Tag: Shows

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14 Sep: Atlanta

14 September – 10 High (Atlanta, GA)
CD Release Party

I have always believed, since the days of my old band, that for your CD release party what matters most is not the location but having control of the evening. I have gone to too many CD release parties that were at nice clubs on a Wednesday night, sandwiched between two bands who, not only are unaware the night means anything to anyone in particular, but also bear little to no resemblance to the band in question musically. In other words, it’s just another Wednesday night show to everyone else, and then the band in question wonders why they feel let down afterward. It’s a party, goddammit. You just spent months (or in some hypothetical cases we won’t mention here, years) making this thing, you’re supposed to be celebrating. Go with whatever club will let you do whatever you want on whatever night you want.

I have been lucky enough to have had two CD release parties prior to this, both of them were very crowded. Both of them were at less than savory clubs. But they were also both on a Saturday, and both were full of bands and people I loved. This time I got luckier still and managed to have all of that at the club I would have chosen.

Oh, I stressed beforehand, believe me. Though these things have drawn well before, I never believe that to be any indication that it will happen again, and so I was nervous about turnout for the show in a way I haven’t been in a while now. I really had no way of knowing if people were going to make it out.

The day was overcast and wet, perfect for the mood of the CD. I should have known.

All three bands were outside waiting for load-in, we all chatted. It felt good, I always love playing with other bands I know, since that eliminates one variable, the one of “band-with-attitude.” We loaded in, set up. Sound checked, it went well. Daemon was throwing a pre-show party starting at 8pm for the press and such. Around 8:45 or so we got up and played three songs for the glitterati. Jeff Clark, who some of you may recall is the person who banned me from his magazine at one time, not only mentioned me recently in glowing terms but came out for the little pre-show party. They cheered, it was a decent sized crowd of people, a bit more than I had expected for that part of the show.

Afterwards I felt great. I came to the conclusion that I should do a pre-show show before every show. It completely eliminates the usual antsy feeling I get, wanting things to get moving, wanting to go ahead and play. Beforehand I kept telling people I was really looking forward to being on the other side of the show, I just wanted it to already have happened and have been a success so I could just get on with basking. But after playing a few songs it was sort of like that mood got expelled, and I was able to be at the show and enjoy it waiting for my turn to play the regular set.

The Ether Family Presents… went on first. I have gone on about them at length before. So, all I really want to add is that this was the first time I have ever seen them live. The lights went down, the background music went off, and they struck the first chord. I remember being stunned, just by the first chord. I don’t know what I had expected, but it was so full I was completely caught off guard. They were amazing, and it’s a damn shame they haven’t played out more often. When they started playing the crowd was already huge. The club was packed, and I experienced mocking at the hands of people who had to suffer through my worrying beforehand. The crowd stood up against the stage and filled the entire room, and a lot of them were singing along, something that threw Jimmy at one point.

By the time weaklazyliar went on it was as crowded as I have ever seen the place. I have gone on about them at length before. So for them suffice to say that, this was their first show with a new drummer. I know they were stressed about it. And it was amazing. It was different from when Joe played, it had to be. But it was just as incredible. They were ON. And again, the crowd up front was singing along. Between songs Gerlinda would get a silly sort of smirk on her face, like she just didn’t think these people should be so satisfied.

For nothing else, I am glad that I could freak out bands I love by having them play a show with such a huge, appreciative crowd. If there’s one time I can take credit for something like that, I would like to think this is the time.

Then we took the stage. There was a moment, before I started, when I just said, “hey, I’m Paul Melancon.” And everyone cheered. And cheered. And cheered.

I couldn’t speak.

Curtis was running sound and lights (he’s in a band called the Bibles, who also kick ass), and, like the club, is the person I would have chosen all along to do so. We opened with “Hey, California,” me playing acoustic alone up until the very end of the song when the band kicks in. Curtis just had a spot on me until they came in, and it felt like a moment of rock concert high-cheese in a way, and it was great, to be honest. We ran through the set, I babbled incessantly (knowing we weren’t going to fill up the amount of time the club normally likes). The crowd was packed, and singing along. There was a moment at the beginning of “Slumberland” where I nearly stopped singing because so many people were singing the words in front of me. Just to hear it. But I didn’t. I played a melodica solo on “Sherman.” The crowd was so loud after every song, it was just unbelievable.

