Hate Touring, Love Having Toured

There was once a famous writer (I forget whom, e-mail if you know), who said about writing: “I hate writing, but I love having written.”  I often feel that way about travelling, and as I faced our first gig on the road I had an habitual reluctance to leave the comforts of my home to sit in a van with two guys and drive to Madison to do a show.  In the end, despite my hesitation to leave the tranquil routines of my house, I learned more doing our first road gig, then I did sitting on my couch with a box of donuts.

Six Things I Learned at My First Out-of-Town Show.

1.  Bring snacks.

I ate a big breakfast, and I figured I would eat lunch before we left at 2 PM.  What I did not anticipate is how much MORE stuff you have to bring when you’re doing a show out of town than when you’re doing the bar a mile a way.   In the end the time I would have spent eating lunch I spent organizing gear.  I was pretty happy that I had the foresight to bring some food to eat in the car.  Trail mix rocks.

2.  Bring a flashlight.

The show which was scheduled at Escape Java Joint ended up being an outdoor show, because the cafe itself was being remodeled. When we pulled up in front of the cafe we were greeted with a huge sign that said: “Closed for Remodeling.”  Huh, we thought.  Aren’t we supposed to play here?  Turns out the promoter converted the outdoor patio into a stage and  we played outside which was fun. The only problem was that the minuted they killed the stage lights, we had no light to see while we packed our gear.

Hermes greets us at Escape Java Joint

3. Bring bug spray.

And just because you never know when you’re going to play outside, bring bug spray.  “Wow,” I said to Bob, “I’ve never played so close to mulch before.”

4. Bring an extension cord.

That three-foot power strip seems long enough inside a club or bar, but it’s not nearly long enough outside.

5. Have a load-in checklist.

We learned that you have to make sure everyone in the band has their gear, and not just be concerned about yourself.   Here’s why:  the next morning after the gig, I get a call from Bob, the harmonica player.  “Are my harmonicas in your gear?”  He asked with urgency. Turns out Bob lost his harmonicas.  And this is a big deal. Why? Because Bob’s harmonicas are custom harmonicas and the whole outfit including the leather case costs over $700.  He thought he put them in the back of his amp but he couldn’t find them the next morning. After several phone calls to Madison, we finally decided that Bob and Brian should drive up to Madison again that day to look for the harmonicas.  So, 8 hours after returning to Madison, they were heading  back.   Bob eventually did find them, but not in Madison.  He went home again and checked the back of the amp again.  They had slid under the reverb tank.

5. Bring Duct Tape.

Just because.

I also learned that you can have fun on the road.  We talked about music in the car, our families, and the albums that influenced as teenagers (actually, we talked about many things because Bob was producing an audio/photo montage of us for YouTube. More about that later).  I learned that I can be happy on the road if I just be on the road instead of wishing I was back home.  I learned that great shows start with greetings from happy dogs. I learned that we look great in the light of dusk at an outdoor show. And I learned that you can get really great thai curry at the Corner Store on Williamson Street in Madison.  I’m a forty-one year-old woman who just did her very first road gig, and I learned that getting my ass out of the house to do something completely new and foreign is way more educational than sitting on the couch with a box of donuts.

Home is Where Your Rock Band Is

Tomorrow I’m going to my first out-of-town gig with Short Punks.  I’ve written before about how I’m an unlikely musician.  About how I would rather be at home on the couch with a box of donuts, than at a show at 10 PM at night.  I’ve written about it more than once, because in many ways it’s my greatest challenge.  Overcoming the inertia of life to do something interesting with my life.

Tomorrow, I’m going out of town for a mere 20 hours, but I feel like I’ll be gone for a week and I wonder how I’ll cope. I wonder how I”ll manage without the morning meditation at the temple, or what I will do without my usual lunch of miso soup and rice, or how I will take a nap in the back of the van while Bob and Brian trade dialogue from Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galatica.

