Are You Dave?

We finished two lightning-quick nights “in the box” at Garden Street Music…. here are some photos by my friend Guy Patton!

Justin and Vanessa in the studio

Here we are! Photo by Guy Patton

Dana at the Mic! Photo by Guy Patton

Chris pauses for input from producer Dan McLoughlin. Photo by Guy Patton.

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).

On this date in 2008, Cabin Fever hosted the “Kipley, Dana and Dave Music Show,” a collaboration between several local family entertainers. Maiken DuBois was there too, as was Justin Michael on bass. We didn’t have a drummer, just Dana bashing herself in the thigh with a tambourine. We’ve come a long way since then, with no signs of slowing!

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

As part of a fund-raiser for her daughter’s school, Dana booked the Lemons at Ben & Jerry’s in Hoboken. It’s always a sweet gig, no pun intended (well, maybe a little). We did it as an unplugged trio, Dana, Chris and myself rocking out on the patio at sunset. Playing with a smaller band for a smaller audience actually creates a lot of freedom for improvisation and experimentation. For example, halfway through “Jump in a Puddle” I decided to make it into a freeze dance! Yet another example of how comfortable we’ve all become as a band, how easily we can communicate with one another and take the music to new places.

Look for us at Ben and Jerry’s again when the weather warms up!
~ Dave

Trick or Treat, part deaux! We performed our Halloween set at the Elks for the annual Garden Street Music bash, and it was a great time, as always! Each year, we share the stage with GSM’s students, and watching the teen and pre-teen rockers is a real treat. (Especially since many of them used to be in my Music Together class!)

One particular highlight stands out: A dance class had been working on “The Time Warp,” and was going to dance to a playback, but we had it on our set list so they got up and danced along to us instead!

In lieu of payment for this show, we’ve got credit for studio time with Dan. Sometime in the winter or spring we’ll be going back into the studio to record a new album! I can’t wait!

~ Dave