We’re back at Garden Street Music! Brandon is fixing his broken drum head, Dana is making hot tea, and the rest of the gang is in the booth listening to last night’s takes of “Jump, Wiggle and Shake.” My guess is we’ll start with that song tonight. Watch this space!
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We did a few takes of “Jump, Wiggle and Shake” before Brandon requested that we come back to it tomorrow. “It’s not swinging,” he says. I thought it sounded darn good but I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about–he’s an amazing drummer with a heck of a ear. Anyway, we moved on and knocked “Fairytale Blues” out, then started setting up for “Girls Rock” when Brandon busted a drum head. He’s replacing his snare drum now (he brings, like, five snare drums to the studio!) and we’re going to record a quick one before quittin’ time.
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The Fuzzy Lemons are back in the studio! It’s 10:30 p.m. and we’ve been here at Garden Street Music since 7, crankin’ out tunes. Phase one is to record Brandon’s drums and Justin’s bass, then we’ll come back and overdub the guitars, vocals, accordions, saxophone, and whatnot. To that end we’ve booked the studio for four 5-hour nights, back-to-back, so we can leave everything set up overnight. Tonight is night 1. We’ve nailed “Rough and Tumble” and now we’re moving on to “Jump, Wiggle and Shake.”
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This show marks the beginning of my crazy summer, 5 gigs with 4 bands in 3 weeks, plus 20 hours in the recording studio. And I love it!
The annual Music Together show (read about last year’s here) is a bit of a departure from the other stuff I find myself doing these days. Whereas the Gordys are a band with lots of regular members who have to learn new material every year, the Music Together gang is an ever-rotating group who all happen to know the same music. And in fact this year we were blessed to not only have Anne and Catherine returning, we were joined by newcomer Kristin Springer as well. Her energy (and love of broadway show tunes) fit right in.
I’m grateful that we got the show together with only two big rehearsals (plus a couple of smaller get-togethers to pick songs and work out harmonies). My colleagues are al fantastic musicians and singers, and man-oh-man can they harmonize. Indeed, try to stop them! So once again we were able to put on a huge show with the simple lineup of four singer and a couple of guitars. We had a wonderfully supportive Shipyard crowd, as always, and the city’s sound crew, Tom and Aaron, did a bang-up job supporting us on the tech side.
Best moment: When I sang the opening notes of “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and the whole crowd answered back with the next line. That was fun.
From the show I packed up my gear and headed straight to Garden Street Music for a session with the Fuzzy Lemons. I’ll be back on the Shipyard stage with them next week!
~Dave
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More gigs in the works! Parties! Festivals! Pirates! Mark your calendars!
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Road trip!!!!!!!
We rolled out of bed early this morning and were loading up Dana and Kipley’s vehicles by 9:00 a.m. for our first real road trip to an out-of-town festival, the Great South Bay Music Festival on Long Island. It was a classic day: A sack o’ bagels, iPod jacked into the car stereo, and a lot of miles to cover. I don’t have a lot of details to share from the trip itself (who wants to read about someone else driving?) so I’ll skip to when we got there.
There’d been heavy rains the night before, and the KidZone is located in a tent right down near the water. What might have normally been a packed-earth floor inside the tent was instead a damp, seaweed-covered beach! So, we had to brush a little sand off of our gear afterwards, no big deal.
The guys from the Long Island Music Hall of Fame were great, getting gear set up and making us feel very welcome. The first performer, Paul Helou, was a dynamic and creative musician who greeted us with a big smile, even as we edged into his start time with all of our gear-hauling ands set-up. He even invited us to get up and jam with him, and so I borrowed Justin’s bass, and Brandon and I backed him up. His tunes were clever and silly and he has a great voice, check him out.
As for the Lemons, we played a pretty rockin’, high-energy set. Maybe the energy was too high; our “Jump, Wiggle & Shake” was about 90 m.p.h. At one point during the song Kipley just looked at me wide-eyed and mouthed “wow.”
The audience was thin, unfortunately. A trio of suspiciously childless young men hung out for most of our set, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. We had no idea why, but we had our suspicions… but after the show we found out they were local teachers, not just some stoners.
The KidZone was located next to Ye Pirate Brotherhood, a splendid and rowdy group of costumers, as you can imagine. After our set they approached us about possibly playing the 2nd Annual Long Island Pirate Festival in September. What could be more fun than that?
Overall, a fun day, even if we didn’t entertain thousands of screaming fans. Big ups to Erin Lee for helping us land the gig!
~Dave
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