I’m an unlikely musician.  I’m a homebody, a book-lover, a cookbook collecter, and a writer.  I like quiet, silence, and cats that pad softly around the apartment looking for places to lie in the sun.  I’m a person who feels the richness of an empty afternoon.  I’m that kind of person, and I’m going to sit in a van for six hours with two guys, and wait a couple more hours before soundcheck, so that I can do a 45 minute set.    So, at moments like these I have to ask myself one question: what am I going for?

I’m going because there’s a feeling you can only get on stage, that is not reproducable anywhere else:  not in a bar as a customer, not in a classroom as  a teacher, not as a buddhist sitting in temple.  There  really is nothing  like the feeling of setting up your gear on a stage whether it’s the corner of a neighborhood saloon or a space along a cafe wall.  There really is nothing like the experience of communicating with others without words, of catching the ear of someone who wasn’t planning on listening.

So I’m going.  I’m going to ride in the backseat of a rented minivan, headphones on my head, listening to buddhist chants, and taking notes for my memoir.  I’m going to watch the flat, grassy landscape of the midwest pass by me like a green-brown sea while I wait for my 45 minutes in the dim sun of a Madison cafe.  I’m going to forget about missing miso soup and snack on apples, and listen to the odd snippet of conversation from Bob and Brian when they both realize at the same time that they watched Outer Limits as kids.  I’m going because despite how rich I find a quiet life, there’s something unmistakable about a noisy, messy, rocking one.

Breakthroughs

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while then you know I’m a wannabe musician who doesn’t really like to practice.  I heard a saying from Bob, the new harmonica player in the band, about the differences between rock musicians and jazz musicians.  Jazz musician like to practice, but don’t like to rehearse; rock musicians  like to rehearse, but don’t like to practice.  Then there’s me.  Weeks go by when I don’t want to practice or rehearse. This is the odd paradox of my creative life:  I like having created something, but I’m lazy about creating it.

It’s a miracle that I got this far being a drummer when my tendency in life is to be inertial.  I wrote once that I would rather be sitting on a the couch with a box of donuts than be at a gig.   So, I’m surprised when I actually do practice.  You know, get out the practice pad, find the drumsticks, take out the metronome, get some practice books out, and sit there and do exercises.  That’s practice. That’s boring practice.  I managed to progress as a drummer initially because I had so much training as a child and I just learned how to practice.  I knew that it was largely about repetition.  Repeating something  until it sounds right or is done right.  In the end, it is this understanding of “practice” that makes me hate to do it. I hate doing it because it’s dull, but experience told me (tells me still) that it pays off. Gigs sounds better, performances are smoother, and in the moment of playing on stage the body, which has its own kind of memory, can kick in and do things that your mind is too slow to think of.  I practice knowing its good for me, but not really liking it.

So it was a complete surprise for me tonight when I practiced and it was different.  I liked it.  I cannot tell you how or why it was different, but it was.  Something shifted and instead of playing with my brain, the part of me that says “this is good for you, so do it,” I practiced with my body, the muscles, which say instead “man, this feels good.”  And for the first time in my life, it was different.  I fell into grooves and stroke patterns that I can’t play usually and played them better.

The blues pattern, for instance, has always been hard for me, but I could have played it all night. That triplet feel, that ONE-trip-let, TWO-trip-let, THREE-trip-let, Four-trip-let felt more real than it ever had.  I heard the beat in my head, and then I heard Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf jamming on the top.  For the first time ever, I got it. Eyes closed, sticks moving in rhythm, my lips humming the melody, I finally felt that blues thing, that feeling.

And after twenty minutes, the spell was broken.  My arms got tired.  I got bored again. I started wondering if I could play other beats I couldn’t play before.  Ten minutes later I was sitting in the rocking chair not practicing.  Those moments are fleeting — those it’s-so-effortless moments come and go.  Even on stage, you can never count on it. Adrenaline helps, makes you think it’s all that easy, but we know in our heads if we have had that moment.

I wish I knew what made tonight different.  Is it because I’ve been sick for the last month with the flu and a respiratory infection?  Was I too tired to be intellectual about practice? Is it because I painted my office yellow and moved the buddha statue to the east wall?

