Possibilities...

OK - I'm a Star Trek fan/geek/whatever (BIG fan of the original series - not so much of the Next Generation). Not to the point of dressing up like Kirk for ComicCon, but - yeah - I love the show and the movies.

Anyway, the second Trek movie "Wrath of Khan" is a classic. I don't think I'm spoiling the movie for anyone when I say Spock dies at the end. In these days of movie spoiler sites, Quicktime trailers and DVDs something like this wouldn't be a big deal, but I saw the movie at the theater when it opened in '82, and without any advance notice or hints I was genuinely shocked.

At the end of the movie they put Spock's body in a tube/coffin and shoot it to "The Genesis Planet" for his final resting place. Kirk, still grieving, looks to the future and reminds himself that "Spock always said there are possibilities." Kirk then grins and looks almost - confident? - and the movie ends.

My band played a gig on Saturday with a new keyboardist/female vocalist. It was an AMAZING show. We were winging it, as we used a sub guitar player, but it was unbelievable. I haven't felt so good about performing music in quite some time. Whatever we wanted to play we played, with no pressure or worry about being perfect. At times it felt like a free fall, but - although I've never jumped off a building! - I imagine a free fall is scary AND exhilarating at the same time.

We swapped harmonies and verses, sung together and apart and LAUGHED - a lot! - like kids just discovering something really cool for the first time. Props to Rob and Joey - the band's rock-solid rhythm section - for slipping more punches than Mohammed Ali in his prime, and keeping the rhythm fatter than pre-Subway Jared. Knowing you guys are back there holding it down is an amazing comfort, and I appreciate that.

So now? I'm feeling more excited than I have in 25 years of playing music. The band's going to stretch and play different things. We're gearing up to attack the next level in terms of gigs and musicality.

I'm confident, man, just considering the possibilities.

Ice Breaker Ship - aka Singer

Sometimes, life has a crappy way of imposing its will on you. You're making an omelet but you're thinking about a safe that's about to drop on your head. You're painting the fence while a poison-tipped spear's been thrown at your noggin. Or, you're getting ready to play music in front of strangers who expect you to entertain them for a few hours, but you're getting beat up by life's ill-timed shrapnel.

That's the thing, right? Keeping focused on the job at hand - but sometimes that's close to impossible. I have a gig this Friday with one sub and one new member (luckily, both are excellent musicians). These type of weird gigs need a higher concentration level - no skating here. Keeping two strangers and the other 60% of the band on the same page will take some doing, but I just ain't there yet.

The day gig. The fam. The muse who's suddenly gone MIA. All of this is nipping at me like a squirrel eating a buttered corn cob. This is the the danger of having two professions, and although I can normally keep them in opposite corners, I'm having no luck doing that this week. Whereas music is often an "escape" - even though it's actually MORE difficult than the day gig (I'll explain this in another blog) - I'm having trouble getting my head around what the band needs to do because of the heinous stuff unrelated to music soaring around me like Pig Pen's little cloud on speed.

So - I asked myself how to get through this, and my demented head shot back: "Ice Breaker Ship." For those of you who think I've totally fried my noodle - or don't know what I'm talking about - icebreakers are used to punch through and break up thick Arctic and Antarctic ice. They have a steeped hull to rise on top of the ice and then, using the ship's weight and gravity, crush downward through it. Inside the hull is a huge support structure so the hull itself isn't crushed, and powerful engines keep pushing it forward so the ship doesn't break under pressure.

(Yes - you're all gagging because the metaphor's so damn obvious.)

Anyway, that's where my head's going to be for the next day - trying to break through all the crap that's keeping me from focusing on the gig. And if I need help, I know Rob and Joey (Party Jones' esteemed rhythm section) are there to keep me smiling and help the band nail the gig.

The Kindness of Strangers

People can be kind - the type of good-hearted, no stings attached niceness that makes you think "hey - there's hope for mankind yet!"

We played a gig last Saturday - a 25th anniversary party in Huntington Beach. Before we played one note it was a great gig. The band was feeling good, the room was terrific, and the guests were cool and friendly.

But more than that, the hosts - and the guests - made us feel like we were there WITH them, not just performing FOR them. We ate with them (UNBELIEVEABLE food - filet mignon, anyone?), shared drinks with them (though I, as usual, stuck with water), had coffee and dessert and TONS of great conversation.

