Just a quick one today. Lately my posts have dealt with music in culture or reviews or some such nonsense. There are a few reasons for this. Number one, I tend to get more random Google hits by talking about bands that people actually care about, which more often than not are not the bands that I play with. Number the second, I haven’t been playing that much lately. Critical Mass’ regular drummer is back from baby-hiatus, my audition with that other band still has to happen (got an email the other week assuring me that it will happen, perhaps not any time soon) and I haven’t had any calls from any of my other musical suitors.
This past Saturday, however, was officially one of the weirdest shows I ever played. The Runaway got asked to play a coffee house in Hamilton and asked me along, which I obliged. It was going to be a little more chill than usual so we put together more of a stripped down set: two songs with beats, one with guitar and one with djembe.
What made it bizarre was the other acts. I don’t know what the advisor’s concept of the evening would be, but here are the acts in the order I may or may not remember:
-- My friend Sara playing some folksy stuff, starting with a song about lemon meringue pie set to the tune of “Leavin’ On A Jet Plane”
-- A spoken word poet who did poems about, and backed by classical symphonies
-- A trio of Spanish youth singing songs in Spanish and “other historical Hispanic languages”
-- A stand up comedian who hated public transit
-- A woman singing songs in Serbian
-- A diminutive Asian tenor in a tuxedo singing opera in Italian
-- Another spoken word poet whose final piece centered on a pair of talking shoes that he owned
-- Us!
The show itself was decent. I absolutely maimed a few chords in one song, but got it back by the end.
OK, OK, enough of my meager musical existence. Something funny where I (something small) make fun of something in the music industry (something big) on Friday.
Showing posts with label shows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shows. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Sales
So after having a pretty slow June (by choice) and a really slow July (not so much by choice) things are picking up again!
I mentioned all kinds of stuff in the last post. Stuff I’d like you to remember. Stuff like the August 14 show in Milton with the Runaway. Please remember that. I won't be doing the BCR album, by the way: practiced with the boys last night and it didn't feel super good for me. I'm not so good at the metal stuff. They were still interested, but they wanted to get in the studio ASAP and I don't have the time to rehearse twice weekly for a band I'm not technically joining in the first place. So an amicable parting of way ensued.
But yeah, I forgot to mention the funnest stuff! Mainly, that I’m getting the chance to rock out with Garner soon. Remember them? Remember when I said I’ve never wanted a band I wasn’t in to succeed so badly? Well, that’s a half truth, because for three awesome days I am IN like FLYNN with Garner. They’re playing a worship conference in Waterloo and their drummer can’t make the last day, so I’ll be filling in. For the rest of the weekend I’ll rocking the djembe and shakers and so on. I even bought a djembe stand for the occasion, but after our first practice last night I’m kind of annoyed with it and may take it back.
Having worked in the sales part of music for a while, it’s always weird going into a store and having people sell me stuff. Not for the reason you think, though. For some reason, and I wish I knew why, I have this urge to make sure that the person knows I used to be in sales. I used to think that it was so they didn’t try to snow me on stuff that I knew better about, but I think it’s an esteem thing. It’s important to me that the sales person re-welcome me to the (non-existent) Fraternity of Sales. “I WAS ONCE LIKE YOU, SHINING IN THE STORE!! WE ARE CONTEMPORARIES, YOU AND I!” Yep, Weird guy.
Oh, and I also found a bunch a stuff I want to buy. A derbouka, for one,. And we saw an ocean drum. It’s a drum usually around 16”-20” around and around 3 inches wide. It’s completely enclosed, with one end clear plastic and the other head fabric. There are a bunch of ball bearings inside. You hold the drum flat with the fabric side down and gently swoosh the bearings inside to create the sound of the ocean (much like a rain stick). Sweet. Absolutely useless, but sweet.
I’m writing this on Thursday and I have my first practice with BCR tonight, so we’ll see how that goes. Have a rocktastic weekend and we’ll talk soon!