I don’t know. But, I hope that practice will become easier — something I want to do if only to see if I can capture that moment again.  That moment when being a drummer is mostly easy and not mostly hard.

Laurie Lindeen

We find inspiration wherever we can get it. And sometimes when we’re not even looking, really great inspiration comes into your boring job, sits right down, inspires you, goes to lunch with you, inspires you some more, goes home, and then friends you on Facebook.  This is what happened to me this week — another busy week –  when I wasn’t looking for inspiration. Inspiration walked in called herself  “Laurie Lindeen” (http://laurielindeen.com/) and proceeded to remind me why playing music is still worth doing even when I haven’t touched a drumstick in four weeks.

One of the bonuses of being a teacher is that we have a venue for sharing and exposing other artists’ work to the college and to students.   It was Brian’s idea (not mine) to invite Laurie to speak at the school; he had been an admirer of Laurie’s band Zuzu’s Petals in the 1990s.  She had recently published a memoir about her experiences titled Petal Pusher and Brian had loved it.  I had no idea who she was.  But, dutifully, I supported Brian and assigned an excerpt of her memoir about playing in a rock band to my students.  This was facilitated by Brian who handed me a copy of a chapter and an assignment and said, “Here, have your students read this.”

And I did.  The chapter I read could have been a posting on chickdrummer.  In it Lindeen writes about the aftereffects of gigging, the adrenaline that races through your veins the next morning, the hangover that comes not just from alcohol, but from the experience.

“It’s difficult returning to your normal life the morning after a gig.  I’m not exactly a dewy-eyed newlywed with an afterglow.  More like a haggard mental patient following shock treatment: After all that adrenaline leaves your body, you are left with a ferocous hangover.  The counterchemical is as down as the adrenaline is up.  Antiadrenaline is the darkest shade of navy blue; it brings a sort of postcoital depression.”

I read that in my office preparing for class, but I felt like the proselyte of a new religion who had just heard holy words from an oracle.  You said it, girl. I had always wondered what that was. That funk, that weirdness I felt the morning after gigs. The first two years of gigging I rode the adrenaline high for two days after the show, but as I get older I want off the ride the faster. Roller coasters are great, but who wants to live on one?  So, I had to develop a new after-show routine. We leave the club as soon as we can, no hanging out to talk with other musicians, we come home, unload the gear with the precision of a S.W.A.T team, and I shower, I eat something light and healthy — grains, vegetables, tofu, fruit — I do yoga to stretch the worn-out muscles, and I try to be in bed before 2 am (reasonably early for musicians), and the next morning I try to get up at the same time I always do instead of sleeping late.  I learned to do this out of my own sense of self-preservation.  I’m 40 years-old, not twenty, and the physical strain of shows takes a toll on me that it doesn’t on some young thing.

And that was what was so inspiring about Laurie. She writes about and talks about what gigging and being a “rock star” (in quotes because the term is relative) really means.  It means you can still suck at your instruments and still record and gig, it means you don’t have to be a virtuoso, it means you can do it just for fun, and here’s the inspirational part:  it means you can be woman. And she also speaks from the perspective of a woman who has matured and reflected on what the years in a rock band in her twenties means for her now and how it influences her writing.  “I write listening to the backbeat; I hear how the vocal sits on top,”  she said.  That too, I think, is also the benefit of music outside of music.  It changes our understanding of other arts.

There aren’t a lot of books by female musicians that tell you what’s like for us. There’s umpteen million books about male musicians, their gear, their groupies, their drug problems, but there aren’t many written by women.  The other inspiration in Laurie’s public appearance is that I could see how she inspired the young women in the audience.  I could see it in their eyes and the way they looked at her with one question beaming from their faces:  How did you do it? In the end, it doesn’t matter that you or I may have not heard of Laurie Lindeen or Zuzu’s Petals.  What matters for some of the women (young or old) in the audience is that there was  another one out there who tried to live life on her own terms.