At the end we finished the set with “Hitchcock Blonde.” I can’t say enough things about the people who agreed to back me for these shows. Rob Gal, John Cerreta, David Henderson, Pete McDade, and Lee Cuthbert are all amazing musicians and they honestly make me sound much better than I would otherwise. I am extremely lucky to have had them there.

They left the stage, and the final phase began. When I realized that I wouldn’t have much opportunity to rehearse with the band before the show, I tried to figure out something special to do after our set. Over email Jimmy (from the Ethers) and I decided to slap together some covers. They were all suggested by him, lovingly endorsed by me. The closest we came to rehearsing was all of us having copies of the originals and Jimmy sending out mp3s of him playing them by himself. We knew it would be messy but hoped it would be fun.

We started with “Turn to Stone” by ELO. Chris (from the Ethers) and David played, too. Somehow we made it through, and it sounded much better than I had figured. Then it was “Picture Book” by the Kinks. Adam McIntyre hopped up to play bass and David switched to keyboards. Adam drove all the way in from Nashville just to catch the show, so it was great to have one of those rock ‘n’ roll moments of having the visiting musician hop up suddenly to play an impromptu song. He nailed it, better than the rest of us, I think. It was a blast. Then we did “Barbara Ann” by the Beach Boys, David back on the bass. I think I can say we played the song. More than that might be too much. Lastly we did “Let ’em In” by Paul McCartney. By this time I had noticed that Lyle Bufkin had made it to the show (he was playing with Kenny Howes elsewhere that night but had managed to make it over to our show afterwards). So David called him up to play bass and went back to the keyboards. I think I had been most worried about that song and it may be the one we almost nailed. Ryan and I did the horn parts vocally. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

I sold a lot of CDs.
The place was packed all night.
Lauren and Rama at Goodsforyou.com (they designed the CD and the new website) had blown up the cover of the CD onto a giant vinyl poster as a gift. They announced it during weaklazyliar’s set and had the crowd autograph it throughout the rest of the night.
John Brand, who used to be at Daemon and in a band called Belloluna, came up to tell me he loved the CD and thought it was in the top five of CDs the label has ever put out.
So many people came up with congratulations, so many people came out who I haven’t seen in so very long. There are people who came who I only found out they were there afterwards, from other people.
I signed a lot of autographs and felt generally silly about it.

I felt like a rock star. And you guys did it to me.

Every one of you. Bands, fans, friends, I love you all.

Good night.

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28 Aug: Atlanta

28 Aug – San Francisco Coffee (Atlanta, GA)
w/Daniel Lee, Sue Witty

Once again I played the place with no PA, the same place I didn’t really want to play the last time. I entered in with the same mindset this time, but left with vastly different results.

It was good.

Oh, it was silly, and sloppy. But this time it was good.

I was riffing. Sometimes I go into these acoustic shows and I try to put myself in a mindset where I know I shouldn’t overanalyze, I should just play it casually, keep it all in perspective. But it’s rare that once I start I hang onto that motivation. But last night, for some reason, it stayed. We had one mic to share between us, Sue had brought her PA along. I started things off (se and I were doing this in-the-round) and spent the first few minutes just babbling and being a smart-ass. To what seemed to be an appreciative crowd, which just made me worse. From that point my night was pretty much set and I was good. I botched songs. My voice caught. I forgot words. But I played it all off and it was nothing. I stopped mid-song after having played the wrong chord, just to explain to everyone the thought process involved of trying to decide at the last minute which chord it was supposed to be, like one of those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books.

THAT’S how casual it got.

It was good, and everything I want acoustic shows to be. Interaction with the audience, in a way that is conversational, like they just happened to show up at your house while you were playing. Comfortable, little to no pretense.

How I manage that more often I don’t know. But last night I had it, and it felt great. I felt affectionate to the world after it, I couldn’t stop hugging people. I just wanted to make out with the world.

So, that was good.

