Are You Dave?

Goodness, I’ve had NO gigs this month! I’ve only had one birthday party, and I’m only teaching 9 or 10 classes a week instead of my usual 13 or 14. This is gonna bring my numbers way down. But on the up-side, I’ve had a LOT of great time to spend with my family. We’ve been up to the pool on campus quite regularly, and we’re off to northern CA at the end of next week to visit a whole bucketful of relatives. Tonight we went over to the Shipyard to see our pal Big Jeff perform with his band, The Bouncy People. Which reminds me, next Tuesday I am sitting in with Erin Lee and her new band at the Shipyard. I’d better rehearse….

Two in one day!

At the organic store, I heard “Are you Dave?” from a woman near the check-out counter. Turns out it was Karyn Kuhl, another Hoboken-based musician who does classes for kids. Eight years working in the same field in the same town and we’ve never actually said “hi” to each other. But she could have been a Fuzzy Lemon: She was included in the original e-mail I sent out, inviting people to jam with Dana, Kipley, Maiken and myself at Cabin Fever 2008. Anyway, we hobnobbed for a bit. She’s friendly.

Then, after a pleasant afternoon noodling on my banjo (not a euphemism) at Church Square Park, I heard an “Are you Dave?” from the gazebo. A woman named Liz recognized me from the Gordys; she was hanging out with another fellow who introduced himself as Manny The Artist. Manny said he’d enjoyed my banjo picking and told me about his son, who is in a band called Blue Food, and I should check ‘em out on YouTube. Blue Food. You heard it here first, folks!

It’s summer in Hoboken, and that can only mean one thing: The Gordys are on the loose! That’s right, the Mile-Square City’s hottest Klezmer outfit did its thing again this year at Sinatra Park, and as always, it was a blast. It was a gorgeous night, featuring a lovely moonrise over our Manhattan backdrop. Big thanks to Geri Fallo, Tom Sweeney and sound-guy Chris “Gibby” Gibson.”

This year’s Gordy line-up featured:
Dave Lambert, guitars, mandolin, vocals, percussion and harmonica
Howard Olah-Reiken, guitars and vocals
Pamela Strell, vocals and percussion
Adam Laden, guitars, mandolin, vocals and woodwinds
Barbara Arnett, accordion
Rob Harari, keyboards, vocals and percussion
Joe Harari, drums, vocals
Justin Michael, bass guitar
And two special guests:
Donna Coney Island, vocals
Gordy Haas, vocals and guitar

That’s right, Gordy himself, after whom the band was named, made his stage debut with us tonight! He rocked that Bon Jovi country tune, “Who Says You Can’t Go Home?” And the hilarious and talented (and patient) Donna Coney Island stepped in on several tunes, notably “Time Warp” and “We Got The Beat.”

Also, the night featured some VERY special guests, as the Gordys: The Next Generation took the stage. Rob, Howard, Adam and Barbara’s kids all came up to sing that inescapable Train song, “Hey Soul Sister,” and they did a heck of a job.

We even got asked to do an encore! Stunned, we stumbled our way through “Angel from Montgomery” to the delight of the synagogue crowd. Then we went to the bar at 10th and Willow for afters, already planning the set list for next year’s show.

The photos on this page are by Joe Epstein. Bill Benzon also took some great shots of the night, you can see them here.

-- Weather When Posted --

• Temperature: 81°F;
• Humidity: 54%;
• Heat Index: 82°F;
• Wind Chill: 81°F;
• Pressure: 30 in.;

Ah, the legendary annual Shipyard concert. I won’t bother repeating a lot about how great these shows are; you can read last year’s entry and get a good idea of the crowd and the energy.

This year there were a few minor differences. First of all, Hoboken had managed to go a year without any more arrests at City Hall, so there was no politicking. Also, I’d had a great meeting with Sibel, the wonderful lady who runs the local Ben & Jerry’s, and she was sponsoring the event and selling ice cream over by the fountain. Let’s see, what else happened that was different from last year… oh yeah… We got rained out midway through!

That’s right, for once the weather people got it right. The sound crew, Randy and Tom, arrived at the Shipyard and started setting up gear, so we figured Geri had decided the threat of rain was minimal. Kipley was pretty sure it was going to rain halfway through our set and he was dead right (as he pointed out more than once during the hurried tear-down afterwards). Oh well. We went for it, put on a great 30-minute show, then spent an hour back at the studio, toweling off our gear.

Joe Epstein got some great shots of us before the skies opened up. Thanks Joe!

Make Music New York is a HUGE city-wide music event: Musician of all stripes can be found performing in pretty much every public space in the entire city. We submitted our package months ago, and actually got offered a couple of different slots. We picked Richard Tucker Square on the upper west side, mainly because it’s on the upper west side. Specifically, it’s close to Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, and that awesome Barnes and Noble where we’d played a couple of times.

