Are You Dave?

I'm wearing Dana's feather boa and she's wearing a pot on her head. All is right with the world.

Since our first conversation at The Frozen Monkey, Kipley has been telling us about his friends Omar and Kazumi, who’ve written a children’s book and have big plans to turn it into a series, a TV show, a musical, all kinds of things. So as we geared up and played our first shows, we were angling to perform at their big book-launch party at a theater space near Times Square in NYC.

Excitement grew as the event drew closer and plans got nailed down. We started looking into advertising the event in Time Out New York Kids and other NYC family resources (we were listed in Urban Baby and GoCityKids, it’s a lot of fun to see our names in print!). We went to the theater space the week before and scoped out the venue: a good-sized room with lots of chairs, a big stage, and built-in sound equipment. 

The gig itself was a mixed bag.

I’ll start with the positive: we had a lot of fun going on our first “road trip,” packing the gear into Dana and Maiken’s vehicles (then hopping on the NJ Transit bus to Port Authority because there was no room left for passengers) and crossing the Hudson, prepared to conquer.

Dave Entwistle was along, and I think we sounded pretty darn good as a result. Plus, we’d been rehearsing and the songs were coming together nicely.  I’d been extending myself a little, daring myself to take solos on the mandolin and electric guitar (hey, I grew up playing rhythm guitar. Lead is a new bag for me). Justin and Kimberly were rock-solid in the rhythm section, and we were all coming out of our shells and starting to have fun, taking the material out to play.

Plus, I got to be the MC for the event, and I never turn down a chance to hog the mic.

But there were several nightmares that day as well. I started the day off right by leaving some very important gear at our rehearsal space, which caused me to leap off the bus and race through the streets of Hoboken, in hopes of catching Dana’s car before it pulled away. I got lucky, she was still there and able to pack up my equipment. She drove me back to Washington street while poor Kimberly perched on her drum kit in back, and I caught the next bus into the city. I arrived to find some frustrated Lemons mulling about. Turns out we’d been evicted from the nice big theater space we’d seen, and the entire event was in the process of being moved to a smaller room on a different floor. 

The lesson here is: Barter only gets you so far. Omar had done some work for the theater guys in return for the use of the space, but a paying customer arrived and *poof*, we were out. 

The good news is, they were still able to provide some PA equipment, and we’d brought along enough auxiliary gear to create a workable sound system (plus we had Dave, our secret weapon). The bad news was, the room was so small that when the band was fully set up, we took up nearly half of the available floor space!

But you didn’t hear anyone complaining. People complained, no doubt, but you couldn’t hear a word of it because our new room was Directly. Beneath. A Flamenco Class. 20 Flemencans in 40 clunky shoes whumping away just inches above our heads. Dust and plaster rained down as the pipes and other ceiling fixtures rattled above us. It was deafening, and terrifying. 

You just had to laugh. 

Anyway, at the end of the day, a lot of people showed up, the Flamenco class ended, the food was excellent, people bought copies of the book and grooved on The Fuzzy Lemons. 

Omar declared us “The Official Band of Molly & Kai” afterwards. A second Molly & Kai gig has so far failed to materialize.

With the rousing success of our first show at the Elks Club (hey, no one died, no one got sued) we decided to roll forward.  But first some questions had to be answered. Mainly, who was going to play what? With the exception of the redoubtable Justin, the rest of us (Dave, Dana, Kipley and Maiken) play multiple instruments. It’s fun to switch things around, to keep the sound different and show off a little by changing instruments, but the problem we faced boiled down to the fact that we had no drummer. Maiken offered to play drums, but that would take her off of keyboards. Kipley could play keyboards, but that would put all of the rhythm guitar chores in Dana’s hands. In one swoop we’d loose all of that musical flexibility. 

So we tackled it the same way we tackled the bass player issue: We brought someone in, raising our roster to 6. It didn’t take long to find our drummer; we posted a note on the Hoboken Moms e-mail list, hoping to find a local parent with a drum kit in the basement who was itching to play. Instead we got Kimberly Perry, who was already known to both Justin and myself — we both did a mental forehead-slap “duh, of COURSE!” when her name came up. We’d been hoping to talk her into playing with the church worship team for ages. So it was a huge boost when she replied that she’d be interested in checking out The Fuzzy Lemons.

Kimberly is a teacher at a local school in addition to being a drum teacher and semi-pro (she had played with local band Eugene for a while). She works with kids and is a great fit for the whole Lemon vibe. She sat in on a rehearsal in late February, and by the third song she’d jumped up on stage to play along. I don’t think any of us ever questioned it, she just joined right in. Like Justin, she only had a few weeks to learn the material but she caught up quickly (fighting illness the whole time, bless her heart), adding a whole new layer to the music. There’s nothing like hearing the little songs you’ve written suddenly come to life with bass, drums and electric guitar!

As all of this was going on, we were working on booking our second-ever gig. I hit on the happy idea of taking over the back room at The Goldhawk, around the corner from my apartment. I knew the owner, Fran, and I’d done kids’ parties there before (well, one, and that was for Fran’s nephew, but still). So Dana and I hit the bar after rehearsal one night, bought some beers, and bounced the idea off of him. He was into it, so with a pledge of $60 to the sound guy, the place was ours from 4 to 6 on Sunday March 16. 

We advertised like mad, flyers and e-mails all over town (and I think Kipley had put up our web site by that point as well). We didn’t sell tickets or anything; the idea was to pass the tip jar and see what happened. Well, the combination of beer for the grown-ups and a free concert for the kids proved to be irresistible–folks lined up around the block. The capacity of the Goldhawk’s back room is around 75, but by all estimates we doubled that. People who arrived after the 4:00 start time peeked in the window, saw the crowd, and turned around and left again. I felt bad about that, but it also felt really good to draw such a crowd! 

The Fuzzy Lemons at the Goldhawk, 3/16/08

A negative voice in the back of my head told me that people only came to see us because it was something new, and that the excitement would fade quickly. But I’ve gotten a lot better at shushing the negative voices in my head (they’re pretty common) and have since embraced the radical idea that people come to see us because they like us. 

I think we learned a lot that day, both about playing together as a band and about how to book a small club! I don’t have the set list from that day but I imagine it was pretty similar to the Cabin Fever set. We added some covers, songs like “No Rain” and Todd Rundgren’s classic “Bang on the Drum All Day,” that gave the grown-ups something to enjoy. I think we sounded great and the energy was spilling out of that little room. I’m sure it was all a sloppy mess, but I don’t think any recordings exist of the event so you’ll never know, nyah.

Kipley’s post-gig e-mail to the band speaks volumes:

Did that really happen? Did we just pack the Goldhawk and play a great show?! It’s all a blur. I remember little bits and flashes… smiling faces in the audience, [Justin's wife] clapping and hollering, [Dave's family] bouncing to the beat, Dave [Entwistle] grinning back at me, Dana’s profile… not so much of you guys on the stage, though. I couldn’t turn around without bumping my microphone stand.

Well… Great job, everyone! Soon we’ll all have those little ear monitors so we can really hear ourselves and enjoy the full effect.

Seriously… DAMN!!! Am I the only one who wants to do this every weekend now? How soon can we give in and become full-time Lemons?

Soon, Kipley. Soon.

At the end of the day we’d collected something like $250 in the tip jar, and sold a lot of beer for Fran, which made him happy enough to let us come back..twice! (More on those gigs later). We used that money to pay, and tip handsomely, Fran’s sound guy, Dave Entwistle. A lot, and I mean a whole heck of a lot, of the credit for our sound goes to Dave. He was cheerful, speedy and professional, working away at the sound board with a big cheery smile on his face. It made us all happy to see him grinning and dancing back there. We liked him so much that we booked him on the spot to help us with our next show, a road trip into Manhattan. More on that in an upcoming Gig Diary entry.

Dave

Got this in my e-mail today:

Hi Dave-

Are you “the” Dave Lambert I have been hearing so much about? My husband and I own Garden St Music which is a recording studio and music school in Hoboken.

She went on to talk about her new son, music classes, and their cool little studio, located under a bank on Washington street. I haven’t been yet but I’m looking forward to checking it out.

Dave

Hi again! We had a great “business meeting” the other night, the five of us got together and talked about our goals, and we all agreed on four:

1. Make Good Music. Not just music but GOOD music.
2. Have Fun. This should be obvious.
3. Make Money. Also obvious. We have bills to pay, and if we can combine making money with having fun then life is just that much better.
4. Change the World. Once we’re rich and famous are we just going to sit back on our laurels? Heck no! We’re going to use the power of music to help influence an entire generation of children (along with their parents) grow up knowing that they, and the planet they live on, are precious gifts worth protecting. We can never sit back content while children anywhere are hungry, or sick, or suffering.

So there you have it. See you soon!
Dave