished the first set and she had befriended two beautiful women who she prompltly introduced to her son as he got off stage. Nothin like you're mom pimpin for ya. At one point during the set I saw two women talking to each other and i could tell one was trying to explain to the other that the voice she was hearing was coming from the tuba. It cracked me up so I gave them a nod. I'm trying to be a little more aware of the audience and what's going on with them rather than just being completely caught up in my own world. The late Friday late night shows at pianos aren't really gonna get me anywhere as a musician long term. By which I mean anyone who goes to pianos late night on a Friday would probably never go to a real show and conversely anyone who might go to a regular show would never come to pianos late night on a Friday. So from an audience building career standpoint it's kind of a useless gig. But over the course of a night we can play to a lot of people and I really enjoy the challenging nature of the gig. I enjoy confronting someone who would never go see strange experimental tuba music. I like seeing their confusion and I enjoy the challenge of forcing them to enjoy something they never would have thought they'd like. This gig is all about that look of surprise on people's faces. Besides which you constantly read about people whining about the gentrification of the downtown scene and how's there's nothing experimental going on anymore and how you gotta go out to Brooklyn where everything is cool and hip and this is a little bit of my thumb in those people's eyes. Steve was working for Amy Arbus for a while and I remember him telling me about going to a party of a bunch of well off folks reminiscing about the old downtown days when crazy art went down and how those days are a thing of the past because nothing exciting or different goes down anymore. Well, as they say in new Orleans "fuck all y'all." you can say all you want about the dead end stupidity of playing electronic tuba rock music but I'll put it up against anything that went down at CBGBs back in the day creatively speaking. There's plenty of shit still going on out there people. You just have to make a reasonable effort to find it and if that effort involves squeezing your way through a sardeine can full of douchebag than so be it. Thanks pianos for keepin it weird in the face of normal

Everyone...

Everyone has a story to tell. I happen to have a particularly useless one...

daunting

Last show in Colorado last night in Crested Butte. Met lots of good people. The journey back to New York seems a little daunting right now. I was pretty tempted to continue on and go to burning man because many of my friends have been berating me about going. A few things have dissuaded me from going: first off it's another 2000 miles to my trip, secondly that costs money (gas and car rental time), and thirdly I have a shit load to do for the next leg of the bucket tour. I have to get my whole merch world in order and I have to work out a couple more songs. Unfortunately getting fucked up in the desert will have to happen some other time. All my blueman friends are building a big stage this year which probably won't ever happen again but what can you do...but get in the car and drive east instead of west...

limits

Sometimes I forget that my body has limits. I tend to push myself with no thought of consequence. I don't need too much sleep to function so I'll stay up late. Maybe drive after the show, crash in the car until daytime and then walk around all day and this never used to bother me. I've managed to get sick on the last two tours though. A little throat congestion doesn’t really bother my tuba playing too much but singing has been really problematic. I guess I don't fully consider that when you're alone there's very little downtime. You can't just crash out in the back of the van while someone else drives. Also, I'm gathering new found respect for solo acts. It's tough being up there alone because there's nothing else going on to draw attention, even for a moment. Even if it's brief it helps to be able to step back out of the picture at a show. When you're the only one up there that's just not possible. Last night's show in Aspen was a bit of a struggle. I got a little light headed and my limbs were a little rubbery and I had trouble holding it all together. There's a lot for me to keep track of and manage during these sets which involves a lot of sharp, relaxed concentration. After the show I drove up the mountain pass towards Buena Vista and crashed in the car along a river. It was quite peaceful and beautiful. I woke up early and finished the journey to Buena Vista where I'm meeting a friend of a friend. When I hit town it was pretty early and I pulled in to a coffee shop/bakery. I asked the women at the counter if there was a drug store around at which I could get some allergy medicine which apparently was an invitation for a strange man to tell me all about his persistent athletes foot. Apparently it's really hard to clean that stuff out in between the toes. In addition he got the athletes foot doing work for a year for this guy who never paid him. Apparently this guy has the whole town fooled because he's really a drug dealer who goes down to South America all the time. This gentleman with the athlete's foot then pulled me aside and leaned in real close (a little too close) and told me that he was on death row but was exonerated and that the townspeople still see him as a criminal and that no one likes him and that, in fact, they're all out to get him. Apparently Buena Vista is really mostly a prison town in which either everybody's been to prison or there are lots of prisons or everyone is in the imprisoning business. It was a little hard to tell which. I tried to get a couple words in edgewise but he quickly cut me off having, it seemed, a whole lot that he absolutely needed to tell me in what he feared would be far too little time. I quickly found out that he studied the violin as a child. That he quit at an early age. That he has now picked up the mandolin. That he is very upset that people have asked him to play the mandolin for them in what I could vaguely translate as some kind of challenge of his abilities. I found out about his father's military career and various other sundries. All this was crammed into about 5-10 minutes of conversation as I attempted to escape to the pharmacy to get some drugs that would hopefully alleviate my pounding sinuses. Before I escaped he told me that he doesn't understand how people can not want to talk to each other and I decided not to point out that we really hadn't had a conversation. I think of a conversation as going in two directions. Nevertheless he needed an audience and I was happy to help him out...to a point.

