I've seen worse photos

But not many. Go see my other site for more on the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss concerts.

From Chattanooga

So many better pictures in the world will exist, I'm sure.

Event security in Knoxville

Currently on the way to the fourth stop on the Plant-Krauss tour after witnessing their "third adventure" last night, as Plant referred to it welcoming the crowd for the first time last night.

I posted a summary of the show online right afterward. It's at www.LedZeppelinNews.com -- specifically, here. What I didn't mention there, I will here. The security was painful. Before the show, event staff intimidated the hell out of anybody wanting to smuggle in "cameras of any kind." Such items were prohibited, and a list posted outside the venue also said no recording equipment of any kind, etc. Well, all they did when you entered the venue was check your tickets. No patdowns or pocket checks, but if you had a purse they gave it a quick once-over. No worries.

Inside the venue, however, goons wearing black "EVENT STAFF" shirts stopped anybody who was obviously using anything electric. So no cell phone shots. No still or video photography. And even me using my BlackBerry to type up some stuff about the show, "No dice, Kenny." A woman silently broadcasting the show to a friend at home via her cell phone was told to hang up. The word "fascism" came to mind. But arguing with these goons over why I couldn't use my BlackBerry was the last thing on my mind. With apologies to Gene Weingarten, imagine the conversation that would have transpired:

Goon: "Sir, you have to put that away."
Lemon: "Why?"
Goon: "Because I said so."
Lemon: "Who the hell are you to tell me what I can and cannot do?"
Goon: "I'm the guy who's gonna kick you out of here in 10 seconds if you don't put that away."
Lemon:
Goon: "Thought so."

Don't know if that experience was unique to Knoxville, but just a warning for those of you hoping to do anything electric on this tour.

Tennessee road trippin'

This has been a great experience. A few months back, I got an e-mail from my buddy Brad in PA out of blue for the first time in a year. I can't say it was exactly unexpected. He normally does reach out to me, if I don't contact him first, whenever tour dates involving any member of Led Zeppelin are announced. The question, invariably, is which date or dates shall we go? It's been our habit for the last six years.

This January, however, when I got Brad's e-mail, it was slightly less expected, as the nearest concert was 500 miles south of me in DC and farther for him all the way up outside Philly. But Brad said, not missing a beat, "I'm thinking of heading down to Knoxville -- and if so, maybe catching the next night's show in Chattanooga. You in?"

Sure. I could use a little spring road trip. Don't get down to Tennessee much. Why not?

So he picked me up in DC last night and we drove halfway to the gig. We stayed in a place in Salem, VA, that had a sign out front that read, "WE LKY RAT." Great, our first impression of the place is that they "likey rat." But I think the sign was missing a few letters and juxtaposed a couple that were there but was trying to say "WEEKLY RATE" instead. Even though it was indicating no actual numerical rate either! There were no rats in the place and no bugs either. It passed our inspection. I slept well. We woke up and hopped back onto I-81 South for much of the remaining 250 miles to Knoxville. This place doesn't likey rats either. This is working out for us.

Now I'm sitting with Brad inside the Knoxville Civic Coliseum waiting for the main event to begin: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss with T Bone Burnett. They need a good band name, by the way, so you don't have to say all three names or even the first two. Go ahead and leave suggestions in the comment box down below. (Update: The Golden Gods.)

I'm gonna be blogging about this show and tomorrow night's on LedZeppelinNews.com, so go check it out there. Suffice it to say I'm looking forward to my eighth and ninth times seeing Robert Plant in concert -- and my first and second times for Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett.

Well, the stage is set, and opening act Sharon Little is finishing up her last song (see horrible photo), so I'd better get off this thing!

Friday G Tones show review, plus my goals in music

The G Tones played out Friday night. It was very loud but very good. First, my acknowledgements.

Thanks to Jan for bringing Duncan, Kristin and the Beautiful Erin out, and to Megan for bringing Chris out, because without them I wouldn't have had any people there specifically to see me.

Thanks to the Guitar Monsters for jamming with us for sets one and four, allowing me to play blues harmonica and branch out and warm up.

Thanks to Carrie for the Sambuca and wings, even if that stuff did cost me more than Karlin and I made combined.

Thanks to Tracy for bringing herself out and for lending me her car to get me out there with my equipment, and back.

Thanks to Karlin for bringing out his sister Kim, who says I'm crazy, and for being my bass player/soul brother for the last 46 years and counting.

Thanks to the Led Zeppelin and World of Warcraft freaks for chatting me up after the gig about their 200 bootlegs.