As I've blogged before, this type of treatment is totally unexpected and NEVER a requirement for hiring a band. We're brought in to do a job, much like a waiter or busboy (who work their butts off all night! They're the unsung heroes of many corporate and personal gigs, and I appreciate what they do and how they do it). We're not guests. We're hired to set up gear, sing and entertain, tear down gear and move along. Anything in addition to that is pure gravy, showing a generosity from the hosts that shouldn't be expected, but appreciated.

If - as a cover band player - you're not cool with that...if you expect to be treated like a king or a rock star...pull your head out and get into another line of work.

But I digress. Anyway, after a great night of food, fun and music, the hosts gave us a tip that made our eyes spin. Amazing. And you know what the host says to me? He shakes my hand and says "You guys made this party - and you're underpaid."

Yes, performing cover music is often a grind and can drive you nuts. But the kindness of strangers can make a good night really great - and creates memories I can carry with me for years.

Dodging Bullets, Neo Style

There's something weird/cool/pulse-pounding/whack about facing a bunch of strangers who expect you to do something REALLY exceptional - take them someplace in their past, and do it perfectly.

Cover music, man. It's bizarre! There they are, staring you down like something off George Romero's cutting-room floor, and you're looking back at them while the drummer counts off the song. It's time to nail it - kill the tune, raise the energy level, keep them dancing and singing along while not allowing that bastard Moe Mentum to escape out the back door.

Like most bands, we use a set list to get the wheel spinning. It helps the guitarist get his settings in place, helps the drummer and bass player figure out transitions and lock down the correct tempos and gives us a general roadmap for the night.

But what if the night takes a left turn down Bizarre Road? What if the crowd the night before loved 80s music but this crowd's eating it up like liver and lima bean-flavored ice cream? What if following the set list song-for-song is not only letting Moe get away, but it's killing the poor guy?

THEN it's time to slow things down - figuratively, not literally - and go Wachowski Brothers on the crowd. Bullet time, Matrix style.

What's that mean? Well, if you saw The Matrix (and I know you did), you remember Neo moving so quickly he felt like he was moving in slow motion. He could gauge his every move in a controlled, calm way. Remember him leaning back on his heels dodging The Agents' bullets?

OK - when bad energy comes back at you, go Neo style. Slow everything down in your head. Lean back, dodge, dodge. Don't panic - don't get discouraged. Then, while the band's playing the current song, rewind the past few songs in your head. Pay attention to details - every little foot tap and provocative stare. What worked? What didn't?

After that, do a quick mental review of the songlist while the band's cooking along.

Do all of this in about four or five seconds, but do it so quickly that - to you - you're moving in slow motion and not missing anything about crowd reactions to the previous songs.

This sounds really goofy, but I'm telling you - I've completely changed a set's directions based upon some girl tapping her foot or clapping for a song we played ten minutes before. And it WORKS. So when it works, you go with that road until it stops working, or until the end of the set. By then, you'll probably have the crowd on your side and ready to follow you wherever you want to take them.

(For those of you who want to cut to the chase? ALWAYS think on your feet. OK - I friggin' LOVE the Matrix. Sue me!)

AKA The Seven Degrees of 7/4

I'm reaching back in my Rolodex-card memory (most of the cards are smudged though!) and thinking about previous July 4th gigs.

America's birthday's always been good to me and my musical crew - financially and otherwise. And it's weird how many friends I've made and gigs I've picked up through this one holiday.

For example: my friend Jack introduced me to Bob and Sue, who'd used a different band every year for their huge July 4 party...that is, before us (well, by "us" I mean me and several incarnations of my band. Wait, wait...in NO WAY am I taking full credit for doing this party every year - I've been blessed to play this gig with some crazy good cats. However, I'm kind of the string holding the years together).

Anyway, one of the guests at Bob and Sue's party was Steve, who throws his own summer bash every year. He now books us for that every year, playing alongside his band - and we have a BLAST. At Steve's party we met several folks who've hooked us up for the Long Beach Auto Show, Long Beach Concerts on the Park and Rancho Los Cerritos community. At the Long Beach Auto Show we met a person who hired us to play their Christmas function, and at THAT function we met someone wanting to book us for HER holiday function the following year!

