Three Shows In…

I have to say that we’re finally getting our “tour-legs” under us. Last night’s show at the Crystal Bay Casino felt like that magical thing was happening that was happening last tour. And we totally nailed “Mound.”

Tom Cleary has his own blog where he talks about learning Mound: http://www.tomclearymusic.com/#/events/learning-new-tunes-for-the-march-11-tour/

It’s interesting to get everyone’s take on learning this beast. I thought I’d write about my own process.

I was given a studio recording of the song, and later a live recording, and four pages of hand written sheet music that is the score for the middle section. The score includes the guitar, piano and bass parts as well as, minimally, the drum parts.

While I was pretty adept at reading for the trumpet and piano when I was a kid, I’ve never read music for guitar and so for me there’s a missing piece that is the eye-to-hand thing that happens when you read music all the time. So I have to look at every note and figure out where it is on the guitar. And beyond that, since there are various places to play the same notes on the guitar, I also have to figure out where on the neck to play things.

This is a very slow process but in a way it has the advantage of forcing me to memorize the part rather than be dependent on the sheet music.

So the first thing I did was to modify the media I was given to make it more “friendly.” I took the PDF files of the sheet music and edited them in Photoshop to create a “guitar-only” version of the score. This reduced the number of pages from four to one and made it a lot easier to follow.

I then took the corresponding section of the recording and using some digital recording software first applied some filtering to isolate the guitar parts as much as possible, and then forced it to fit on “the grid.” This accomplished a few things: I could slow that part of the recording down (very helpful!). I could also overlay a metronome onto it to clarify some of the rhythmic stuff. It also allowed the measures of the recording to be numbered in a way that corresponded to the sheet music, so that if I was working on measure 37 I could loop that measure in the recording and play along while reading the sheet music for the same measure.

Also, because I’m not a reader for guitar music, I notated all of the chords on the sheet music. The entire part is mostly three note chords and so I notated them with interpretations of the structures that recalled certain positions in my brain.

For example, one such chord has an A on the bottom, a C more than an octave up from that, and an Eb above that. You could interpret those notes as an A diminished chord, but the form that I’m using is more like an inverted F7 without the root, so that’s how I notated it.

Once everything was notated I started the task of committing everything to muscle memory. This is a very tedious process of taking two chords at a time and repeating them ad nauseum until the movement between them becomes second nature. Then I tie the whole thing together by starting with the first two chords, repeating them over and over, then adding one chord at a time until I have a whole “section” under my fingers. Then onto the next section.

Once everything is in the muscles then the challenge is… not over. Now I focus on the sound of each string of chords and how to express through them. That’s always a challenge. It’s one thing to learn and memorize a set of notes, but the extra thing is to take that pre-written piece of music and make it mine; express through it; play it as though I had written it.

Of course that’s just the middle section of Mound. At the same time I had to memorize the lyrics and learn the harmony parts for the verses, AND I had to learn to sing the backup harmonies in 5/4 while playing a guitar part in 4/4! (Still messing that up occasionally…)

Okay, enough about that. I’m in Santa Cruz now. I’m on the bus with the windows open and it’s just lovely.

Eugene

Well last night was the first night of tour and I have to say that it was… ok. I’m my own worst critic of course. We encored with Mound and it was not as good as I had hoped. We were sailing through the middle section and near the end I got lost and couldn’t keep up. It’s like there’s a threshold of how fast I can make each of those chords sound and last night’s tempo was just beyond that threshold. So I have some work to do to get it under my fingers so that the tempo should be irrelevant.

Everything else was pretty good with a few stand out moments. Tom was on fire last night! The crowd was very receptive and responsive to everything we were doing. We got some good feedback on our vocals.

The town was nice even though it was a drizzly day. I recommend The Sustainable Table. Great food all locally grown with vegan or gluten free options for most of the menu items.

Tonight we’re in Acadia, CA at the Van Duzer Theater right on the Humboldt State University campus. I’m blogging from Couple Cups, a nice coffee shop with good breakfast sandwiches and great coffee.

I can’t wait to play Mound again though it probably won’t be tonight. But let me at that b!#@%!!!!

Rehearsal Week

I’m writing from Eugene, OR across from the McDonald Theater. I was in Burlington all last week for rehearsals and I must say that they were great! We’re tackling some of the most complicated of Mike’s originals. I’ve had to memorize pages of sheet music and it’s some of the most complex stuff I’ve ever played. In the beginning of last week it all seemed overwhelming but now that we’ve played these tunes a bunch it seems almost reasonable. Most of the rehearsals were in the evening so I had the days to practice and learn this stuff on my own.