A night so strange that the following HAD to happen… someone requested an old Radiant City song, someone I don’t know. She had gotten a copy of the benefit CD the song had appeared on, listened to it not knowing who Radiant City was, recognized my voice on it (having seen me play before, solo) and looked to find it was me.

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27 Jul: Los Angeles

27 Jul – The Joint (Los Angeles, CA)
International Pop Overthrow festival
w/the Supers; Walter Clevenger and the Dairy Kings; and a bunch of others and I don’t have the list in front of me

Alright, so, first things first, because most of you will have read reviews elsewhere…

Yes, we got an encore. Yes, this is a rare occurrence at IPO.

And yes, I still managed to be neurotic and suck the life out of it afterwards. This is why people love me.

It took me 15 hours to get to Los Angeles on Friday, flying on stand-by. They confiscated my wire cutters out of my guitar case, though they did allow me, on both flights, to stow the case on the plane rather than check it. I had thought that I’d be getting into LA early on Friday, and so would have some time with some friends of mine, plus some time to see a few IPO shows. But by the time I finally got there it was early evening and I’d be going back to the airport to pick up Chris and his wife in a couple of hours. So it was just a quick dinner, a jaunt to the airport and then off to the hotel to crash.

Saturday we were up early and I took the Chris and Robyn driving to get myself another pair of wire cutters, and then some makeshift touring since they’d never been to LA before. My knowledge being limited itself I’m not sure how good of a tour it was, but I showed them the obvious sites, drove aimlessly for a bit, and visited a place Sarah and I had seen two years ago, a huge Elks Club that had been built in 1925 or so. It’s an amazing little bit of Art Deco that they were restoring into a hotel then and I wanted to see how far along it had come. The scaffolding was gone but they were still working on the upper floors. We could get inside though, and we received an impromptu tour of the first two floors, mainly ballrooms. It’s just as amazing inside as out. It also sits across from McArthur Park, and so I serenaded Robyn with Richard Harris’ finest song (not to her enjoyment) for a bit before we left.

We stopped by The Joint that afternoon, where our show would be that evening, to see the day shows going on. I caught most of John Brodeur’s set, and he was good. I spoke maybe five words to him afterward, one more awkward conversation in my career. I’ve really mastered them, I think. The club was very different from the shows I saw two years previous, which had allowed for a lot more shmoozing in between sets. This club made it virtually impossible, it was small and dark. So, we left pretty much after his set, I wanted to get back and restring the guitar and perform all the pre-show rituals. Plus, I felt out of place. I always come into these things thinking this might be the moment where I feel I’ve connected, where I’ve found the group of musicians where I will feel a part of things. But that never happened, and that marks two IPO festivals. I’m not entirely sure I will try a third.

Anyway.

We got back to the club around 6:30, thinking we’d get extra time to set up and maybe get a level of comfort with the place. The day shows ended at 5pm and there was a two hour break before ours began. But the club was closed until 7pm, so we waited outside, having finally met up with Lyle and Lee (the rest of the band). Once inside we set up quickly and had a very quick sound check. I saw a few people very very briefly before we began. The club was full. IPO shows have a built in crowd, so I hadn’t been very worried about the turnout, but Lee also grew up there and so had a large contingent of people out. Thank you, seriously, each and every one of you.

We started the set. And there’s not much I can tell you. It seemed to go well. I was relatively animated, apparently, which is good. The stage was very small and literally about five feet off the ground (with only a metal ladder to climb up), so it wasn’t a stage that really encouraged you to move a lot. I think, as I recall it, it went a lot better than any of our rehearsals, that extra bit of adrenaline pushing things where they had needed to be. Big cheers, I seem to recall the end of “Jeff Lynne” in particular getting a good response. The amps were provided, and for the life of me I could not shut off the distortion on mine, but did manage to get it to a decent level, so I think it worked. For the first two songs I couldn’t hear my guitar at all, and knew I’d start breaking strings if I didn’t do something. I turned it up after the first and still couldn’t hear, so repeated it after the second, and suddenly it was drowning everything out. None of this was reflected for the crowd mix, from what I understand, which is good. We finished “Hitchcock Blonde” and the crowd cheered. We started to unplug (to run, smiling, from the stage, of course) and David Bash (the organizer and emcee) came up to do his bit, and he asked me if we had another song. We had rehearsed an extra one even though I honestly didn’t believe it would be necessary.

