Are You 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.

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!

I’ve been looking forward to this show for quite some time! I love boats, I love the water, I love Hoboken, I love music… so playing music on a historic boat on Hoboken’s storied waterfront was a perfect combination.

If you haven’t visited The Waterfront Museum, check it out. I can wait. David Sharps bought the barge for a dollar, some 20-25 years ago. Since then he’s spent something like a million dollars making it livable (he and his awesome family live aboard) and serviceable as a venue (he hosts a circus every Sunday, among other things).

Shout-outs to Carter Craft for connecting us with David, and to Geri Fallo for working out the details involved in getting the barge to town, and more importantly, getting them a license to serve alcohol aboard (no, there was no booze at the Lemons’ show). We’d been concerned about the show in the weeks leading up to the date because advanced ticket sales were low, but close to 100 people came out see us on the day of… not too shabby.

I have some pretty darn good video of the show, thanks to my friends Guy and Dana and their HD camera. (Guy owed me a solid after I did some music for some of his movies. We’re even, Guy!) The barge had a little stage area complete with a painted backdrop, which David lowered theatrically as we took the stage.

The barge rocked! No, I mean that literally: The barge rocked with the swells and continually slid around underneath us. A few of the Lemons were feeling lime-green throughout the show, and I found that my usual leaping about had to be tapered down a bit, lest I come back down on a floor that had decided it had better places to be. No one fell, no one hurled, so all’s well.

I have to say, I think the Lemons rocked too (in the musical sense). Dave Entwistle did another amazing job on sound, so if we sounded less-than-stellar, it’s our fault, not his. The rocking (boat) did have an effect on the rocking (band). The video reveals some sloppy moments, but it also reveals that our energy was good and our audience was into us. The wooden walls of the barge made for a warm, rich acoustic atmosphere, and the open doors ensured our sound carried across to all of the sunbathers on Pier A. In fact, more than a few people heard us from there and wandered over to get a better look.

High points:

• Julio Fernandez wandering by and shooting me a wink through the hatch. He’s awesome. 
• Dana stepping out from behind the mic to lead the girls in the crowd in “Girls Rock!”
• Bantering with Justin and Kipley between (or even during) songs. We’re getting better at that.
• Rocking the big finish with “If You Are My Friend.”
• All the amazing fans who clapped and cheered and hung out to say hi afterwards (sometimes it seems like there’s a silent stampede for the door).

Up next, three outdoor shows!
~Dave

Wow, what a night! We did two 45-minute sets this evening in a local school gym, not to mention hauling the new P.A. to and from our rehearsal studio. I’m pooped! But it was a magical night. When the lights went down and we saw a sea of kids waving their little glow sticks… well, that was a rock’n'roll moment.

The Spring Dance was organized by the Father’s Group at my kid’s school (of which I am a proud member). The dads and the school did a great job publicizing and setting up the event. There were balloons and glow-sticks, pizza and juice boxes. There was a 50/50 raffle; a dad in our classroom won $200, with the other $200 going to the school.I don’t know the numbers but it sure looked like a lot of families were there.

The gym was an acoustical nightmare, but thanks to the magic of Dave Entwistle I think we sounded pretty good (I’m hoping some of the dough the event raised will help pay for some acoustic tile for the walls in that gym!). People came up to us afterward and gave us lots of compliments, and people stayed until the very end of our second set, which is the biggest compliment of all.

It was fun to realize that we could play two high-energy 45-minute sets without exhausting our song catalog. We have a lot of great-sounding new material, and tonight really reminded me that I can’t wait to record new tracks and finish a full-length CD.

Playing that hard takes its toll; Kipley’s voice was fading, and I could barely stand up by the end. Justin did the nearly impossible: He broke a bass string. But we got good energy from the kids and their families, and made it through to the end. It was an excellent night.

I can’t even believe I am typing this: The Fuzzy Lemons are now the AWARD-WINNING FUZZY LEMONS! Last night at the Goldhawk, our good friend Dave Entwistle hosted the first annual Hoboken Music Awards, and the Lemons picked up the prestigious People’s Choice statuette.

THANK YOU HOBOKEN!

