Are You Dave?

It’s been a while! With so much competition in town (Music for Aardvarks, Preschool of Rock, Kidville, etc.) my name apparently hasn’t been circulating as much as it used to. So it was nice to hear, even though the lady got my name wrong at first.

The setup: Sitting down for lunch at Anthony David’s, our local hangout. To my right sat a bunch of moms, neighbors of ours and alumni of Music Together, having a chat. Behind me was a table full of new mommies, cradling infants and eating their salads one-handed. One of the Alumni Moms stops at the New Mommy table on her way out, and says “you guys need to take music class with this guy, he’s great.” Sweet, and a little embarrassing. So then I turn around and explain that I teach Music Together, and one of the moms asks “Oh, are you… Dan?”

Oh well. Close enough.

I’m pleased to say that, even though the rest of the country is in a downward spiral, my numbers saw a nice bump in 2011, back up to 2009 levels!

I taught 415 Music Together classes - the exact same number I taught in 2010. In addition, I taught 55 “Sonic Uke” ukulele classes at Guitar Bar Jr.
I performed at 32 parties, way up from last year. I also did three Santa Claus visits.
The Fuzzy Lemons played 35 concerts, and I did 4 shows with other bands (including the Gordys and my Music Together cohorts).

Grand total: approx. 544 hours of performing for kids, an average of about 90 minutes a day. I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did!
~ Dave

Hats off to Jerry Needel, a fellow PSU alum who lives here in Hoboken. In the wake of the awful scandal at Penn State this fall, he gave the world his vision of the largest alumni philanthropy in the world, in support of victims of abuse. More here. Support RAINN! I’ve ordered my shirt, have you?

Trick or Treat! After a few weeks off, we did our 2nd annual Halloween show at the Knit today. I snatched up matching “Sgt. Pepper” jackets for myself, Justin and Chris at a Halloween store, and I must say we cut dashing figures. (Ask Dana about the text she mistakenly sent her pastor when she was shopping for a matching costume.) Lots of kids at the show had dressed up as well, and we had a ghoulishly good time.

I my last gig diary entry I mentioned that we’ve become a very flexible band. We’re able to pull out Halloween tunes such as “Monster Mash” and the Scooby Doo theme with little difficulty. Come summer, we’ll rip out “California Sun” and similar surf-themed songs. We’re a non-stop Kindie rock machine!

~ Dave

‘Tis the season for end-of-summer and back-to-school shows, but the weather doesn’t always cooperate. The All Saints’ gig in Hoboken, scheduled for the 7th, was rained out, and so was this show’s original date on Sept. 24th. But we worked out a new date and were blessed with GORGEOUS weather for our last outdoor show of the fall.

A huge thank-you to the Auxiliary Board of the Rye Free Reading Room for making it happen. From the moment we pulled up we were met by helpful volunteers, which came in handy when Vanessa’s keyboard would’t work and we had to send someone to Radio Shack for a new power supply! Vanny didn’t blink, she just grabbed her tambourine and rocked out for the entire set. This band has really become a fluid and adaptable rock’n'roll unit and I love being a Lemon!

Woohoo! MusicFest is one of our biggest shows of the year! We’ve been here twice before; in 2009 it was really hot, and and 2010 it rained. This year was our “Goldilocks” year, everything was just right. The weather was delightful, the crowds were agreeable, and the band was at its rockin’ best.

These festivals are fun for me, not just because we get to play on a huge stage to huge crowds, but because we get to meet (and observe) other performers who are in our line of work. This year we missed sharing the stage with our friend Baze (he played on Saturday), but we met magician Dave Levitan and the awesome cats from Starfish, our neighbors from nearby Maplewood, NJ (Starfish drummer “Grateful Dave” also plays drums for our pal Big Jeff).

As always, HUGE props to the This Is It! people and to DJ Mickey G for making it a smooth, fun, ultra-cool day.

~ Dave

For a week leading up to today, we’ve been hearing about Hurricane Irene, coming straight up the coast and down our throats. My family and I jumped in a rental SUV and headed north to upstate NY and VT, on an already-scheduled vacation. We drove out a couple of days early, because we didn’t want to be trapped in town if there was flooding and damage that blocked roads. It turns out Hoboken didn’t have any problems that it doesn’t have during a regular rainstorm (but several towns in upstate NY and VT were hit hard).

Folks all around me in Hoboken felt the affects of today’s earthquake, but I didn’t feel a thing. Which is disappointing to me (not that I wish it had been worse, mind you), and frankly worrisome. I mean, buildings were shaking! Am I really so out of it?

We were invited to participate in the Riverhead Library’s end-of-summer party for the kids who’d enrolled in their summer-reading program. They must have run a great program this summer, because there was a HUGE crowd of kids and families waiting to rock out with us! And rock out they did, dancing up and down the aisles for the entire show. They jumped, wiggled, and shook, and when we did “Don’t'cha Wanna Ride?” the kids spontaneously formed a loooooong train and choo-chooed around the entire auditorium. The local Patch.com site posted a story with photos here.

Riverhead is quite a trip for us, but we enjoyed it because Chris rented an enormous passenger van. All of the Lemons (plus Mark the sound guy!) and all of our gear fit in the van! Nothing makes a road trip more fun than a busload of friends to share it with. We even made an obligatory stop at Wendy’s. (On the way home that night, Vanessa turned my song “Sing Your Thing” into a gross-out anthem called “Pass Your Gas.” The Wendy’s was to blame, I suspect. She’s still giggling about the whole thing.)

We have a three-week break until our next gig, and that one’s in Hoboken. See you then!
~ Dave

Our crazy week continues! This was a Kids Kingdom Show, and it was good to see Deanna Hunt and DJ Mickey G., our This Is It! compadres. It was a lovely day, not too hot, and the kids were having fun. (Vanessa in particular made friends with a young man named Jose, who wasn’t shy about getting up and dancing with the girls!)

We shared the stage with Buckaroo Bindlestiff, a wild-west offshoot of the amazing Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. They spotted the Corn Mo sticker on my guitar case and we reminisced for a bit over mutual acquaintances (without going into detail, I’ll admit that in my pre-Lemons days I hung out once or twice with some of NYC’s most talented underground cabaret acts). If you haven’t seen the Bindlestiff performers in one of their many guises, you’re missing out.