Are You Dave?

Last month’s Neil Young night was such a blast that everyone decided to do another one! Keith, in particular, is a rabid fan, and very quickly produced a set list that was every bit as awesome as the first, without a single repeat. I claimed “Helpless” (in fact, during the February Neil Young show I texted Jim that I wanted to do “Helpless” at the next one), imagining those rich backing harmonies in my head.

Over the next few weeks I felt pretty full of myself, and booked “Roll Another Number for the Road” and “Needle and the Damage Done” as well. In addition, Keith asked me to sing “Union Man” and even to play bass(!) on two tunes, “C’mon Baby Let’s Go Downtown” and “Bite the Bullet.” I was a little intimidated, but Jim encouraged me. “A monkey can play the bass,” he’s fond of saying. I borrowed Justin’s acoustic bass and practiced whenever I could. That’s the great thing about these shows, they’ve got me practicing again. I’m pushing myself to play better, to rise to the level of these other cats.

As usual, it was a fun night, with cold beer and hot tunes. Everything came off seamlessly, everyone sounded fantastic (though I mumbled a couple of lines of “Needle”). Joff, in particular, sounded great, playing gentle pedal-steel with me on “Needle.” I invited him to come to Howard’s annual birthday jam at the end of the month, I think he’d fit in nicely.

Anyway, we raised over $650, not bad for passing the hat in a wee pub.

Keith wrote everyone afterwards: “I’d like to thank everyone for doing a great job last night, especially with regard to keeping things moving along by following the setlist and being ready to play. I thought it was one of the smoother running shows we’ve done. The theme for the next show will be: ‘Songs of 1969′.”

Can’t wait!
~ Dave

Our second full-band show on the year took place on the road! We hiked all the way out to New London, CT, which is almost to Rhode Island, for those who are keeping track. The venue was a large banquet hall with a gorgeous view of Long Island Sound, and the crowd was close to 500 strong. We did two full sets, with lots of covers for the grown-ups to get into. We lost some of our crowd when the pasta was served, but we had die-hard music lovers up front and dancing the whole time (you can hear Vanessa on the recordings, cajoling them to keep on dancing).

The Hoboken Family Alliance has been hosting their groovy “Cabin Fever” event at the Hoboken High School gym for a couple of years now, and not a moment too soon! The event had long since outgrown the Elks club. In a twist, however, I was barely involved this year, and the Lemons weren’t there at all! I did a half hour of ukulele songs to advertise for Guitar Bar, Jr., and that was it. I did get to visit with Daniel from the Rockdoves, and Michael of Preschool of Rock, and you know how much I enjoy networking. The Rockdoves (along with Erin Lee & the Up Past Bedtime Band and some others) are working with the Lemons to get a family concert series going in NYC, watch this space for details.

Tonight was Neil Young night, two hours of rockin’ tunes and cold beer in an appropriately grungy (yet still quite pleasant) bar downtown. I performed “Harvest Moon” and “From Hank to Hendrix” with Keith, Ereni, Ty, Joff and the rest. It was even more fun than November’s Dylan night, because I felt much more relaxed and prepared, I had gotten to know my bandmates better, and because several friends came out to sing along.

The event raised some $500 for a scholarship run by Pete Martinez, drummer and proprietor of the Drum Den here in town.

Can’t wait to find out what next month’s theme will be…

Dana, Vanessa and Dave rocked a birthday party today with our friends at Garden Street Music. They’ve got a great new space upstairs where they teach dance classes and throw parties. We’ll be back at GSM in a month or two to record, hooray, but in the meantime it was nice to drop in and visit.

Our first full-band gig of 2012 took place right here in our beloved hometown of Hoboken, NJ. We’ve deliberately kept our schedule light this winter so we could focus on getting new material together for a new album, but we couldn’t pass up Justin’s suggestion* to help raise money for our friends at TRUE Mentors. Plans for the “Winter FUN-Raiser” were put together and executed in just about a month, proving once again that the Lemons are a Lean Mean Music Machine (also, that our loyal and wonderful fans in Hoboken are the greatest in the world).