Dave did an amazing job setting up the awards. He was inspired by the Asbury Park Music Awards. They’ve got Springsteen, he reasoned, but we’ve got Sinatra. Hoboken deserves its own music awards. And so he made it happen, setting up a panel of judges culled from his many music-industry contacts and putting together a crackerjck list of nominees. He won’t admit it, but I don’t think he would have had a Childrens’ Music category if he hadn’t worked so closely with the Lemons for the past year.

The whole evening was a blast. The weather was wonderful, a perfect spring night, so most of us met at Ben & Jerry’s for some ice cream before andering over to the Goldhawk.

Once we got there, the event was just winding up. Kipley and I caught the first band while Brandon, Justin and Dana enjoyed a drink outside in the warm air. Big Jeff (our competition) and his wife wandered in and I invited them to take a couple of seats at our table. I say “competition” but he’s such a sweet guy and our philosophies are all about sharing and collaborating. That was Dave’s philosphy in creating the HMAs, too: bringing people together, allowing musicians to connect and honor each other and have a good time. Hoboken’s musical family is alive and well.

But I digress. After the first band was done, Dave got up and made a little speech about the origin of the HMAs. Turns out that he’s, like, HUGE in his home country of Canada. Anyway, We’re thrilled to announce that the VERY FIRST AWARD handed out at the very first Hoboken Music Awards was the “People’s Choice” prize, and we clinched it. Our fans are the best!

We floated up to the stage to accept our statuette, and only then did we realize that none of us had even remotely considered what we’d say if we won!

I’d write more about the rest of the night, but it was a bit of an anticlimax. Big Jeff (deservedly) won the Children’s Music award, and some more bands played, and some other people got awards. We finally realized that it was past our bedtimes and went home. But we’re going to update our MySpace so that we can make a big impression on the judges at the next Hoboken Music Awards!

The local paper covered the event and even took our picture, check it out here.

This past week was “The Week of the Young Child”; there were events at my kids’ school (Wednesday was Crazy Hat Day and Thursday was Pajama Day, for example). Our friends at All Saints, just down Washington Street, went all-out and booked The Fuzzy Lemons for their big Friday night event!

The most exciting thing about this gig was not actually about the gig itself. We bought a new P.A.! Tired of renting or borrowing gear and not always knowing what we’d get, we spent a couple thousand bucks on speakers, an amplifier and 16-channel mixer (plus assorted cables and stands). Justin and Brandon did their homework, and Kipley drive Brandon out to Clifton or somewhere like that to pick it up.

And you know what? It sounded great tonight. Dave Entwistle worked his magic, and as we’ve discovered in the past, being able to hear ourselves helps us to feel more comfortable and play better!

We played a very energetic set, with no slow songs. It was a party-and-a-half and we had a great audience from All Saints’ nursery, pre-k and kindergarten. Most of them were longtime Fuzzy Lemons fans, but we also garnered some new followers. We sold some shirts and CDs, and had fun autographing some of the CDs after the show. I love being a rock star.

Today was our year-end Holiday Extravaganza, and it was, to say the least, epic. And the best part was, we didn’t have to do a thing other than learning a couple of holiday songs.

Our awesome friends at Garden Street Music have started a children’s choir, and we’ve been excited about the possiblity of collborating with them, perhaps inviting them to sing on one of our recordings, for example. I’m not sure how the conversation came about (Kipley tends to be the prime mover in cases like these) but we wound up inviting the choir to sing with us at our final Fuzzy Friday.

Well, that ripped the lid off of a giant can of worms. Not only did we have to find a way to rehearse with the choir (and learn their songs and teach them ours) but word got out that our final Friday had become this big Holiday Event. Our other awesome friends, the Hoboken Family Alliance, had been casting about for a Holiday Event of their own, and so they reached out and offered to underwrite the Lemons performance and make the whole thing a free HFA event, with cupcakes and stuff downstairs while the Lemons did their thing upstairs.

Not being content to invite the entire HFA mailing list, I had to open my big mouth and invite the local Brownie troop, too. Many of the kids who’d been in my Music Together classes 4 to 6 years ago were now Brownies, the perfect age to enjoy the Fuzzy Lemons.

So on the big day our li’l church was PACKED. It was great. It wasn’t easy coordinating the children’s choir, and we didn’t get a lot of rehearsal time with them (and they’d never really sung with microphones in front of a big crowd before) but their director had really whipped them into shape. We started the set with their 5 songs (mainly because the thought of trying to herd them together and bring them on stage in the middle of the gig was a nightmare), and I think they performed wonderfully.

