K&W - SCP and RSM - 13/14May05

We played South Coast Plaza on Friday evening. A lot fewer studying-college-kids than usual, which, unfortunately, meant it was nearly empty. We did get a pair of college kids, but they weren't studying, just shopping, and they listened and made some requests for a while. And we had a nice Persian lady that seemed to like the stuff, even though she didn't know many of the songs. She said she lives nearby, and would like to bring some family to see us next time we're there. That's flattering.

I tested out my new arrangement of "Something" -- having finally caved to the pressure of the many times we get people inadvertently requesting James Taylor's "Something in the Way She Moves" when they really mean George's tune. Turns out that parts of it work pretty cool in My Style, whatever that is, though other parts, not so much. Maybe they'll tweak with time. Warren seemed to like it, anyway.

But, as expected, it went quite well, again, solo at RSM on Saturday. It was pretty empty at first, but somewhere in the middle I got a few kids, and was doing songs for them. Apparently, some other kids heard familiar tunes, and came in, and I ended up snagging quite a few families that way. And, of course, the adults like to send the kids up with some money for the jar. Because it was so kid-heavy, I think I made the most tips ever, and without selling a single CD -- though I did give one away to a nice couple that was celebrating their 35th anniversary (with me?!? What's up with that?).

The guy was amusingly forgetful -- he asked for "You Were On My Mind", which I did, and three or four songs later, he asked whether he had requested "You Were On My Mind" or "Always On My Mind", which, in retrospect, is probably what he *meant* to ask for (anniversary-song-wise), but wasn't. And when they were leaving and I offered the CD "as an anniversary present", he said, "How did you know it was my anniversary?!?". He had told me when they first came in, not more than 45 minutes earlier.

"Mind" games

K&W - Yorba Linda 07May05

Not bad, for Yorba Linda. It's just such a big, bright, impersonal space -- more like a school cafeteria than a coffeeshop. It affords the people plenty of space to sit far away from us, and remain disengaged. It just doesn't feel like "we're here together".

Still, we got some response from several groups of people, especially a family that came in with a freakishly friendly young lady (17). She walked in with a big smile, looking directly at me (us?). The only (normal) explanation would be if I knew her, but, nope, she's just shockingly open. Refreshing, and wonderful. And she was a big Beatles fan, and asked for their songs all night. Made our night, really. Funny how it only takes one person to make the difference.

My voice wasn't quite as good as the night before at RSM, but my playing was (a bit) more focused. The disconcerting total silence at least makes for "good sound". Sometimes the bustle of the people's conversations and the drink-making machines are hard to play against...

I thought "Long, Long Time" went particularly well. And "First Cut..." was the best it's ever been. Some kind of slightly slower tempo, I think.

K&W - RSM 06May05

The gig went really well last night. It started off slow -- seemed "too early" since the sun was blazing through the windows, making it seem like early afternoon. It just doesn't seem appropriate to be doing mellow coffeeshop music so early in the day. So I played the faster, pop-ier stuff, and got into it eventually. It was more or less full most of the evening after a while.

The highlight was later on when I put my almost-full bottle of lemonade (graciously provided by Borders management) on the table next to the amp, and launched into "I've Just Seen a Face". Apparently, the vibrations were buzzing the bottle toward the edge, and just after the word "Falling!", the bottle fell, with a crash, right next to my foot. I, of course, froze, looked down at it, decided there was nothing I could really do that was urgent, and continued the song (albeit with an abbreviated last half). The irony of the timing was lost on no one. That's entertainment.

We cleaned it up (mostly), and got back going, but even though it didn't really seem to bother me that much, my concentration was shot for the next dozen or so songs. Weird.

Our new little fan ("almost 9"), Paige, was there again (with her dad) -- two weeks in a row. It's always nice to have someone to play to. There was also a lively high-school-age girl who listened for a while, asked for a song or two, and whipped out her cell phone to call and excitedly beckon her twin sister. Obviously more kids who grew up listening to their parents' playing of this "old music".

But the night was mostly notable (to me) by how well I was singing. With a microphone, you're hearing yourself from "the outside" so it's easy to be impartial to how you sound -- it sounds like someone else, or a recording -- so I know when I'm singing good, and when I'm singing bad. Last night, after about 9:00, I was hitting stuff I usually strain for, and more flexible than usual, both. A lady asked for "Pancho and Lefty" and it was, by far, the best I've ever sung it. I wish I'd'a had a recorder running.

Conversely, I was playing pretty poorly -- made a lot of "got lost" mistakes, seemingly always during the instrumental verse, screwing Warren. Concentration problem. Especially after the lemonade explosion. We're at Yorba Linda tonight -- we'll see if I can stay focussed...

KC - RSM 15Apr05

RSM was pretty good, as, I suppose, it usually is these days. Margie's boyfriend and his thirty-something daughter (Allison?) were already there when I got there, and Margie showed up a little while later. Patty from up the hill came in with her three kids, as did Princess dad Kevin with his three. But before any kids showed up, I handed a song list to Margie's party, and after reading it through, Allison wanted to hear "Rubber Duckie". Another familiar looking lady was there, who I eventually figured out was the wife of the Ovation Expert guy that we met there before. After "Rubber Duckie", she asked for "Last Unicorn", and somebody else wanted "Rainbow Connection". All these kids' songs were asked for by adults, but we were "pretending" that I was actually playing them for the one 10-year-old boy that was there with his parents, not really listening. So I gave him a sheet, and he asked for (adult song) "First Cut is the Deepest", to great amusement all around.

Later on, I was just finishing a song when a middle-aged lady came around the corner of the magazine rack and loudly proclaimed, "You mean that wasn't a *record*?!?" which sent the café into a stunned silence. I was taken aback, of course, but managed to say something about "No, it's just me...", followed by some lame jokes about there actually being a CD player in the amp, and I'm lip-synching. What I *wished* I'd'a said is, "Thanks, Mom, but you're laying it on a little too heavy!" but I'm not that quick-witted.

K&W - Mission Viejo - 26Mar05

It went pretty well, for Mission Viejo. Warren cut out at 9:30 for some previous engagement, so I was solo for a while, but getting over that first 10 minutes is the hard part, so it was no problem.

I hung out and played for another hour or so after he left -- they close at 11:00. A little girl (7 years old) and her mom showed up at about 9:50, and I was about out of Adult Songs anyway, so I played a few for her. She was way over by the window, but she came up to me and said "Thank you" -- I'm sure it was mom-induced, but cute anyway.

When my fingers couldn't take any more, I announced the Last Song, and played it. Then I said thanks &c., and said that we play "here" and "other local Borders", and that there were "cards with a website address on 'em up here on the table, so you can check the schedule and catch us again". *Four people* got up and fetched cards! Four out of about ten that were still there. Pretty flattering.

Vocal Ranges

Warren and I have been puzzling over the actual vocal ranges of people. Mostly, I suppose, due to my problem of pitching songs at Princess campouts so that both Dads and their Daughters can sing along. As always, the web tells all, of course. I found the standard choir vocal ranges, according to Rice University.

They did the staff notation, I drew it on a keyboard 'cuz I'm a visual kinda guy.

According to this then, C to C is the only shared range -- although, as theorized, that's with the guys (low-C to Middle-C) an octave below the girls (Middle-C to high-C). I guess there's only three notes (well, 5, if you count black keys) that are shared by everybody in absolute pitch, but that would make a pretty boring song.

I get the feeling that the shared part of the guys' two ranges is approximately the "inexperienced" guys' range, and similarly for the girls. Basically you cut off the low part of the basses, and the high part of the tenors, and you have a guy who's essentially neither. But, by experience, getting above Middle-C is tough for non-singers, so I'd say the low-C to Middle-C is pretty safe for, say, Indian Princess dads.

It's strange to me, though, that they expect basses and sopranos to span two octaves, but they go so much easier on the tenors and altos.

Anyway, the lowest note I (try to) sing at the coffee shop is in "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground": a low-low-E, same as the lowest string on the guitar. I used to could sing it, back when I was a stock E-to-E bass, but only early in the morning, and before I got too warmed up. Since I've been singing so much, again, ('course, not as much as two hours a day, back in school), my range has been moving up (or, at least, the bottom end has), so I can't really hit it anymore. Fortunately, the guitar's bass note is kind of fortifying me when I aim at it, so I think it gets implied, if not enumerated.

Difficulty/Complexity and Music

Sometimes it strikes me that I have some great songs that are a lot of work (and/or are so hard that playing them is risky), and then when I drag 'em out, they don't even go over all that well. And then there are songs that you could teach a monkey to play ("Teach Your Children", "Peaceful Easy Feeling") that people keep asking for. Obviously, this is really just a truism, a song is good or bad *not* depending on how hard it is, but it makes me wonder if it's worth it when I undertake a new song that's hard (e.g., "Martha My Dear", which just laid there), when I could just find some more campfire-hack-favorites. I'm just saying...

Living Tradition Jam - 22Jan05

Geneva and I checked into the Living Tradition Folk Jam in Anaheim on Saturday night. I hadn't really thought she'd be interested, so I wasn't planning on going, but at 5:00, we were just sitting around, and I glanced at the clock and remembered that the Jam was that night, and asked Geneva if she wanted to go. She was all for it! So we packed up quickly and jumped in the car.

Anyway, it was pretty big fun -- especially, and amazingly, for Geneva. She snuggled up to the whistle-lady to her right (and her music stand), and sight-read as best she could. She did OK on the slower ones, but she didn't seem at all frustrated by the fast ones that she couldn't catch up on. Patty had a feedback form to fill out at the end, and Geneva just wrote "More slow songs!" in the comments section. Other than that, she had a great time.

I just strummed along on guitar. At first I thought I could keep up by watching another dude's hands, but a lot of the songs change chords too fast. The guitar guy on my left figured that out and moved his music stand over closer, and I did all right from then on. I figured that guitar players were a dime a dozen so they wouldn't really need me, but when Patty asked my guitar-neighbor what song he wanted to do, he chose "Golden Slippers" 'cuz he's learning to flat-pick the melody. All the other guitar players took the opportunity ("Easy song!") to get out their respective melody instruments (mandolin, etc.) so I found myself the only one playing rhythm!

Patty (who ran the jam) was kind of going around the circle, asking folks what they wanted to play, and after a while decided to notice Geneva, asked her her name, and if she had a song she wanted to do. When Geneva asked for "Ashokan Farewell", they were all totally thrilled (and impressed) (and, probably, relieved that it wasn't, say, "Hot Cross Buns").

Unfortunately, our glory was short-lived, as Patty's gaze turned to me next, and by way of explanation, I told her that I play with Warren (who's been going to these for a while) at coffee shops. She asked what kind of music, and I said mostly 70's pop -- "not this kind of stuff". "Like what?" "Well, 'Fire and Rain', and such." "Play it!" "Now?" "Sure!" "Well, it's a 'singing' song." "So, sing it!" "Well, OK." "What key is it in?" "Um, F?" "Go ahead!"

So, without my songbook open (you'd think that, by now...) I sang the first verse, forgot the words to the first chorus, sang the third verse, second chorus, and quit. Flipped open the book and found the second verse, which they implored me to go ahead and do, as some of the better fiddlers were starting to get the hang of something.

Anyway, it just kind of landed with a thud. Even if I hadn't completely blown it, I don't think it was very well advised. Generally regrettable. If she'd'a asked "Do you know any folk songs?", I could have pulled out "Tennessee Waltz", or something. But she asked "what we did" and drove me down the wrong street. Made a bit of a fool of myself, I'm afraid, though they're quite forgiving, or at least well-practiced at ignoring embarrassing events. Hopefully, at the next one, we can pull something a little better planned out, and redeem myself.

But, I only really only drove out there for Geneva's sake, and she loved it, and really pulled it off far better than I did. And, of course, they loved having her. I think she's definitely in for another go next month, and if she wants to go, I'm inclined to take her. Unfortunately, it's another RSM gig, so we'll have to bug out early again. (This one broke up at 6:50-ish.) And the month after is a Mission Viejo gig. At least that one has an 8:00 start time.

Acacia's School Bus Pinecar

Three years ago, when we went to build the annual pinecars, Acacia asked for a school bus. It turned out to look kinda cool, even though it's so simple. A bit of Monster Truck feel to it, because of the big black tires on the "outside" of the bus body.

I had half tried to talk her out of it, since it was too simple to be a Design Award winner, but that was the year that Acacia was in 1st grade, and she was pretty intimidated by the (real) school bus. It was loud, and there were Big Boys in it, and only the presence of her big sister got her into it every morning. I think maybe it was a subconscious plan to "conquer" the thing -- her own personal Moby Dick. Bringing it down to scale, and "owning" it probably helped her deal with it in Real Life.

"Paper Moon"

I've lately added "Paper Moon" to my song list. I was inspired, not surprisingly, by a James Taylor version from the movie "A League of Their Own", in his sweet and affable fashion. It's got that great old Tin Pan chord progression, which defied/challenged me to figure it out. I've been working on it for a while, actually -- my first downloaded version languishing on my hard drive was from September 2001. I've been poking at it lately again, trying to get it by ear, but could only catch parts. But, while searching for some Christmas tune, I encountered a batch of jazz-chord songs' sheets, and there it was again. Combining hints from there, and my own sensibilities (created by my limitations), I worked up a pretty passable chord-set.

I've also been poking at, less successfully, "As Time Goes By", which I can do the verse of, but the bridge needs work. The jazz-chord site's version works (for me) for a while, and then falls apart. Strange how these Internet songsheets (and, almost as much, paid-for commercial songsseets) just never seem to work as is. I *always* have to tweak them -- usually for the singable key, but almost always also to get 'em to sound right.

Maybe it's just me.

"Martha, My Dear"

My brother suggested "Martha, My Dear", which sounded kinda easy in my head (ragtime-y, should work with Travis picking -- or so I thought). Turns out to be really strange -- the first part is in Eb, and the middle section is in F (on the record). And the verse is played, twice, on just piano (as intro and as an instrumental verse).

So, first I had to find a (pair of) key(s) that were playable (and, hopefully, singable as well), and then I had to work up a passable instrumental verse, which, remarkably, is coming along pretty well. Noting Juber needs to be worried about, but pretty OK. I can't usually play it well on the first time through, but I'm working on it. I ended up transposing it up (!) a whole step, and capoing two. I'm singing down an octave from there, of course, so it's really down a 5th or so. A fun challenge.

"Blatz Reunion" performance evaluation

I couldn't really tell how anything went, with the lights so bright in my eyes and all. I really thought I was singing unusually badly, because of the cold, and extra nervousness. The bass player was also throwing me off on the songs he played on, since he blew it pretty badly, especially on "South of the Border", which sounds easy, but the changes aren't as obvious as you'd think (and he thought).

Anyway, it was darn fun. I don't know how we missed doing "Let it Be", and I was hoping to get to "Hey, Mister", re-worked up just for the nostalgia value, especially for my Aunt Sharon. But I reckon she went away pretty happy with what we did manage to get done.

My old roommate Kendall is (still) a mechanical monster on the guitar. His fingering is so precise, and he insists on getting every note exactly right. It's funny (and amazing) to me that he still dissects every James Taylor album, decrypting every new trick that James picks up. But having Kendall as a roommate definitely brought me up from being a three-chord-strummer to being able to play with some class. And every James song I do came directly from Kendall, or from the James-sensing-capability I developed from Kendall's tutoring. I'd sure like to sit with him for 6 or 8 hours sometime and learn some more tricks...

Christmas Tunes

A lot of the Xmas songs are trivial, especially the kids' ones: Frosty, Rudolph, Housetop. But the old-time jazz standard types are a lot more interesting than most current (and by that, I mean "20 year old") pop tunes. Working those out is what got me to the level that I can do things like "You Don't Know Me", "Someone to Watch..." etc. (whether or not that's a good thing).

I'd be tempted to do only the jazz classics at Moxie Java: "Have Yourself...", "I'll be Home...", and maybe (if I can pull it off), that Eagles "Please Come Home for Christmas" blues tune. Seems like I learned two Elvis tunes: " Santa Claus is Back in Town" and "I'll Have a Blue Christmas" last year, as a joke, but they both worked pretty good. I'd expected to be embarrassed to do them, but they sound good, so I wasn't.

I guess I'd want to have the lamer songs handy, just for the kids, if any, by request -- that always bumps up the tipping.

I've had a spurt of new song learning this week (already) -- "Homeward Bound", "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" (in D, I think), "Mister Postman" (haven't settled on a key yet -- maybe C (i.e., C, Am, F, G, all the way through)), and "All I Have To Do Is Dream" (in C (hey, it's C, Am, F, G, too!)).

The latter three are all trivial, but I thought they might be fun, in the vein of "Standing There". But "Homeward" is deceptively tough. Maybe I'm trying to play two guitars (and the bass) at the same time, but the chorus is hard (and fast). The verses are easy, at least half of the way through. But that intro/outro riff has to be right on the first try, which will take some practice, and luck. The original is too high, of course -- it's in G, capoed three, but if I just leave the capo off, I think I'll be OK.

Borders -- It's Working Out!

Last night I went by Borders RSM to drop off some posters, which I augmented by taping a copy of the "Round the Rancho" newspaper article to the bottom, with the "You could find a treat at Borders tonight" modified by "X-ing" out the "to" in "tonight" and writing "Saturday" above it, in red Sharpie. I don't know if anyone will read the whole article, but it might help to have the endorsement of an authority, an Actual Newspaper.

Cidne wasn't there, but I handed them over to Tom (the "event manager"), who very gladly put them both up immediately -- one taped to the window by the front door, and the other installed in a pre-made poster-frame that's up on a pillar in the middle of the store, pre-empting a "Something Percent Off Sale" poster (!). He said something like, "It's nice to finally get some *good* music in here", which was pretty nice of him. He also wanted me to bring posters in for the next one (Nov 26) when we come in on Saturday, and he'll put them up, too.

