My first Party Gig

I played an office Christmas party at my in-laws'. It went OK, but nothing to write home about. Probably 40 people in the house, only 6 or 8 came over to listen to me -- the rest were partying, of all the nerve. But the folks that listened in seemed to enjoy it -- they didn't hasten to join the others, at any rate. It was unnerving, to try to play while most folks were talking and laughing, loudly -- as always, I'm afraid to interfere. I probably played for an hour and a half, though. Did most of my adult-ish (bars Frosty and Rudolph)Christmas songs, and some James, of course. A lady asked for "Shenandoah", but gladly accepted "Water is Wide" in its place -- that was nice. All in all, I'd rather play Tully's, though. It was better than a "cold" night at Tully's, but worse than most nights there. The upside was that folks felt comfortable just talking to me, or asking for stuff. The downside was that I just seemed out of place. Good place to do the "party test", though, I guess. Running though them, though, I realized that "I'll Be Home for Christmas" was way too high, so I transposed it to A (from C). Plays OK there, and sings much better. Too maudlin to actually perform, though, so I never got to it. I thought I'd hold it off to later, but suddenly it was time for the gift exchange, and I was done. I also took a look at "Blue Christmas", just as a joke, but it's actually kinda cool. I'm gonna play with it some more, and see if I can do anything with it that doesn't ridicule Elvis (or me). And I transposed "Please Come Home for Christmas" down to D (from A). Seems like a long way, but it's *still* kinda high for my voice -- those darn Eagles! Reminds me of "Hotel California" -- waaay too high. Anyway, it works OK in D, mostly playable -- but I gotta get my G#dim (4x343x) worked up better, it happens too often in this Christmas music.

I hate Guitar Center

I hate Guitar Center -- I like the cheap prices, but I can't stand being "helped" by an idiot, or, worse, a rock-n-roll know-it-all. It's quite unpleasant being pressure-sold something I don't want, or being unable to buy what I do want.

My Second Patent

It's a shoulder strap that includes the AC adapter for your notebook. Presumably, your notebook could have strap hooks on it, eliminating the need for a case, or, at least, the case would be a lot slimmer with only the notebook (and your papers) in it.

The cleverness is that the wires are triple-folded inside the strap during carrying, and extend out when in use. You pull the strap and it sucks the cable up inside the strap.

Seemed like a good idea at the time...

Open Mic at the Gypsy Den, second time

October 22, 2002

We played another Open Mic night at the Gypsy Den in Santa Ana -- our second attempt.

Shakti was pretty OK, until she started that third "headache maker" song -- although I do have to object to folks that sing so quietly/mumbled/slurred that you can't possibly pick up any lyrics. Why write lyrics, then?

Nima was OK, too -- he does have some guitar chops going on. I get the impression that it was two songs strung together -- the repetition in the second half didn't match the repetition in the first half. Still, it was OK, and had some melodic merit, and interesting guitar parts.

But... Somebody needs to tell these amateur songwriters when to quit. Less is more. Say what you need to say and close it up. All night, it seemed that song length was in direct proportion to awfulness.

Anyway, I guess we did all right. "Water Is Wide" got (me) all messed up. I got completely lost in the bit after the guitar solo. I was making up chords, trying to get back in sync -- looked at the paper, at the wrong place, of course, and trusted it... I musta been completely wrong for two or three lines at least. Somehow I managed to just keep the vocal going, though, and found the guitar part eventually. I gotta do the whole song from memory (which I can do with no pressure, but I'm not sure how I'll react with it), or keep my eyes on the page. (It's probably partially the fault of my "left margin chords" format, too. If I get lost, finding my place is complicated by the non-coincidence of words and chords.) If I stick on the paper the whole time, I have no problems, but it's not much of a performance.

"Tennessee Waltz" went OK, though. I think the room was a little stunned to hear such an old standard. Certainly in stark contrast to the home made stuff everyone else is dragging out. Nice to have some kind of "combo" quality, though -- everyone else is strictly solo (except Shakti's inaudible bass player, I guess). I think folks liked us well enough -- they should have been hugely grateful for the insertion of some actual songs, with actual chords and actual words -- but you couldn't tell that they were, or not.