However, it’s not a very BIG park, more like a traffic triangle off of Broadway. And, as we found out a few days before the event, no electricity. So we drew on the success of our recent set at KZTV and decided to go the unplugged route (Kipley and I both own small, portable, battery-powered amplifiers, so we were able to plug in three mics and the bass guitar).

We were pleased to discover that we COULD hold a crowd and put on a great show without spending 90 minutes on set-up and soundcheck beforehand. Imagine that! A little bit of amplification helped a LOT; not only could the audience hear us over the traffic noises, but we could hear ourselves and each other adequately and no one blew out their voice trying to shout loud enough to be heard (my biggest fear with this sort of gig).

We teamed up with a clothing company called Little Miss Matched for this event, one of our first stabs at the cross-promotion game. They arrived with these awesome little bundles of mismatched socks and handed them out to the crowd while we played “It’s OK To Be Different.” See? Cross-promotion. Clever, no?

It was an unexpectedly successful little show in NYC!

Photos coming soon.

Last year Dana subscribed us to a service called Festivalnet.com, which lists street fairs and festivals and makes it easy for artists and performers to reach them. We dug through the listings and found that many of the festivals in NJ are booked by some of the same people. Some are booked by our good friends at This Is It! and some, like the Nutley Father’s Day Festival, are booked by JC Promotions. So we sent them our info and landed a couple of slots; we’re getting more and more out-of-town gigs, which is exciting.

The Nutley Father’s Day Festival rivaled Hoboken’s Art & Music Fest; block after block of food, art, and swag. The stage boasted a variety of acts, from local teen rockers to a soulful R&B group from Newark… and of course the Fuzzy Lemons. We were first up for the day, which of course meant a VERY early departure from Hoboken. We took a LONG time to get set up for some reason, I think because we were using someone else’s sound equipment and so we had to re-learn where everyone was plugged in. The band reached an important decision this morning: we ALWAYS bring our sound board and our snake — even if we’re just plugging that stuff into an existing PA — so we know where to plug in. Fortunately Dave Entwistle was along for the ride and worked his magic, as usual.

The show itself (the “Wild City Safari” set again, of course) went pretty well. The crowd was mostly passing through; while we had the luxury of performing on a shaded stage, the street in front of us was exposed to the merciless sun, and I don’t blame people for not lingering!

The folks from JC Promotions liked us, I think; we’re hoping to book more fun events with them.

Also, today kicks off a long week of gigs for me and another Week of Justin. What with six Lemons sets, plus a rehearsal before the big Gordys show on Thursday, I’m going to be hanging with Justin every night this week except Friday. He’s good company!

The Fuzzy Lemons have long spoken of getting involved with schools, visiting classrooms and that sort of thing. Playing for HOPES is a good start, and now we have an “in” with the Jersey City school system as well. A Hoboken dad works as a social worker over there, and passed our CD along to his boss when they were looking for entertainment for a school event.

Thus we found ourselves rockin’ the pre-K crowd on a warm Wednesday night in Jersey City Heights. Middle School #7, despite its unimaginative name, is an impressive facility, with halls adorned with student art made from all manner of recycled material. And the crowd that gathered was as enthusiastic and energetic as any we’d seen. They definitely made the best “train” ever when we performed “Don’t'cha Wanna Ride?” and I caught a whole lot of people joining in on the singalongs like “Skunks in my Shoes.”

This was our first of many gigs performing our “Wild City Safari” set, with the goal of perfecting it for the upcoming Bronx Zoo weekend. We want to have the songs perfected, of course, but we also want to have the spaces between the songs perfected: the transitions, the patter, the banter, etc. So far so good!

Three gigs in three days; it’s going to be a busy June!

Once again we were pleased to invade Brooklyn for a show at the fabulous Knit. These are always fun (for me, anyway), it’s such a cool venue with great equipment. We didn’t get much of a crowd, unfortunately, but the folks who came out were seen dancing and having a blast.

We decided to axe our July Knit show, it seems that no one really wants to sit in a hot bar on a hot summer day, but we’ll be back there in a couple of months, with some new stuff!
~ Dave

One of the many, many exciting shows we’ve been looking forward to this spring is an appearance on KZTV, the closed-circuit TV studio set up at Mt. Sinai Hospital in NYC for the young patients there. No kidding, they have their own little studio, with three cameras, backdrops, the works, and they use it to broadcast live shows to the kids in the pediatrics section. It’s an amazing line-up, too, from magic and circus performances to science segments and even game shows.

And of course, live music! The Fuzzy Lemons paid a visit to the KZTV studios on Friday afternoon and were greeted by the top-notch staff, producer Alayna Kramer and engineer Gerard Edison. This was a rare “unplugged” Lemons show, all-acoustic with no drum kit (Brandon brought shakers and a hand drum). That made for a quick and easy set-up, that’s for sure!

