Tag: Rob Gal

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9 Nov: Atlanta

If Coffeehouse (Atlanta, GA)
w/ Kate Simpkins, Eva Sotus

This was a good weekend for feeling like a musician.

Friday’s show went well. More amazement at hearing Kate play. She and Eric are really good, and I’m glad a lot of the people who came to see me got to see her, too. I sang with them on a couple of songs, our voices seem to blend well, though I wasn’t sure how well my choices went, but it seemed to work. Actually rehearsing (rather than coming up with ideas in my car singing along with her CD) would probably be a good plan, but we didn’t have the time for it before this show. When I came up afterward, she had to leave but really wanted to sing along with “Forget the Forget,” which I hadn’t planned on playing, but, who am I to turn down the chance to hear her singing along, so off we went, and she did an amazing job, I thought.

I played a set, and after writing these lately I’m not sure what to say about it specifically. The in-between banter was okay, a quiet crowd is always tough to work off of, but it seemed to go well and they got somewhat more responsive to my endless self-deprecation toward the end. I suppose dancing like a monkey has that effect on people. I kept getting told afterward that I had been really “on” and I certainly didn’t feel very “on” but I suppose there are those who will tell you that I never do.

There was a lot of lingering after the show, which is always good, getting to talk to people afterward. If you’ve got the time to kill and the patience always feel free to stay after a show and talk. My ego is so needy, people, you should really make use of it.

Saturday rolls around and it’s time to rehearse with the Million Box. Normally I wouldn’t bore you with the details except that it was part of an entire schedule of events this weekend. We don’t rehearse again, sadly, until the day of the show (Nov 29) and that’s a little frustrating, but it’s just trying to work within everyone’s schedules. It’s the tradeoff I decided was worth it, and this is the price I pay for it. Whether it becomes a price I grow unable to deal with is hard to say. But rehearsal is good, nonetheless, with the extra bonus of suddenly deciding to stick a hidden track on the upcoming CD. It will actually work out well, since the song is pretty upbeat and pop, and the way the CD ends (very darkly) it’ll be a nice counterpoint.

Saturday night I head down to the Hard Rock where weaklazyliar are playing. Hop up on stage to do backing vocals for them on “Snow.” They played a great set, given the weird acoustics of the place from the stage they give no sign that it affects them at all. A really strong set, and they seem to be getting much stronger overall. I love watching that. Gentle Readers played next, and played a number of songs I hadn’t heard them do before. Talked with them after the show and they want me to open for them at Eddie’s on Dec 20 (which I agreed to immediately, even though I have a show there 3 days later, but I don’t care and neither did they). Chances are I’ll do a song with them (they’re playing in their seventies cover band incarnation the Susi French Connection) during their set.

I thought that was the end of the weekend, and planned on writing this Sunday night, but Sunday morning I get a call from Rob asking me if I can stop by the studio later that day to track some backing vocals for Lithp. I end up going there around 8pm, Josh is recording a Christmas song and I do some high backing vocals and some hand claps.

Twice this weekend I have referred to myself as a “vocal whore.” I really would love to be able to supplement myself by doing vocals for people, it’s something I enjoy and I seem to be relatively good at it (quick, if nothing else). I just have no idea how you go about doing that kind of work, short of what I’m doing now, which is that I’ve been around Rob long enough that he knows me and brings me in when it comes up, and that I meet other bands and let them know that I’d be happy to work with them if they ever need it.

Anyway, there’s my busy (musically speaking) weekend. I can’t say I’ve had one like that in a long time, if ever.

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2 Oct: studio

KING SHAM
me – vocals
Rob – guitar, bass
John Cerreta – organ
Pete McDade – drums

It’s October 2, 2001. I began this whole process on October 29, 2000.

It does bother me. Objectively I know it’s not as if I’ve actually spent a year on it… even apart from the lack of recording between April and September when we have been in studio it really only amounts to one or two days in a week, punctuated by a couple of weeks off. Hopefully, I’m going to be able to give him a lump sum within the month, and we’ll set aside a block of time to wrap it up. I can’t say enough about Rob and the fact that he has been so willing to work with me on doing this, given the frequency with which he’s actually getting paid by me.

All that said, we began work on song #7 of 11 last night. Pete came in last week and laid down the drum tracks. Last night with a scratch guitar track and the bass already done I did the vocals. One take with a couple of punch-ins, and then doubling it. I could already hear the backing vocals, which is always reassuring. There’s nothing worse than not hearing anything, like staring at empty paper with a deadline looming. Then Rob and John did the intro to the song, a kind of warbley (I love trying to type a word like that… like “wonky”) guitar and organ bit.

Basically things went really easily. I wasn’t absolutely crazy about the song, and I hardly ever play it acoustic. But when we rehearsed the band a couple of weeks ago I brought it out and the version we hashed out sounded great (and I had sort of known that it really was a band song). When I was doing the vocals last night the song wasn’t grabbing me much, I was thinking it might end up being a weak point, but as things fell into place it really started to sound great.

It’s hard at times to keep myself excited about the CD, just because the process has taken so long and has had so many long breaks of no activity. The CD is really meant to be a whole entity (what they euphemistically refer to as a “song cycle” instead on “concept” record, sort of like calling a comic book a “graphic novel,” it just serves to make you seem desperate to not sound uncool) so it’s hard to keep a grasp on it with so much time passing between songs. But I am eager to get it done and out, I want to have a SECOND CD… it’s hard to explain. It’s hard to keep saying that what I do during the day isn’t my real “job,” that what I am is a musician, when I look and only see one CD sitting there. I want development.

Don’t get me wrong. I feel good.

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13 Aug: studio

OVERTURE
me – guitar

HITCHCOCK BLONDE
me – guitar

This is the worst point in recording a song for me. I don’t consider myself to be an accomplished guitarist, although I have improved over the past few years, and I can play a song well. I don’t know theory or any of that, I know the names of some chords and the rest I’ve simply stumbled onto and tried to figure out what they were later. On acoustic guitar my hand cramps badly if there are too many barre chords. But I think, in general, I am a dependable guitarist. Recording acoustic tracks usually means doing it a few times for each song, even assuming you nail it the first time, just for double tracking and making a fuller sound. So the process for me can become very painful. Plus, the song at this stage sounds the most bare, usually just the drums and a scratch guitar track and a scratch vocal. So, you don’t get a feeling of accomplishment very often at this point, because even when you’re done the song sounds pretty weak, although you can see the vague shape of what it might become.

Luckily, tracking on these went well, and there aren’t any overdubs for the acoustic on either, so both were one take with a punch-in on one song at the end.

We were all sort of lackluster overall. Rob was tired, I think, and of course there’s me. I will be on Percocet for the entire week because of the kidney stone. Which amuses me to a certain extent, because it means at least part of this CD will have been recorded under the influence of strong depressants. Maybe I should put that on a sticker on the outside.

An added bonus was talk about more rehearsing for the band, so clearly the feeling across the board is that this is a real band and a going concern.