We warmed up the crowd with some parachute games before launching into two full sets of high-energy rock. Our neighbor Kathy Zucker blogged about it here; seems like she and her kids had fun, and she even got some cool cell-phone video!

Special thanks to the redoubtable Mark Glindmeyer for running our sound board. At the end of the day we raised well over $1,000 for TRUE Mentors, making it a worthy afternoon indeed.
~ Dave

* Pronounced “sugg-Justin”

Dana and I went over to the Brandt school in Hoboken today, at the request of a mom who is lamenting the lack of music in her child’s classroom. I won’t go into detail because it was a private event, but I will say that they took a lot of photos and made a fun collage of our visit afterwards!

Back in September, we received a very kind e-mail from Carrie Springer (a naturalist, of all things), who “absolutely fell in love” with our music as she was putting together an event for the Somerset County Park Commission’s Environmental Education Center. Well, who could resist such an invitation?

The event was a Hibernation Masquerade; everyone would wear pajamas and make animal masks and wish the hibernating animals a good winter’s nap. So we dusted off our pajama-jam set and threw a party!

When we first arrived, a staffer was out front in a bear suit, waving to the incoming visitors. We knew right then that it was going to be a fun day. The Environmental Education Center needs a shorter name, but it’s quite an impressive facility, packed with nature exhibits and animals both living and stuffed. They cleared a big space for us to set up, and soon we had a groovy audience of kids and families piled up on the floor, eager to rock out.

Somehow, at intermission, Chris talked his way into the bear costume, and he wore it for the entire 2nd set. That’s true Fuzzy Lemon spirit.

Another notable, this is (I think) the only set where we’ve played a lullaby. Listen for Vanessa’s lovely composition “Sweetie Pie Lullaby” on our next album!

The Fuzzy Lemons at the Hibernation Masquerade

The annual sing-along with my good friend Howard is always a fun afternoon. Thanks go to the Hoboken Historical Museum for taking over the playroom and printing up snazzy posters for us!

That’s right, I’m a Guitar Bar All-Star now! I’ve been teaching “Sonic Uke” at the Guitar Bar, Jr. for almost a year. In that time I’ve meet some of the other mega-talented musicians who make up the GB family, and when Jim Mastro (owner, boss, all-around hep cat) mentioned they were doing an all-Bob-Dylan show I was eager to participate.

It wasn’t as easy as all that - I never made it onto the official e-mail list, if indeed there was one, and didn’t get clued in to rehearsals. Other stuff was going on so I kind of wrote it off, saying “I’ll do the next one.” But on Tuesday Jim texted me, would I be interested in doing “Subterranean Homesick Blues” at the show? I shot back an affirmative, before fully realizing what I lyrical nightmare I was in for. 48 hours to memorize four verses of Dylan at his wordiest.

I never found out just WHY I got the last-minute call to do that song… maybe someone else was scheduled to do it, but his brain exploded. Sometime on Wednesday, feeling a little burnt but able to sing the first two verses almost perfectly, I texted Jim. “My brain is full. Is this what the ’60s felt like?”

By Thursday afternoon I had three verses down but I knew I was never going to nail the fourth. So I printed a cheat sheet in a big font and sent a message to Jim to make sure there was a music stand at the show.

What can I say about rockin’ out with the likes of the All Stars? It’s a Bucket-List experience. Keith Hartell, to single one out, knows every every lyric to every song and can play them all on any instrument you care to hand him. He’s the organizer of the All-Stars and plays bass, mostly. Then there’s Boo Reiners, who can light a fire just by looking at a guitar, mandolin or fiddle. Not to mention Jim Mastro, 80s pop star, side-man to Ian Hunter and even Robert Plant. And there I was, fast-mumbling my way through an iconic Dylan classic with these cats.

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” doesn’t have a guitar solo, but wedged between Jim and Boo, how could I not step back and let ‘em take one? That’s the kind of group it is, just point your chin at someone and he (or she) will rip into a solo that peels the paint from the walls, or lay on a harmony that makes angels weep. It’s rhythm-guitarist heaven, let me tell you.

Next up, a Neil Young night! I’ve already dibs’d “Harvest Moon,” maybe I’ll get to do another track or two as well. Can’t wait!