I have finally put some photos up from the tour of Florida with Indigo Girls. If you’re interested CLICK HERE to take a look.
Meanwhile, the vague post last week about something that wouldn’t happen? Well, it isn’t happening. But it was a convoluted path to get there.
I may have explained this before, back when I sent a copy of Camera Obscura to Jeff Lynne, that when I toss these little “CD in a bottle” things into the ocean toward people I respect and consider to be huge influences I don’t expect favors or sudden friendship or magical recording contracts. I just hope that, at some point, they might come back to me and say, “hey, I actually listened to that CD… it’s not bad. Keep it up.”
I’ve only managed to get three CDs into anyone’s hands. A friend once got a copy of Slumberland backstage to Tim Finn (I was out of town playing a show and missed his show. She ended up talking to his wife at the club after his set and told her all about that and asked her if she could take back my CD to Tim. She did and brought back an autographed copy of his newest CD at the time for me). Then there was the aforementioned CD to Jeff Lynne, sent through the person who is in charge of the ELO re-masters that came out a year or so ago. I have never heard anything back on that one.
And the third? I met the head of Aimee Mann’s street team a couple of years ago online, we’ll call her J. At some point she ended up with a copy of Slumberland, which was the only CD I had out at the time. She loved it and got an extra copy and agreed to try to get it to Aimee if she ever got a chance. Eventually she did and Aimee’s only response when she handed it to her was that she liked the rabbit. I never heard anything else. When Camera Obscura came out J. got a copy of it to Aimee as well.
A week ago I got a call from J. She was calling to ask if she could give Aimee’s manager my phone number and email because he was looking for my contact info. Aimee is playing here tonight and both Daemon and J. had done some lobbying trying to get me on the bill as the opening act. The show was a week away and they still hadn’t settled on an act, and when J. called she assumed that was why they wanted my info. She knew they were still trying to decide and she figured I must be one of the three acts they were trying to decide on. Through the whole lobbying process I never really expected anything to come from it so I was just impressed that it had gotten this far.
Before the show last Thursday, though, Kenny Howes told me he was opening for Aimee. Apparently the venue had booked him to open. I emailed J. to let her know because from what Kenny was saying he had been booked by the club before I had been contacted about my info, so I thought it was possible that Aimee’s people didn’t know the place had booked someone in. Which was apparently the case since Monday Sarah saw an ad for the show that listed Pete Droge as the opening act and later that day I got a mass email from Kenny announcing he was not opening for the show.
The thing that struck me as sort of odd about the whole thing was that Pete Droge is a national act (and also part of the United Musicians collective that Aimee and Michael Penn started) and that they must have planned to have him on the bill for a while.
When I got home today I got the final piece in the form of a voice mail from J. letting me know that she had talked to Aimee’s manager’s assistant and that he hadn’t wanted my contact info for the show at all.
Apparently Aimee had actually listened to the CD and really liked it.
I haven’t heard this from anyone official, and still haven’t actually had my contact info used by the people asking for it. But still…
That’s pretty fucking cool.