Woohoo! MusicFest is one of our biggest shows of the year! We’ve been here twice before; in 2009 it was really hot, and and 2010 it rained. This year was our “Goldilocks” year, everything was just right. The weather was delightful, the crowds were agreeable, and the band was at its rockin’ best.
These festivals are fun for me, not just because we get to play on a huge stage to huge crowds, but because we get to meet (and observe) other performers who are in our line of work. This year we missed sharing the stage with our friend Baze (he played on Saturday), but we met magician Dave Levitan and the awesome cats from Starfish, our neighbors from nearby Maplewood, NJ (Starfish drummer “Grateful Dave” also plays drums for our pal Big Jeff).
As always, HUGE props to the This Is It! people and to DJ Mickey G for making it a smooth, fun, ultra-cool day.
Our crazy week continues! This was a Kids Kingdom Show, and it was good to see Deanna Hunt and DJ Mickey G., our This Is It! compadres. It was a lovely day, not too hot, and the kids were having fun. (Vanessa in particular made friends with a young man named Jose, who wasn’t shy about getting up and dancing with the girls!)
We shared the stage with Buckaroo Bindlestiff, a wild-west offshoot of the amazing Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. They spotted the Corn Mo sticker on my guitar case and we reminisced for a bit over mutual acquaintances (without going into detail, I’ll admit that in my pre-Lemons days I hung out once or twice with some of NYC’s most talented underground cabaret acts). If you haven’t seen the Bindlestiff performers in one of their many guises, you’re missing out.
Rahway was our first of several Kids Kingdom events through This Is It! Productions this summer, and I think we’re off to a good start. We love playing those enormous stages, and of course our pal DJ Mickey G is always there to get the crowd pumped for our set.
As we arrived, Patricia Shih was finishing her set, and we got to hobnob briefly afterwards. She’s a sweet person and a talented musician who has put a lot of effort into creating CDs for varying age groups. Check her out here.
Regular Lemon drummer Chris Moran was away for the weekend, so our guest percussionist was none other than longtime Lemon friend Dave Entwistle. He’s been listening to our music since our second gig, and he did a great job with the djembe, tambourine, shakers and other percussion.
UC MusicFest has been on the calendar for months, marked with a big red circle. This is a seriously cool show put on by This Is It! Productions, three stages, two days, and LOT of bands, rides and attractions. We did it last year and couldn’t wait to come back. These guys erect a huge stage and bring in an amazing sound crew, and DJ Mickey G is ever-present, keepin’ the party flowing between sets.
But not even the amazing crew at This Is It! could keep the rain away. It’s been a disappointing summer, weather-wise. Several of our big-deal gigs were rained out… including almost every Hoboken show we had planned! It wasn’t raining hard in Clark, just a drizzle by the time we were ready to take the stage, but it was enough to keep most of the audience home and dry.
Dana and I got there first; Justin and Brandon were driving the U-Haul and Kipley was driving himself to the show following another gig. She and I hung out under the audience awning with Matt Wilson and Stephanie Sine, whom we’d met in August at the Kids Kingdom show. We cheered for Matt & Stefanie’s Ultimate Rock’n'Roll show and had a mini drum-circle with the other This Is It! entertainers huddled with us under the tent. The guy who’d brought the drums (later introduced to me as Steve) was an amazing player with a wide variety of percussion instruments on and about his person. It’s been too long since I’ve done any cool drumming; I had a blast passing the time pounding away in the rain with him and the few kids who’d braved the weather.
When our turn came, it was still drizzling enough that Brandon was (justifiably) concerned about his drums. They’d already been doused with water twice this summer and he wasn’t very interested in a third soaking—especially for such a tiny audience. So we set up our gear but kept some tarps handy.
Sure enough, we were three songs in to our set and the drizzle hadn’t let up, so Brandon covered his drums and we did a few songs “au natural.” But I had an inspiration… the guy with the handdrums down in the tent was amazing, so I quickly suggested that Dj Mickey G invite him up to join us on stage. And soon he was there, hunkered down in a chair behind me (best seat in the house) and thumping away on his djembe. I dunno if he was good or if it’s just that Lemons’ songs are simple, but he clicked right in as if he’d been rehearsing with us for weeks. When the rains finally did mellow out, Brandon rejoined us and we had a full percussion section for the last few songs. Wow, it sounded amazing, I must say.
After the first set, Brandon and Steve talked drums for pretty much the entire break, and we invited him to sit in again for the second set. The rain ceased and families started to show up, and I think we put on a great show. Man, I wish we had a recording of it, Steve brought some really cool textures and grooves to our songs. And he was so mellow; afterwards he just ambled off with a wave. Gotta love a musician who lets his instrument do the talking.
Today was the first of our three gigs with This Is It! Productions’ Traveling Kids’ Kingdom, and what a start it was! Deanna Hunt and the good folks at This Is it! really know how to pull out all the stops and put on a great show.
Our friend DJ Mickey G was there, doin’ his thing as MC. He knows what the kids like! We talked about collaborating with him; Dana has a new song that might be a perfect match for his skills at the turntable. I keep mentioning it in hopes that it’ll actually come true.
