Are You Dave?

I’m in the process of bringing a screening of this film to Hoboken. Anyone who has a boy or knows a boy or was a boy is invited. Watch this space for details.
Dave

Wow, it’s been such a busy week that I forgot to tell you my BIG news: Geri Fallo has invited me to MC the 3rd Street Stage at the Fall Arts & Music Festival! So I’ll be introducing the bands and bantering with the crowd all day. But that’s not all, wait until you hear who the bands are!

• 12:00 and 1:00, MUSIC TOGETHER
• 2:00 and 3:00 ERIN LEE & MARCI
• 4:00 and 5:00 THE FUZZY LEMONS

Yes, that’s right, I’m IN two of the three bands, and sitting in for a few songs with the third! In other words, I’ll be on stage ALL DAY. 

The good news is, I get to invoice the town for two band gigs and the MC job. The bad news is, I may die of sunstroke or something.

So be sure to bring the kids because you never know what might happen! September 28th at the Arts & Music Festival! Whee!

Dave

This is actually a follow-up to a previous “Are you Dave?”

Annie McLoughlin of Garden Street Music had contacted me via e-mail months ago, with an online “are you Dave?” but we hadn’t yet met face-to-face. So after our set at the Turning Point her multi-talented husband Dan came up and asked “are you Dave?”

Dan is very cool and plays just about every instrument known to man. You can check out his musical CV on his Web site; all you need to know is that he was in the band Push Stars and worked with my musical crush, Tanya Donelly. We rapped for a bit about music and recording, and then I managed to make his little son cry with some ill-timed antics on my way out the door.

If he’s forgiven me, then the Fuzzy Lemons may team up with Garden Street Music to do a project together in the near future, possibly involving the new Childrens’ Choir they’re setting up. We’ve also discussed taking advantage of Dan’s mad recording skillz to cut a track there in exchange for a performance at an upcoming event. Watch this space for details!

Dave

The Fuzzy Lemons vs. Hurricane Hanna

Wow, what a fun and crazy gig! We played at The Turning Point, Hoboken’s newest eatery, located on the banks of the scenic Hudson River. The event was an afternoon-long Ice Cream Social to raise funds for Hoboken’s Jubilee Center. It was a great gathering of Hoboken’s family-based businesses, from Creative Groove Studio to Garden Street Music.

Of course, the Fuzzy Lemons’ interests were fully represented: Music Together (Dave), Mr. Kipley (Kipley), Musicology (Dana) and ToddlerTainment (Maiken) all had flyers on the table. We’re a package deal!

The Turning Point isn’t very big so we planned a 45-minute “unplugged” set, bringing only mics and a monitor for our own vocals. We rehearsed with acoustic instruments the week before and re-arranged the set list to emphasize our non-electric skills (in other words, we took out the songs that needed my wah-wah pedal). It wasn’t our first unplugged set, so we kinda felt like we had it under control.

What we couldn’t plan for was the weather.

Hurricane Hanna rolled inexorably up the East Coast late in the week and smacked into North Carolina at high speed, sending torrents of rain all the way up into New England. Hoboken, as usual, was half-submerged. So we were some soggy Lemons as we rolled into the Turning Point for our show. (As often happens to me, I had a birthday party before the set and rolled in 20 minutes before showtime! Thank goodness Dana was available to pick me up!)

The rain kept a lot of people away but I think the turnout was still very good. I don’t know how the numbers came out, but we saw a lot of groovin’ kids and parents checking us out between face-fulls of ice cream. We sounded tight, we enjoyed our performance and it showed. And one dad brought me a super-cool Jimmy Page t-shirt, so that was nice.

The other cool thing about this show is that we introduced our brand-new drummer, Brandon Miller. He’s a cool Hoboken dad who brings his li’l daughter to Music Together, so he was a natural fit for the Fuzzy Lemons. He has learned all of our songs in a tearing hurry, which is good because our next show is the big fund-raiser in Tenafly next weekend.

Things are moving along rapidly!
Dave

I spent almost 8 hours today cooped up in a tiny room, listening to the same five songs over and over. Have I suddenly become a guest of the CIA at Guantanamo Bay? Nope! I took the Fuzzy Lemons’ demo tracks to Deep Diner Music in NYC for mastering! My neighbor Bob Mann runs the place, when he’s not touring with James Taylor. 

World-class engineer Darwin Best spent the day patiently turning our home-recorded demo tracks into something really special. He’s a wizard, very professional, easy-going and fast (hey, mastering a song from the ground up in an hour and 20 minutes is a lot faster than I could go!). He regaled Justin and me with stories of his experiences over the years fixing Clive Davis’ mistakes, recording Rod Stewart and appearing on TV thanks to Regis Philbin (”I just stared at Kelly Ripa’s @$$”).

Next week we press the CD, they’ll be on sale by next weekend! Can you believe it?

Bonus Star Wars geek cred: One of the platinum records on the wall, inscribed to Bob’s partner Allan Schwartzberg, is the original MECO “Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk” album.

Photos courtesy of Justin Michael

Taken with the sport following the Beijing Olympics, my friend Ted hosted a Badminton Invitational on Labor Day. I had fun playing, but as you can see I quickly fell into my typical role as Pied Piper.

 

Photos courtesy of Ted Mauseth

Birthday parties!

 

 

Photos courtesy of Lauren Mehlberger

Today at the playground, the mom at the swing next to us was singing a little ditty to her son:

One, Two, Three, Four, Five,
I caught a fish alive!
Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten,
I let him go again!

Why’d I let him go?
He bit me on the toe!
Which one did he bite?
The little one on the right! 

Naturally we got to talking about music. When I asked her if she’d taken her son to a music class, she said “I just signed up for Music Together.” When she saw me doing a little victory dance, she asked “Are you Dave?”

She introduced me to a couple of other moms who had their 18-month-olds at the playground too. They all signed up for my Shipyard class this fall. Woohoo!

That’s our pal Penny Jo singing backup, just behind Billy Bob Thornton(!). She’s the middle backup singer, with short hair. We just had to brag on her a little; we’ve been friends and fans since her Syracuse days (she’s making a splash in Austin nowadays, hanging with Ian Maclagen and Ronny Wood among other people). Visit her Web site at pennyjopullus.com and enjoy some of her soulful twang.

Penny Jo trivia: She and Sheryl Crow share a birthday. But we’re not telling which one.