(ASIDE: this hasn't even TOUCHED upon meeting the wonderful Steve and Jennifer at Bob's party, who've become very good friends - no, make that "part of the Jones family.")

I KNOW I'm forgetting something - and one of these days I'll do the definitive gig tree, which shows where EVERYTHING came from (would Taco Surf be the Tree of Life?). In the meantime, it's interesting and fun to see how much really comes from celebrating the Fourth of July with Party Jones.

No Nets for a 3P w/V

Although my band is now "officially" a five-piece (drums, bass, guitar, keyboards and voice), I've spent most of my musicial career playing in what's known as a three-piece and voice. In fact, my band will still occasionally play as a 3P w/V for smaller/less $$ gigs.

In this type of band the guitarist, if he's any good, wears about 20 hats every song. He's chording to fatten the sound while playing all the hookish and familiar guitar/key/horn/string runs. The bass player can't play just the written bass part - he has to weave around the guitar player and be intuitive enough to know when to fill it up and when to stick in the pocket. The drummer has to lock in with the bass player while also knowing when to drop in a fill and when to let the song breathe. Meanwhile, the singer belts it out, and depending on the amount of backup singers in the band the lead vocalist may have to jump from melody to harmony to unison chant to melody within a few bars.

This type of band is fun, challenging and somewhat dangerous (musically, duh). For example, if the guitar player misses a chord in a five or six-piece band, it often gets lost in the shuffle behind the second guitarist, keyboardist or horn section. Same with the bass player and drummer. Being surrounded by several musicians is a good safety net - they all produce sounds that help cover up minor gliches.

However, if only three guys are responsible for the sound and one guy for the melody, and one of them makes a mistake, it's HUGE. Even the smallest mistake - the singer going flat, the bass player missing a note, the drummer dropping a beat or the guitarist playing the wrong chord - is amplified. For me, it always feels like we're standing on a coffee table with wobbly legs and it kind of shakes and teeters before we regain balance.

If this happens for a prolonged time, it's disasterous for the band. A few years back we played a gig with a bass player who shouldn't have been on stage - let alone earning money to play music - to begin with. The guitar player launched into his solo, and the bass player (who at the beginning of the song gave a fey and arrogant hand wave when asked "do you know this song?") proceeded to demolish the solo section, playing changes in the wrong key while his "stupid" fingers ran up and down the fretboard like a pinball on crack. Man - about 35 seconds of living in the pits of hell, in front of a packed house. It was humiliating, infuriating and amatuerish, but mostly it made THE ENTIRE BAND look like a bunch of novice wannabes. (Thankfully, this particular bass player was humanely destroyed behind a barn. "Bass player, thy name is 'poser!' Ka-POW!")

So, there's no safety net for a three-piece with voice. Each guy has to nail his part or risk making the entire band sound unprepared. It's thrilling. It's scary. It's cool.

And, thankfully, with the addition of a wonderful keyboardist, it'll soon be a thing of the past.

Telling Stories, Taking Lives

Selling cover music to a crowd staring right at you and demanding truth and emotion and insisting you take them to a place in their past...

...is difficult.

Through my ravings I've said playing cover music isn't great art - and it isn't. I compared it to a paint-by-numbers version of the Mona Lisa - and it is. Cover musicians didn't create "The Exorcist" - we just decided to adapt it as a musical for people to enjoy their memories while we entertain them and keep them happy.

Still, if you're going to perform music that's important to someone, you'd better make it as real as possible. Music is life's signposts and markers, intimately intertwined with our emotions, events, places, times and people. Simply put, cover music evokes memories and is a guide to our past.

Heavy, right? Reality, though.

As a cover band musician, listeners depends on you to help them revisit an event, or a friend, or place or time, or an emotion. If you can't convey truth, they won't respond. They won't trust you. I mean, face it - we've ALL heard crappy cover bands doing plastic versions of songs - sure, the basic chords are there, but where's the "oomph?" The realism? The honesty?

The answer is simple, but the technique is hard. The musician HAS to find something in the song he or she can relate to, then tap into the emotion and apply it to the performance. For example, I'm furious about our government's hypocrisy and broken promises. I tap into that when singing "Pink Houses." I remember myself as a spazzy kid running around laughing myself silly and causing trouble for "I Wish." I'd tell you where the inspiration comes from for "Let's Get it On," but I don't want to name names.

