Are You Dave?

We’re back!

After a lovely hiatus, the Lemons are back to tackle the second half of the summer. And we came back with a bang, rocking the gorgeous gazebo in Victory Park in the lovely little hamlet of Rumson, NJ. I don’t know the full story of how this gig was booked (I rarely do) but apparently there are several Hoboken ex-pats in Rumson, and someone slipped our name to the town Concert Committee*. Thank you, whoever you are!

Rumson is lovely, and apparently a fairly wealthy area. We passed several driveways that disappeared through manicured lawns without ever catching a glimpse of the houses at the end. I think I could just buy a driveway and make people think I had a fancy house at the other end.

Victory Park overlooks a scenic little harbor, and a light sea breeze washed over us all evening. Every gig should be in such a gorgeous setting! We got ourselves situated pretty quickly, with Dave E. in his familiar spot at the sound board. We were encouraged by the local coordinator (I didn’t get his name, shame on me, he was nice) to play our pre-show music nice and loud, as it would draw a crowd. I think it worked, because before long the park was a sea of blankets and beach chairs!

As is often the case, the band had mixed feelings about the set itself. We always have some technical issue or other, on top of our usual self-criticism about mistakes we make while playing. But looking back now as I write this, I have a really good image of the night in my head. Kids running and playing, grown-ups clapping along to the music, some unexpected familiar faces in the crowd, and really enthusiastic greetings from fans afterwards. That’s the true measure of success, when people come up and tell us how much they and their kids enjoyed the music.

Sure, we get some things wrong. But we’re doing something right!
~Dave

* You can tell that there are Hobokenites on the committee because our neighbor Polka Dot is next on the Victory park schedule.

It was a hot, hot weekend at the world-famous Bronx Zoo, made even hotter by the appearance of Hoboken’s own Fuzzy Lemons! We’ve been looking forward to this show for months, ever since we booked it way back in March. I mean, come on, it’s the world-famous Bronx Zoo! All summer we followed their Web site, checking out the other bands that were playing there. It was a good line-up, including our friends Rocknoceros, and we feel quite honored to be part of it.

The Zoo staff were all fantastic: Energetic, helpful and fun. The only wrinkle we encountered the entire weekend was as gate guard at the entrance on Saturday who hadn’t been told we could drive our U-Haul to the stage. Even that didn’t last long, as a young, energetic, helpful Zoo staffer arrived at Mach 4 to escort us in.

The sound crew was super-cool, and thrilled to find out we’d brought our own sound guy, the redoubtable Dave E. It sure made their jobs easier! They had all the gear we could possibly need—They’d been doing this all summer, after all.

I’ve been to gigs where you had to keep it down because of the neighbors, but this was the first gig I’d been to where we had to keep it down because of the lemurs. The lemur house was across the green from the stage, and we had to keep the sound levels on the mellow side because no one wants a room full of agitated lemurs. Also, we had to be done with sound-check at a certain time because the sea lion feeding was about to start.

In case you’re wondering, I was grinning like a kid the entire morning, even before the first set started.

We ran the Wild City Safari set we’d been rehearsing for weeks, and I think all that effort paid off. As with so many outdoor shows, the crowd tends to linger in the shade, which is rarely in front of the stage. But we had a pretty sizeable group of fans in front of us at any given time. We had ‘em jumping, wiggling and shaking, stomping like elephants, even running in circles.

Meanwhile, Dana had recruited her usual batch of awesome volunteers, and they constantly worked the crowd, blowing bubbles and passing out stickers and hawking the e-mail list. We saw lots of familiar faces from all over NJ, NY and even my family from CT.

There was a near-disaster during one set, when the wind blew the drum shield down on Brandon’s kit, but we managed to slide it off and out of the way without too much interruption of the show. It’s currently in pieces, requiring some serious re-assembly. But other than that I think we played four pretty solid (if sweaty) sets over the course of two days.

New York Life sponsored the stage all summer, and tweeted the following videos:

Some Folks Like The Beach

Please Don’t Cry!

The Zoo staff seemed pretty excited to have us back next year, watch this space!
~ Dave

Last year Dana subscribed us to a service called Festivalnet.com, which lists street fairs and festivals and makes it easy for artists and performers to reach them. We dug through the listings and found that many of the festivals in NJ are booked by some of the same people. Some are booked by our good friends at This Is It! and some, like the Nutley Father’s Day Festival, are booked by JC Promotions. So we sent them our info and landed a couple of slots; we’re getting more and more out-of-town gigs, which is exciting.