Thanks to Pink Floyd, the Doors, the Foo Fighters, Thin Lizzy, the Beatles and Stevie Wonder for the material we ripped off.

Thanks to Shortty and Spills for being "on" for all the songs we practiced so damn much. We were in the pocket.

Thanks to Tony for writing the songs that really rule, for putting up with my annoying habits on the pitch bend, and for bringing out his Lovely Jen.

And thanks to everybody else who was there, whether you talked to me or not. Just thanks for being there!

So the G Tones played what I thought was an excellent show Friday night. What impressed Tony the most was the vision of eyes being fixed on the band. No conversations. Just watching and listening. And enjoying. Even if his vocals did sound a little muffled, and if the rest of us were way too loud. Minor stuff. What was most impressive to me was how well we all played together for our first outing.

So here's what I'm thinking.

Part 1: What really energizes me about this band is the original stuff. We have a number of originals Tony came up with by himself long before I ever entered the fray. Now with Karlin and me aboard, we're entering a whole new dimension of songwriting. We're getting together late Sunday night, supposedly, to try writing some stuff again. So, anyway, we gotta write music. That's a priority. I'm gonna get my songwriting fix with these guys, which I haven't had in any other bands since about 2000.

Part 2: We record it every time we rehearse from now on. We get copies of what we record so we can listen to it throughout the week, critique our own parts and learn from our mistakes, and figure out whatever it is we need to do to become note-perfect. Then, armed with knowledge, we can enter the studio in a few months -- having written an album's worth of material -- and lay it all down. Have an album out with the G Tones by the end of the year, no later.

Part 3: Another goal is to be playing gigs out every weekend next year, at least once or twice a weekend, without fail.

Solo piano gig, 4/17/08

Tonight, my goal is to play three albums back to back.

I've never done Pink Floyd's Animals before. There are five songs on
it, the first and last of which are short and nearly identical. The
middle song is the one I've been playing with the G Tones and talked
about earlier on this thing. It's the second and fourth ones that I've
never played in full before. But I just saw a band called Several
Species play Animals the full way through at a show last month, so I'm
belatedly inspired by that.

I'm going to gear myself up for this occasion by first playing another
classic album the whole way through. That's the Beatles' Abbey Road.
Now, I've played this album by myself a few times in full before, and
the B-side medley portion with a band a number of times, but never
with all the lyrics printed out. (Oh, and I'm adding "Don't Let Me
Down" to it, even though it doesn't belong there. It fits musically in
between "Sun King" and "Mean Mr. Mustard.")

After Animals, I will play another Pink Floyd album straight through.
The Dark Side of the Moon is another one I've played in full before,
both with groups and without, but never with my own set of lyrics
printed out.

So it'll be a night of challenges but a night of fun. I'll pull it
off. And whenever I can't remember parts of songs -- Animals' fourth
track, "Sheep," is the one song that will probably screw me up the
most -- I'll just jam.

Lyrics? No. Song structures? Jamming? Bring it on

A little while ago, I was thinking about the fact that I'm no good with memorizing lyrics and too ambivalent to care about rehearsing them. I had a Usual Suspects gig coming up April 12 at the Fish Head Cantina in which I was to sing "Gimme Some Loving" entirely from memory. Well, now that the date is behind me, I can say it went by fine. In fact, I was one of two guys in the band suddenly handed lead singing duties for the evening as our main lead singer was too incapacitated to come to the gig. No way we were going to cancel. No way we would admit defeat. We pulled through. We churned out a show that was pretty much second-nature to us. I sang some stuff, and I'm not sure what, but it was all fine. Actually, it felt better than fine. And I think that was conveyed to the audience. While it was not the large crowd I preferred, there was a hardcore throng in front of us enjoying everything. Yep, that's exactly what I needed: positive reinforcement for my ambivalence.

Tonight I have a solo piano gig, and I'm not exactly sure what kind of stuff I'm going to play. But I'm playing directly after rehearsal with my other band, the G Tones. That band's first gig with the current lineup is tomorrow night, so this is our last practice together before our onstage debut. So tonight is kind of important. Hopefully, I can give it the amount of time and attention it deserves before I have to roll out and head over to that solo piano gig of mine. I want the show to go over well tomorrow.

The differences between my two bands are pretty wide. On the surface, it's easier to tackle the similarities between them. We both do classic rock; in fact, both groups cover "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder and "Time" by Pink Floyd. We also both do modern rock; in fact, both groups cover "My Hero" by the Foo Fighters.