Monday, Mike brought me to his singing teacher. I’ve always wanted to take a voice lesson and this one did not disappoint. I learned a ton of stuff and got lots of questions answered that have been haunting me for years. Her method of singing is all about being as efficient as possible which is so helpful to me. It allows me to sing clearly without blowing out my voice and allows me to hear my voice in the lower registers even when the band is loud. Very cool.

She came to rehearsal on Wednesday to work with the band as an ensemble as well. Not only did it help each of us individually but it got us all thinking on the same page about our vocals so that our inflections and pronunciations are lined up. What a difference! Plus, by putting the emphasis on the vocals the instruments are quieter and geared toward highlighting the vocals.

All in all it was a great week!

We traveled yesterday flying to Portland last night and meeting the bus which took us to Eugene. We’re all well rested and ready to go!!

Pre Tour

I’m writing from Dobra Tea House in Burlington, VT. I’ve been up here since Monday rehearsing with the band. Tonight is our last rehearsal and tomorrow we fly to L.A.. The band sounds great as we’ve been learning more tunes from Mike’s new CD as well as some interesting cover tunes. Very psyched!

I’m thinking about making the blog entries this tour more about the personal experience of life on the road. There are certainly aspects about tour life that most people take for granted I bet. Things like trying to stay connected with loved ones, missing events at home while away, staying healthy, etc. We’ll see how that goes.

But I wanted to write more about that BreakDownWay.com video experience. They’ve put up another of my lessons btw. Check it out here.

In the beginning of the year I took an acting class. It’s been something that’s been in the back of my mind for years and years. I’ve always thought that acting would be something I could do and enjoy even though I’ve had no experience at all. It was certainly a lot of fun and I definitely learned a ton of useful stuff; useful in a variety of ways. The gains from it have spilled over into all aspects of my life I’d say.

Right after I took the class I got approached by BreakDownWay.com to do a video guitar lesson. They said I’d be the first electric guitarist on the site! I went on the site and checked it out. Very cool! They make great videos but beyond that there are chord charts that line up with the vids and whatnot. It’s all just very well done. So I accepted the offer.

The filming was to be done in NYC all in a single day, about eight hours worth. I put together some notes about different lesson ideas I could do.

It was quite a different experience than what I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be interview style where they’d ask about stuff and I would respond, but instead they set me up, turned on three cameras and said, “Go.”

I found that it took about an hour to get through the notes I had made and I still had hours and hours to go!

I was really nervous! This is where the acting class came in so handy. I was able to focus and get beyond my nerves and really become the instructor I wanted to be. Of course when I watch the videos I look really nervous to me but not as nervous as I actually would have been!

They filmed hours of stuff and now they’re going through that footage and cutting things up into individual lessons. The first lesson was about lead guitar techniques. I talked about some technical stuff in the beginning but I really wanted to focus on something that most instructional videos don’t focus on: expression through improvisation.

It was such a great experience and I’m so glad I did it! I’ve always thought that teaching was a great way to learn but this was teaching me things on many different levels, musically and beyond, and now as I watch the videos after they’re posted I find myself still learning from the experience!

They’ve just put up the second installment which is an instructional about playing my song, “Cruel World” using a looper.

Ok, back to tour…

Of course once we get to L.A. we’ll be on a tour bus traveling all the way across the country. Living on a bus with so many people is always interesting. One thing that I’ve noticed is that we’ve all found our permanent bunk locations. The tour buses have 12 bunks in them, arranged in two rows of three on each side. So they can be divided into groups: bottom, middle and top bunks; front and rear bunks; driver’s side and passenger side bunks.

For the past few tours it seems everybody takes the same bunks as last time even though it’s a different bus each time. Everyone has their preferences. Some won’t take top bunks; some won’t take bottom bunks. Some won’t take rear bunks (too close to the engine).

Mine is always the bottom rear bunk on the driver’s side. I like the bottom because I don’t have to worry about falling out, and it’s very easy to get into; no climbing involved. The rear bunks are noisier but I have no trouble sleeping through noise so I always take a rear bunk.

Today’s question is: which bunk would you take?

Ok, enough for now. See you “out there”…

Lebanon Opera House

It was another dreary day, pouring rain and cold and overcast. I woke up on the bus and I didn’t want to go anywhere. I didn’t go find a coffee shop to blog in, or go for lunch or anything. I decided I would do everything at the venue. It had a very nice back room with a shower and they had coffee on in there. I was all set.

More than all set really. This place was gorgeous. It was truly a theater with multiple dressing rooms, a lovely main hall with theater seats and all. For a room as large as it was, it had great sound. They had rented a sound system from Atomic in Burlington and Mark had the room sounding great.