I gotta say that the feedback is more readable at Tully's than at the Den. At the Den, you get polite applause, good or bad. Not really helpful. At least at Tully's, people are listening, or they're not, and if they are, you can see their faces (and count their money). And they say "thank you" on their way out.

Not to mention the dreadful sound at the Den, and the fact that you're stuck with the worst part of the performance, i.e., the first two songs, when you're still all nervous and not-warmed-up yet. (Arguably, that's good practice, doing "the worst part" over and over again until it doesn't affect you anymore, but still...)

Anyway, it (the playing) is not all that unpleasant, but it doesn't seem to have much value, either, since there's no real feedback. I can't think of what I'd expect them to do, but "nothing" isn't quite it. It does make me appreciate the Tully's gig all the more, though.

Amps for campouts

I was just thinking about amps on Sunday, due to the use of one at Surf Camp. They told us that "they" would take care of the campfire, so I decided not to haul the big amp out there, but then I thought I'd better have something, just in case, so I brought the little battery powered Peavey that my dad bought me (which I used at the Santa Clause house last Christmas). It worked surprisingly well, I just plugged in my wired mic, even with the 1/4" jack, and it was plenty loud for "announcement" use. And I jacked the guitar in for the perennial favorite, "I'm an Indian Princess" (and, by request, "Cum By Ya" (which, by the way, sounds great if you play it in G, with 320033 for G, x32033 for the C, and a standard D).

They did have a kind of small amphitheater, with a plywood stage and backdrop, so the sound wasn't as lost as it usually is, and the group was smaller than usual (since it was one of the Expensive Events), so the little amp got a bit of a break, but I was glad to have it. Still, I got to thinking how ideal the big Carvin Stagemate amp is, for various purposes, and how lucky I am to have access to it. Fortunately, Acacia still has three years of Princesses to go, so I won't have to worry about replacing it for a while. When I do, though, I can't think of any other device I've seen that would do as good a job, so I may end up with one just like it. It's just so darn handy not to have to find power, and it's never yet run out of juice on me -- I have no idea how long it can actually go.

Gypsy Den debrief

Reasonably fun. We only did two songs, and I'm still not sure why we didn't just pick a third song and do it, once we found out that three was the acceptable number. In retrospect, we coulda done "Water Is Wide", or "Crying", or whatever.

It's kinda OK that most everyone else was pure Amateur Hour. The worse the rest of the acts are, the better we look, right? I wasn't really there to listen -- I was there to play.

'Course, it's nice to see the "competition". I suppose the gauge is whether you'd stay in the same room with any of them, had you encountered them in a back room at a party. For me, I guess the answer for all the acts I saw was "No", although the a cappella guy was intriguing. His songs were all correctly structured to have verses, choruses, and rational chord progressions. Dude, find a guitar player! I could have worked up the chord sheets for his songs in 15 minutes...

And that black lady with the bass player. Ouch. She was personally appealing, but when she tuned her G string down to (almost) D, and her high E down to D -- and then pulled out the tuning machine to fine tune the high string, and proceed to completely neglect tuning the G (now D). Ouch. It didn't help that Tim chose that moment to disappear, just as she was feeding back something awful. Literally painful.

I still feel embarrassed that I don't write my own songs, but last night confirms my belief that good "used" songs beat bad originals any day.

My guitar has a pretty bad tuning problem when I change (or add) a capo. I guess I, as always, am self-conscious about wasting the audience's time with "my problem" of an out of tune guitar. Probably I've sat through guys that spend more time tuning than playing, and you start to wonder why you came... (I saw Riders in the Sky recently, and noticed that they didn't tune once. The whole time. How do they get away with that?)