He showed me the November Borders Official Newsletter, which has, as he put it, "a pretty nice write up". I had to admit that it's "pretty nice" because we wrote it ourselves, but it prominently occupies the whole middle column of the three column page -- they used our "release" in its entirety. I suppose it helped that, because of the holiday, there are few events, so they needed to fill some space...

Thoughts About Playing at Borders

I was feeling intimidated by Russian-born, Hollywood-store playing, multiple Real (looking) Album recording, gorgeous, "Marina V", and noticed that she was playing at, of all places, RSM on Friday, so I stopped by. She sings pretty well, plays a big electronic piano and has a guy playing guitar along but mostly inaudibly. Writes her own songs -- I listened to 4 or 5, and they all sound pretty alike. I wonder if it's because they *are* alike, or if it's because the "sound" (her voice and the piano) is the same, or if it's because they're all songs I've never heard so they just run together. Mostly, they're all very earnest, very serious, very somber. She introduces each song with a little story about it ('cuz she wrote 'em), and they all have some very serious Meaning to her ("I wrote this song while thinking about my little brother, back in Russia, who I miss very much..."). I was hard pressed not to shout "Lighten up!" at her. The place was very sparsely populated -- probably only 4 or 5 people in the coffeeshop itself (and one guy was clearly working on some kind of chemistry term paper on his laptop). I think she essentially sombers people right out of the room.

She did commandeer a table at the "back" of the coffeeshop (by the magazines) (which she could afford to do, since there was almost nobody using them), and had a little display of CDs, a tip jar, some small posters, and a little sign: "Marina V CDs, only $10". I guess this allowed people to just serve themselves. It looked a little better than a table dedicated to holding just a tip jar (as our analog would be). I'd be very surprised if she'd sold any, though. Or made any tips, for that matter.

I think it points up the strong symbiosis between venue/audience-type and band/music-type. K&W and RSM "match". Marina V and RSM don't. Perhaps she's a big hit at, say, the Hollywood store. We may be completely humiliated in Hollywood tomorrow night. But, hey, it'll be a story to tell, whichever way it goes.

Name That Tune

This is pretty cool...

http://www.name-this-tune.com/

a.k.a. "Musipedia" (.org)

It's a music encyclopedia, built on-the-fly by its users, on the Wikipedia model. Uses a clever tune searching method called "Parsons code", where a tune is described only by its changes, up, down, or repeated. Seems to work -- I found "Over the Rainbow" with it. The tune was detail-described by another notation method called "Lilypond", which had the tune, but sans rhythm, so in the spirit of public interest, I figured Lilypond out and went ahead and put some rhythm cues in.

Good fun, and potentially useful someday -- check it out.

P.S. Here's the Parsons Code for "Rainbow", just to get you jump started:

*UDDUUUDUD

K&W - South Coast Plaza - 08Aug04

Inexplicably, the South Coast Plaza Borders has their music on Sunday afternoon. We were greeted by a room full of intensely studying Asian college kids, some of whom had earplugs in even before we got there. Since virtually all of them were (a) too young, and (b) from another culture, the response was, shall we say, underwhelming. On top of that, the Muzak wouldn't stay off -- we had to keep asking them to kill it, and it would reappear 10 minutes later. It was a pretty big waste of time, but I always say, "A bad day playin' is still better'n a good day watchin' TV". (And certainly better'n waxin' the car!)

A year or two ago, I'd'a been deeply annoyed, probably, but these days I'm pretty confident that we're Good, and the lack of response just felt like their *inability* to respond, not our lack of talent. So, it wasn't really painful, just surreal. What's hard to imagine is who decided that Sunday afternoons was The Time to do that -- both being Insanely Wrong, and bucking the rest-of-stores trend of doing music on Friday and Saturday evenings. I imagine that, even at that store, the vibe is completely different on weekend evenings than on Sunday afternoons.

Clearly, although it was amusing once, I'd rather not repeat the experience, but that store isn't even on the September listing, so there's no danger there. And none of the other gigs are afternoons, either, so hopefully we won't encounter that kind of environment again. And, clearly, we've learned another lesson -- stand staring at the Manager until the Muzak demonstrably goes off. They need to know that if the Muzak don't go off, the Band don't play.

In retrospect, and without the pressure of actually standing there, I think I might have been a bit more aggressive, too. That's easy to say now... At the time, it seemed prudent to be a even swap for the Muzak. Along the lines of a string quartet at a garden party -- just music wafting by. I figured the kids couldn't have more issue with us than they'd already have had with the speakers. At least three of them were wearing earplugs even before we got there. Still, even if I had been *able* to dislodge the kids from their books, I'm not sure that that would be doing any of them a favor. Even kids that would have rather been listening to music were probably aware that what they *ought* to be doing is knuckling down. So I felt better just fading back, and letting them be OK with ignoring me.

Anyway, however a gig goes, it makes for at least one good story. This one yielded two -- the "Day of the Dead" gig itself, and the skimpily-clad college cutie who sat right in front of me and leeeeaaaaned over, multiple times, to get into her book bag -- all while I was trying to play "You've Got a Friend" -- probably the most concentration-challenging song I play. That there was a Test sent by the Devil hisself!

JT Night?

I took Geneva over to Del Lago on Sunday morning to check out the "Neil Diamond Tribute" karaoke. It's not "come up and sing" karaoke -- it's a guy with all the Neil Diamond karaoke CDs and a system, and (only) he sings. He's actually pretty good, and the old ladies were groovin' to it. He doesn't really "imitate" Neil, but he sings a lot like him, and wears a fancy shirt and gold chain. He's probably 55 or so himself, pretty close to Neil's current age, I'd guess.

Counting us, there were probably a dozen people there at the peak (all *not* his wife and friends). The interesting part is that he got people out there (and his "steak house in Dana Point" gig, and a private party in the condo complex across the street later that day) on the strength of his "come hear Neil Diamond songs" promo. If the poster had said "guy singing along with karaoke box", nobody would have been there. But these folks showed up 'cuz they knew what to expect.

Makes me wonder about, at least, the Marketing/wording on our "poster", and, at most, possibly doing something similar but with a James Taylor spin.

To start with, I can replace "Family-friendly classic pop" on the poster with something more specific, like a list of Featured Artists. Sorting the List by artist yields clumps of James Taylor, Beatles, Paul Simon, and Willie Nelson. I'm willing to leave Willie off the list, since although I think people like his songs (or these few, anyway), most folks around here probably don't think of themselves as Willie Nelson Fans. Maybe something like " James Taylor, Beatles, Paul Simon, and many more". Maybe stick Chris Isaak in there, for the young(er) ones.

Or, more extreme, we could do some kind of "James Taylor Night". On the Long List, there are 15 JT songs, some of which we don't *really* do, but which I can kinda do, and might could be worked up better (Mexico, Sarah Maria, Daddy's Baby). And I can probably work up a batch of the easy but not compelling (to me) ones. We could advertise a "Tribute", do all the JT songs in one "set", and see if the folks roped-in thereby (if any) would hang out a little longer for some non-James-but-along-the-same-lines tunes. That JT hook sure seems to work on coffee shop owners, as an intro line...

Autoharp Progress Report

I finished the chordbars, but haven't built any buttons yet. I've tried two temporary solutions, and actually my first-try little yellow buttons were better than the current bigger green ones. It also sucks that I labeled the sticks on the stick, not the button (with little peel-and-stick labels). If the buttons are the labels, it's obvious which label applies to which button (duh), but you have to lift your fingers to see the labels. This way you can see the labels all the time, but it's hard to correlate which is which. Dilemma. I think the original machine's solution is that the labels are on the (slanted) front surface of the (quite tall) buttons. I think I like that approach, but it won't work with the "T-shaped" buttons I'm thinking of -- unless I'm significantly cleverer with the table saw than I think I am...

I was thinking that the buttons are typically way taller than they need to be, as evidenced by the mighty-thin yellow ones I made. But now I'm starting to think, conversely, that really tall buttons my relieve some of the wrist-tweak problems. You can rest the heel of your hand on the "deck" of the bank of chord bars, and if the buttons are, say, 3/4" tall, your wrist won't be so bent to push 'em. I'll have to experiment with that before I start cutting wood.

Autoharp Remodel

Well, over the long weekend, I had time to build the new chord bars for my autoharp. It took longer than I thought it would, 'cuz although they're "just sticks", they need to be (reasonably) *accurate* sticks. Also, since I lowered the "action" (a lot), it mattered that the bass end strings ride higher than the treble end (because they're wound and really thick) -- so I had to taper the sticks to compensate.

Anyway, I ended up using "fun foam", which is a 1/16" thick, really cheap, "Arts-n-Crafts" material -- basically a modern equivalent of Construction Paper for kids to make flowers and butterflies with. It's about the right softness, though I'd have liked it to be a bit thicker. It seems to be working at least as well as the original felt.