The Nutley Father’s Day Festival rivaled Hoboken’s Art & Music Fest; block after block of food, art, and swag. The stage boasted a variety of acts, from local teen rockers to a soulful R&B group from Newark… and of course the Fuzzy Lemons. We were first up for the day, which of course meant a VERY early departure from Hoboken. We took a LONG time to get set up for some reason, I think because we were using someone else’s sound equipment and so we had to re-learn where everyone was plugged in. The band reached an important decision this morning: we ALWAYS bring our sound board and our snake — even if we’re just plugging that stuff into an existing PA — so we know where to plug in. Fortunately Dave Entwistle was along for the ride and worked his magic, as usual.

The show itself (the “Wild City Safari” set again, of course) went pretty well. The crowd was mostly passing through; while we had the luxury of performing on a shaded stage, the street in front of us was exposed to the merciless sun, and I don’t blame people for not lingering!

The folks from JC Promotions liked us, I think; we’re hoping to book more fun events with them.

Also, today kicks off a long week of gigs for me and another Week of Justin. What with six Lemons sets, plus a rehearsal before the big Gordys show on Thursday, I’m going to be hanging with Justin every night this week except Friday. He’s good company!

Another full day! After rockin’ Madison Square Park, we loaded up and rolled back to Hoboken for two sets at the awesome Block Party put on by the HOPES Fathers Group. First we bellied up at Justin’s pad for an hour or so, for some much-needed downtime. Then we hit the studio, grabbed the rest of the P.A. gear, and then it was down to the Rue building to set up.

Last year the Spring Fling was indoors, in the gym. This year the Father’s Group got bold and made it into a block party instead. They had everything: a bouncy castle, big grills laden with burgers and dogs, tubs of Italian ice, and even a small stage for the band. There was only one snafu: While the school got the Block Party permit and was able to close the street with no problem, the town traffic people didn’t get the word in time to get the cars moved off of the block. Oh well, y’can’t have everything.

We also had a setback when Dave Entwistle, sound guy to the stars, had to leave due to a personal emergency. We missed him (and we wish you all the best, Dave!!!) but Justin was able to call in a favor from a cohort to keep an eye on the knobs during the show. I think we sounded pretty good, and we had a wonderful crowd of kids and parents dancing. The band all seemed to agree that our first set was pretty low on energy, but we brought it back up for the second set.

On a personal note, I broke in my new lemon-yellow Chuck Taylor Converse All-Stars today, and they looked good, but MAN did my feet hurt at the end of the day!

Who knew we’d be back at Room 84 so quickly? Just a month after our last trip here, we came back to do another fund-raiser, two sets for the Outward Bound Trust.

It was a crazy day; we scuttled home from the Knitting Factory, threw the P.A. together, and dove in! Actually, thanks to the capable help of Dave Enwistle, we blazed through sound-check and actually had some free time to breathe and snack before the 4:00 set.

As with the Knit show that morning, we sounded great and interacted will with the crowd, but didn’t pull in a large crowd. Gotta work on that….

This was sort of a last-minute show, and unfortunately we didn’t draw a large crowd (gain with the rain!), but we had a lot of fun breaking in Room 84, a new club in downtown Hoboken (I was there in December in a Santa suit but this was a lot more fun). We did two sets, with the talented Dave E. running sound. We’re continually working with him to improve our sound, and I think it’s really working.

As for Room 84, it’s not unlikely that we’ll be rockin’ that joint again…

As the Lemons continue to play gigs around the area, more and more I find myself writing things like “we’re happy to be back at…” or “today was our triumphant return to…”

Well, today was our triumphant return to the totally cool Liberty Science Center in Jersey City. We were invited there not long ago as part of a Make-A-Wish event. The event fell through but LSC asked us to come and play anyway! It’s always a thrill and an honor, and we even decided to record the event by asking our friend and neighbor Bill Hamilton of BeelMedia to come film the event in HD.

The first set was at 10:00 a.m., an EARLY start, so we actually set it up with LSC to come in the night before to load our gear in and spend a little time assembling the PA. Kudos to Dana for making that all happen, and for driving! She’s been our tireless, uncomplaining bus driver for two years now.

As for the gig itself: I’m eager to see the footage Bill shot, to see if it matches my own impressions of the day. The first set was a high-energy show, and I think the fans really got into it. Dave Entwistle was in the command chair at the sound board, which is always a good feeling.

We had a good crowd up front and dancing, which will look pretty good on the video, I reckon! I made some noticeable mistakes, including starting a song in the wrong key, but overall I think the whole band felt good about the first set.

We took a break and did it all over again at 11:15, but I think fatigue was setting in–the band seems to agree that the energy wasn’t as high. But again we had a good crowd up and dancing in the front, and had a lot of fun, so that’s why I want to see the tapes!