Sound check was a whimsical thing mostly spent playing with the lights for Mike’s family, or swapping instruments and jamming. It was the last night of tour and the band was greased and ready to go. We were all both happy and sad to be here.

Tom’s cousin, Joe Cleary came during dinner as he was going to sit in with us on fiddle for a few tunes and we worked them out while we ate (and skyped). We taught him my song, Willow Tree with the idea that we would quadruple the beat during the solos and switch to a traditional bluegrass tune. This is exactly what we did and it worked great. We then jammed into Mike’s “Weekly Time” which is another favorite of mine and Joe picked up on it right away.

Again the lights were amazing and the band was at its best, nailing all the tunes with ease (except the endings maybe) and taking the jams to the deepest of places. The Suskind jam was VERY deep, kind of modeled after a GRAB version Julia played me on the bus the night before.

Surprisingly, we encored with one of my tunes, Jones and then Country Boy, the fastest picking song I’ve ever done. Jones was deep, thick and groovy and Country Boy was like 1000 mph and no brakes. Joe Cleary came up for Country Boy again and nailed it.

So ends another MGB tour. Again I had the opportunity to make music with some of the best players I know and I learned a lot and had a blast at the same time. Plus I got to visit some different parts of the county, meet new people, and see people I haven’t seen in a long time.

Back to reality!

Pearl Street

I’ve played the big room in Pearl Street a hundred times and it’s always sounded cavernous and thin in there but I’ve got to hand it to Mark Allspough, our soundman, who got the room sounding great.

Before sound check I walked to Haymarket and got some coffee and skyped with Cheryl from the basement. It was a gray and rainy day and the atmosphere inside Haymarket was warm and inviting.

I walked over to sound check and we did a few jamming exercises, this time concentrating on changing time signatures during jams, or ignoring time signatures altogether.

We had asked Mark Mercier to sit in with us and he was there for soundcheck so after the jamming exercises we played the two tunes Mark was going to play on, his cover of Columbus Stockade Blues, and Mike’s Voices.

I must say, bringing Mark and Tom Cleary together was big, an event with the equivalent weight of Spock meeting Data. There are so many ways in which these two are cut from the same block. Just to hear them have a conversation could confuse as to who’s saying what, as even their speaking styles are similar.

So when they jammed together it was an amazing exchange. Each has such talent and depth on their instrument and you could see the mutual admiration as they traded riffs back and forth. It was exhilarating for me as these guys represent the cream of the keyboard crop to me.

Anyway, the chemistry of having Mark with us was obvious even in sound check. The rest of sound check was spent jamming to Liggy’s light show for the sake of Mike’s family who came for the afternoon.

After sound check I met up with Dave Wright and his son Ben. Dave was the drummer in one of the first bands I was ever in, in which I played keyboards. We met my niece Lenora and her friend from childhood, Diana, for dinner at the Spoleto Restaurant.

While I was at dinner I got a pleasant surprise: my son Jordan was coming to the gig with a couple of his friends, Sarah and Ken. Woo hoo!!

Pearl Street was sold out and so when I got back after dinner the room was packed, which is great for the sound in there. The crowd was very responsive. They seemed to react to every little nuance and when Mark came up to sit in he got a great response.

The whole night went really well for me and the second set included one of my favorites, Gillian Welch’s “Time (The Revelator).” I love this one because it’s a ballad with great vocal harmonies, a haunting lead vocal and a deep guitar solo in the middle.

The jams were off the hook all night as well. The time bending stuff we worked on at rehearsal was obviously helping us to shake it up and we took the music into unexplored territory yet again.

After the show, Jordan and his friends came and “partied” on the bus along with Dave Wright and his son before we left to do the drive to New Hampshire.

Of course we all felt the end of the tour rapidly approaching. Everyone was making comments about how the band is just hitting its stride and about how deep the jams are getting. It’s such a shame that it has to end after only ten days, but it’s even a bigger shame that it will be months before we play together again.

TLA

Last night was a great gig! We had some folks from The Chieftains sit-in with us during the first set, and that was cool but I thought that second set raged!

It was a rainy day in Philadelphia but I walked to a coffee shop anyway and skyped with Cheryl for a bit. South street is a pretty cool neighborhood.

Sound check was very minimal with most of the time spent doing jamming exercises. The jamming exercises are awesome. They really get the band playing like a band and they get everyone’s ears opened up.

Craig and I then went out to dinner with my friends Shawn and Erin and their friend Ron at a really great Thai restaurant, Tamarind. Craig and Ron got fish that still had eyes. Um… yum?

