Ah, remember the Usual Suspects! And family next week

Got a nice e-mail earlier in the week from Matty Knuckles, one of the guys in the Usual Suspects. He was letting me know how things have been going since I left the band upon moving to Florida.

Coincidentally, Matt wrote to me on Jan. 25, three months to the day since my last show with the band. That last show was at the University of Maryland, inside the alumni center just before their Homecoming game. It was raining cats and dogs for that last gig, but we were indoors. That Homecoming game was outdoors. It was a whole lot nicer indoors!

The last dude in the band I saw was the other Matt -- Matty Fingers -- when he dropped me off at a train station after the gig. He wrote me today to let me know of an e-mail address change and then to tell me about this video he'd just posted online:


It's a compilation of clips from my first gig with them, which was on Feb. 16, 2008, at the Fish Head Cantina in Arbutus, Md. Most of this stuff has been online before, but I was surprised to see and hear what starts at 3:06. We get a good half-minute of our reggae version of the song "Hotel California." And of course that song is now more important to me this month as I've just finished playing the entire Eagles album of that name onstage note-for-note three times.

But it was always a great number to play live with the Usual Suspects, and I didn't know any other band to make a reggae version of the song. That changed on Nov. 23, 2008, when Dessie and I were relaxing on Islamorada with a Red Stripe on lounge chairs by the water's edge, and the reggae band playing nearby launched into a similar version of that tune around 4:30 p.m. Upon hearing this, I busted out my BlackBerry and sent off a quick message to my former bandmates, although it didn't send until after midnight, when my handheld's Internet connection was restored.

This weekend, I'm doing some cool stuff.

• On Saturday, I'll be assisting with an interview of Mark Stein, original lead singer and keyboardist for the Vanilla Fudge. (I saw a reformed version of that band at the 9:30 club in D.C. back on Jan. 18, 2005, pretty much headlining over Canned Heat and Mountain, with Pat Travers joining some Fudge members for a closing set.)
• And Sunday being Super Bowl Sunday, I'll be catching an early-morning flight up north, ultimately to see my family for the first time since October, watch the big game, catch up with some friends, spend the better part of a week up there, and once again visit Aunt Rose, who's been sick for a long time.

Then on Friday, I'll be picked up by a buddy in the D.C. area and spend most of the weekend with him. I probably won't even be inside the District while I'm around, and I probably won't see many of the people, places and things I mentioned in my long litany of goodbyes in October. But I'll be back to see my buddy Brian, and that's cool enough for now.

Malfunction, or the swooping sound from hell

For the past few days, I've been back home in Florida after my Hotel California tour. I was looking for some semblance of normalcy, but instead I spent Sunday night in an emergency room with Dessie (she's OK now) and Monday trying to recover from not sleeping overnight.

Then last night, I couldn't find the plug for my laptop and didn't remember packing it with me when I checked out of a hotel in Gainesville on Thursday. Housekeeping confirmed that it was recovered in my room, and so now that ever-important $30 piece is being shipped to me at half its value.

In the meantime, what I do all day long -- use it to write and connect to the Internet for my muses -- is more of a challenge. But I do remember, and may never forget, the single biggest obstacle to my successful performance on this tour: a stupid malfunction on the main keyboard I was using.

Swoop!

It's a downward swooping noise that sometimes comes out. I heard it once over the course of six days using it for the Houses of the Holy shows in December, and I thought nothing of it. These things happen, and it did only once. It was in a rehearsal, not in front of an audience, so no sweat.

I'm using the same board on the Hotel California tour, and I got through the first day and the first concert without hearing the sound at all. I wasn't even listening for it, as it had totally slipped my mind from before. It was only that once, and it was long forgotten.

Forgotten until the second day during rehearsal.

Swoop!

What was that? Was it something I did? Did I accidentally press some button near my hand that makes it do that? Did I press a key too lightly, or too hardly? I tried several things that might trigger the noise, and nothing worked. And nobody else had heard it because I was using headphones and wasn't plugged in to the PA.