Highlights: The young girl who waved the Jolly Roger for us during “If I were a Pirate”; seeing some old friend with kids of their own at the show!

Just about a year ago we played a fantastic show in the gazebo at Church Square Park, sponsored by our friends at O’Nieals. I guess it went well because they asked us back to do it again this year!

This year, I’m pleased to say, we own most of our own P.A. gear so there was no last-minute scrambling to throw something together (although Dana did have to drive up to the heights to borrow a couple of items from our friend Stefanie again). In fact, we had pretty much everything set up and ready to go long before the park handyman arrived to turn on the power for us!

Gene The Plumber swung by to make sure we had everything we needed; he coordinates the Weds shows in Curch Square. I told him he’d been immortalized in song by Geri Fallo at the Gordys show last week; he got a kick out of that. More importantly, he loaned us a couple of carpets to cover all the cabling that ran from the stage to the sound board. What a guy. Dave Entwistle gave us a crackerjack sound-check, and we were off!

I love outdoor gigs and I’m pleased that we have a couple more on our calendar; playing in the gazebo is fun because we’re way up high and can see all the people bobbing all over Church Square Park. And we had ‘em dancing this year! It was a gorgeous evening, again with a slight chance of rain that never appeared, and we had a really good crowd out enjoying the music. More and more people are learning our songs and singing along at shows, which to me is a hugely gratifying thing.

This is the first anniversary of our last show with Kimberly, so I wanted to take a moment and throw her a shout-out: Hi Kimberly! You rock!

It was a great night, all around. As per usual there were some minor boo-boos (I put the capo in the wrong place again for “To The Moon”; Brandon shocked us all by launching into “Girls Rock” when the rest of us were geared up to play “Fairytale Blues,” which was the next tune on the setlist) but overall it was a euphoric and lovely event. I hope to have some photos to post soon. There’s nothing like a sunset concert, and nothing like a Hoboken crowd!

Afterwards, we hauled all of our gear home and most of us adjourned to O’Nieals for a free dinner! Bonus!

~ Dave

Back-to-back outdoor shows, can you believe it? As with yesterday’s show in Jersey City, this one took place at a bustling festival, with shade for the band but not for the audience. In this case we were in the gazebo at Church Square Park, and the festival was put on by OLG, the church that gives the park its name.

Waving to the crowd!

It was a busy, crowded stage, with Tom Sweeney playing D.J. and M.C. in between the various puppet shows, dancers, bands, and even WCW wrestlers. Tom’s not a sound guy, however, so we lugged our own P.A. in and talked Dave Entwistle into coming back to mix for us once again.

The normally spacious gazebo was suddenly overflowing with gear and personnel: the Fuzzy Lemons, Sweeney, a bunch of people who wanted to make announcements at random moments (seriously, I haven’t been interrupted in the middle of a set this many times since my college band’s drunken frat-house days) and, ultimately, wrestlers.

We rocked it, though, if I do say so myself. Kipley brought his keyboard in addition to his guitar and accordion, adding some wicked cool piano to “Baby Brother Blues.” Every gig sees something new blossom in the Lemons!

Finally, outdoor concert season begins! The Fuzzy Lemons kicked off the summer with a (short) road trip to Jersey City, for the Learning Community Charter School’s June-A-Palooza Street Fair at the Boys & Girls Club. It was a huge event, sprawling the entire length of the club’s block-long parking lot. The J.C. fire department was helping folks beat the heat by pumping a spray of water over shrieking kids; there was a long, long line of tables groaning with delicious ethnic foods; and music filled the air!

When I arrived via Light Rail, the awesome percussion group Marafanyi was putting on a spectacular display of drumming from around the world. After that, a favorite local band took the stage: The Black Pearls, a winsome foursome of hard-rockin’ 12-year-old girls. They closed with a smokin’ version of Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” (which I’m sure they’ll drop from their set when they realize that the song is almost as old as their moms).

Kudos to the organizers for putting up a tent to provide shade for the band. Next year some shade for the audience would be awesome—standing around in a hot parking lot is usually what you do before you see a band.

Anyway, it was a fun set and a fun day. Dave Entwistle worked his usual magic, and I had a nice ride back to Hoboken with him on the Light Rail, chatting about life, the universe and everything.

A note about transportation: I’ve got a folding grocery cart—which I normally use for grocery runs since I don’t have a car—but I need it to haul my gear when the Lemons load Kipley and Dana’s vehicles up with the P.A. and drums and such. So if you see a musical hobo trundling his guitars in a pushcart through the streets of Hoboken, it’s just me on the way to a gig. I’m looking forward to the shows that the town runs (Kiddiepalooza, Shipyard Park) because we can use the town’s P.A. and I can fit my junk in Dana’s car!