Of course, I suddenly couldn't play with the theory anymore, I had to "cut bait", so I decided on a final (for now) layout. I moved the "long row" (8 buttons) to the "bottom" (as seen by the incoming left hand, when the 'harp is held upright), and the "short row" (7 buttons) to the top. This is opposite to default, but it put the 2m and 6m under the thumb when the 4, 1, 5 are under the three strong fingers. The 6m is a bit tucked under the index finger (on the 4 chord), but it's easily workable, having (now) tried it. The picture makes it pretty clear (but discount the apparent location of the pinky -- that's accidental, the pinky isn't used except for long leaps to "accidental" chords).

Building the chords themselves wasn't hard -- I had just glued a slab of Fun Foam to a chunk of wood, and sawed the whole thing up into sticks, with the Foam already on 'em. I just had to trim little "V"s out of the Foam where I wanted a string to sound. The chords worked out OK, except the G#m is pretty weak. The two top octaves are "complete", but the bass octave is missing the D#, G# and A#. This leaves the G# chord without not only a Bass 1, but also a bass 5. I cut it anyway, and figured it'd be OK since it's not used much. But I'm thinking that if, in fact, it's not used much, I might decide to replace it with, say, D#dim or something. Or, maybe, C/b -- though those are pretty far-fetched, too. I do have three spare un-notched sticks, so I can experiment.

But my two bigger concerns at this point are (1) I don't have any push buttons -- the ShopSmith burned through a belt just as I finished the sticks, so I couldn't build the button stock. As an interim solution, I used little rectangles of peel-and-stick (bright yellow) Fun Foam (!), which, since my action is so low, work pretty well, despite being only 1/16" "tall". I also just wrote the chord names on 'em with fine-point Sharpie, so that was handy.

The second problem is inherent in Autoharp design -- it seems to be perfectly designed as a carpal-tunnel-syndrome generator. The left hand reaches around the thing, cranks 90 degrees at the wrist, and tries to push the buttons, hard. Worst possible thing you can do to your hand/wrist. And it hurts, too, even before you get any permanent damage. Not sure what to do about that -- possibly better positioning across the chest, maybe hold the left elbow out from the body? With a small pillow? (At the risk of making people think you have some soft of bagpipe-autoharp hybrid...)

Final layout

More Thoughts On Autoharp layouts

Despite my sister's adherence to "old" autoharps, presumably with 15 bars (as opposed to the really old 12s), the Real autoharpers all seem to use the 21s, though seemingly always modified for better chords and chord layout. Unfortunately, there seems to be as many "correct" layouts as there are guys to opine on the topic. Part of the attachment to 21-bar harps is, obviously, more chords, but also the bars are narrower, so the buttons are closer together, and there are three rows of buttons, rather than the 15-bar harp's two.

So, I'm tempted to try a three row layout on my 15-bar Chromaharp (which showed up on Friday) -- though the rationale seems to be Majors in one row, Minors in another, and the 7th in the third. Since I won't have any 7ths, that doesn't necessarily make sense for me.

What worries me now is the matter of playability when it's laid on a table versus held up against the chest. Upright leaves the right (strum) hand in the same place, but reverses the incoming direction of the left. Apparently the idea is to be able to use the fingers and thumb (oops -- didn't think of that!) to chord, with "touch type-ability". I think this means that I'll have the Majors on the top row, so the 1, 4, and 5 are under middle, index and ring finger, and the Minors in the bottom row where my shorter thumb can reach 'em -- and shifted right so the 2m and 6m are *under* the thumb, not necessarily "near" the 1. Or maybe that won't work out 'cuz it throws a lot of the minor chords off the end of the rack...

On further thought, I don't think three rows makes any sense for my scheme, since I won't have any 7ths. The real hang-up now is this left-hand coming in from the top, or bottom, problem. I talked to my sister this morning and she said that she Never plays it laying flat (lap or table). She distains the crossed-over wrists thing you get when it's flat (though that's the way it's pictured in the booklet that came with my ChromAharP). This might explain why the playing position is never mentioned in the FAQ -- it's Presumed Upright by all the Regulars. But it obviously makes a big difference if you're gonna lock your three main fingers on 1, 4, and 5 -- where your thumb ends up (to the left or right of that), is gonna determine where you want to put 2m and 6m. I suppose I'll build it "right" (i.e., meant to be held upright), and my daughters will figure out that it works better that way soon enough. It is, mainly, for them -- but I want it to "bring 'em up right" chord-relationship-wise, so I want to put in the logical chord bars before I let 'em play it much. I can picture them playing along with me on some of my guitar songs, once the requisite chords are available.

Thoughts On Autoharp chords

Well, I tried a lot of chord layouts, but logic brought me inexorably to the good ol' Circle O' Fifths. But does the Way Music Works drag you to the Circle, or does the Circle make music work?

There are little pockets of logic in the Oscar Schmidt autoharp layout, but they evaporate pretty quickly. I can only presume that Oscar thought that nobody cared what key they were actually in (i.e., no one ever played with anyone else on a different instrument), and so being able to shift over and play in, say, Ab, seemed like a great idea. This is even more prevalent on the 21 chord model. And clearly, 7th chords were a lot more fashionable in the Olden Days than they are with me, now.

But, if you're gonna play with other people (or, maybe more importantly (to me), use other people's sheet music), you only need to aim at reasonable guitar keys and chords. My layout is gonna let me play in C, G, D, A, and E, with all the normally required chords available. I can't play in any flat or sharp keys, nor in F or B, but I'm pretty sure I can live with that <grin>. Even if my kids need to transpose a song to put it in their singing range, E is close enough to F, and C to B.

That said, it's true that since I'm not gonna use B as a I or IV, it can be a 7th chord. I can at least give it a high-octave 7, and maybe the middle one, too. Seems like the chords towards the left and right edges of the layout are "not gonna be I" chords, and can be 7ths -- like the Dm, too, perhaps. Still, I'm always a lot happier to leave a 7th out than to have one in that doesn't belong. Maybe they all can receive the high-octave-7th-only treatment, just in case. At the least, maybe I should re-scan a stack of songs to see which appears more often, B or B7, Dm or Dm7, C#m or C#m7, etc.

Bought an Autoharp

Whoops. Up and bought an autoharp on eBay. It's actually a "ChromAharP" (pretty wacky capitalization!)

While I wait for it to arrive, I got to mess with my mother-in-law's (real) Autoharp. It's a new one, with the plastic box covering the 21 chord bars. I tuned it (it was a half-step off near the top -- obviously not getting much use) and messed with it a little. No Bm! No F#m! 21 chords and I can't play any songs that are in D (which is *lots* of 'em)! E7, but no E! No C#s! Who dreamed this thing up?

I was starting to think that since they've built a few million of 'em, they must work for somebody, so maybe I could live with the native set up. But even on the 21 chord model, there's no black-key chords except for Bb7 and Ab. Huh?

So, clearly, I'll have to rebuild the chord bars. Not sure how I'll re-label 'em, but that's the least of my worries. First, to find suitable "felt". I wonder if some alternate material would work on the chord bars: some dense foam like flip-flops, or artificial chamois, or something. I also don't know if I'll rebuild the existing bars, or just replace them with duplicates -- might seem safer, and let me do some experimentation without doing any permanent damage. For one thing, I did layouts with three and even four "rows" of buttons (like the way the 21-chord boxes have three rows of 7). And to make matters worse, I read some guy talking about re-tuning some strings, as well! Turns out the low-end is non-complete, and he wanted a low G# to fatten up the E chord he was adding. More options to worry about! (Personally, I'm not terribly attracted to adding a low third to a chord...)

Chordie.com

What an Amazing Thing this is! These guys find tab/chord sheets in text format on any/all Internet sites, analyze it, and format it *on the fly* into that clever x-by-2 line table format to keep the chords where they belong! Who even thought it would be possible!?! An amazing parsing job, considering how many nearly-randomly-formatted chord files are out there.

And just for fun, since they've auto-detected the chords versus the words, they put little chord diagrams on the right. And on top of that, they do on-the-fly chord transposition, too. I am totally impressed.

They even "extra format" any found-in-the-text, 6-number, chord "diagrams", with the little string numbers over the fret numbers. Careful, though, it's still all the "OLGA-quality" (oxymoron alert!) files that are being presented. Just 'cuz the format's nice doesn't mean that the chords/words are right. Cool, anyway.

http://www.chordie.com/index.php

Tully's Dead

The manager at Tully's (where we've been playing nearly every Saturday night, for two years, for free) called and asked us not to come back, citing "customer complaints" about not being able to study while we're there.

Sounds like a pretty lame excuse to me, though. We weren't bogarting any "study" tables. "... not enough table space"?!? Isn't that an architectural/furnishing problem, and doesn't it imply that the place is full, and isn't that a good thing? I suppose we were deleting the use of two chairs, but they weren't "study chairs", since they didn't have any writing area anyway.

I guess I could buy the argument that we were too noisy to do group study around. But how many study groups come down there on Saturday nights, anyway? And do students that showed up and were chased away by the awful racket then return in the daytime, ask for the manager, and complain? Hard to imagine...