I also met another surprise character: Matt Wilson, a.k.a. “Harry” on Cyberchase, one of our favorite PBS kids’ shows. I saw his trademark spiky hair and goofy clothes and shouted like a fanboy “Oh wow, it’s Harry from Cyberchase!” Rather than siccing security on me, Matt flashed a huge grin and said “hi,” introduced himself by his real name, and even asked about my kid.
Then he did something so amazing I can scarcely believe it: When I introduced myself as a Fuzzy Lemon, he said “Oh, you guys are great, I love the Fuzzy Lemons!” He’d actually heard of us and liked our music! I can’t imagine how such a thing is possible but I’m going to act as if it’s true.
Matt and Dave
After Matt and his wife Stephanie performed their “Ultimate Rock and Roll Show” (a real crowd-pleaser) it was our turn. We whipped through a super-fast set up and soundcheck. Deanna had hired Mike K. again and he and his team had us up and running in record time.
I love outdoor shows. The wind and sun feel so good, I think they enhance the music in some mysterious way. But the wind also decided to knock the drum shield over, and the sun was pretty darn hot…
In other words, the gig was a mixed bag, as per usual. We played through a state-of-the-art sound system on a huge stage, but we couldn’t seem to hold the festival crowd. I don’t mean to say the place was empty——we had kids dancing, but Matt and Stephanie seemed to have more. As always, I think the sun was a factor. But there’s definitely an opportunity here for the Lemons to really step up our game and find out how to capture folks’ attention, without giving anything away in terms of the songs we write and perform.
We have two more gigs with This Is It! Productions in September and October; I can’t wait to turn it up another notch!
When we played the UC MusicFest this summer, my biggest wish (other than landing a slot opening for TMBG) was to build a good relationship with This Is It! Productions, because their website shows them running events all over the state of NJ every summer.
Well, it seems like we’re off to a good start, because Deanna Hunt e-mailed us a few weeks back and invited us to perform at the grand opening of the new Clearview Cinema movie theater, right here in Hoboken! The theater has been the talk of the town for a long time, everyone’s excited to have it (and also concerned about the effect on parking, as usual).
(Within a day of receiving Deanna’s note, I also got an e-mail from Geri Fallo about the event. I told Geri that we’d already been contacted, and she replied that we should roll on ahead with This Is It! because they were the ones signing the checks.)
We were already booked for a private gig later that day so we nailed down the 11:00 and noon slots. I was able to get in touch with the sound crew well in advance of the event and lay out our full technical needs, and you could almost hear the angels’ voices bursting forth when the guys said “we’ll have 6 monitors and a 64-channel mixer.” Finally! A stage setup worthy of our Lemony awesomeness! No, no, it’s not like that, it’s just that we need a lot of channels and a lot of sound and it seemed like we were really gonna get it.
As the date closed in, so did the bad weather. The week leading up to the event, of course, was sunny and clear, but every weather report indicated that Saturday was going to be horrific: wet, cold, and windy. So a few days out we got a urgent request: Could we move our gig to Sunday morning instead?
“No sweat,” said the reliable and ever-flexible Lemons. So we played our private gig on Saturday and then left our entire PA setup in Dana’s truck afterwards, not knowing if we’d need it after all on Sunday (but hoping that we would still be getting the full rock-star setup).
Sunday dawned clear and gorgeous, and the oh-so-punctual Lemons arrived at the movie theater before 9:30. At 10:15 we were still watching them build the stage. Rock and roll is a lot like being in the military, in the sense that (a) there’s always a ton of gear to haul, and (b) once you’ve hauled it it’s hurry-up-and-wait time. We passed the time picking the nimble brain of DJ Mickey G, whom we’d met at UC MusicFest, about how Radio Disney works and would it be worthwhile to pursue a contact with them (it probably would, as it turns out).
Then, of course, at 10:30 when the stage was fully erected, we did our mad scramble to set up our own gear (drums, guitars, keyboards, accordion, horns, bass amp, etc) while the crew set up the mics and monitors around us. We had an 11:00 start time, remember!
I’m not complaining, mind you. We love a good sound check but understand when it’s not in the cards. And Mike K. and his team were crackerjack, they had us up and sound-checked in short order. In fact he had the coolest toy I’ve ever seen: a wireless setup that let him run a virtual soundboard from his laptop. He wandered around the stage, going to each member of the band and getting us our own personalize sound mixes, tapping on his laptop and moving on. I know what the Lemons want for Christmas….
Ok, enough about the setup! I know it’s deathly dull for you readers, but for the band it’s often the thing that stands out from one gig to the next. No matter how much we rehearse, the on-stage technical stuff (and the people running it) can make or break a gig.
In this case I am pleased to say we had a rockin’ show, everyone had their own custom monitor mix and the sound out in the seating area (giant bales of hay set up by the HFA, I believe) was clear as a ball, as evidenced by some cell-phone camera footage I’ve seen since the event (see below). So full-on kudos to everyone involved in the event. A big crowd came out and we saw a lot of familiar faces dancing. I don’t think there were as many people as there were at our Shipyard gig in July, but for a chilly Sunday morning in October I think it was a fantastic turnout.