The small blessing is that we had the foresight to play "People Get Ready" first, where Warren has readily visible solo bits, which left the out-of-tune song to one where he's not so "out front". I really would have tuned more, but I couldn't even hear any "note" in my notes -- just the crunch. It took me way too long just to get the Drop D (for "Five O'Clock World) working (though apparently I was tuning the low string to match a mal-tuned higher one). In the song itself, I was playing by feel mostly, 'cuz it sounded like I was playing washboard, not guitar (gives new meaning to the term "rhythm guitar"). In fact, during the last yodel, I went to change back to D from the Am7 and realized that I was already on the D -- I hadn't been able to hear that I had just skipped a whole chord. Pretty embarrassing, but then I figured that if I couldn't hear it, probably nobody else was gonna mind much, either.

But, the whole capo thing is really getting to be a problem. The current capo has a pressure adjuster on it, but if I reduce the pressure any more, the bass string starts to buzz. It's hard to imagine that one of those spring-loaded capoes would do any better, especially since it's *not* adjustable, but it may be that I need to give it a try. I hate to spend $18 on it just to find out that it doesn't do any better, though. I wonder if I can haul my guitar and tuner into Guitar Center and try 'em until one works. Hmmm, on second thought, this is just the ticket for Shade Tree, isn't it? They won't make me buy one that doesn't work, and may even understand the concept of wanting to stay in tune... Maybe I can get over there on a weeknight next week.

Songs for the Gypsy Den

Saw a friend of Warren's at some Chinese restaurant in Costa Mesa. He was a pretty good strummer, and bold enough, and somewhat inspired, if dopey, as a writer. I spent the time thinking that if folks get away with songs like that, I shoulda written a bunch of 'em myself by now. On the other hand, his songs, while enjoyable enough, wouldn't be something I could be proud enough of to play for my mom, so I guess that's why I haven't. Seems to me like, if you're staring at a blank piece of paper casting about for ideas for a new song, and the notion of Siamese twins seems like a good idea to you, you probably need to fire your muse.

Anyway, lacking Original Tunes to play at the Gypsy Den, I'd only feel right if the tunes were remarkable in some other way -- four possibilities occur to me: Extremely Obscure, Surprisingly Well Performed, Rarely Covered, Or Unusually Arranged.

That pretty much kills all the James songs, except maybe "Water is Wide", which is on an album but nobody's heard, and "Little Help", "People Get Ready", and "The Way You Look", which are James' arrangements, but came from bootleg performances, so nobody knows 'em. But "Help" is too cheesy, and too common. The other three are possibilities, I guess...

"Something in the Way She Moves" fails most of the criteria, too, but it's kind of obscure (as it's getting so old), and I think we do it well, so maybe I'd be open to that one.

"Stardust" is ripped straight from Willie Nelson, and everyone's heard it, so that won't work. "America" is fun to play at Tully's, but I feel like it's a dim reflection of the original, lacking the harmony vocal, and played by a guy who can't really strum...

I would be willing to chance "Crying", though it fails the same tests the songs above fail. I dunno, maybe just 'cuz it's my current favorite, or because it's Rarely Covered, or because it takes such guts to sing... Anyway I guess I think I perform it reasonably well.

I think "Five O'Clock World" would work. It's clearly non-original, but it is Unusually Arranged, and Rarely Covered. It's ripped off from Hal Ketchum, but I doubt anybody would know that, nor complain if they did.

"Rhythm of the Rain" qualifies as Rarely Covered, but it's a little limp. "Ten Degrees and Getting Colder" is Obscure, and has the added attraction (for this crowd) of being about a "road musician, to the taverns he would go". I'd have to rehearse it some first, though -- I always blow the mid section.

So, let's see. Seems like if you only get two, they ought to be one fast, one slow. Maybe "Five O'Clock" and "Crying" would qualify.

Of course, there's my wife's issue, "Why do you want to do that? You already got a gig." I guess it's the fear/thrill of playing for other players. Best/worst possible audience -- outwardly, they're bound to be polite, but inside, they're the harshest judges. We'll see...