putting myself out there

About 20 years ago I regularly played out as a solo act.  I played at restaurants, coffeehouses, open mics... all as a solo performer.  I had a long list of cover tunes that I knew and a few originals.  I gigged three or four times in an average month.  Then something happened.  Alexis was growing up and showed the promise of being an excellent performer.  We learned a couple of songs together and I took her to a little vegetarian restaurant called Mother Earth to perform with me.  She was in 9th grade.  She sang on about half of the songs and we had a great time.  She was glowing by the end of the evening.  When I gave her half of the tip jar, she looked at me in sheer amazement... "You mean we get paid for this!?!?!?"  I laughed and smiled at her naivete.  She was bitten.

She began to come with me on every gig and before long she was singing the entire night.  A 9th grade class project came up where each student was supposed to pick a profession and do a report.  Alexis chose singer/songwriter and shadowed a friend of mine - Amy Abdou - as she wrote and recorded material.  Alexis and I wrote a couple of tunes together (including Call Down Thunder in the player on the right - the melody and the lyrics were hers) and performed them for her 9th grade class.  We were officially a duo - originally called "d"  and we began performing around the folk circuit in upstate NY and into Massachusetts.  As Alexis became more comfortable on the stage, she took over.  She was clearly the focus and we began to perform as Alexis d.  I sang lead on two or three songs, but she clearly had become the star.  We performed together and wrote material all through her high school years and shared the stage with some great acoustic acts including Patty Larkin, The Nields, and Tony Trischka.  I had transformed from a solo performer to a back up musician.

It was fine with me.  It gave me the chance to stretch out a bit on my guitar parts plus she was a great performer with a wonderful ear for unusual melodies.  It made for music that I felt very good about.  And if something went wrong, there was someone else on stage to help fix things (or to blame).

When we moved to Cali, Alexis came along and we continued to perform for the first year around Santa Barbara and into the LA area a few times.  Then, she went back east to finish her school and Alexis d essentially bit the dust.  She moved on as she should have.

I took a position playing electric guitar in a funk band for a while but discovered I'm too old to be playing bars anymore... then took on the role of acoustic guitar player for a singer/songwriter named Jamie Green.  Together with an amazing drummer/percussionist named Bob Terry, we were a trio.  Jamie is also a great performer and wonderful songwriter, but I was not part of the songwriting.  I was charged with playing guitar parts from her recordings (which weren't always what I would have chosen to play so sometimes I played pretty closely to the recording and other times I made them my own) or coming up with something that worked in the stripped down acoustic trio setting when her recordings were full productions.  I was even more of a sideman during those years but it still felt like a good fit to me.  Last summer, Jamie decided to go in a different direction and with very little notice, I was suddenly no longer a sideman.

I looked for a while to try to find another singer to back up but in spite of running into some great singer/songwriters, none seemed to fit very well for a variety of reasons.

So now I'm struggling with trying to become a solo act again.  I got used to playing some complicated and difficult parts and wrote some music with Alexis that I'm still proud of... but for the life of me, I'm having a difficult time playing those parts and singing her unusual melodies.  But I'm putting myself out there.  This week I did a songwriters circle, played at Songwriters at Play, and met and played for and with a wonderful musician named Randall Williams.  Frankly, in each setting I screwed up some of the vocals and played my share of clams on the guitar while trying to sing.  Still it was fun and terrifying and I'm inspired to do more and to try to write some new tunes all by myself.  I'm excited about putting myself out there!

the siren call

Since my late adolescence there has been this siren call that my music has had for me. During college, it was very strong and I was very close to making music my career. I majored in music and spent a lot of weekends traveling and performing in churches and coffeehouses. Still, it felt untenable as a way to actually live and I followed the other call and headed off to seminary. Then in seminary, the call re-asserted itself and I toyed with following a path as a "Christian" musician. After two years as an intern in a local church, I worked for one year with Come Alive Ministries, doing a syndicated radio show with Cheryl and traveling and performing in churches. I had some wonderful times and some that were anything but and it became clear that actually making a living doing music in churches was more difficult than I wanted to tackle. I decided to follow the call to the pastorate and, for the most part through the years, have felt that was the right decision.

I have continued to perform in a variety of settings through the years, playing in bar bands, as a solo singer/songwriter, in duos and trios and as a sideman. I also was on the board for the Eighth Step and now book a small concert series in Goleta. The tension has always been to find a way to make music that is meaningful and fits into the space allowed by the demands of family and job. At various times that has been easier and more rewarding than others.

I'm feeling a strong call again and trying to figure out how to make it all fit. I continue to play guitar for Jamie Green, although Jamie struggles with the same issues and is spending a significant part of her musical time with another project called Soul Aviv so we don't perform all that regularly. Alexis will be staying with us for a few months while her husband does a training program in New Jersey so we'll be performing once or twice, doing some of our material from the Alexis d days (one of the most satisfying musical times for me - you can hear it in the player on the right). Still, it feels like I need something more. I'm trying to take on a few more guitar students and to find a few more opportunities as a sideman on either guitar or bass but so far there hasn't been a lot of bites for either.

