I played another one of Gilles Larrain and his wife Louda’s incredibly awesome Art Salon Parties Thursday night (photos coming soon!) It was a pretty calm one due to the rotten weather but I tend to prefer less crowded environments like that vs. congested rooms where you have to suck in and walk sideways to get to the line for the bathroom and scream while cupping your mouth to have a conversation. We saw a lot of familiar (or “fermiliar” as some like to say) faces and met some really cool, interesting new goofballs to hang out with. That’s what it’s all about.
When I’m part of a bill of 2 or 3 other performers I’m usually not too picky about what slot I play – I’m just happy to be playing. One thing I forgot about with gigging until about 2 hours into my sangria buzz at the party is when I go on last, it’s a wise idea to pace the recreational alcohol-infused thirst quenching. I get a little, how do you say, involved when playing my guitar and need to be at least slightly more thinky than drinky when I play. Aside from a beer or two I usually don’t like to drink much before playing. Here’s the thing with the Art Salon Parties though: Once you set foot in that studio bottomless cups of various wines and Gilles’ bitchin’ homemade sangria await you. I like my drinks strong and let me tell you, a few good swigs of that sangria will have you blurred enough to start thinking things like “Did I just think that or did I say it out loud?” It’s seriously good stuff. When I’m hanging out there and have 3 hours to kill before I play? Well duuuuh, of course I have no choice but to partake in some guzzling. What am I gonna do, drink water for 3 hours? Eew. Grody to the max.
Both Mark Safan and Sophia Urista played phenomenal sets and then it was my turn. I dialed back on the sangria a half hour prior and was relieved after plugging in my guitar, amp, and pedal to notice that it was all done effortlessly and CORRECTLY. It’s only happened maybe once or twice but when I have 1 cocktail too many and do stupid shit like sending inputs to outputs or forgetting to zero my amp volume before turning it on, then Houston? We have a problem. Once my rig was all set up and I was in that silver chair with my guitar I knew I was in pretty good shape. PRETTY good.
All week long I dared myself to play one of my hardest tunes (Clusterfug) right out of the starting gate, so I did. There were a few times where the carriage (my brain) got ahead of the horse (my fingers) but I was happy enough with how it turned out. It’s just nice to make it to the end of that one without any major trains derailing. A minute into my second tune I started going into a spellbinding Hey wait, am I buzzed or am I sober? spiral which essentially means Yeah, you’re probably buzzed. Not all that buzzed though because I managed to keep things on track for the most part. As cheesy
Hi, we've died a lot!
as it sounds playing those tunes is a truly bizarre out of body thing. I start playing and 10 seconds into the song it’s SEE YA. Bubbye. It’s very similar to the scenes in movies where somebody dies in the street and their ghost hovers high above watching people gather and paramedics do their thing. Thankfully in my case I’m not dead or in the street or watching paramedics do their thing to my former body. That’s about as far as you can get from playing guitar, maybe unless you’re in Mötley Crüe. Throwing Gilles’ gratifying high octane sangria into the mix certainly made getting through my set quite the entertaining little tightrope walk indeed.
I never know who is watching or listening. I heard some background chit-chat and started playing louder and faster to stay focused and remain afloat. About halfway through my set while I was deep in the throes of my “hovering ghost of dead guy” state of mind I felt a presence walk up and stand next to me for a minute or two. I instantly thought Shit… whoever this is has come to tell me to turn it down. One of the curses that comes with playing solo instrumental guitar is occasionally someone who doesn’t know any better will walk up to you even while you’re in the middle of playing and ask you to turn down so that they can have an easier time going about their conversation across the room. Either that or you get someone who asks if you can play any songs that they know. That’s always so awesome when that happens. I am not an iPod.
I continued playing and out of the corner of my eye saw it was Gilles standing there next to me. Okay, I thought. Something must be bugging him… I toadilly respect this dude. It’s his place, his party, and I’ll happily turn down… I let up on my strings a little to cut down on volume and shaved about a minute or so off of the tune. Instead of where I’d usually repeat phrases 4 times I cut some down to 1 or 2. When I finished he asked to see my fingernails on my picking hand (STRING picking, not nose picking). A wave of surprise and immense relief washed over me. He wasn’t standing there waiting for me to stop so he could ask me to turn down as I’d thought – he just wanted a better view of what I was doing. In addition to his amazing photography and potent sangria formula Gilles is also a phenomenal Flamenco guitarist. We compared fingernail lengths and he gave my playing the ultimate compliment: “That’s some good shit!” Woah. The guy who has taken renowned photos of Miles, Sting, John Lennon, and a billion other people who are beyond human to me is standing there diggin’ on music I created and was playing? Knock me over with a galldamned feather. It’s such a blast to connect with people like that through music, be it theirs or mine.
Awe-inspiring little exclamation point moments in time like that are few and far between but exactly why the move to New York needed to happen. My acoustic guitar barely saw the light of day the last few years we lived in MN and I not only stopped writing on it but actually forgot how to play half of my existing songs. I kind of felt like Marty McFly watching himself disappear in the photo at the end of Back To The Future. After we signed the lease for the place in Brooklyn I predicted I’d get the music ball officially rolling 2 years into living here. So far it feels like things are on schedule. I don’t necessarily know what in the Hell that schedule is or what the rest of it entails but that’s kind of the way I like it. How my tunes are perceived by whoever happens to be around when I’m playing them always seems to determine what happens next and the only control I really have over that is showing up to play.
Now I just have to keep on playing and focus on writing more and shortening the time lapses between those exclamation points. That and maybe find a job that will pay me hundreds of millions of dollars to sit around and drink coffee and write guitar music all day. If anyone hears of anything like that please let me know. My resume is all ready to pass on. It’s the same shape of a business card and looks like this:
Oopsies. Wrong side. It looks like this:
