25 April – Floataway Open House (Atlanta, GA)
w/ weaklazyliar
This wasn’t really a public show, it was an open house for a complex of businesses in Atlanta. They do this every year, with food, drinks and live music. The first show I ever officially did post-Radiant City was playing this, back in 1999. It caused a lot of drama at the time because, though I had booked it as a solo show before the blow-up, the band saw it as proof that I had intended to quit all along. That night I played with weaklazyliar and the Young Antiques.
weaklazyliar sounds great with their new drummer Travis. He seems to me to be a combination of Joe and Mitch in all the right ways. Ryan also was playing his new Moog, making lots of little Fantastic Planet noises. I can’t say enough that I want them to keep making music. They could be so much more confident if they could be touring. They could be indie darlings in a way I don’t think I ever could.
We did the show as an acoustic three-piece since Lee was out of town. We… well, *I* was sloppy. And in pain. My hand was cramping, reminding me why I don’t like to play the acoustic. I broke a string on the second song (which Gerlinda fixed while I was playing her guitar). But overall it went okay. I had a few people tell me they liked the treatment we gave the songs and the changes we had made. Though, I’m not really aware of any changes that we made deliberately, so I assume they were mostly the subconscious ones. Watching dynamics and that sort of thing. they wanted one more song once we were done and we really hadn’t worked up anything else, not to mention I couldn’t imagine playing guitar any longer, so instead we did a version of Squeeze’s “Tempted” with Lyle playing bass and Chris playing a little percussion that went surprisingly well.
26 April 2003 – 10 High (Atlanta, GA)
on stage with chain poets
Now the secret can be told. For two weeks I went and rehearsed with chain poets to get ready for this show.
“Mr. Blue Sky”
That’s what we did. I’m sorry, not just “Mr. Blue Sky,” but virtually every tiny bit of “Mr. Blue Sky” short of the ‘clang-clang-clang’ sound which we couldn’t reproduce. But YES to lots of harmonies falling all over the place, YES to string sounds, YES to the vocoder, and even YES to the operatic ending. I did not nail the solo and would kill for another chance at it, but it still sounded great. Curtis, who normally runs sound, wasn’t going to be at the show but heard us run through it for soundcheck and swapped with another soundman for the night to make sure he was the one running sound.
Damn right.
And it was a fucking blast, too. Happy late birthday to me.
We also did “No Matter What,” but we’ve done that before. The thing I learn from being on stage with them, though, is that I do have that lingering urge to RAWK, to front a loud seventies rock band. But I find, in the end, that I don’t want it consistently enough to be in a band like that full time. Anyway, I don’t think I pull off the image.
On a side note, they’ve got a new song that kills me and I wish I had written it.
27 April 2003 – Borders (Atlanta, GA)
This was something that was set up about a month or so ago. An in-store in conjunction with EarthShare and Earth Day. Unfortunately, the person at Daemon who set it up with Borders was gone by April, and the promotion that had been promised at the time never materialized. So I really half expected no one would be there for it. Actually, I half-expected that the store wouldn’t even have a clue that I was supposed to be there. Thankfully, though, that idea was wrong, and they had the little area set up before I even got there. Still, I played to about 10 people, but having expected that it wasn’t such a big deal. I sold a couple of CDs, even, had a few people sign up. Even more unexpectedly I felt really good about how it sounded and how I played. Which goes to show you can never predict these things.
With the lull I’m in musically right now I find myself in sort of a pit. I feel a little short-tempered and impatient, and the whole enterprise seems terribly pointless at the moment. Nevertheless I keep going through the motions. I don’t really know when I developed this sort of ability to ignore myself and keep doing things musically while I wait out my depression. But thank whoever that I did.
I just need movement again. The problem is that I don’t know how soon that will come. A lot has happened in the past 6 months, most of it I would never have believed. But on the other side of it, taking the long view, it’s hard to feel that I’ve made much headway.