But, whatever -- whether it's a bogus excuse or a real one, we're out of a job. I wonder if, after a week or three, he were to get several complaints from people who had shown up hoping to hear some music, and were disappointed, whether he might reconsider. Of course, that would require the Music Fans to have the same determination as the study-fiend Philistines -- they'd have to show up on Sunday morning expressing their disappointment to Dave in person, since it's unlikely that any "Hey, where's the band?" complaints would be accurately and diligently relayed by the Saturday night staff.

But, frankly, as much as Tully's is (was) the highlight of my whole week, this just makes me angry.

I guess we'll get an occasional gig at Del Lago, and we could (and should) get back in touch with Jill at Moxie and see if she wants us to do a Friday (paid, and attended) night over there once in a while. And we can send another CD in to Diedrich, possibly with material recorded on Saturday -- though they seem a long shot to me now. (I did listen to a tiny bit of Saturday's file, and it sounded really "boomy" -- possibly not usable at all).

Or maybe I'll just have some Saturdays at home with the family for a while.

"Ring of Fire" notes

There's some real rhythmic weirdness in this song...

Discounting the pickup notes, there are 4 strong beats of mariachi trumpets, then 3(!) beats of guitar vamp, then the second line, same thing each a set of 7.

(Actually, listening to the bass notes from the guitar, maybe it's really 3 and 4 (not 4 and 3). He seems to do 1-1-5, 1-5-1-5.)

Then the singing starts -- 4 beats of singing, 4 beats of trumpets, 3 beats of vamp, for 11 total beats, and into the next singing line. There is no trumpets after the fourth sung line of the verse ("I fell into..."), but we go straight into the chorus which is mercifully but jarringly straight-four.

After the chorus, the second verse is like the first, 11 beats per line, *except* for the third line, on which, apparently just by mistake, the trumpets come in a beat late, so that line gets a more normal 12 beats.

Really wacky! Now I know why I'm having trouble figuring out when to come back in with the vocal after each line of the verse -- something in me is trying to hit a "normal" rhythm pattern. I'm probably vamping one beat too long, just to get it into 12 beats.

I'd love to see the sheet music for this thing. You don't see many country songs changing meters every measure...

"You Were On My Mind"

I worked up the "We Five" hit "You Were On My Mind" lately. The lead singer is a girl, singing (at first) way down low (for her). I had to transpose it for my range, and it's working surprisingly well.

The original was probably in E, but that was even way higher than the usual tenor-based song. I kept dropping it until I found a pair of keys that were first-position playable: G and A. I have a hard time imagining someone deliberately modulating into F# (from E), but if that's not how they did it, I'm mystified. I suppose it could be capoed, what, 9? (so G would sound in E), but that's very unlikely. Maybe it was C and D, capo 5. There's a prominent sus4 chord, which is B4 when the key is E, which seems unlikely to work, too. I thought I'd eventually find a "natural" place to play it, but I'm not convinced I have.

Anyway, it's a favorite of mine (even if this isn't the "right" way to play it). I was surprised (and pleased) to find that it was playable at all, and didn't sound terrible without the pervasive vocal harmonies. I guess I'll aim at capo 3, unless I end up straining "in situ". I can never tell at home, except just by the actual pitches involved, which seem attainable. It definitely had that "jingle jangle" Byrds-like guitar sound -- maybe Warren's guitar can sound like that, given proper knob-tweaking.

It's good because I need more fast(er) songs. I guess my problem with them comes from various sources. One is that I'm lame at strumming, which comes from a combination of my not doing it much ('cuz I'm lame at it, 'cuz I don't do it much...), and that my guitar doesn't really strum well. Turns out when I use my old only-6-strings-on-it 12-string, I strum pretty OK. Not sure what the difference is -- the string spacing would seem to be part of it, but it can't be that much different. I've considered hauling it in to the coffee shops, for just the strummers, but can't bear the thought of the hassle -- both of bringing it in, and changing guitars back and forth all night.

The other problem is that I feel like most rock songs, even simple pop-rock, really require a bass and drums, and I feel like a Guy-Who-Doesn't-Know-Any-Better when I play 'em anyway (sans bass and drums). The softer, slower stuff (e.g., James Taylor) features far less prominent bass and drums, and I feel like my rendition is closer to what they "ought" to sound like. (An exception is "I Saw Her Standing There", but I'm doing that "as" a blues tune (with, in fact, a far blues-ier bass line than the original), and pretending that it's no longer a "rock" song.

"You Were On My Mind", though, and a few more, are fast, without relying on the bass and drummer to drive it. So it sounds just fine to me, played by me.

Del Lago -- booked!

I got us a second booking at "Café Vista Del Lago" on the Mission Viejo lake! We played once before, and the owner agreed in principle to book us again, but hadn't given a date. I tried to coax one out of him by email, but that wasn't working, so I dropped by in person. A band called "Roland and Etienne" were playing to a packed house (about 35 people). I asked Jose (the owner) how many he thought were "fan club" and how many were "come by to hear (whatever) music", and he thought the former were only 7.

Later, I was talking to his wife, Lorelei, outside, and she said "We gotta get you guys back in here.", and I said I had e-mailed Jose but hadn't gotten any reply. She apologized for him, and asked my to just call her on Sunday, and she'd make him write us in -- which I did, and they did: April 10, 7-10pm.

Anyway, Lorelei didn't mention money, nor did I. We'll see how that goes, again. Presumably, they'll assume we cost the same as last time. It's hard for me to imagine that "Roland and Etienne" do this for $40. Alex, maybe, assuming he doesn't pay the "accessory" boys. If, in fact, the place fills on Saturdays (already) without the band's needing (much of) a fan club, we may have the advantage of being their most cost effective Saturday solution. I guess the question would be, even if we were free, and the place fills of its own accord, would they want us every, or every other, Saturday, or will they want to keep a "variety" thing going (since they have access to at least 4 other bands), just to keep it from going stale. I don't know how to call that one -- I don't even know what I'd do if I owned the place.

But, I think I've figured out what's going on -- there's a big Retirement apartment/condo beehive across the street. It's pretty upscale, on account of being on the lake. I think Jose's managed to coax a bunch of those people into the place -- the "non-fan club" people in there were pretty well along. This is a huge upside for us, based on The List. In fact, a white-haired lady that saw us the first time was there, again, and I talked to her for a while with Lorelei. She remembered us. If Jose's managed to turn his place into a viable social gathering place for the retirement complex, it's gonna really work for him -- and us.

I'll work up an e-mail for all the usual suspects, relatives and friends, urging them to come out and make a big showing. I'm a little afraid of that backfiring -- if they all come the first time, we'll not get anyone out the (presumed) second time. But, considering how hard it is to drag folks out, I guess I'll risk it, just to get some people there at all.

Lorelei agreed with my idea of putting some song lists out as advertisements. Both she and Jose had instantly gotten interested in having us the first time, solely by reading the list, so I suggested that it might help them to hype us to day-time customers. I guess I'll do a custom version with their shop logo on top, and make it more flyer-like, date, time, location, pictures, *and* the list. I had thought that she'd want them the week running up to the gig, but she said to bring 'em in as soon as possible, so I'd better get on it.

Songs To Play At Del Lago

My impression is that the crowd at Del Lago are mostly adults, but it's not Leisure World. The complex across the street are just apartments (or condos), not "assisted living", or a nursing home. Some people are there with their school-age kids, but I think most are 50-something -- adult, with grown-up kids so they don't have to stay at home every night anymore.

When I saw Roland and Etienne lately, they were doing a lot more pop stuff (versus the All Torch Song set I'd heard before). The ones I remember are "Twist and Shout", "I've Just Seen a Face" (!), and a cheesy "You've Got a Friend / Somebody To Lean On" medley. Etienne introduced a very large Latino woman who sang a Mexican love (?) song along with Roland on classical guitar, and then a quite passable "Crazy" with Roland back on "honky-tonk" piano. (I'm beginning to think that Roland is a Really Good piano player, and very versatile. Etienne, on the other hand, is way too cheesy for me -- she thinks she's on Broadway, and it's a little much.)

I think the clientele is up for the middle-years songs we have going -- Beatles and James. Even my mom, at 70, is a big James Taylor fan -- she's not looking to hear "Someone To Watch Over Me" all the time. I didn't really learn those songs to have some age-matched songs for people of that bracket -- I learned 'em like Willie and Linda Ronstadt did, 'cuz they're classics, and fun to re-interpret. I would never learn 'em on cheesy jazz piano and try to do/be (no pun intended) Sinatra with 'em. (And, yes, I know that if I'm not *in* the cheese, I can reach out and touch it with "Crying", and some others, but sometimes you just gotta push that edge.)

Anyway, I think it'll be a lot easier to pass our late-60s-to-70s-heavy song list off on 50-somethings than on the 20-somethings we'd be getting at Diedrich.