I mentioned all kinds of stuff in the last post. Stuff I’d like you to remember. Stuff like the August 14 show in Milton with the Runaway. Please remember that. I won't be doing the BCR album, by the way: practiced with the boys last night and it didn't feel super good for me. I'm not so good at the metal stuff. They were still interested, but they wanted to get in the studio ASAP and I don't have the time to rehearse twice weekly for a band I'm not technically joining in the first place. So an amicable parting of way ensued.
But yeah, I forgot to mention the funnest stuff! Mainly, that I’m getting the chance to rock out with Garner soon. Remember them? Remember when I said I’ve never wanted a band I wasn’t in to succeed so badly? Well, that’s a half truth, because for three awesome days I am IN like FLYNN with Garner. They’re playing a worship conference in Waterloo and their drummer can’t make the last day, so I’ll be filling in. For the rest of the weekend I’ll rocking the djembe and shakers and so on. I even bought a djembe stand for the occasion, but after our first practice last night I’m kind of annoyed with it and may take it back.
Having worked in the sales part of music for a while, it’s always weird going into a store and having people sell me stuff. Not for the reason you think, though. For some reason, and I wish I knew why, I have this urge to make sure that the person knows I used to be in sales. I used to think that it was so they didn’t try to snow me on stuff that I knew better about, but I think it’s an esteem thing. It’s important to me that the sales person re-welcome me to the (non-existent) Fraternity of Sales. “I WAS ONCE LIKE YOU, SHINING IN THE STORE!! WE ARE CONTEMPORARIES, YOU AND I!” Yep, Weird guy.
Oh, and I also found a bunch a stuff I want to buy. A derbouka, for one,. And we saw an ocean drum. It’s a drum usually around 16”-20” around and around 3 inches wide. It’s completely enclosed, with one end clear plastic and the other head fabric. There are a bunch of ball bearings inside. You hold the drum flat with the fabric side down and gently swoosh the bearings inside to create the sound of the ocean (much like a rain stick). Sweet. Absolutely useless, but sweet.
I’m writing this on Thursday and I have my first practice with BCR tonight, so we’ll see how that goes. Have a rocktastic weekend and we’ll talk soon!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Back
“So what’s up with you? Three months and you’re already missing updates?”
Yep. Much like a squirrel saving nuts, I had saved up a bunch of random posts to get me through the droughts of nothing to write about/no time to write. But I ran out of nuts. And posts. And since I can’t buy posts at Zehrs, my readers (both of you) are the ones who must suffer. But not me. I bought more nuts.
ANYWAY!!! I am back, and I should hopefully have some good stuff to write about in the coming weeks.
For example, last Thursday the Runaway Jam played Maxwell’s Music House in Waterloo. Maxwell’s is a new venue owned and operated by Paul Maxwell, who you may remember as the keyboardist for the Tyler Schwende band. It’s a really cool concept and you should check it out.
ANYWAY, it was a great show. Titus was our first opener, followed by Relic, and then we hit the stage. It felt like we were a little under rehearsed: I finally got to spit my own lines in a verse and I messed them up, and there were a couple of other small not-necessarily-noticable-to-the-crowd-but-noticeable-to-us snags, but it went well.
We now have a big push towards August 14, which will be a huge show in Milton featuring ourselves and some very special guests (due to some necessary discretion we can’t say who will be there but trust me, you won’t want to miss this). It’s happening at 7 PM at 200 Main St. in Milton. You should come, and bring everyone you love.
I’ve also been in contact with a band called Black City Ruin and they’ve asked me to fill in for their recently departed drummer on their upcoming album. Sounds like fun, so I’m going to do it.
I also recently did my first photo shoot as a musician. My friend Blythe is a fantastic photographer and she was kind enough to do a shoot pro-bono for me (pro bono means “for the public good”, so maybe it’s not as appropriate as just saying “free” but I’d like to think pictures of me sitting on a train with a guitar case benefit the public). I’ll post some of them later and you can choose which ones you like.