A couple of pieces have pushed me to think more about the solo singer/songwriter direction - a direction that is the most difficult, the most work, and perhaps has the most opportunity for reward. This past Sunday, my friend, Bob Terry played drums for us at church and we were talking afterward. Bob essentially said, "it's all about the music, making good music that feeds your soul." He was right. Then, I read a blog from an acquaintance, Fernando Gros, who seems at times to struggle with the same kinds of questions that I wrestle with... (although he answers them better). Fernando had two recent posts - here on the music biz, and here on putting together his new studio. Together with the discussion with Bob and my internal stuff, it has all been pushing me to get my butt in gear and start making more of my music and to do the work to get that happening.

So I'm writing this post as a way of making myself more accountable... and I'm hoping that every now and then some of you out there will say, "Hey Roy, have you written any music lately?" or "How is the plan for your little studio moving along?" or "Any solo gigs coming up?" I'm still looking for a few more students and I'd love to have a few gigs as a sideman on bass or guitar but... maybe with a little push, I'll answer the siren call in a way that both fits my life and makes some good music that is truly mine.

cut capos - duh!

I've been playing with cut capos since they were really cut capos. Here's the concept... a capo is a little clamp that goes across the strings of a guitar - like an extra finger - normally used to change the key of a song to fit a voice or to make certain chords easier to play. A normal capo goes all the way across the fingerboard so the relationships between the open strings stay consistent with whatever tuning you're using. A cut capo is just what it sounds like - you take a hack saw and an art knife to a normal capo and suddenly it only pushes down on selected strings instead of all six, changing the intervals between open strings. The first ones that people made covered three of the interior strings creating an Esus4 chord when the strings were played open or one that just leaves one string uncovered for the equivalent of a drop D, two frets higher. Fingerings remain the same. So, you get an interesting hybrid between the normal tuning of a guitar and an open tuning which allows you to do some things impossible in either of the other situations.

If you look at the photo, the capo on the right is an actual cut capo. It began life as a normal Kyser capo and I cut it to cover three strings only... probably did that one in the early 90's. Since then, they've found more widespread use and a number of companies sell them already configured. The capo on the right is a Shubb partial that does the Esus4 thing and is available in many music stores. The Kyser version of the Esus4 is called the Short Cut. Both also market a version that covers 5 strings. Kyser even markets a series in 4 different configurations with a lever that makes it easier to play the strings that pass under the capo.

So, I've been using cut capos for a number of years. If you go to the player on the right, you can hear some - Call Down Thunder and Beautiful Day have one cut capo. Heartbeat has two cut capos. With Jamie Green, I use a whole capo and a cut capo with a lever on Like to Be with You which I play very differently than the player did on her CD. So... I've been using them a long time, but I stopped experimenting a long time ago too. I've been taking them for granted and haven't pushed them nearly as far as I could.

A few weeks ago I saw that my friend Greg Newlon was giving a seminar on using cut capos in the Bay area... got me thinking about them a bit... Then I was surfing around the other day and ended up at Harvey Reid's site. He is a big proponent of using partial capos and has been doing so since the 80's. Looking at his site, I realized how much more I could do with partial capos than I have been doing. So I dumped all of my capos on the bed (and there are a lot of them in various configurations) and started playing around. He has a book called Capo Voodoo that I ordered, hoping it might inspire me a bit (which it has). So I'm working at using them more and more of them. I'll likely buy a few more in different configurations or maybe cut a few more...

Here's a video of a guy named Trace Bundy playing a song called Hot Capo Stew with 5 capos on his guitar - 4 cut ones and a whole one. Notice how sometimes he plays between and behind the capos...



So if you're a guitar player, they do open up some new and interesting possibilities for chord voicings that aren't possible in any other way. I'll be working more with mine. Who knows, maybe I'll follow Greg's lead and offer a workshop in the Santa Barbara area. Let me know if you'd be interested.

songcraft

I play guitar with a wonderful singer songwriter named Jamie Green who has entered one of her songs in a contest to perform at one of the Lilith Fair venues. The contest is set up in a neat way, 4 songs come up at a time and you order them from best to worst then the program uses some algorithm to rate the songs. You have to listen to at least 15 seconds of each of the songs in order to judge them.

To participate in the judging, go to Ourstage, click on "judge," choose the "Lilith Fair channels," and pick the city you want to judge (Jamie is in the San Francisco, LA, San Diego competition).

It is addicting and I have listened to snippets from well over 200 of the entries and I've been thinking a bit about songwriting. There are some great songs and great performances (Jamie's included) in the contest and some real bad stuff and it has led me to think about pop songs. There is an old saying among pop songwriters that goes something like - "Don't be a shnook, get to the hook. Please don't bore us, get to the chorus." In well over 1/3rd of the songs I have heard, nothing at all has happened in those 15 seconds. So I listen to the first 30 seconds and if nothing has hooked me, I go on to the next tune, knowing that I may have missed out on something wonderful, but why waste the time? If I listened to more of the songs, I might never get to the one that really is amazing. So, I skip ahead if that first 30 seconds doesn't catch my attention. There is wisdom in that silly saying.