This sent up a red flag, so my inclination was to alert Nick, who was much more familiar with the keyboards I was using. But was this really important enough to be brought to his attention? After all, it was something that happened only once that day, and nothing I was doing would trigger it again. Besides, I had already bugged Nick a few times in the previous 20 minutes about some other issues with the keyboard that were under my control. Maybe I ought to let this slide.

We finished rehearsal, and the sound hadn't recurred, but it was still on my mind. Casually, I approached Nick later on. We shared some small talk about the concerts and about some other gear, and I mentioned the phantom swoop. He knew the sound I was talking about. He said it happens on that keyboard from time to time, and he assured me it was no big deal.

Life carried on, and we played the Lake Worth gig. We're on the second song, and I'm playing a string sound. Mine is a really delicate part with long, sustained chords. In fact, the whole song is like that: It is a slow song with subtle instrumentation that at times can be almost nonexistent. Toward the end of that song, while four singers are intoning "ooh" harmoniously, there's a strange sound nobody expected to hear.

Swoop!

Onstage, people look around. Somebody said afterward he thought someone was setting off a firecracker.

Swoop!

Only a few seconds later, the sound comes out again. This time, most of the musicians all turn toward me. I shrug my shoulders and adopt a quizzical look on my face as if to indicate that I have no idea what is causing the noise. I also gesture, with my unused left hand, toward the keyboard, as if to name the culprit.

As the song ends, having featured this pair of alien spacecraft landings, I'm not sure how the audience will react. But they applaud and cheer just like they had for the opening number. Good. They didn't notice. Or maybe they thought the noises were part of the song.

Swoop!

I become a little more suspect as the night goes on and the noise makes itself known again. Would the audience fall for this being a part of that song as well?

Swoop!

And that one?

Swoop!

All throughout this album? Because of this malfunction, the show goes from near-perfect to near-perfect with an annoyance.

Swoop!

Hoping there's some solution to this problem, I turned off one of my machines between songs and turned it back on again. I don't know if that reset some portamento setting or something like that and made the noise go away, but thankfully, that was it for the night. There was no more swooping noise after that, but still, that was six too many. Doesn't that keyboard know I could lose my job over this if it makes me look bad? Or is that what it wants?

Backstage after the show, the conversation turns squarely to the one distraction that kept it from being near-perfect. Everybody's imitating the phantom swoop and asking me about it and making jokes about it. Even though Nick assures everybody that the noise is the fault of a keyboard and not mine, Lake Worth seems destined to go down as "the swoop show" on the Hotel California. We're all laughing and having a good time about the noise that reared its ugly and unwelcome head six times that night.

Next night onstage, in Jacksonville?

Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop!

I lost count after the first 600 times in the first two songs only. Now our tour finale is plagued with this noise. My fellow musicians onstage keep looking over at me as if there's something more I can do. And I shoot them back this exasperated look. I truly want to go home. I'm making them look bad because I'm sounding bad, and I have no control over it.

Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop! Swoop!

After a viciously noise-plagued instrumental orchestral number featuring only Nick's keyboard and my malfunctioning one, he looks over at me from across the stage and mouths the unmistakable words, "Stop playing that thing." So now what? Just give up playing? Actually, he means I should figure out a way to ignore my main keyboard and play all the same parts on the one on the side. So that's what I do. And no more of that horrid sound effect gone wrong. It's early in the show, too, that he demanded this switch of me, so there was a lot of time to get over it and start thinking positive about how good the rest of the show was.

That is, until we got backstage. Now nobody is even saying any words. All they are doing is swooping at each other! And at me! And I'm speechless, almost hurt, as if I had just pissed my pants and everybody is calling me "Pisspants." I worry aloud to one of my bandmates that I'm going to be famous not for the notes that I'm playing but for the notes that I'm not playing. She assures me that's not the case, that everything is fine. Nick reiterates that it's the keyboard's fault and not any human's, and that I sounded good otherwise. So I'm feeling a little better, which is good because we still have some encores to do. And all I have to do for them is sing (and do a little hand-clapping). No keyboards! And it goes well, so I'm glad to put that whole ordeal behind me.