I think that covers it for now. I still have a bunch of reviews I haven’t done yet and they’re getting so old as to be pointless, but what the hey. See you Friday.
Yep. Much like a squirrel saving nuts, I had saved up a bunch of random posts to get me through the droughts of nothing to write about/no time to write. But I ran out of nuts. And posts. And since I can’t buy posts at Zehrs, my readers (both of you) are the ones who must suffer. But not me. I bought more nuts.
ANYWAY!!! I am back, and I should hopefully have some good stuff to write about in the coming weeks.
For example, last Thursday the Runaway Jam played Maxwell’s Music House in Waterloo. Maxwell’s is a new venue owned and operated by Paul Maxwell, who you may remember as the keyboardist for the Tyler Schwende band. It’s a really cool concept and you should check it out.
ANYWAY, it was a great show. Titus was our first opener, followed by Relic, and then we hit the stage. It felt like we were a little under rehearsed: I finally got to spit my own lines in a verse and I messed them up, and there were a couple of other small not-necessarily-noticable-to-the-crowd-but-noticeable-to-us snags, but it went well.
We now have a big push towards August 14, which will be a huge show in Milton featuring ourselves and some very special guests (due to some necessary discretion we can’t say who will be there but trust me, you won’t want to miss this). It’s happening at 7 PM at 200 Main St. in Milton. You should come, and bring everyone you love.
I’ve also been in contact with a band called Black City Ruin and they’ve asked me to fill in for their recently departed drummer on their upcoming album. Sounds like fun, so I’m going to do it.
I also recently did my first photo shoot as a musician. My friend Blythe is a fantastic photographer and she was kind enough to do a shoot pro-bono for me (pro bono means “for the public good”, so maybe it’s not as appropriate as just saying “free” but I’d like to think pictures of me sitting on a train with a guitar case benefit the public). I’ll post some of them later and you can choose which ones you like.
I think that covers it for now. I still have a bunch of reviews I haven’t done yet and they’re getting so old as to be pointless, but what the hey. See you Friday.
Friday, June 13, 2008
On the road again
So I feel like I was somewhat deceptive in my last post. I said I had played a bunch of shows, but in reality I only played 2 last week: Wednesday in Hamilton with The Runaway and Saturday in Maple with Critical Mass. Sorry; when you work full time, take courses and have a girlfriend, 2 shows seems like a billion.
Wednesday was straight up awesome. I always love playing shows with the Runaway, and even more so with the Runaway Jam, which is the full band consisting of myself on drums and backup vox, Josh McFadyen on bass, Andrew Karram on keys, my awesome girlfriend Krista on vocals, and of course the Runaway himself on rhymes.
We were playing something called The Artist’s Roundtable at the Freeway Café in Hamilton. The idea is that 5 bands each do a 15-20 minute set. At the end of the night all the bands sit down onstage in front of the crowd and break down each others’ sets, mention what they liked or thought needed improvement. Then there’s a Q and A period with the crowd.
I hope this doesn’t come off as arrogant, but it’s been a long long time since I played a show where I wasn’t in at least the second best band there (In my opinion). This is mostly a result of playing a lot of Christian shows, where bands tend to be a lot younger and therefore not as good. But my goodness, every single band was amazing. The first act was 2x The Mono, which is an experimental indie project consisting of one guy named Randell Neudorf working guitar, harmonica, keyboards, and percussion. He uses a Jam-Man like repeater to build sequences on each instrument until a song is there. He only had time to do two songs, but they were both really great and interesting. Not something you hear every day.
The second act was my favourite: Brielle Goheen. Brielle is a singer-songwriter on piano who is training in classical violin out at Trinity Western. She has this incredible dynamic range and her songs are very intricate and counter-intuitive, but never sacrifice melody for the sake of “newness”. You can hear a melding of pop, classical and theatre influences in her style. Alas, she has nothing recorded and is only in the province until the end of the summer, so I may have to run a show (and therefore lose money) to hear her again. She did say she’d be open to coming to Waterloo, so keep your eyes peeled.