"Somewhere"

I've always been impressed by Tom Waits' heart-rending version of "Somewhere" from "West Side Story". It's an amazing thing, but it's all lush orchestra chords -- impossible to decipher. But, I found a MIDI file, and analyzed the bass line, and worked out the chords -- not too hard after all. Amazing writing: there's at least one of every "letter" in there; D, E, F, F#m, G, A, Bb, Bm, and C. It's in D, I guess. Not sure I'll try to do it in public, but it's nice to have finally cracked it.

Tully's solo - 06Mar04

Interesting weekend...

I played at Tully's, solo, 'cuz Warren was busy. It went moderately well. When I got there, there were 4 kids playing cards, sans paid-for drinks, in the "area". I stalled a while, since there was (nearly) no one else in there, but finally Barista Brian asked them to move, which they did. I set up and played some guitar, and they decided to adjourn to somebody's house. I played a few new songs, for practice, to the now-empty shop. Finally, another set of kids came in (5). They were friendly, and apparently into music themselves, and asked for some tunes. An exotic-looking girl asked if I knew "Wicked Game", and professed to know it herself. I said, "Come on up then", which bluff she called! Guitar, mic and all, she launched into it, not too badly. Her friends put money in *my* jar, although I was telling them their mistake there.

Anyway, I got back up and did a few more for 'em. Apparently they had something else to get to (movie?) and left at 8:40. I practiced a little more, and packed up.

Went past "It's a Grind" to see if they were open later than Tully's, and they were. Or at least, still were -- I didn't find an hours sign, but there were 4 couples in there (more than I'd seen at Tully's all night). And not all, or even predominantly Asian. But, it's just too small to play in. Next-next door is a Tea place that was also nearly full, and 8 or 10 people out on the canvas-roofed patio, owing to the nice weather. Might turn into a possible summer place to play.

From there, I went to Del Lago, about 9:30. It was nearly packed! Alex was playing, with a bass player, bongo-guy, and flutist. There were at least 20 people there, and 8 or 10 more outside with over-active children. Jose was thrilled to see me (!), professing to having wanted to call me, but lost my number. Apparently his wife, Lorelei, had just been asking after us a day or two before. I, amazed at the turnout (which did *not* seem to be entirely Alex's fan club), told 'em that we're hip to play there whenever they're open. Jose said he'd check the calendar and give me a call -- I left a card with my numbers on the back.

I listened to Alex for a while. He's OK, and likable, but (to me anyway) the stuff is kinda generic. Strumming and mostly unintelligible singing. I was struck/annoyed that he somehow fills places, and I don't. I'm apparently charisma-impaired. There's an Event Calendar posted, and Jose's got the place booked nearly every Saturday: Alex, Roland and Etienne, Mark Madison, Linda Barbarino (the lady I saw at Moxie Java). I was suddenly *very* frustrated -- I think we're at least as good as any of these, and better than some, but we're consigned to accepting 6 to 10 people in a night and thinking we did pretty good.

I can only surmise that the "play songs people know" strategy is flawed. No one seems to be taking this tack, and everyone is doing better than we are -- including getting call-backs from Diedrich. I'm not sure what to do -- giving it up is one option. Another would be to learn a bunch of obscure songs, based on, apparently, no criteria at all. Best would be to get a night at Del Lago and fill the place. I know how to do the first half of that...

Horseback Riding in Hollywood

We had a great time on Sunday. The stable is at the north end of a street that dead-ends into the Hollywood Hills. You drive right past the original offices of the Hollywoodland Realty company that put the original Hollywood(land) sign up, and the stable is only a few hundred yards from the sign itself, and most of the way up the mountain. You ride west through a gate, and you're in Griffith Park. After going up a while to the top, you wind down the other side, winding up in Burbank, at the 134 and Forest Lawn Drive. There's the Los Angeles Equestrian Center there, next door to a Mexican Restaurant, so they tied up the horses, and we had lunch. After lunch, it was back on the horses, and another two-hour ride back to the stable. We rode out at 11, and got back at 4.

And, yes, I'm really sore. The worst was my bottom, what with the horse insisting on trotting a lot of the time, so I was bouncing on that seat -- and I don't have much padding between the leather and my bones. Especially on the way home, he pretty much insisted on trotting, so I got pretty good at detecting the little half-step that indicated he was about to shift into trot-mode, and pulling him back down into a walk. Too late, though, I guess. My bottom is better now, but my back is still pretty stiff.

We did have a near-tragedy -- about 5 minutes from getting back to the stable, our 'expert' rider dad somehow managed to get his horse's back feet off the edge of the trail, a 45 degree slope. The horse was digging in from a reared-up, Hi-ho Silver position, and Roger fell off. The horse scrambled back to the trail, but kicked him two or three places in the process. Fortunately, it was just his calf, and a small ding to the forehead. The rangers got him out of there (somehow -- we kept going on to the stable), and the paramedics took him to the hospital. They did X-rays and CT scanned his head, and he's OK. Not a good thing for his daughter to have to watch, though. Fortunately, by the time he was loaded into the ambulance, he was past some of the pain and joking around, so his daughter was able to see he was OK. That ol' Roger always has to be the center of attention. I told him it was pretty nice of him to throw himself under the horse to cushion his fall.

Anyway, naturally, on Monday, on their long walk to school, Geneva started the campaign to get a horse. Of course, Daleen, having owned a horse herself already, won't hear a word of it. Even Geneva had to admit that 'maybe I shouldn't have gone on that ride.' She is 'working' down at the Camp Cookie stable for their Girl Scout project, so that helps. Unfortunately, they're supposed to be cleaning and repairing the stable, not playing with the horses, but it's hard to get Geneva to remember that...

Jimi Hendrix's guitars

It's reasonably well-documented that Jimi played a right-handed Strat, strung upside down so it would be "normal" to him -- bass strings at the top. The only "hard" mods would be to reverse the nut, and put the strap button on the "wrong" horn.

This puts the pickups in a strange "shape" for the strings they refer to, and the tremolo bar under Jimi's elbow, which you can see him working in performances. There's also some people who think that the long gap from nut to tuner on the bass strings in this configuration (rather than the treble strings) makes some difference to the sound.

Still, people labor under the belief that the nut-to-tuner gap, and the odd pickup angles (especially the closest-to-saddle pickup, which is strongly angled -- presumably to compensate for something, but in the Jimi-arrangement is now doubly-wrongly compensating) contributed to Jimi's sound, and they want it, too. So Fender makes (made?) the "Voodoo" model -- a not-exactly mirror image white Strat, so right-handed players can upside-down string a left-handed guitar, becoming, I suppose, the Bizzaro-Jimi. Actually, the neck and pickups are backwards, but the "horns", controls and tremolo bar are in the conventional spots. I guess it's more of a right-handed body (with "wrongly" placed pickups) and a left-handed neck. This avoids Jimi's problem of the deeper cutaway being on the wrong side, too.

Thoughts about an audition CD

Warren wants to put "Take Me to the River" first thing on the CD. I'd'a put it last, or not on there at all -- partly because I don't think it's Representative, and partly because I don't think I do it well. I guess we're agreed that for the audition CD, being Representative is optional, but I'm still pretty embarrassed by doing the song in the first place. (It remains a mystery why I worked it up at all. I guess I like the song too much, and hoped for the best.) Part of it is that I don't think of myself as a "rocker" (singing *or* playing), part is that it's (supposed to be) so drum and bass intensive, and we have neither (which is why I tried to add that MIDI part once), and part is that I'm singing it an octave down.

I guess every song I play has a little story to go with it. "Let It Be" is a favorite lately because I think I sing it well, and I feel like it's one song that I'm not really "imitating the original" so much. I don't sound like Paul the way I sound like James, and the guitar part is clearly not Paul's piano, so I guess I like to fantasize that it's (at least a little bit) a re-interpretation, rather than an imitation, which makes me feel cool. Unlike, say, "Fire and Rain" where I'm playing as exactly like James as I can, though I've tried to back down on the sounding-like-James vocally, and sing it a bit more like me instead.

The story on "Five O'Clock World" is that I heard it done by Hal Ketchum, and am imitating his version. I like the yodeling in it, mostly because it's so "out there" -- even more scary to do in public than normal singing. I like doing it, early and often -- and because of the "edge", it's what I chose to do at The Gypsy Den. But then it came to my attention that every "young and hip" listener associates it *only* with the Drew Carey show -- and now I'm mostly embarrassed to do it, 'cuz of the lame cultural reference. When older people are in the house, I think it sounds as I intended it, but with a younger audience, my sincere reading juxtaposed with Drew Carey's ironic comedic take = embarrassing. "Who's the geek up there singing that Joke Song like it was Mozart?"

And if you can bear another story, "A Whole New World" is probably just a mistake. There's a great, soft country version on the "Best of Country Sing the Best of Disney" album, by Collin Raye, a reasonably famous country star. (A) I'm not pulling off the country feel he (and his band) does, and (B) despite it being the Big Song from a relatively recent Disney hit, none of the little kids actually seem to recognize it.