When I got back to the club the members of the Chieftains were there and we ran over the tunes they were sitting in on.

The fiddle player that sat in (I can’t remember any of their names except Jeff, the guitarist) was excellent. We did some bluegrass and we did Mike’s song Voices and she fit right in over all of it. They had three tap dancers that came out at various points. It was dangerous out there! They were high kicking and covering a lot of ground and I spent a lot of time trying to stay out of the way!

Then for Walls Of Time I let Jeff use my guitar while he sang with Mike and I went out front for a bit to check it out. A rare opportunity!

When I came back on my guitar cable was shot. Casualty of dancers maybe? Anyway Rachel replaced my cable and I was good to go.

After all the fun distractions of the first set the band came out for second set firing on all cylinders. The jams were excellent and somewhere in there we played Jones again and it raged.

The last song of the set was Suskind Hotel and the ending jam was so so so good that I convinced Mike that when we did the encore we should start the Suskind jam again from where we left off. Which we did. It was great fun!

Afterward Shawn, Erin and Ron came to the bus with me and Shawn brought some excellent wine, of course.

All in all it was a great night.

Oh, and thanks to Pete for bringing and arranging the sit-ins to happen!

Charlottesville (VA)

I love Charlottesville, or at least that little section of it that I saw which was the walk-in mall in the center of town. Lots of nice shops and coffee places.

I have to say that I loved the sound check yesterday way more than the show. The sound check was just magical. We were working on various things and the sound was awesome and everybody was playing cool things. Creative ideas were just falling out of my fingers. I love that feeling.

After sound check most everyone went out to eat but I was still full from lunch so I went to a tea place instead and ordered some Yunnan Velvet Tips, a rich smokey tea with lots of caffeine. I skyped with Cheryl for a bit while listening to some musicians warming up, or rather, appearing to warm up by playing and singing along with some tabla loops and what sounded like hurdy gurdy loops.

I probably shouldn’t have had 5 or 6 cups of the YVT but I did. I didn’t feel jacked on caffeine or anything, but when I got on stage it felt forced; somehow the magic of soundcheck had lessened. The crowd seemed tougher than usual. They were paying such close attention and seemed to be into it but when we’d finish a song there was very little response.

Which isn’t to say the music was bad. There were definitely some nuggets in there. 15 Steps, our Radiohead cover, came out very well and had a great jam at the end, and we inserted my Emotional Railroad into a Traveled Too Far sandwich and that was really good.

After the show, on the bus, Maresca put in “It Might Get Loud” which is the movie of Jimmy Page, Jack White and The Edge talking about guitars. It was great to watch. It reminds me of an aspect of being a guitar player that I forget about sometimes which is cranking it up and putting a ton of effects on. Ahhhhhh.

Ram’s Head Live

Well, last night was a very fun night. It was not without some sound issues for me but still it was a very creative night.

We had been in Baltimore all day. Mike, Tom and I met at noon to work out harmonies for the tune that Tom worked up from our first day of rehearsal, and then we had lunch in Fells Point. The weather was gorgeous and it was a very relaxing afternoon.

At sound check Mike noticed that the stage had been set up with a lot more space between us than usual. I was thinking that it would be better for me anyway because it would give me more separation between sounds on stage, but this ended up being a disadvantage for me later on.

I had dinner with Howard and Noah and then we checked out Danny Barnes’ set. I love this guy. What a great player. He’s so innovative.

When we went on I had a hard time hearing anything clearly except my guitar, but that sounded more distorted than usual. I’m fairly certain that my volume was louder than usual so I’m not sure whether I was pushing the amp harder or whether my ears were distorting but I found myself adjusting my distortion pedal all night, cutting back on the drive.

Regardless of the sound issues for me, the band sounded great. It was a playful evening, initiated by the Danny Barnes sit in. He came up for Deranged, a rare and bizarre David Bowie tune taken from a movie soundtrack. In the middle of this we inserted Walls Of Time, the bluegrass tune which seem to fit effortlessly into the middle. At this point Danny, Mike and I met in the middle of the stage and passed our instruments to the person to the left. This put Mike on banjo, Danny on guitar, and me on bass, and we played most of the tune this way. Near the end Mike and Danny swapped and Mike wailed a guitar solo. (He is one of my favorite guitarists…) Then we swapped back and finished deranged.

We broke out the new Tom tune in the first set too. Mike had been looking for a tune in the repertoire that had a repetitive vocal ending that wasn’t the chorus of the song and we found it in this tune. Very anthemic.

Second set we broke out my tune, Jones, for the first time. The groove on this was so thick and when we rehearsed it we only played one verse and chorus, and I ended up rearranging it on the spot.

