On a great note, I started out the month up in Massachusetts, where the Building Science Boogie Band really took Summer Camp by storm, performing lengthy sets of some really complicated music. The five core members hail from Colorado, Washington, Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia, but we don't let the distance separate us musically when we play together once a year. And we don't hold back when it comes to musicianship or challenging ourselves to proceed to the next level. We have some audio recordings I hope to be sharing soon as I'm sure they will attest to the quality of the music and the enjoyment of our captive audience as we performed.
When I came back from Massachusetts, I was immediately back in the groove performing with Trademark one night and a newly revamped lineup of the Usual Suspects the following afternoon. The Trademark show at McGinty's Public, an upstairs bar tucked away in Silver Spring, was the group's best with me around. Two of the guys in the Usual Suspects came to check out the gig and smooth-talked the manager into getting their group, also with me, a date on the calendar. Then we were playing together at an autism research benefit in a few hours, this being my first meeting with our new drummer. It was his second gig with the band, however, as they had played a show with somebody filling in on keyboards for me while I was up in Massachusetts. I was impressed with the new drummer, and we entertained a bunch of bikers who were helping the cause. It was great to see all those tattooed people dancing while we rocked out tunes by Tom Petty, Cracker and Stevie Wonder.
From there, I hurried out so I could hop a flight to Florida for a week that included some heavy romance and a successful job interview. It seemed like a five-day glimpse into a crystal ball. Much more on all of that later. I'm just writing about music for now ...
Oh, I guess I could mention I wished I could have sat in with some musicians I was enjoying in Florida. All on that Thursday night, I saw four bands playing down there in four different locations, and the last group was having members of one of the groups I'd seen earlier sit in. No keyboard was available on their stage, or else I would have asked to sit in. I would have fit in perfectly with the arrangements of some rather obscure tunes I recognized.
Also in Florida, I caught up with a friend in the Led Zeppelin fan community online I have known for several years (and whom I also booked one time to write an article on plants at the professional dayjob I held between 2002 and 2007). It was this friend who suggested the places I could go to catch some good live music while I was around, and his advice proved fruitful. He also told me about this little-known recording studio I found some time to visit; one of the guys there is Keith Rose, who was an assistant engineer on the album Jimmy Page and David Coverdale made together.
When I left Florida, I hustled back home because I had a gig in some town in Maryland called Eldersburg. It's one town whose name I had never heard before, but one thing I now know about that place is it is definitely in Ravens territory. Baltimore's football team was losing a preseason game to the Minnesota Vikings on the big screen, although a bunch of men and women in Todd Heap jerseys forgot those troubles when area wonderboy Michael Phelps racked up his eighth medal.
The DangerTones helped keep the celebration alive when our second set started as we picked up mid-song on "Love Shack" by the B-52s, which was playing on the house sound system while we were resuming the stage. The bass player, assumedly because he considers himself a truly serious musician (my perception anyway), did not participate in the impromptu jam. I, however, was the cause of it all. The drummer, guitarist and singer all helped keep it going.
When we were finally done with "Love Shack," the bassist returned to his spot, where all night long he would cue me in on precise song arrangements, accents, dynamics, endings and the like. That's what I love about live music: when the performers are able to follow each other. Whether I'm participating or sitting in the audience, knowing this is happening among musicians is what gives me the greatest enjoyment.
This certainly happened with the DangerTones, a group whose singer was the only one who knew me. I'd never seen or heard the group before, but I was familiar with everything on their set list and confident I could pull off this gig filling in for their unavailable keyboardist. I provided backup vocals whenever needed -- and maybe once or twice when it wasn't needed but helped anyway.
But now here's the one problem with that gig, which paid me $100. I had to rent a car to get myself there and back, which made me mindful of how much transportation was costing me. For the use of my neighborhood Zipcar for 7.5 hours at $9.50 an hour, I paid about $75. I also spent $20 at the bar, which brings my net gross for an evening's work to a whopping $5.
And that is why Abe Lincoln was glaring at me on the long trip back home to D.C. that night. He was on the five-dollar bill I earned, mocking me and taunting me as I guided the white Scion xA south on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
Honest Abe says I'll never make it in performing live music. Well, screw him. To hell with what he thinks.
Let Teddy win!
Coincidentally, this blog entry refers to two of the bands that will be playing at the MusicFest on Sep 5-6 (Cracker and The B-52s).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ucmusicfest.com/