Venue Troubles

We're gonna try to keep Tully's open as an option, or even back again as a residency (barring other Better Offers). I wish Dave had put the hours back to 10:00, not just 9, but you can't have everything.

It's clear that Moxie is Not Gonna Work Out, at least not in the short run. This last weekend was encouraging -- it was way up from the all-time low of Exactly Nobody the weekend before. I'd'a said that two more Saturdays of "near nobody" would have fulfilled our obligation to Jill. Admittedly, apparently everywhere was Really Slow through the holidays, and the grocery strike is still ongoing, so many of the "chances" that Moxie had to "show us the audience" were unfairly stacked against poor Jill and her little cardboard sign.

I don't want to get off on a rant, but my problems with Tully's are (a) short hours and (b) lack of support. Even if they back down on the open resentment, the fact that Manager Dave won't even put a stinkin' sign in the window bugs me. Moxie at least put up The Sign and some of my little posters, and Del Lago put up signs *and* handed us some cash. Dave won't do either -- and for the first oh, three months, that was understandable. But after a year of free Saturdays, you'd think he'd have thrown us a bone. "Live music Saturdays" written across the bottom of the whiteboard standing outside would have been a start.

Still, it's better'n nothin'. Even if the management and staff treat us like a scourge, the customers tend to be mostly nice.

Thoughts About Playing at Moxie Java

Turnouts at Moxie Java have been pretty small. Obviously, we'd prefer a place with more people in it, but I don't know how to find that gig. I'm feeling lucky to have a gig at all, and hoping for the best, traffic-wise. It's a little scary when Steve says, "Not a bad crowd, for a Saturday" (eerily mimicking the first line of the last verse of "Piano Man"). It'll be interesting to see how much attendance we get this Friday. My impression from the two Fridays that I've checked in were that they consist of a few drop-ins, and a lot of friends/fans of the particular act of the night. For the piano guy (Rob Blaney), that makes 50 people; for the guitar lady, it was 8-ish. I guess it's a challenge to us to create a fan base, or make do with the drop-in traffic. The third option is find a new place (like Tully's) that has decent drop-in traffic.

The tough part of having a gig is it limits your ability to go looking for a different one. I keep holding out hope for Mama Java's at Mission Viejo Lake, which has that cute little sub-room especially built for music, but I haven't been able get there to see what they're up to since the "last chance!" night of the little jazz combo. I don't know if the combo was retiring, or moving on, or being fired, or if the shop itself has abandoned hosting music. The upside there is that it's fed by the big "Tortilla Flats" restaurant in the same center, and it's got the cachet of being "on the lake", instead of "next to Von's" like Moxie. When I went to the "last chance", there were about 20 people packed into the room, but they were clearly friends/fans, so it was probably non-indicative of a "normal night".

Diedrich's remains tempting, too, but the whole corporate control thing scares me. I'm not sure I'd like being sent all over different places every week. I guess it also feels like they prefer Original Acts, not cover bands -- more like the vibe at the Gypsy Den. I'm afraid to find out how the Monkees must have felt when they went on after Hendrix.

New Gig at Moxie Java

Well, Tully's changed their hours, and is now closing at 7:30 every night (which is when we *used* to start!) so we're out of there. But, coincidentally, my wife saw an article in the local paper about a new (3 months old) coffee shop that has live music every Friday (*Friday*?) and was looking for local talent. So, I called the lady up, and told her I was Local Talent, and she said that she was pretty booked up for Fridays until December. I told her that we're used to playing Saturdays anyway, and she said that she wasn't really ready to afford (afford?) to have music on two nights, but then suddenly said to come on down, then.

Turns out she pays the acts (all solos so far, apparently) $20/hour, and she wanted us to play 7:30-9 (though they close at 10). We went ahead and played 'til 10, of course, 'cuz we like to. My wife and kids came down, and the lady slipped her a check for $40 while we were playing. That's more than she'd promised, and before she knew that we were gonna play longer than *we'd* promised. It's only $20 each, but it's nice to be appreciated. They advertise the "Live Music On Fridays" in their PennySaver ads and the sign out by the street. There's posters of the Act of the Week in the window and tacked to the cash register. Apparently, unlike Tully's, they *like* having music. They *want* to have music. They want to be The Friendly Neighborhood Hangout. We may convince them to add Saturdays...

Anyway, I have an Indian Princess campout this weekend, but they may call me to come in on Friday (which is their advertised night.) I had dropped by this Friday, just to see what's up, and they were *packed*. It was some keyboard guy, with CDs for sale, and professionally photographed posters and a website... Probably a lot of the people were his fanbase -- friends, family, website mailing listers. But however many of them were Friday Regulars for the music, I guess we'll have next Friday, if we get to go in.

Busking in Japan

I'm thinking about taking my guitar to Japan and playing in the subway stations. I've seen plenty of Japanese kids doing it, generally completely ignored, and I guess I'd just like to see if walking-by folks would like me. I'd be way too scared to do it in, say, New York, but Japan is so non-threatening that I could fire it up without fear of danger -- only fear of "rejection". Even that is infinitesimally low -- Japanese people are too polite to overtly "reject" with sneers, boos, tomatoes, or suchlike. If they don't want to listen, they'll just be "busy" (which, nearly by definition, people in a train station are, anyway), and scoot by. They don't have to feel bad, and I don't have to feel bad. But if I get a few people to stop and listen and throw a few yen into the guitar case, I'll have a story to tell my grandkids.

Geneva's being there is a concern, though. But, again, it's so safe there that I don't think there'll be a problem if she comes along. The train stations are clean, safe, well lit -- more like one of our malls, really. Shiny happy people scurrying here and there. (And great acoustics because of all the tile...) Geneva certainly can come along if she wants to -- more danger of her being bored than anything else. Or, maybe I can leave her in the hotel room watching strange, unintelligible TV shows. But, lately, she's wanted to learn a few songs with me (!) -- maybe we'll work up a few before we go and she can give it a try. If a 11-year-old blonde American girl singing Disney tunes doesn't make an impression in the Ikebukuro train station, I don't know what will.

Once Upon a Time...

... there was a little girl who had too many unicorns.

Campout in Julian

The campout was pretty good. There were only three of us Pawnee, but it was Acacia's two best friends, and, coincidentally, two of mine, so it was a good combination. It was waaay out by Julian, and 4000 feet up the mountain there, so it was bitingly cold, but we got through it.

They asked me (*asked* me!) to play two songs at the Nation campfire, so I did "The Three Mile Hike" (Princess words superimposed on, of course, the Gilligan's Island theme), and closed the show with my "Goodnight Irene (Princess version)". I had a whole two minutes' notice, so I fumbled quite a lot on "Hike", because I have to slide the capo in real time to affect the 4 half-step key changes, which is pretty tricky even when I've practiced the move, and my hands aren't frozen. With no practice, frozen hands, and campfire smoke blowing into me with an inopportune wind shift, it was quite a trick.

Afterwards, we have our own tribal campfire, but I spent the remainder of the evening setting up the telescope to peek at Jupiter, so I didn't play much.

But at the end of the Big campfire, they asked me to whip up "God Bless America" (!) for the morning show. Not exactly your usual guitar-oriented folk song... I spent the early morning working that up, and got a passable rendition ready in time. They sure have (unfounded) faith in my abilities. I guess my problem is that I haven't let 'em down yet, so each subsequent request is more outrageous.

On the way home Sunday, we stopped for the gold mine tour, which was pretty amazing. Three-feet wide by five-feet high tunnels right into the mountain, probably a thousand yards worth, on the level we took. We walked around in there (with a guide) for almost an hour.

Miyazaki's "Spirited Away"

Terrific. Problem was, we thought we were going to the dubbed-to-English version, supervised by John Lassiter (of "Toy Story", "Monster's Inc.", etc.), but when we got to the theater, it was the Japanese language version with subtitles. That's kinda OK with me, but the kids were a little over their heads, bandwidth-wise. Especially since, as the reviewer below notes, it's a pretty complex story for a kid's movie.

The good news is that they're releasing it on DVD this coming Tuesday (dubbed version, of course). At the same time, they're releasing "Kiki" and "Laputa". Gonna be an expensive Tuesday for me, and not only because it's tax day.

It won the "Best Animated Film" Academy Award last month -- beating Disney's "Lilo and Stitch" and "Treasure Planet", and Fox's computer-generated comedy "Ice Age". I think I read that the other three had earned over $100 million each, while the US release of "Spirited Away" had only made $5.5 mil. I can't tell if the US releases of Miyazaki movies don't make money because they're marketed badly (on small budgets), or if they're marketed badly because they don't make money.

Working up some songs

I'm trying to work up "Puttin' On the Ritz". It was apparently written in 1930. I haven't really decided which verses and bridges to use -- the original words were about going down to Harlem and watching the servants spend their pay. There were a bunch of verses added subsequently, to replace the offensive ones, so there's no "real" version anymore. The Pasadena Roof Orchestra version I have uses some of each, so I may follow their lead.