And here is where the neurosis begins.

See, when he came up, he commented on my “fan club” and he asked me if we had one more really quick one. I told him we had another, about three and a half minutes like pretty much everything else. And he said, “oh, okay.” He then started talking on the mic, speaking as if the set was done. I wasn’t sure what he had meant, and we were all looking at each other unsure as to whether we were or weren’t playing another song. I caught his eye and sort of asked, was that a yes or no, and he turned to the mic and asked the crowd if they wanted another. Which was the last thing I had intended, and suddenly I felt like the jerk on stage who had weaseled himself another song. I felt like a complete ass. We played the song (after I cracked my skull on Lee’s guitar) and David came back up, referred again to the “fan club” and told them there was a lot more music coming up that they might enjoy, too.

This is what it’s like to be me.

I have been told repeatedly by others who were there that they didn’t get that sense from what happened at all. David Bash is a sweetheart of a guy, I might add, and has sought me out both times for IPO. So, believe it or not, I KNOW that this is all ME. He was up front, dancing with someone through the whole set. It’s also important to note that I had this same sort of neurotic freakout after the set two years ago. It’s this desire to feel like I’m part of a larger scene, and when it doesn’t come off like I imagine it I pick apart the minutiae until all that’s left is a corpse. So, sometimes even I wish I would just shut up. In the end, it was a great set, but because of my own head, I have to rely on the reports of others to be left with this determination.

David patted me on the back a couple of times as he walked by after the set. I hung out for most of the rest of the show, hanging with most of the above people until they left, and then stayed there alone for a while. I was still wallowing in feeling out of place at the time, but was complimented by a few people. I sold 12 CDs, and that would be 12 more than last time. Some people signed up for the mailing list, including John Borack who writes for Amplifier among other things. Swapped compliments with the Supers (from Toronto) who played a couple of slots after me (and did a really smart cover of “Take On Me” as a country number).

I left and met up with some of the crowd, plus Lee and Lyle, at a restaurant several miles away. Chatted for a bit, and then drove Lyle and Lee back to the club to their car. I walked across the street to get a Mountain Dew and then was waiting to cross the street again when two guys came up to me and called me by name. They had driven up to IPO from Phoenix, had listened to music online to determine who to come see, mine being one of them. They went on and on about how great the show was, and how great my music was. This was hours after I had played, and it was a very strange feeling, standing on the streets of LA in my technicolor suit, being told that these guys can’t get my music out of their “fucking heads.” It didn’t sink in then but has slowly seeped into my consciousness since, and I think may have single-handedly shut down the neurosis and left me feeling as if maybe the show was a success.

Then it was back to the hotel, and after some chatting crashed.

Sunday I spent the day with Scott and Maggie. We had a nice breakfast and then they humored me in my pilgrimage to the Museum of Jurassic Technology, a place that I can only describe as a Borges story brought to life. I could spend the entire day there, not just for the exhibits but for the skill in presenting them, the place is magical for me, and that’s not a word I would throw around lightly. We stopped by a bookstore and I got a copy of the new McSweeney’s (which, when I finally opened it today, turned out to be missing the accompanying TMBG CD, so I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to rectify that), and then we went and got excellent Italian food.

Back to the hotel, slept. Went to airport Monday morning. They forced me to check my guitar this time, despite my protest that they didn’t on the way out (“well, you should have left it at home”). Bumped from flight. Took flight to Salt Lake in hopes of connecting to Atlanta from there. Bumped from Atlanta flight. No other flight until 11:55pm. Gave up and went to hotel. Paid money I did not have. Went to airport again on Tuesday morning (the first words out of the shuttle driver’s mouth were, “Early enough for ya?” Really. He nearly died). Finally got flight to Atlanta. Came home. Passed out.

Things happened while I was gone. These will be discussed soon. They are good.

I’m tired of typing now.