Are You Dave?

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.

A typical week in the life of the Fuzzy Lemons can include anywhere from 75 to 200 e-mails. Buried in among the discussions of set lists, copyright issues, technology, marketing and general hoo-ha are actual announcements of gigs that we’ve booked.

In an effort to keep my schedule (and my head) straight, I’m trying to cull all of my events from the e-mail torrent and get them all listed in one location. And wow, turns out it’s quite a list:

• April 11 11:00 a.m. TFL @ The Knitting Factory, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
• April 11 TFL @ Room 84 in Hoboken
• April 30 - May 2 Kindiefest (a cool conference I plan to attend, though I haven’t yet registered!)
• May 21 PENDING TFL @ Jersey City Family Fitness Fair (they haven’t returned our e-mail so we’re not holding our breath)
• May 22 11:00 a.m. TFL @ the Knitting factory
• May 22 HOPES Spring Fling, 7:00 at the Rue building
• May 23 PENDING Southpaw (A cool Bklyn alt-country bar)
• June 5 11:00 a.m. TFL @ the Knitting factory
• June 20 TFL @ Father’s Day festival in Nutley, NJ, time/stage TBA
• June 21 TFL at Make Music NY at Richard Tucker Square, NYC 4:00 p.m. (this is a cool city-wide music festival and we’re thrilled to be rocking this park on the Upper West Side!)
• June 22 TFL @ Shipyard Park, Hoboken 7:00
• June 24 Gordys at Sinatra Park, Hoboken
• June 26 & 27 TFL @ The Bronx Zoo!
• July 10 11:00 TFL @ The Knitting Factory
• July 27 Music Together at Shipyard Park
• August 8 TFL @ Rumson Recreation Ctr 7-8 p.m.
• August 9 TFL @ Waterside Plaza NYC 7:00 p.m. (pre-show for a movie night overlooking the East River, should be fun!)
• August 14 TFL @ Kids Kingdom, Elizabeth NJ (thanks to our friends at This Is It! Productions)
• August 22 PENDING Morristown
• September 11 and/or 12 TFL @ Union County MusicFest, Clark NJ (Psyched to do this festival again!)
• September 26 TFL @ Hoboken Art & Music Fest
• October 9 TFL @ Clearview Cinema Hoboken (rain date Oct 10)
• Oct 17 Barnes & Noble Lincoln Triangle

Whew! That’s a BUNCH of road trips around NJ, a crop of outdoor shows right here in Hoboken (a favorite), a mind-blowing conference with the biggest names in the business, and jaunts to Brooklyn, the Bronx and NYC. And we haven’t even booked our Knit gigs for the 2nd half of the year yet. I’m exhausted just thinking about it, and eager and excited to rock so many places. The week of June 20-27 promises to be extra crazy… and extra fun! See you there!

~ Dave