Then we launched into our own holiday-skewed performance, including “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch” and our very own version of the Dreidle song among the standard Lemons chestnuts. With Dave Entwistle in his accustomed place at the board, I felt like we had a very good sound. Maiken was conspicuously absent, and we were all very sad to lose her, but at the same time the lack of keyboards left the sound much more raw and guitar-oriented, which I rather enjoyed. But then I’m the lead guitarist so I may be biased.

Overall I was thrilled that we were finally reaching our audience, kids between the ages of 3 and 7. We’d seen a lot of infants at Fuzzy Friday, and I think people are starting to realize that a Fuzzy Lemons show is NOT a Music Together or Musicology class, or a puppet show with Mr. Kipley. We’re a rock band, dudes. It’s just too bad that this was the last Fuzzy Friday; I think we need to jump right in after the holidays to capture and hold that audience. Cabin Fever in February (another free HFA event, and the place where it all started) will probably be our next opportunity.

The only really upsetting part ofd the day was the fact that our CDs didn’t arrive in time for us to sell them at the show. They were sitting in the lobby of my building when I got home afterwards. Razza-frazza-muzza-wuzza. We could have sold a hundred of them and financed our next recording session in one shot.

Oh well.

Dave

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!

This is going to be a short entry. Today we learned a couple of things. We learned that we need to keep control of who is in the sound booth, and we learned that we need to improve the visual portion of our set in case the audio winds up out of our control.

Full props to Jessica and Eric for getting us set up with this show, and for helping keep stuff on track for us. Thanks to Gineen and Lois for all of their work and for hosting us in the first place. Thumbs up to Dave Entwistle for hanging in and doing his job in the face of many contrary opinions. And pats on the back to the rest of the band for soldiering on even when we could barely hear ourselves.

This all sounds so negative. I do need to say that we ended strong, once we found our sound. We really had the joint rockin’ and I was disappointed when all of a sudden it was 3:00 and we had to stop!

I don’t know how much we raised for the JCC’s excellent nursery program, but I hope it was a lot. I also hope that the people in Tenafly who bought our little 5-song demo CD like what they hear and remember us for next time.

I’ll post photos from the show as soon as I get some. My entire family (parents, sisters, brother-in-law, and young niece and nephew) came in from CT and VA and took pictures. Thanks for coming, everyone!
Dave

The Fuzzy Lemons rocked a new location this week: the Gazebo in Church Square Park. We had a pretty big crowd; some of them were on the benches in front of the gazebo, some of them were over in the “tot lot” to our left, and some of them were in the bigger playground to our right. It was a lot of fun to see kids and parents bobbing their heads to the music in and around the playground equipment. 

Playing in the gazebo was a different experience. On the one hand, it was fun to be elevated several feet above the crowd, gazing down from our musical Olympus like the Rock Deities we truly are. And being in the center of the park meant that no matter where we looked, on the left or on the right, we saw families rockin’ along with us. On the other hand, I think we all felt sort of caged in, and that the distance from the audience kept us from connecting, as if we were playing near some people instead for playing for them.

At the Shipyard (or the Goldhawk) the kids come right up on the stage and touch our gear. There was none of that at Church Square Park, but on the flipside there were drunken bums wandering through, hollering… I dunno, drunken bum things at us.

Sometimes it seems like the band is on fire but the audience is tepid; other times, like tonight, it feels like the band is not at their best but the audience doesn’t care because they’re having fun. We all made little mistakes, but I think overall we put on a good show and people had fun. I wrote extensively about our pre-show sound issues here, but once again I need to point out that Dave Entwistle really proved to the world that he’s a supah-genius behind the sound board. The reviews I’ve received all say we sounded great, and lots of people have said “hi” to me since Wednesday and told me how much they enjoyed the show.

One other note about this event: it was our last gig (for the foreseeable future) with Kimberly on drums. She’s got a teaching job that keeps her super busy–busier than any one human being should be expected to be at that pay scale. As the Lemons are stepping up our rehearsal and performance tempo, she’s decided to step back, at least for now. We love you Kimberly! Her Web site is here, not sure how up-to-date it is but you can drop her a line and wish her well.

Dave