So while the tastes are quite similar, the groups differ in their approach. The Usual Suspects prefer to come off sounding tight, professional, polished and rehearsed. The G Tones, on the other hand, aren't afraid to let an audience know that we're gonna jam it out and let the parts of a song come together however they do.

So given this difference, it was really ironic that the Usual Suspects gig on Saturday the 12th had to happen without our front man. It definitely made the four remaining members improvise more and listen to each other more -- and not shut me down when I started playing songs we'd never rehearsed before.

Another big difference between the two groups is that in the Usual Suspects, the repertoire is comprised entirely of cover songs. Not so with the G Tones, whose leader and namesake, Tone G, has written a host of hot little numbers. And bits and pieces of songs I'm working on writing with fellow G Tones members may possibly take form at some point down the line in the group's set.

What's a bit daunting at this point is that all of a sudden, the G Tones want to sound polished at this first concert! I really don't care either way. I just think anything you do in covering a song should be aimed at making the damn thing sound better. If you want to play somebody else's tune, you can do one of two things: play it exactly as it was previously performed or recorded, or devise your own arrangement and do it that way. Either way, the goal ought to be to improve the tune. There's no point in playing a song if you're going to make it sound worse. That's detrimental to your act. Make it sound better, and you'll stand out.

So now there's talk of shortening our version of a song that lasts 11 minutes and 28 seconds on album. The tune is "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" by Pink Floyd. We've been struggling to approach the song section by section. We don't have to play it note for note, and in fact I would never really want to waste my time doing that. But we at least have to nail the song structure, or else there's no point in playing the song. We could go another route and improve the song structure, but that's for some other day.

"Pigs (Three Different Ones)" is an easy song. It consists of a few sections. Map the song out if you have to, to become familiar with the song structure, and you're fine. Memorize it, or just feel it out, whatever you have to do. Use notes. Use nods. Or just internalize and replicate. Whatever works for you. But seriously, you can play the stupid song. Look, it's only this.

1. Intro (eight measures with just bass, then eight measures with bass and guitar -- only during the last four measures are there any drums)
2. Verse one ("Big man, pig man" through "And when your hand is on your heart" -- and be careful on the timing of that last line because one of the measures has one less beat, as dictated by the rhythm of the lyrics)
3. End of verse one ("You're nearly a big laugh" through "You're nearly a laugh but you're really a cry")
4. Four measures of nothing
5. Verse two ("Bus stop rat bag" through "You radiate cold shafts of broken glass")
6. End of verse two ("You're nearly a good laugh" through "You're nearly a laugh but you're really a cry" -- exactly the same as end of verse one)
7. Four measures of nothing, ended by the quick drum fill at 4:12 (now I'm going to start giving time cues because there aren't lyrics to reference)
8. At 4:13, the arrangement drops down to the elongated chord progression of E (4:13) to C (4:28). The first time it goes back to the E, the E comes in half a beat early for effect (4:42), assisted by a repeat of the same drum fill heard at 4:12.
9. Then it's E to C (4:58), as before. The second time it goes back from C to the E, the E is preceded by the B riff (5:09-5:12).
10. This E at 5:13 is when the talkbox comes in. Then it's E to C (5:28), as before.
11. Again, the E comes in half a beat early for effect (5:42). Then it's up to C (5:57), and the E is preceded by the B riff (6:08-6:11).
12. It's E (6:12) to C (6:26), as before.
13. Again, the next E comes in half a beat early for effect (6:40). The C comes in at 6:55. The B riff goes from 7:06 to 7:09.
14. A reprise of the intro begins at 7:09. The bass part is different this time but still lasts exactly eight measures. After those eight, there are eight measures with the guitar, the last four of which are accompanied by drums. The last half of this intro reprise is exactly as it was at the beginning.
15. Verse three begins at 8:09 ("Hey you, Whitehouse" through "You try to keep our feelings off the street")
16. End of verse three ("You're nearly a real treat" through "Mary, you're nearly a treat but you're really a cry")
17. Four measures of nothing
18. Rock out the ending. This part starts at 9:39 on their version and lasts another minute and 49 seconds, but that fades out anyway, so who knows how long Pink Floyd actually did spend on it in the studio.

There. That's the whole damn song. Simple song, really. There are tough Pink Floyd songs to play. Really, that ain't one of 'em. Hell, I might print out the lyrics for myself and play it tonight at my solo piano gig. Which goes to provie my original point that I can remember musical arrangements much better than I can lyrics. See, I have all that stuff above memorized -- just not the lyrics. It's all a bunch of musical cues that make sense to me as a musician. Try to tweak the song, and you risk doing harm to it.

