Are You Dave?

At today’s Fuzzy Friday, Dana and I finished the show feeling quite pumped and enthusiastic about our performance. On the other side of the stage, Justin and Kipley felt like they’d turned in one of their worst performances to date. Go figure.

It’s almost here, I’m so excited! The awesome people at Garden Street Music have traded us 10 hours of studio time in return for a performance at their Halloween party last month. 10 hours! Can you believe it? So we’re narrowing down which tunes we want to record and ironing out our parts, so that we can maximize our time. I suspect that we’ll want to shell out for another 10 hours once this batch is done… a few good sessions and we’ll have enough tracks for a full-length CD!

We’re even talking about taking the demo tracks we did, turning them over to Dan to engineer alongside the new stuff (and give Brandon a shot at recording drum tracks) to make them part of the full album. We’ll see how that works out. I really don’t care WHAT we do, I’m just giddy to be headed back into the studio.

With all the craziness of the election and such, I haven’t posted a THING about Fuzzy Fridays!

Kipley hit on the craaaazy idea to do a whole series of shows, back-to-back, for 8 weeks, as a way to (a) develop our material; (b) expand our audience; and (c) hone our performing skills. The church where we’ve been rehearsing was open to the idea, so we opened the doors and Fuzzy Fridays was born. Eight Fuzzy Lemons shows, every Friday at 3:30 in October and November (excepting holidays) and a big Holiday show on Dec. 5.

It’s been a LOT of fun and a huge challenge. Setting up our stage, complete with backdrop (including lights and other decorations), running soundchecks, then playing a 45-minute set, then breaking it all down again, EVERY week… it’s a workout! But I think it’s been very fruitful. We’ve debuted some new material, revisited old material to see how to keep it fresh, and for the week before Halloween we added a whole batch of Halloween tunes (including an original that Maiken wrote!).

We’ve been extra-blessed to once again have Dave Entwistle doing sound for us. We’re hoping that, by the last couple of shows, we will have tweaked the sound well enough to attempt to make a recording of the set. We’ll see if that pans out. 

Fan response has been pretty good, judging by ticket sales: 10 families the first week, 20 the 2nd week, and up into the 30s for the last three shows. We have three left: Nov. 14, Nov. 21 and the holiday show Dec. 5. Here’s a video snippet from the Oct. 17 set:

Nov. 21 will sadly be our last gig with Maiken, as she’s celebrating the holiday season by moving to Sidney with her husband. We’re crushed, but eager to get her into the studio to record a bunch of her material before she moves so we can milk every possible penny out of her keep her music alive with us even after she’s gone around the globe.

Speaking of the studio, our new friends at Garden Street Music will be joining us on Dec. 5, our last gig in the series, with their youth choir! It’s going to be fun to sing “Rudolph” and other favorites with a choir. Meanwhile, word of the event has spread and this particular Fuzzy Friday has suddenly evolved into a giant HFA holiday brouhaha! They’ll be doing snacks and such downstairs at the church, while the Lemons rock it upstairs. Everyone will get goodiebags, and I’m sure there will be giveaways and all the other fun stuff you can expect from the crazy crew at the Hoboken Family Alliance. So check it out!

In 1983 NASA’s Guy Bluford Jr., became the first African-American astronaut to fly into space. In 1992 Mae Jemison became the first female African-American astronaut to fly.

A few years ago Denzel Washington and Halle Berry won the Oscars for Best Actor and Actress.

Tonight we have our first African-American President.

I’d be very happy to never* hear the words “the first African-American [fill in the blank]” again. Let’s be done with “separate but equal” once and for all. Let’s all be one Human Race.

Meanwhile, no one says it better than The Boss:

[* With the possible exception of "first female African-American president," which could happen in my lifetime, or maybe my child's.]