Let me catch my breath...

So apparently Breckenridge is over 9000 feet above sea level. I had forgotten about the altitude. As a tubist you have to be careful about the very real possibility of passing out. I walked around a bunch during the day which really helped me get acclimated. My legs felt like rubber but eventually I got a little used to it. It's a good thing I did because I definitely had a few light headed moments during the set last night.
I overheard someone say "I think it's gonna snow soon," and they might be right. I'm pretty sure it's still August but it was freezing cold last night. I had to crank up the heat in the car on the way back to Denver. All in all the show went well though. People were cool and I played okay. I've really been fighting the balance between the various loops and the live stuff. For some reason it's a real struggle right now. After the shows there's always someone with some kind of sound suggestion or analysis but inevitably I can't tell if they're thinking of things differently from me or if they're understanding which sounds are which. There's a lot of different shit that goes on when I play and even I have trouble keeping track some times. I had forgotten about the drunken hippie thing of telling you the same thing over and over and over again. I couldn't believe how many times one large presumably stoned and drunk man turned to me and said virtually the same thing with the same inflections, "I have no idea what I just heard but I know I liked it."

Made it!

So I'm two hours outside of Denver and I call my friend Darin to make some plans to hang out and I'm thinking, piece of cake. That was easy. Smooth sailing. Once you get out west past Chicago the roads are straight and the speed limit is really high. Just point and shoot and you can eat away the miles. I get off the phone with him and suddenly the sky gets dark and there's lightning and it begins to pour. Now I've lived in New Orleans so I've seen real rain but this was pissing down so hard I thought to myself thank god I got full insurance coverage 'cause I'm pretty sure this rain is gonna crack the windshield. My wipers could barely keep up and I found myself unable to see more than five feet in front of me. Fortunately I outran the storm before too long and made it to Denver, hung out with Darin, and saw some music. Life is good...

Big Country

Sometimes I really love new york. So I walk out my door and blocks away, wedged in between a great new falafel joint and a new sandwich shop which seems to specialize in pork sandwiches is an alamo rental car location. I usually get a compact car but I figure that since I'm insane enough to drive 18 hundred miles to a gig I might as well spring for a full size. I've got a few simple requirements for a car. I hope all my equipment can fit in the trunk so I don't have to worry about unloading the car every night and I hope that there's a direct line for the ipod because though I have one of those adaptors which allows you to listen to it on the radio they kind of suck. That's really it. I might have to add satellite radio to that list because this car came with it and I'm really digging it.
So I'm booking across the country and I pass Chicago and I figure wow. This has been easy. I'm practically in Colorado already. And then the realization dawns on me that this is a really big country. Chicago isn't even half way to Denver from New York. What the hell was I thinking? My conclusion is that the first thousand miles is no problem at all for me. It's the second thousand that's sort of a pain. Not to mention I gotta do it all again on the way back. Driving gives you flexibility though. I could still continue on to burning man, or I can change my route home and visit friends, or I can just book back.
I'll be in Denver by tonight. Can't wait to play tomorrow. Got some tough decisions deciding what songs to play. There's only so much you can cover in a forty minute set. I'm mulling over whether to do set lists or not. I prefer to just feel it out but I'm not sure I'm comfortable enough yet with the solo stuff to not plan things. I just found out that some of the shows I'm doing on september leg of shows opening for Buckethead will be twenty minute sets. Seems pretty weird to drive somewhere and set up and only play 3 or 4 songs. That's gonna be tough. That's barely enough time to get my rocks off. Same pay though so I can't complain.