My drummer pulls every drop of emotion out of "Can't Get It Out of My Head" due to events occurring in his life while we learned the song - and you FEEL that in his playing, from his tripleted fills "pulling" against the song's time to the openness of his backbeat. His drumming's filled with tension, then spaciousness and ultimately release. It's probably my favorite "drumming" song in our list, and it gets me every time.

As a singer, one of the greatest compliments I've received is when a listener - be it someone in the crowd or someone in a band - told me my singing gave him or her "chills." That's amazing to me, and it proves that tapping into MY emotion helps make cover music a communal, sharing experience.

You know, I often think of cover musicians as actors. We know how actors earn a living - a screenwriter creates a script. The actor studies these flat, two-dimensional words on paper and, under the director's instructions, makes the words come to life. You have to believe the actor lost a lover in a car accident, or is possessed by a dark spirit, or pushed his body to the breaking point in order to save the world.

Bringing life to words on a page, written by someone else - that's an actor's passion.

Bringing feeling and emotion to a tired song, telling a story and taking lives back to another place - that's the blessing and calling of a good cover musician.

Weirded Out - AKA "The Cobra Stare"

The cobra snake's reputation is pretty solid, right? Creepy looking, big ol' snake (some can get up to 24 feet in length). There's the hood, the deadly toxins inherent in the bite (which cause suffocation due to paralysis of the diaphragm) - man. That's enough to give most people the ol' "fear skittering up my back like a spider" feeling.

The other thing about a cobra? Depending on what you read, a cobra can hypnotise its prey by staring at while rhythmically moving back and forth. Then it attacks.

OK - time to dovetail. Playing gigs means getting attention from the crowd/customers. It's normally fun, and it's the routine - I mean, part of the job of a cover band is to entertain, and people enjoy seeing musicians singing, running around, having fun and playing instruments. Of course, gigging musicians enjoy the attention - after all, I firmly believe most musicians are insecure to beging with. So, when the crowd's digging you, you're digging them back via the music and entertainment, and it creates good synergy (I blogged about this a few days ago).

However - every now and then, there are a few people in the crowd who take it way past the "comfortable zone." Maybe it's a guy who's been pounding drinks all day long and side-stepped from the "fun, buzzed" arena to the darker "beligerant drunk" side. This guy stumbles to the dance floor, bashes into people without regard and hits on girls who want nothing to do with him. Or maybe it's the girl who's so into the band she DEMANDS you play her favorite song, regardless if the band's never done it (or ALREADY done it one set before) - to the point of yelling at the band to "&#ck off!" if the band doesn't comply.

But beyond that, there's the person who uses what I call "The Cobra Stare." THIS person weirds me right out the door. 99% of the time, this person is a girl, and here's how she operates:

• Forces her way to the front of the crowd, right up to the stage - no matter who she needs to bump out of the way
• Emulates whatever I do on stage (e.g. peace sign, arms raised while singing, arching back while hitting a note, etc.)
• Stares DIRECTLY into my eyes while NEVER BLINKING - even from ACROSS THE ROOM

AGH! This happens occasionally, and - as a seasoned musician and singer - it freaks the livin' hoo-hah out of me. See, I'm a writer and creative type with a love of good horror/suspense - so of course my friggin' imagination grabs the wheel and starts telling me exactly what I don't want to hear ("She's from a pod, Kenny" "She'll swallow your soul, Kenny!" "She's the human cobra woman who'll hypnotize you, then bite you and suffocate you, Kenny!").

Bottom line? Well, I'm civil to this type of person - just like to anyone else who takes the time to come and see us.

But still...

...it weirds me out!

Sweatin' to the Oldies

What a weekend. Two gigs, two crowds, two completely different vibes, different songs, different locations, and - strangely enough! - different bands, as we introduced our female keyboardist/vocalist on Saturday.

There was, however, one consistent between the two nights. One thing that is a consistent at EVERY gig we play...

...sweat.

Sweet Mother McCreedy - is it just me, or do clubs insist on forcing the bands to lose a pound or two in water weight? In my scattered memory I can't remember one time a club's ran A/C while the band's played, and for the life of me I can't figure out why.