Third up was Garner! I don’t know what I can say about Garner that hasn’t already been said: they write great pop songs, they have an amazing songwriting range, they’re super fun to watch, and they are all really amazingly nice guys. I’ve never wanted a band that I wasn’t in to succeed so much. They’ll be heading out on tour starting June 20, and the lovely Krista will be doing some backups for them at that show. More to come on that.
We went on fourth, so I’ll skip to fifth: McKenna. This is a brother duo who look very out of place with each other: their guitarist is kind of clean cut, not jocky but very much a “dude” you could have a beer with. I mistook their singer for a homeless man when I met him (to be fair, the Freeway is a downtown mission that always brings in member of the homeless community, but still). Like so many family duos they have rice, tight harmonies which are accented by some furious guitaring and an incredible knack for storytelling.
Wow, that was quite a preamble. Anyway, our set went really well, considering the five of us hadn’t been in a room together since we opened for Shad in October (seriously, we did this show without a practice). Because of the set length we only got to do five songs, but they all went well. I got an impromptu drum solo in the middle of “Soul Raise” that I felt like I flubbed, but people responded positively after which means it either a) went way better than I thought or b) went way worse than I thought, to the point that people needed to console me.
Saturday I drove solo to the thriving metropolis of Maple, ON. The day started off poorly: I had to be in Maple for 8 AM for soundcheck, so I hit the road around 7. The 401 was closed off in Milton, meaning all the traffic first backed up huge and then had to find alternate routes. I took the milk run to end all milk runs and wound up arriving around 9:30.
One thing I hate about Christian shows (especially those with lots of bands) is they usually tell you not to bring your own kit because they have one and want to keep changeover time down. Then they saddle you with a terrible kit. This one was a mirrored (!) Pearl Export kit from roughly 2000 with some of the worst hardware ever. I of course brought my own cymbals, kick and snare, but I couldn’t even unclip the hi-hat they had on because the clip was stripped. The hi-hat was awful, too, like two garbage can lids.
Enough whining. We were acting as the “senior band” at this contest for 14 other bands who were hoping to win. We did a short set off the top at 10:45, and then had to wait until 4:30 for our second set. The bands were all young and some were just starting to get a feel of what they like to do and what they’re capable of, so I won’t go into detail here as I think they’re all very much a work in progress. I thought he eventual winners were called the Mac Band, but I could be wrong, as I tried to find them on Google and the only Mac Band I found were R&B darlings from Flint, Michigan.
Our second set went well, too, although after a day of music no one really seemed in the mood to see us. We’re performing a mix of old stuff and stuff that’s coming up on the new Critical Mass album, some of which I recorded. It sounds like it’ll be an interesting disc – I’ll keep you posted.
IN OTHER NEWS!
Not much to report. I’m backing off of taking more shows in June, just because I’ve been really busy and am starting to wig out over my lost sleep. I’m gigging at the Burlington Music Festival next Sunday with My 2 Sense, so come check that out if you’re in the area.
Wednesday was straight up awesome. I always love playing shows with the Runaway, and even more so with the Runaway Jam, which is the full band consisting of myself on drums and backup vox, Josh McFadyen on bass, Andrew Karram on keys, my awesome girlfriend Krista on vocals, and of course the Runaway himself on rhymes.
We were playing something called The Artist’s Roundtable at the Freeway Café in Hamilton. The idea is that 5 bands each do a 15-20 minute set. At the end of the night all the bands sit down onstage in front of the crowd and break down each others’ sets, mention what they liked or thought needed improvement. Then there’s a Q and A period with the crowd.