We also added a guitar/keyboard solo to the verse/chorus progressions in Sugar Shack. It was cool and fun to play over the progression but I’m not sure it adds anything to the song.

All in all it was a great night. It’s hard for me to rate one night against any of the others because they’re all so different from one another, it’s hard for me to say this one is better than that one or whatever. There is stuff I love about each night, and each night it’s something different. Last night it was the playfulness of the jams and high energy of the whole night.

Creek was well represented with many fans there last night including one guy who asked me to play Gypsy Blue. Of course I had to bust his ass a little. “You could at least request one of MY songs!”

I must say that this cold is kicking my ass majorly. I went to bed early and woke at noon today in Charlottesville for our day off. I’ve been very congested in both my sinuses and my lungs and I have a sty on my eye. I know others that have had this same thing and I guess it lingers. This is my fifth day with it and I’m ready for it to be gone!

I’ve been really making an effort these past few months to keep my voice from being too raspy and it was working pretty well during my weekend in California and the first part of this tour but the cold totally defeats it. I have to push so hard just to have sound come out sometimes.

The weather’s gorgeous in Charlottsville today and there’s an outdoor mall right near our hotel and that’s where tomorrow night’s venue is.

Stroudsburg

I’ve driven through Stroudsburg many times but had never stopped there until yesterday. If there is such a thing as a typical Pennsylvania city, I’d say that this is one. I woke on the bus in the heart of the city (with my really nasty cold in full bloom I might add) and did my usual exploring and found the local coffee shop (a Starbux) to do my blog and pound my coffee.

After blogging and Skyping with Cheryl I went back to the Sherman Theater for sound check. It’s a very large room with theater seating, but for a room of that size it sounded great. The people working there were very nice and sound check went well. We did a jamming exercise where we’d all play but one musician would pick another to play follow the leader with. These exercises that Mike comes up with are great in that they really get everybody’s ears open. Even when it wasn’t my turn, by focusing on the two who were following each other I found myself paying more attention and my playing being more accommodating of the total sound.

After sound check I had dinner with my friends Shawn and Erin at an Irish Pub up the street. Would you trust “Chicken Curry” from an Irish Pub?? We didn’t either.

Anyway, the show was lots of fun. It was an intimate crowd and the band was in kind of a humorous frame of mind. I wouldn’t call it the tightest show of the tour, but the looseness opened some doors to places we wouldn’t normally go.

Probably the best example of it was in Morphing Again. There’s an intricate little warp in the middle of the song that’s supposed to be a call and answer between the drums and percussion while Mike, Tom and I support it, but we never really fell into it totally, and at the end of it there’s supposed to be a cue into this counting thing that takes us to the jam part. Well, we missed the counting thing pretty seriously. We did recover and get there, but by then the door was open and the jam was off the hook. We went to some unexplored places. The jam is supposed to start in 4/4 and work it’s way back to 3/4 and at the same time start in D and work it’s way back to G. This rendition was going every which way. We’d head to 3/4 and then back to 4/4 and we’d insinuate G but never quite get there. It was all very playful and teasing.

We also broke out Hap Nappy, a Mike tune we’ve been rehearsing for a while but haven’t played yet. That’s a fun one that I think will develop into something big over time.

Danny Barnes played a couple again with us, after having Mike sit in for the last couple in his set again. He’s such a nice guy and such a character. He did a couple during our first set but for me the highlight was the encore, another break out, Country Boy. It’s a lightning fast bluegrass tune with a lot of chord changes and it kind of features the guitar a lot and Danny came out and killed it with us. I’m a huge banjo fan and a closet banjo player and it always tickles me to see a master play. Tickles is the best expression for it because it literally makes me giddy to watch someone that good play.

I also have to give props to the crew on this tour. Once again, the lights were just outstanding. I’ve been hearing great things about the sound out front and Rachel has been taking great care of us on stage. It’s such a joy to work with such a dedicated group. This is our third year together and it really is becoming family.

After the show I hung with my friends Pete and Naomi and Shawn and Erin. Shawn is a wine professional and always brings a bottle of some ridiculously delicious red and last night was no exception.

I woke up this morning to a day off in Baltimore. We checked in this morning and a few of us went walking to find breakfast. We ended up in kind of a greasy spoon joint and I supposed it could have gone one way or the other. It wasn’t the most wholesome looking place, but the food was very good and the folks were nice.

I’m looking for recommendations for restaurants or entertainment on a Monday night in Baltimore, even anybody has any suggestions.

Ok, as Chris Friday said a little while ago, “It’s nap-thirty.”