Is it to make the patrons hot and thirsty, forcing them to buy more beer/drinks/frosty libations? Couldn't be - food, peanuts and occasional stupidity drive most people to drop far more coin then they should at the bar and drink way too much. OK - what about saving $ on electricity? Nah, that can't be it. It'd cost pennies to run the A/C for a five or ten minutes per set, and they'd probably make the money spent on A/C 50 times over by keeping customers who run for their lives when they start to smell fire and brimstone. Wait - maybe they just don't HAVE A/C installed? Sorry, but no - though we're not at Jetson level yet, just about every club in So Cali has an A/C unit built it.

I guess there's only one reason for keeping the club hotter than an Easy Bake Oven - musicians look sexy when they sweat.

Yeah - that HAS to be it. When the drummer, guitarist and bass player look like they're coated in Crisco oil, the crowd MUST be digging it. When the singer looks like he's just dunked his head in a bobbing-for-apples sized bucket, and the water's pouring off his temples down his face and into his eyes - the girls MUST be going crazy.

Of course! And when I hug friends who've come to see the band, there's nothing they enjoy more than hugging a singer who feels like a damp washcloth.

...yeah.

...nice.

I Can See REALLY REALLY Clearly Now

About four months ago, something began happening to my voice - something that'd never happened before. My voice wasn't recovering after gigs - or if it was, the recovery was so minimal it made no difference when it was go time on Friday. I began losing range and control - I couldn't nail the highs and swerving around the vocal curlicues felt like I was driving a bulldozer on a curved mountain road greased with lard ("I canna mahk the tuhrns, cap'n! She'll fail for sure!").

Needless to say this freaked me out. For my entire life, my voice would ALWAYS recover completely in one or, at the absolute outside, two days. That is, no sign of huskiness or hoarseness or Joe Cockeriness - come Monday I could hit the notes in my sleep.

But four months ago that stopped happening. My throat wasn't recovering, and I began to worry. First thought: voice with 25 years worth of singing mileage on it, some of those years spent singing in smoke-filled bars (though I never smoked, for years I played in bars with so much second-hand smoke I felt like I was eating nicotine cotton candy) is crapping out. But it didn't feel like that. My voice felt fatigued but not finished. Next thought: polyps on my vocal cords. This freaked me out - if they don't go away on their own, then what?

Finally, I decided to control the things I could control. I committed, for a month, to have absolutely NO alcohol at a gig - not a beer, not a shot, not a bourbon seven- nothing.

(No-brainer time here, as any experienced singer will tell you this: alcohol is a drying agent, drying the vocal cords and making it tougher to sing and hit the notes. Still, as a front man and band leader, I've been expected to knock back a few drinks/shots during the night. Not that I didn't enjoy it!)

Strangely enough, six months ago (before the onset of the vocal problems) I decided to ease up and have only a beer or two per gig in order to stay sharp. But four months ago - when the throat problems really became predominant - I completely quit drinking at gigs.

Boy - reading this back, it sounds like I'm a cross between Otis and Foster Brooks at my gigs. I can definitely hold my liquor, but knocking back a few highballs didn't make me mess songs up. I'm too much of a perfectionist (and far too into beating myself up for every tiny mistake) for that! If anything, I got a bit too silly/giggly, but hell, what can you do?

Also - I'm not much of a social drinker, either. I rarely, if ever, drink during the week.

So what happened? Well, it was amazing - my voice completely recovered, and I found myself singing with the same range and control at the end of the night that I had at the beginning. No small task, considering the band plays for roughly four hours per night. It was awesome.

But something else happened, too - a really cool side benefit. I was seeing everything clearly, all through the night. Suddenly, I could really enjoy the crowd getting off on the band, or the band tearing up a song like there was no tomorrow. I found my concentration going through the roof, and it was like I controlled every note of every song with my hands - not my vocal cords.

Needless to say, my newfound water-only stance has rankled some of my great friends who come to the gigs and say (with a smile) "We liked you better when you were drinking!" It's at this point I wobble a little and slur the words to some one-hit wonder song. That always gets a laugh.

Master of Ceremonies with a bottle of water? Captain of the Enterprise passing on the tronya, instead powering down some Gatorade? The point guard at a championship celebration foregoing champagne for Sparklets?

Hey...why not? :-)