I hope this doesn’t come off as arrogant, but it’s been a long long time since I played a show where I wasn’t in at least the second best band there (In my opinion). This is mostly a result of playing a lot of Christian shows, where bands tend to be a lot younger and therefore not as good. But my goodness, every single band was amazing. The first act was 2x The Mono, which is an experimental indie project consisting of one guy named Randell Neudorf working guitar, harmonica, keyboards, and percussion. He uses a Jam-Man like repeater to build sequences on each instrument until a song is there. He only had time to do two songs, but they were both really great and interesting. Not something you hear every day.
The second act was my favourite: Brielle Goheen. Brielle is a singer-songwriter on piano who is training in classical violin out at Trinity Western. She has this incredible dynamic range and her songs are very intricate and counter-intuitive, but never sacrifice melody for the sake of “newness”. You can hear a melding of pop, classical and theatre influences in her style. Alas, she has nothing recorded and is only in the province until the end of the summer, so I may have to run a show (and therefore lose money) to hear her again. She did say she’d be open to coming to Waterloo, so keep your eyes peeled.
Third up was Garner! I don’t know what I can say about Garner that hasn’t already been said: they write great pop songs, they have an amazing songwriting range, they’re super fun to watch, and they are all really amazingly nice guys. I’ve never wanted a band that I wasn’t in to succeed so much. They’ll be heading out on tour starting June 20, and the lovely Krista will be doing some backups for them at that show. More to come on that.
We went on fourth, so I’ll skip to fifth: McKenna. This is a brother duo who look very out of place with each other: their guitarist is kind of clean cut, not jocky but very much a “dude” you could have a beer with. I mistook their singer for a homeless man when I met him (to be fair, the Freeway is a downtown mission that always brings in member of the homeless community, but still). Like so many family duos they have rice, tight harmonies which are accented by some furious guitaring and an incredible knack for storytelling.
Wow, that was quite a preamble. Anyway, our set went really well, considering the five of us hadn’t been in a room together since we opened for Shad in October (seriously, we did this show without a practice). Because of the set length we only got to do five songs, but they all went well. I got an impromptu drum solo in the middle of “Soul Raise” that I felt like I flubbed, but people responded positively after which means it either a) went way better than I thought or b) went way worse than I thought, to the point that people needed to console me.
Saturday I drove solo to the thriving metropolis of Maple, ON. The day started off poorly: I had to be in Maple for 8 AM for soundcheck, so I hit the road around 7. The 401 was closed off in Milton, meaning all the traffic first backed up huge and then had to find alternate routes. I took the milk run to end all milk runs and wound up arriving around 9:30.
One thing I hate about Christian shows (especially those with lots of bands) is they usually tell you not to bring your own kit because they have one and want to keep changeover time down. Then they saddle you with a terrible kit. This one was a mirrored (!) Pearl Export kit from roughly 2000 with some of the worst hardware ever. I of course brought my own cymbals, kick and snare, but I couldn’t even unclip the hi-hat they had on because the clip was stripped. The hi-hat was awful, too, like two garbage can lids.
Enough whining. We were acting as the “senior band” at this contest for 14 other bands who were hoping to win. We did a short set off the top at 10:45, and then had to wait until 4:30 for our second set. The bands were all young and some were just starting to get a feel of what they like to do and what they’re capable of, so I won’t go into detail here as I think they’re all very much a work in progress. I thought he eventual winners were called the Mac Band, but I could be wrong, as I tried to find them on Google and the only Mac Band I found were R&B darlings from Flint, Michigan.
Our second set went well, too, although after a day of music no one really seemed in the mood to see us. We’re performing a mix of old stuff and stuff that’s coming up on the new Critical Mass album, some of which I recorded. It sounds like it’ll be an interesting disc – I’ll keep you posted.
IN OTHER NEWS!
Not much to report. I’m backing off of taking more shows in June, just because I’ve been really busy and am starting to wig out over my lost sleep. I’m gigging at the Burlington Music Festival next Sunday with My 2 Sense, so come check that out if you’re in the area.
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