I need a lot of work on the guitar part, especially the bridge. There's a lot of bass line, going pretty quickly. Of course, possibly a bigger problem is trying to actually pull it out in public -- the whole song seems too peculiar...

I was also surprised to like "Let It Be" so much. It's always seemed a little "much", but it plays so well on guitar, and I like singing it (now that I've transposed to a rational vocal range). Maybe it feels better because of the current political climate...

I worked on "Someone to Watch Over Me" some more last night. I'm liking it more and more as my arrangement begins to sound righter to me. It was, and is, clearly, a chick song, but lots of guys sing it anyway, so I guess it's OK. I suppose if Sting can do it, I can. (He says, "There's a little lamb that's lost in the woods", instead of "I'm a little...". I may steal that idea.) I'm trying to get the guitar part smoother -- getting the hang of that "four inside strings" diminished chord. In this case, it's a Cdim, x3424x. It helps me to think of it as a two-finger E7 shape (the 030200 part) *and* an A7 shape (the 004040 part), played at the same time.

The "real" song has one of those traditional, completely different, intro parts, which I don't have any chords to, and most folks don't know that part anyway. The remaining song is kind of short, so there's definitely an instrumental verse in there for Warren. I think it'll go like "Stardust", with an instrumental verse, then a repeat of the final section(s).

Yet more new songs

I guess I'm essentially not happy with the quality of many of the songs that I end up doing just to fill the time -- even when it was only an hour and a half. I'm probably my strictest critic, but I keep hoping to stumble on songs that really "work", to replace the second-stringers. Recent additions like "Let It Be" and (I like to think) "Crying" fall into the first category -- all too many others fall in the second.

Anyway, I think I've settled on some working chords for "Someone to Watch Over Me", after some work on Sunday. It's a classic, of course, and though I'm not sure my singing will make it a "keeper", it was worth a try. (Not to mention the pure challenge of getting it working.)

And we were at Daleen's mom's house last night, and she had a "Songs of Irving Berlin" book on the piano, from which I plucked "Putting On the Ritz". Surprisingly, the chords work quite well on guitar (unlike, for instance, "End of the Innocence", as discovered on Saturday). Again, I don't know what the vocal will sound like yet, but there's a small chance it'll work out. (It probably falls under the category of "Songs to Stump the Lead Player", but it might be fun.)

I guess I've discovered that some songs that sound OK in the bedroom, fall flat at Tully's -- and vice versa. So I'm stuck with working them up anyway, and trying them out live.

P.S. In reading various sites on Berlin, one claimed he only played didn't read or write music, never learned to play properly, and only played black keys on the piano (!). Using a pitch shifting piano (apparently readily available at the time), he *sounded* in different keys. Another said that he could only play in F#major (which may or may not correspond to "black keys only" -- I guess it's F#major without 4s and 7s). Can that really be true? If so it'd be a amazing collection of pentatonic melodies... I guess I should sit down at the piano and pick out "Ritz", starting on F#.

Tully's 15Feb2003

Tully's was pretty good this week. My cold is getting worse, but I seem to be able to kinda sing through it -- I don't have a sore throat, just a cruddy one. I managed to hold off the coughing until between songs. A quartet of nice Chinese people came in about 9, having an anniversary party. They wanted to hear some Carpenters, which I begged off of, on account of being chromosomally impaired for such songs. I happen, though, to have "Won't Last a Day Without You" in the book, 'cuz this little girl at work likes to come sing it when I bring my guitar in for lunchtime practice. So the anniversary couple's friend came up and sang it while I played -- she wasn't bad. And they tipped us $20 at the end. We had to play all love songs for the rest of the night, which, as it turns out, not so many in the book qualify for, but it was fun.

Yesterday I worked up a song at my mom's insistence -- it's called "Frog Kissin'", and the recording I have is Chet Atkins. The song may or may not have been written by him, or Ray Stevens. Anyway, it's a novelty song about seeing the best in people, worked around the fairy tale notion in the title. Cute, but I can't imagine doing it for anyone except my mom.

Longer hours at Tully's!

February 10, 2003 9:28 AM

Wow. We did 33 songs last night. I was afraid my ragged voice would give out, but I actually felt stronger as the night went on, though I did hear myself missing notes here and there. It was odd -- usually I just sing, and think about the song, and the words, and the phrasing, and the chords -- and the singing itself just takes care of itself. It's not like you have to think about how to talk -- you just do it. But with the sore throat, I have to actually *try* to hit the notes -- it's like my voice is slightly out of control and I have to concentrate on it to keep it in line.

Hopefully, it'll clear up soon -- though today it's worse than last night, so I'm not in the upswing yet...

Anyway, there weren't many songs on the list that we *didn't* do last night -- mostly the "second stringers". I guess I'd better go on a more active hunt for more material.

I'm pretty stoked that we get to play 'til 10. It'll be a challenge to have that much really good material, and to be able to play that long, and sing that long, but it reinvigorates that whole thing.

Warren seems to think that I sounded "fine". Seemed to me like I heard me miss plenty of notes -- sharp here, flat there. "Wicked Game" is certainly the most challenging -- that descending line off the falsetto flip is the worst. I don't know how he does it so smooth -- I always feel like my flip from falsetto "don't" to regular-voice "want" is horrible. I end up landing on "want" so hard it sounds like a yelp. And my falsetto sounds so much different than full-voice that it embarrasses me. Maybe it's not so bad from the outside? In my head, it's gnarly. If I didn't like that song so much, I'd certainly skip it.

I lately heard "I Will" on the Musak somewhere, in a version that sounded a lot like James Taylor. I've never seen it on an album, but a deep check of the 'net showed it on something (bootleg?) called "Rarebits", so he may do it in concert, though how it would get it on a Musak tape remains a mystery. Anyway, it gave me the idea to go ahead and transpose it to a sing-able key (duh! Why don't I think of that *without* the cattle prod?), which I did yesterday. It's originally in F (!), but moved down to D, it's (as far as I can tell with my trashed voice) in a sing-able space, and easy to play, not to mention very James-like in chords.

In fact, once moved to D, the first phrase is identical to the first and last lines of "The Way You Look Tonight", so I'm thinking of melding (medly-ing) the two. It'll, at least, save me having to decide on a "next tune" once per night.

I'll have to see if some other Beatles songs can be beaten into submission by the same treatment. I might look at "Mother Nature's Son", as requested by my brother a couple of weeks ago -- seems like a distinctive (and non transposable) guitar part, though.

Anyway, I played through some of the "Working On 'Em" songs to see if I can move 'em into the "Good Enough" section. "Play Me" (Neil Diamond) seems a likely candidate, and "Four Strong Winds", I guess. Also, we probably ought to dust off some of the ones that we were playing, but that I've come to avoid because I didn't think I did 'em well enough -- "Free Man", "Crazy Little Thing", "Still Crazy", and such like. Even "That Thing You Do" maybe...

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...

Mermaid vs the Beast

I seem to be in the minority in my opinions of "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast". Virtually everyone likes "Beast" the best (including, apparently, the Academy), but so few people mention "Mermaid". I like Mermaid better, though probably Beast "is" better. I like a Mermaid for the story, which I think is much more accessible that the Beast story is, at a (my) personal level. The "growing up, and taking your own course despite your parents' ideas" story hits me from both sides, as I remember too well the clash of my own separation, and I fear so the upcoming (all too soon) separation of my own girls.

And, I think the songs from Mermaid whup Beast's, too. The obvious fun of "Kiss the Girl" and "Under the Sea" stand on their own, but, further, I honestly can't hear (or sing) the lines, " ...bet they don't reprimand their daughters, bright young women, sick of swimmin', ready to stand... " without choking and misting up. ('Course, I have the same problem with "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas", verse 2 and 3, but that's just our little secret, OK? I'm really turning into a sentimental old softy here in my 40's...)

The Princess Song

I get these ideas, and then I can't *not* try to make 'em happen.

At the Indian Princess campouts, the last night is "Campfire Night", where all the tribes (10 tribes, 10-15 girls per) get up and entertain the rest of the Nation. We, as the newest tribe, didn't have to go up at the last campout, but we will next time. Most of the other tribes did skits, some sang a song, and one lip-synched to "MIB".

Anyway, because we're a new tribe, all our girls are young - all but a few are in kindergarten. None are brave enough to carry off a skit, I think, so I proposed singing a song -- in unison. But with such young ones, there are hardly any songs that they know beyond "Mary" and "Twinkle". With a leap of faith, I figured they might be able to learn "Puff, the Magic Dragon", and I could play it on the guitar. Then came the "where'd that come from" part -- I volunteered to make it more interesting by rewriting the lyrics to make it into an Indian Princess song. It turned out to be non-trivial, but I managed to get two verses and a chorus together. I emailed the new lyrics to the other dads (most have email) so they can teach them to their girls before the campout. I also found and pointed out the web location of a "Puff" MIDI file, so they can play it for the kids a few (dozen?) times to teach them the tune. I might decide to try to turn it into a whole nation sing-along (with pass-out lyric sheets). We'll see how it goes.