In the middle of my strange day yesterday, I got an e-mail with updated lineups for upcoming Classic Albums Live shows. It seems that in addition to a few more shows this year that I was already planning on, I was assigned to some others including a Pink Floyd show in May and a Beatles show coming up sooner with the Miami Philharmonic Orchestra! Dessie I had been planning on attending that show anyway, but now she'll be going to see me! This is sweet. I'm also flying to Newark for another Zeppelin show in May.

So the good news is this newbie's tour last week was a success, and the glitch that plagued this last tour didn't count against me. The powers that be are impressed with me and willing to keep me on through the spring. This is excellent news! I'm looking forward to my new assignments.

One of which is advertised at the right.

Taking copious notes is key

There was a time back in high school that a music teacher encouraged me to try out to sing in Diocesan Chorus. I don't know how, but I made it. Vocalists from all over the area congregated early one morning and spent the whole day just learning one song after another. I remember there being a lot of Latin. The itinerary was very strenuous, allowing us only so much time to learn each song and then call it quits.

The final activity of the day is the concert. Our parents would have to come out and get us home anyway, so why not have a little performance before they go. And some other folks come for the concert too because it's been talked up in the local churches ahead of time.

Singing for that is a trip. You are standing next to some strangers, hoping they'll blend in with you. If you partake two years in a row, or three or four years in a row, you'll recognize some people. But I did it only the once, so I knew only the people from my school. And we were quite outnumbered.

So that's similar to the situation of meeting up with these guys when we're playing with Classic Albums Live. I knew Nick pretty well because we had played six shows together in December, and he's the guy who's been coordinating all the Florida shows. Other than Nick, I had met Joe and Marcus once each when they came out to those Zeppelin gigs last month.

One of the guitarists is Rob, whom I met very briefly under the same circumstances, but I also watched him play a Zeppelin show in November. He's part of the reason I joined this whole thing! So now I get to play with Rob and chit chat with him backstage. He certainly knows how to do voices. He was just doing Pete Townshend's speaking voice. He also speaks in a British accent, all prim and proper, when he's goofing around. He used that British accent to great effect when he handled the litany of "numba nine"s in a performance of the Beatles' White Album. And we were also sitting around talking about Van Halen, and the guy lets loose a perfect David Lee Roth vocal line.

Then there are the other three, exceptional players. Our female vocalist came in on schedule a day after everybody else, and she wowed me. Two other guitarists were there too, including one who's only 19 and whose dad drove him up. Other dude flew in from San Diego with less than a week's notice as a last-minute replacement. He was right on.

The difference between Diocesan Chorus and Classic Albums Live is we all know the material ahead of time. Diocesan Chorus shows up and learns the stuff all really quick. (Wait, I'm now questioning whether or not we did have the sheet music ahead of time. I can't remember.) Anyway, we've been practicing this rock stuff our whole lives, not to mention playing it on constant loop in the month leading up to a show.

I take copious notes. I jot down things that I'm learning on the spot. If we talk over harmony parts, I'm jotting it down in ink so I can refer to it at the show. Because the show is right after rehearsal. And then my notes are there for the second and third shows too. I would never remember everything we discussed without those notes.

What's funny is no matter how hurried we are in our little rehearsal time, we are so prepared by the time we take the stage in front of the audience that we can really relax. All we're doing now is keeping promises. We said we'd do such-and-such, and now it's time to honor those promises and follow through with it. No sense in talking a big game if you aren't going to provide the onslaught.

We brought it hours ago in Gainesville, I'm pleased to report. And next, Lake Worth is up for round No. 2 of Hotel California. Then, Jacksonville gets our third serving.

Johnny-come-lately, the new kid in town

Everybody's new sometime. Today, I'm it.

