Are You Dave?

We’re always thrilled and honored to be part of the fun at KZTV, Mt. Sinai’s closed-circuit TV channel for patients. Producer Alayna Kramer and engineer Gerard Edison do a great job putting on shows for their very special audience.

Justin, Dana and I did a scaled-down “unplugged” set this time around. We printed up lists of our songs in advance and Alayna distributed them to the kids in their various room, so the kids could phone in during the show to make requests. And phone in they did! The phone rang between every song! It’s so cool to be interacting with kids like that. (Even though we can’t actually see the kids!)

This time, we had a little fun with a digital backdrop; I’ll see if I can get a screen-grab to post here. I’ve been thinking visually this year, so it was groovy to see the Lemons in a digital environment.

~ Dave

I have to say, with Kipley’s departure I wasn’t sure how to feel about the future of the Fuzzy Lemons. But some exciting things have been happening that are breathing new life into the band. First of all, I just received word that Pandora (the huge online music site) has accepted our application. Within a few months you’ll be able to set up your own Fuzzy Lemons Pandora channel!

Second, and perhaps most importantly, Dana has been working the phones and has been securing gigs for us. Not just any gigs, either; she’s booking some very cool events. Here’s what’s on the calendar so far:
January 16: Private birthday unplugged gig
[January 29: I'm playing at Kids Rock, Crash Mansion, NYC]
February 6: Unplugged trio in Great Neck, LI
February 10: The Lemons’ Birthday!
[February 13: Music Together at Cabin Fever]
February 13: Knitting Factory, Bklyn
February 18: KZTV at Mt. Sinai Hospital, NYC
March 13: Knitting Factory, Bklyn
March 20: Monroe Theatre, Hoboken
April 9: Autism fund-raiser at the Rue School, Hoboken
April 16: Earth Day at Liberty State Park, Jersey City
April 17: Knitting Factory, Bklyn
May 1: Hoboken Arts & Music Festival
May 7: Monroe Theatre, Hoboken
May 15: Hoboken Baby Parade, Pier A, Hoboken (morning)
May 15: Knitting Factory, Bklyn (afternoon)
June 4: Riverfest, Red Bank NJ
July 9: Kids Kingdom in Rahway NJ
July 18: Family Fun Night in Manhassat, NY
July 26: Shipyard Park, Hoboken
August 13: Kids Kingdom in Elizabeth, NJ
September 17-18: UC MusicFest, Clark, NJ

This is a pretty good start! I’d also love to get back to some of our favorite places to play, including Ben & Jerry’s in Ridgewood, Make Music NY, Waterside Plaza (we never did get to reschedule last year!), Rumson’s Victory Park, the Bronx Zoo, and Madison Square Park.

While I’m at it, here’s my wish list for new gigs for 2011:
Southpaw, Bklyn
92 Street Y Tribeca
Maplewoodstock
Peanut Butter and Jams, Philly
Bowery Poetry Club
Highline Ballroom

And I’d love to get back to KindieFest and this year play the showcase!

What a treat to be back in the groovy little KZTV studio, located at Mt. Sinai hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The staff (Gerard, Alayna and Deepika) were so cheerful and happy to have us there, and set-up took almost no time at all.

The whole thing felt very comfortable (for me, anyway), as if we’d done it a hundred times, when in fact the opposite was true–we were playing almost completely unplugged (Justin had a bass amp) and unrehearsed, in front of 3 TV cameras, with almost no audience in sight.

I will confess that kept getting distracted by looking at the monitors. It’s hard enough to remember a bunch of lyrics and guitar chords when I’m also trying to pay attention to which way my eyes are focused. I missed a couple of lines of a couple of songs; most notably I forgot to sing the line “Skunks in my shoes” once during the song of the same title… oops! But it actually created an interesting gap in the song, I may “forget” to sing that line again from time to time.

I finished the set feeling really happy, like I’d done something good. It’s an honor to be a part of such a positive project. The people at the KidZone at Mt. Sinai are doing awesome, amazing, inspiring work with kids and I salute them!

~ Dave

Rockin' the hospital

Make Music New York is a HUGE city-wide music event: Musician of all stripes can be found performing in pretty much every public space in the entire city. We submitted our package months ago, and actually got offered a couple of different slots. We picked Richard Tucker Square on the upper west side, mainly because it’s on the upper west side. Specifically, it’s close to Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, and that awesome Barnes and Noble where we’d played a couple of times.

However, it’s not a very BIG park, more like a traffic triangle off of Broadway. And, as we found out a few days before the event, no electricity. So we drew on the success of our recent set at KZTV and decided to go the unplugged route (Kipley and I both own small, portable, battery-powered amplifiers, so we were able to plug in three mics and the bass guitar).

We were pleased to discover that we COULD hold a crowd and put on a great show without spending 90 minutes on set-up and soundcheck beforehand. Imagine that! A little bit of amplification helped a LOT; not only could the audience hear us over the traffic noises, but we could hear ourselves and each other adequately and no one blew out their voice trying to shout loud enough to be heard (my biggest fear with this sort of gig).

We teamed up with a clothing company called Little Miss Matched for this event, one of our first stabs at the cross-promotion game. They arrived with these awesome little bundles of mismatched socks and handed them out to the crowd while we played “It’s OK To Be Different.” See? Cross-promotion. Clever, no?

It was an unexpectedly successful little show in NYC!

Photos coming soon.

One of the many, many exciting shows we’ve been looking forward to this spring is an appearance on KZTV, the closed-circuit TV studio set up at Mt. Sinai Hospital in NYC for the young patients there. No kidding, they have their own little studio, with three cameras, backdrops, the works, and they use it to broadcast live shows to the kids in the pediatrics section. It’s an amazing line-up, too, from magic and circus performances to science segments and even game shows.

And of course, live music! The Fuzzy Lemons paid a visit to the KZTV studios on Friday afternoon and were greeted by the top-notch staff, producer Alayna Kramer and engineer Gerard Edison. This was a rare “unplugged” Lemons show, all-acoustic with no drum kit (Brandon brought shakers and a hand drum). That made for a quick and easy set-up, that’s for sure!

Kids can call in to the studio from their rooms to make requests and interact with the performers. Alayna circulated a list of our songs before the show so the kids could call down and let us know what they wanted to hear. She also brought three of her charges down to the studio to be our live audience. Once they were settled, Gerard gave us an official countdown, “we’re live in five… four… three… two… one…” and the cameras were rolling.

We launched into a song and would have done a second one but the phone rang right away. Room 550, it turns out, was the hoppin’ party room that day, four different kids called down from 550 to talk to us and request songs. I don’t know how the others felt about it, but I had a blast taking the calls (I imagine the others would have loved to get a word in edgewise if I’d only shut up for a second).

Some of our songs were a bit sloppy: We’d never done an unplugged rehearsal, and it showed. But overall I think it was a fun and successful show. It was over too quickly, that’s for sure. They’ve asked us back again, which is always a good sign!

On the way out I saw a listing for “Musicians On Call” and asked Gerard to forward my number to them. I can see myself doing more visits of this nature in the future….