Why Flight of the Conchords Isn’t (always) Funny

I jumped on a bandwagon recently and started watching and admiring an HBO series called Flight of the Conchords. The premise of the show is described succinctly on their website: “Bret and Jemaine have moved to New York in the hope of forging a successful music career. So far they’ve managed to find a manager (whose “other” job is at the New Zealand Consulate), one fan (a married obsessive) and one friend (who owns the local pawn shop) — but not much else. ” The premise is intended to create a humorous atmosphere, and if you’re not in a band, then it is hilarious. However, if you live a life even remotely like the Conchords’ then the show is less funny and more a tragic reminder of how pathetic a wanna-be-rockstars’ life really is.

Tthis “digi-folk duo” lives in a small, crappy New York apartment filled with music gear and they do lots of crappy gigs. In one episode, their “manager” (whose day job office sits in the same building as a business called “Asian Massage”) takes them on “tour” (notice how many quotation marks we’re using here?). Jemaine, one of the musicians, reads the contract outloud in the backseat of the manager’s car, and says, “It’s says here we’re going to have a tour bus.”

“This is the tour bus,” says the manager.

“This isn’t a tour bus.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“You’re only two people. What do you need a whole bus for?”

I have paraphrased the conversation, but the gist is the same. It was funny until Brian and realized that (we, a duo with a harmonica player) will no doubt be touring in our Nissan Sentra. This scene just reminded us of this fact, and what began as a funny show laughing at a the adventures of a pair of naive musicians, became a not-so-funny mirror or our own lives.

The scene, however, which really stopped us from laughing, occurs at their first gig in the tour. They’re playing the lounge of a airport motel. In the corner of the restaurant, they’re completing their set, and one of them says, “We’d really like to thank you for having us. We have CDs and t-shirts for sale.” Then the sound of one or two aimless claps resounding in an empty room. Brian and I sat quietly through the scene until I said, “God, that is so not funny.”

“I know,” Brian said. “That happens to us all the time.”

And indeed it does. We’ll be completing a set at a nearly empty bar, but I will still declare cheerfully into the mike: “Thanks for coming everyone! We have free CDs and pins!” And just like in the show, I hear solitary claps echo through the room. The same scenario is funny in the TV show, but is depressing in real life. The myth of the musicians’ life is hardly ever explored, but what I like about this particular show is that they don’t embellish their lives. It is pretty funny to hear them thank everyone for coming to the show, when the joke is that the audience is there because they’re waiting for a flight out of there.

Brian tells this story (possibly apocryphal) about Eddie Van Halen watching This is Spinal Tap, the mockumentary about a rock band. In Brian’s story Eddie Van Halen had to leave the screening because it wasn’t funny. “It was just too real,” said Brian. We have a similar response watching Flight of the Conchords. What should be hilarious scenes about lonely gigs, strange fans, and band drama (one member “quits the band” weekly) for us seems like a sobering Oprah episode on something like identify theft: “this could be you”. And like an Oprah viewer, we recognize ourselves. “Hey, you have that synthesizer!” I’ll shout when it appears in the background of the band’s apartment. Or, “God that happened to us,” Brian will say of the Conchords’ Open Mic gig when the announcer (in the episode, Daryll Hall) used the wrong name to introduce the band: “The Flutes of the Commodores.”

That was the other thing that shocked us: the band’s name is like our band name. Flight of the Conchords sounds a lot like Short Punks in Love. It makes me wonder if we’re not some unrevealed joke. Two mid-thirties to early-forties musicans have day jobs as community college teachers while they pursue a rock-n-roll career in Chicago. Actually, that does sound pretty good. If HBO only knew about us.

Recording at Home the Short Punks Way, pt 1

Our first CD was recorded in the spare bedroom that housed the cat litter box and the drums. The second CD was recorded in a make-shift studio in a rehearsal space on Chicago’s West side. And now, the third CD, which we had been saying we would record but never did, is being recorded back at home. In the living room this time instead of the spare room, because that room was taken over by our rabbit and her cage. In this third recording endeavor, I have finally realized with a clarity that I had not realized before that I hate recording.