As for that ending, I think we can rock it out for a while and -- this is where improvisation comes in -- we look at each other to figure out how to end it. That might mean we instead segue into a different song entirely, as we did at rehearsal once. In practice, we once went straight from this into "Time," followed of course by the rest of Side A from The Dark Side of the Moon, and we've been trying to recapture the spontaneity of that move ever since. Another way to end the song would be by spontaneously writing a new riff and playing that. Good lord.

Haircut, pt. 2

A little shorter
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Haircut

Each winter, I pretty much go a few months without cutting my hair even once. Then my spring ritual is cutting my long locks and keeping it short right up until the winter, or just before.

Today's the day that I'm getting the haircut that radically changes the way I look. The weather is supposed to improve drastically beginning tomorrow, with warm and sunny weather becoming normal from here on out. So now I don't want tons of hair hanging down to cover my forehead, the style that kept me warm throughout the cold months.

I'm writing now from the barber shop. I may upload an after photo when I'm done.
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Not good with lyrics or distance

The reason I listen to most of the music I do is because of the music. No, not circular reasoning. It's the notes that get me, nine out of 10 times over the lyrics. Many times, I couldn't tell you what a song is about, much less be able to recount its lyrics.

So why am I singing a song at my next gig?

Add onto that the fact that I'm not really much of a singer. Granted, I think I've been getting better, thanks to my solo gigs. The only time I can really be heard singing outside of weekly rehearsals with my bandmates and those occasional gigs is in the shower. I've long held that my voice isn't anything spectacular. And I don't quite carry the vocal range of a Rod Stewart.

So why am I singing "Gimme Some Lovin'" by the Spencer Davis Group, which featured a very young and high-pitched Stevie Winwood on vocals, at the next Usual Suspects show?

Particularly when I haven't yet bothered to memorize the lyrics. I looked at the lyrics for the first time last Sunday and was surprised to find out how unfamiliar I was with the words.

It's messed up. The last thing I want to do is have a lyrics sheet in front of me. So am I gonna be able to remember the lyrics? And am I gonna be able to hit those notes?

Yeah, I think I'll be fine. In any event, it won't be till our second set. We'll all have had 20 drinks each by then, so nobody will care.

That's the Usual Suspects gig coming up on Saturday the 12th. It'll be the band's third time playing at the Fish Head Cantina in five months but only the second time with me on board. I really like that place. And we're told that if we draw a nice crowd, we will get in the regular rotation and have opportunities for some gigs over the summer. That's music to my ears!

So I just hope people can make it out. It's a little far for most folks I know, but some folks know (better than I) how distance doesn't necessarily have to separate people.

In other news -- and I can't believe I'm saying this -- my other band also has a gig coming up. Just confirmed: We'll be playing on Friday the 18th at Brinkley's Restaurant & Lounge in Falls Church. This will be good for us. We're really getting tight on the originals and our covers. Things are progressing rather quickly there, which is pleasant.

And Karlin and I are trying to get in the habit of making time for jamming and songwriting on a regular basis. That is, writing music. No lyrics so far. Although I wouldn't put it past him to come up with some lyrics on his own and add it to the music we've been messing around with.

It kind of works that he and I would be writing some stuff together. Back to that distance thing. We live only four blocks apart. So it's really convenient to drag all my stuff over to his place, or he used to come over here now and then. When he and I were in World Peace Party, we had an open invitation to go over to the guitarist's place in Northern Virginia to jam in hopes of collaborating on some new material. That never materialized. I'm guessing it was the distance that kept us away. It's a haul for us two city dwellers to gather up all our stuff and head way out beyond the limits Metrorail system to set up and embark on a mission of the unknown. Whereas the journey of a few city blocks can be done rather easily, pain-free.

Distance... errgh. Is it lame of me to think of distance as such a deal-breaker? I mean, I'm the type of guy who can admit I can't sing and can't memorize lyrics, and yet I'll go onstage and sing my heart out without the aid of a lyrics sheet. So why can't I have such a similarly cavalier attitude toward distance?

Great, now the World Peace Party guitarist is gonna read this and think I'm talking about him. I'm not, Ron. I was having a conversation last weekend with a woman who's a few states away from me but who's been down to see me a few times (even to an Alowishious Farhatt show of mine in December and a Usual Suspects show in February). And we never finished that conversation, but it revolved around my aversion to having a long-distance relationship. Now the ball's been in my court for a week to respond. I think it's about time I did.

And now I really ought to, as I think this woman in question is really the only person who reads any of this crap, other than my boss to make sure I'm not wasting time at work on this stuff.

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