Kids can call in to the studio from their rooms to make requests and interact with the performers. Alayna circulated a list of our songs before the show so the kids could call down and let us know what they wanted to hear. She also brought three of her charges down to the studio to be our live audience. Once they were settled, Gerard gave us an official countdown, “we’re live in five… four… three… two… one…” and the cameras were rolling.

We launched into a song and would have done a second one but the phone rang right away. Room 550, it turns out, was the hoppin’ party room that day, four different kids called down from 550 to talk to us and request songs. I don’t know how the others felt about it, but I had a blast taking the calls (I imagine the others would have loved to get a word in edgewise if I’d only shut up for a second).

Some of our songs were a bit sloppy: We’d never done an unplugged rehearsal, and it showed. But overall I think it was a fun and successful show. It was over too quickly, that’s for sure. They’ve asked us back again, which is always a good sign!

On the way out I saw a listing for “Musicians On Call” and asked Gerard to forward my number to them. I can see myself doing more visits of this nature in the future….

Last year the town threw a magical birthday celebration for a true Hudson River hero, Pete Seeger. I was honored to be a part of it. Even better, Geri Fallo asked me back to join everyone in a reprise this year!

The amazing members of the Demolition String Band (Boo Reiners, Elena Skye, Clarence Ferrari and Skip on bass) put the show together and served as the MCs and “house band” for the night. Just as last year, rehearsing with Elena and Boo was a treat and a half. Even better, as we were running through “Turn, Turn, Turn,” local guitarist Julio Fernandez (you may know him from a little jazz combo called Spiro Gyra) was hanging around, and accepted our invitation to join in. He harmonized and we even threw in an extra slot for a guitar solo for him. All of a sudden I was a member of a supergroup!

I tried to remain cool on the outside, but I gotta say I was positively giddy inside. I was so cool I even offered to buy a round for everyone (rehearsal was at the Shannon Lounge, a classic pub in the true Hoboken tradition). No one took me up on it, but Julio did let me buy him a bottle of water and we sat and gabbed for a bit at the bar, where we were soon joined by Abbe Rivers on her way to rehearse her numbers. I love Hoboken, have I mentioned this lately?

Last year’s event was marred by drizzle, and the weather threatened to turn ugly again this year, but as of this writing we still haven’t seen a drop of the predicted downpour. Sinatra Park was bathed in a gorgeous sunset as we all gathered to perform.

Here’s the line-up from this year’s event:

1. The Hoboken Youth Choir did “If I Had A Hammer,” “This Little Light of Mine” and “This Land is Your Land.” Kate Jacobs, youth wrangler, asked me to stand by and play some guitar chords to keep everyone in the same key, which I was happy to do. Little did I know that Boo would join in on mandolin, along with Skip, the Demolition String Band’s stand-up bass player. It was a regular hootenanny.
2. Then it was my turn! I did “The Garden Song (Inch by Inch),” throwing in a little talkin’ blues cribbed from some classic Arlo Guthrie bits but also containing some of my own original insights. If Pete Seeger can make a speech during a song, the by gum so can I. Then the rest of the band came up, along with Julio, for “Turn, Turn, Turn.” The extra guitar and fiddle solos made the song last longer, but it was still over far too quickly for me.
3. Jon & Deena of The Cucumbers did “Kisses Sweeter than Wine.” I cornered them later and invited them to the Gordys show on June 24 (we’re covering one of their songs!)
4. Boo Reiners and the Demolition String Band led the crowd in singing “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore.”
5. Abbe Rivers melted some faces with her powerhouse renditions of “Mary Don’t You Weep” and “Jacob’s Ladder.”
6. Kate Jacobs, again in delightful counterpoint to Abbe, led the crowd in “Goodnight Irene,” one of my favorites.
7. Elena Skye told us about the times she’d met Pete Seeger, then picked up her banjo and did “Union Maid” and “Little Boxes” with the Demolition String Band.
8. Tom Vincent, former mayoral candidate, did a jazzy “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.”
9. Eddie Fogerty ripped into “John Henry.”
10. Martha Fraiser played dulcimer and harmonized with her dad on the country classic “Get Along Cindy.”
11. I finally got to hear Annalee Van Kleeck sing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” and WOW.
12. Gene D. Plumber did his classic rendition of “Joe Hill” and gave a shout out to union workers who gave us the greatest gifts of all: the 8-hour work day and the weekend!
13. Julio Fernandez led the crowd in a soulful “Guantanamera.” Earlier that day, talking with Julio, I found out he’d been born in Cuba and was sent to live with an aunt in Hoboken when he was 6. The man should write a book. I’d read it.
14. Dave Calamoneri channeled his inner Steve Earle for a sweltering “Bring ‘em Home.”
15. The it was time for the big “This Land is Your Land” ensemble number. There were plenty of singers and guitarists on stage, so I grabbed my harmonica and threw that in instead, which was kinda cool, I thought.