In the beginning, I thought I disliked recording because I was new to drumming and playing drums by at itself was stressful with or without recording. During the second CD, it was less agonizing, although still taxing. We were in someone’s studio space who took care of the details of miking the drums and running cable and setting levels, and helped to make the experience less stressful for both of us. Despite the success of that, we missed the intimacy of the first CD, the spontaneous, recording-by-the-seat-of-your pants quality. And, well, let’s face it –recording at home is free. Recording in a studio costs money, and we’ll need that to duplicate the disk and pay for the covers. So, we’re back at home. Mikes and cables over the place, rabbit locked away so she won’t eat hundreds of dollars worth of cable, and now, Bob, the harmonica player, squeezed into the living room with us.

The addition of a third person has done a lot for us. We argue less because there’s company. I work harder at not being sarcastic or snide or looking outright bored, which I often am while I record. And, more importantly, because I don’t like recording, there’s someone there to be excited with Brian about recording. Bob likes it, too. In our sessions with Bob, I realize how much of a downer I must have been for Brian during the first two CDs. I think it’s because recording is nothing like the experience of playing live (at least for me). Drumming live, from my experience, is like being a racehorse in the paddock waiting for the race start. We want at those drums. We want noise, and the pure adrenaline of letting loose. Meanwhile, recording (at least for SPiL) is about restraint. It’s about me holding back and laying out an even rhythm that Brian and now Bob can overdub. Drumming in this situation is more about staying out of the way and less about driving the band. So, it’s not as much fun and it requires more concentration. I have to listen more to myself (which I hate) and hear whether I’m rushing the beat or whether I’m playing too loud. It’s about maintaining an openness and tranquility, which, frankly, I suck at most of the time. And when I record, I realize just how much I suck at it. I realize that practicing and music training is what helps with this. The violin training I had as a child, I now realize, was about being calm when I was nervous. About playing when I did not want to, and about focusing when I was agitated. That may explain why at 15 years-old I gave up (or gave in) and went with the messiness of my personality. I went with the unease, the activity of mind, the itch to move.

It’s only now, in my forties, having exhausted a life of constant change and movement that I see the value of just sitting still on the drum throne and tapping a constant beat, something even and consistent, undramatic. Calm.

Brian and Bob do overdubs

On Harmonicas and Guitars

We welcomed two new additions to the Short Punks family (and no, not kids — you wish): a harmonica player and a Gretsch.

The harmonica player is named Bob Kessler, formerly of Bakelite 78 and a member of the Buddhist temple I attend in Chicago. Our first “gig” with Bob was at the temple’s Holiday Auction when Bob sat in on a song. It was an impromptu idea on our part, and we had 15 minutes with Bob before the show to give him the chords and run through the song at a short sound check. Even in those few minutes, Brian and I knew Bob was a winner. Bob studied clarinet at the Bloom School of Jazz in Chicago and that training really shows. He can make complementary melodies to supplement Brian’s singing and falls into a groove like a duck sliding into a lake.

Our next gig was at Phyllis’ Musical Inn in January and in an amplified setting Bob sounded even better with us. What I noticed is that I didn’t have to work as hard to keep the music going, and for the first time, I could lay back a little and enjoy the music. In a duo, both people are working really hard the whole time to keep a momentum going, but with an addition of a third person both Brian and I can function as a kind of rhythm section for Bob’s harmonica which gives us moments of rest in what can be an exhausting forty minutes or so.

Bob Kessler, harmonica player extraordinaire

Our next show is on January 24 at the The Bottom Lounge in Chicago, and Brian and I are excited to continue to explore how our sound changes with a harmonica player.