Yesterday was a travel day. I didn't know exactly what was in store. I knew I was hopping into someone's rented van and heading north. The details of where we were going to go and how many people we were picking up were a bit shady. I knew we were bringing musical instruments and sound equipment. I thought some of my stuff would be along for the ride, but it wasn't. Then I met a bunch of guys in Orlando and helped them load a bunch of gear onto a truck.

Hell, this could have been organized crime. We could have been stealing equipment. I have no idea whose stuff this is!

We split ourselves into two cars and drove up north some more and ended up in Gainesville. We checked into a hotel and ate pizza and announced what time we would congregate today: noon.

It really is pretty cool what we're doing and how the whole thing is organized. And it's all on the up-and-up.

What we're doing is taking our stuff to the Phillips Center at University of Florida and rehearsing for our show there tonight. We're playing Hotel California, a collection of nine songs by the Eagles including the hit title track, "Life in the Fast Lane," "Victim of Love," "Pretty Maids All in a Row," and the song that describes what I am now, "New Kid in Town."

I've never been on a tour before. I've played plenty of gigs before, and the most successful run was a three-consecutive-night residency at one venue. That didn't include any loading or unloading for me. Everything I was going to use was already set up. This is a whole different enchilada. I've also never traveled so far for a gig. We're eight hours north of my place in Boca Raton. As Dessie pointed out to me by phone this morning, that's halfway to Washington, D.C., isn't it?

It was really strange being introduced to these folks last night. I traveled far, but some of them traveled even further, hopping on planes in Toronto and flying into Orlando. But here I am in the middle of all of this, meeting these people whose names I barely knew, and barely knowing who plays what instrument. All I know is we're all going to be playing music together soon, and it's going to sound an awful lot like the Eagles.

That's what brings us together from all these different places: the music.

When I used to work as a journalist covering the indoor air quality industry as my beat, I would attend various conferences all over the country. People would fly in from all over because of their common bond, some aspect of buildings. They were all on a mission, or several missions: to educate themselves, to network with others like them, to catch up with colleagues past, to protect or change their lifework, or maybe simply to escape the office or home. Point is they'd all show up for one reason or another and see some of the same faces each time.

This music thing is kind of like that. Only difference is we are flown out here on the promise of a big paycheck in addition to our hotel with continental breakfast and complimentary wi-fi access. That's because we've been deemed worthy of the task at hand; each of us must go out and recreate integral parts of the Eagles' landmark album and other numbers from their catalog.

We're the type of guys who pay attention to how many times a rocker played the rhythm this way and then switched to a slightly different rhythm on the seventh time. Like on "One of These Nights," the piano chords are simple. I can play them with my left hand behind my back. It's just how many times to strike them and on which beats that I have to pay attention to. Once that guitar solo is over, the piano chord pattern is twice as long. He hits the chords not only on beats 2, 3 and the & of 3 but also on the next measure's 1, the & of 1, and the & of 2. He does that pattern six times before adding another one on the second beat 4 for the CMaj7 chords and two additional between-the-beat strikes on the GMaj7 chords (or, since my part omits the tonic, the Bm7 chords). He does that, and I'm going to replicate it. It's my job to know that and to do it just the way he did.

And people love this stuff. They've been posting for months about how excited they are for this Classic Albums Live tour. We're in Gainesville today, down in Lake Worth tomorrow, and finishing up in Jacksonville on Saturday. Some of the band is playing a bunch more shows in Canada after that. Me, I'm just heading home, having done my part.

It's great being brought in for this. I'm already booked on a few more gigs, with some of the same musicians, and then the summertime will probably be full of these shows. Then somebody else will be the new kid in town. But there doesn't seem to be any harassment of Johnny-come-lately. We're all equals in this environment. No jealousy, few gripes. Just know your part, show up, and do your part -- all while dressed right. These seem to be the rules. Adhere to them, and you'll be fine.

I like it.