Not long after that show, Brian and I were commuting home after a day at school and in break between snow storms. We had a long day, and both of us felt mopey and tired. In moments like these, I like to make suggestions to Brian which will cheer him up. And one thing that always make Brian happy is a new guitar. I suggested we stop at Midwest Buy and Sell, Brian’s favorite guitar store and “check out what they have.” We went in thinking that Brian would pick up a Gibson SG (”the guitar with the horns” I usually say), but there’s the idea of the guitar and then there’s the actually playing of one. The SG is a great guitar, but every time Brian picked one up and I listened to it neither us felt that spark, that click in our heads when we think “Oh yeah, that’ll sound great on stage.” After forty minutes I was ready to go. I was cold, hungry and I had to pee. While I waited for Brian to try guitars Iwandered around the store. On the top of row near the ceiling, I caught a flash of orange. I noticed the color more than the guitar. I noticed how it felt warm and cheerful. How it reminded me of candy corn and pumpkins, and how it made me think of Halloween and Fall and warmer seasons. I saw it and thought all this in a second, then I went back to feeling bored and tired and wandered on. Just as I was about to tell Brian I would meet him at the deli across the street, he walked up to me with an orange Gretsch in his hand — the one I had noticed a ten minutes before.

“What do you think of this?” He asked.

“I didn’t think you liked hollow-bodies.”

“I like the color.”

“Well, try it.”

Brian plugged it into an amp, and played one chord. In our heads, a switch seemed to flick on. Click. Oh yeah.

It was love at first strum.

So the Gretsch came home with us and now we’re listening to CD after CD of rockabilly, Elvis, and Eddie Cochrane. Who knows what will happen next?

Gretsch Joins Short Punks

Short Punks Plays Temple

One of my all time favorite gigs was the Temple gig when we followed a puppet show. And I’m thrilled that we will be playing there again on Saturday, December 13.  SPIL is in the short Peace Concert included in the Temple’s Annual HolidayAuction evening.

The doors open at 4:30 PM and I think we’ll be playing around 5 PM. Tickets are $10.00, which includes the auction, vegetarian food, and the concert.

If you’re in town, the auction will be a great place for bargains on art, services, and event tickets.

For more on the evening, go to the temple website:  http://zenbuddhisttemplechicago.org/auction/index.html

It’s Almost Over

I teach for a living (not drum, alas), and the first 2 weeks of December is our rush period.  Students come at all hours of the day, dropping off papers, begging for extensions, and excusing absences.  And it’s 8:30 PM and I’m waiting for an errant student to finish a make-up final exam.

In this brief moment of waiting I realized that my blog missed me.  It’s weird, isn’t it?  This space has developed a personality in my head as if it was a person I should be talking to — or, would rather be talking to.  So, what have I wanted to tell you in the weeks since my last post?

• Our cat has cancer.  I know… I forgot to mention.  He was diagnosed during the first week of orientation, I have barely had time to think about it until now. 
• Short Punks has a gig on Saturday and I haven’t picked up a drumstick in months
• I filed my dissertation and was cleared to graduate
• It’s 22 degrees in Chicago
• Oh yeah, and they arrested our Governor (big surprise)

There was a list in my head of really cool stuff I wanted to write about and you know what, this isn’t it.

I guess what I want to remind myself was that I need to open some space for the drumming and the writing.  This is my new challenge  — creating that space for the things I was doing before I began full-time teaching.

Speed Posting

I’ve got a job — a real job. The kind you have to show up at or they look really unhappy with you.  Oh wait, that’s all jobs.

In this real world of employment I have discovered that there isn’t any time for “the stuff I really want to do.”  Like this blog.  I think about this blog a lot.  I take notes for it.  I take pictures.  And yet, I never write the posts.  Why?  I’m too tired most of the time from reading student papers and commuting.  And for the first time in a long time, I spent hours vegging in front of the TV.  The remote in one hand, and a bowl of food in the other.  Whole days evaporated in front of the TV.

But, today is a new day, and I’m going to try a new approach:  speed posting.  I have a 40 minute break between classes.  I eat for 20 minues, and now, I’m going to try to write a post in the remaning 20 minutes.  Okay, I have ten minutes left.

What do I want to write?  What do I want to say here that I can read later and remember?

It’s snowing.  I have to pee.