I also have found that there are a lot of songs that sound very similar and a lot of artists who sound alike. Some are better than others, but there is a generic quality to many of them that gets tiring quickly. Then there are the ones that are trying very hard to be different. And some are... most not in a good way. There is a reason why the verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus out, works. When it is well done with material that is interesting and relevant, it has a way of getting past our defenses very quickly. Add a good production and a good performance and you have a great pop song that sticks with us. It may not be great art that will last for generations, but it speaks with an authentic voice and touches our hearts.

So, head over to ourstage, judge some tunes and see if you find a new favorite artist... and if Jamie pops up in one of your quartets, be sure to place her at the top of the heap.

Tomorrow's gig

I don't post a lot about my gigs... I'm not sure why. So this week I am. Tomorrow (Friday Nov. 21), I have a gig at Cold Spring Tavern, an historic - well as historic as California gets, stage coach stop built in the 1860's, nestled in the Santa Ynez mountains just above Santa Barbara. The food is great, the atmosphere in the restaurant is romantic and in the bar, funky. It is a fun place to visit and a great place to hear music.

I'm playing with the amazing Jamie Green and groovemaster, Bob Terry on cajon.

We'll be doing an acoustic set but we'll be trying something new as well - adding a few tracks from some of Jamie's recordings. While this is a bit constraining, you have to play with the track and can't add any measures, slow down, speed up, or take any lierties no matter how right it feels at the moment. On the other hand, it will free me a lot. Most of the time, there is just Jamie's voice, my guitar, and Bob's cajon. I have to fill a lot of sonic space. With the other tracks there, there is more room for me to play other stuff... so it is a trade-off.

I am going to get to play a little electric guitar which I haven't done with Jamie before and I'm really looking forward to that. You see, electric guitars actually fill up less sonic space than acoustic guitars so it would be virtually impossible for things to sound full with an electric guitar, cajon, and voice...

If you're in the Santa Barbara area, stop by to hear the music between 7 & 10. Come early and have a meal in the restaurant and have a beautiful evening. Hope to see you.

West Beach

We didn't make the cut... but thanks to everyone who voted for Jamie. Next time!!!

Help!

Dear readers, as you all know, I play guitar with Jamie Green, an amazing singer songwriter here in Santa Barbara. Well, the local independent paper, called amazingly enough, The Independent, is sponsoring a music festival on the beach in September with Ziggy Marly, Natasha Bedingfield, and Big Head Todd and the Monsters. A local act will play the main stage.

The contest for the main stage begins with a popular vote. The artists who can generate the most votes TODAY get to play a preliminary show where the act for the main stage will be chosen. Will you all please go to this site, scroll down and choose Jamie Green and vote for us? You must vote for three artists. You can vote as many times as you like today to help us make the first cut. The artists are in alphabetical order so scroll down to Jamie's name and click her along with two others (maybe my friends Fingersmyth, Andrew Jackson, The Hoagland Conspiracy, or Rob Raede or anyone else at random), and then be sure to scroll to the bottom to click on the cast your vote link.
Thanks.

Gig this weekend

This Sunday, June 22, 2:30-4:30 I have a gig at the Stearns Wharf Vintners Tasting Room on the wharf in Santa Barbara... and it's free!

I'll be playing with Jamie Green and Zak the Red on bass, plus Michele Moreno and Ali Handal (two wonderful singer/songwriters from LA) will be adding additional vocals. Stop by, watch the boats go by, enjoy a cool breeze off the ocean, drink some great wine, nibble on some cheese, and most of all, listen to some great music.

updates

it feels like I've been neglecting my blog recently... life has been crazy.

the deal on the condo in Buellton fell through so we're looking around to see what we might be able to find. We've looked at some places in Santa Barbara and Goleta and were very discouraged. Our price range really didn't purchase very much. Today we saw some units in Carpinteria (a little coastal town about 15 miles east of Santa Barbara) and saw some places that we really liked. They cost considerably more than in Buellton but the distance is much less and you're right on the ocean. The real down side is that the highway to Santa Barbara is often very congested in that direction and they are going to be working on it for about the next 5 years... making it worse.


Alexis received her masters degree from UCSB in Global and International Studies. Her interest has been the role of interfaith relationships in forming a civil society. Congratulations Alexis!

My GAS seems to have found a cure... I have agreed to purchase a Kenny Hill Crossover. Kenny Hill is a builder of high end classical guitars who also contracts with some small shops in Paracho, Mexico and in China to build guitars according to his designs. The crossover I'll be getting is from one of these small shops (I'm not sure where at this point). Most of the hybrid designs come from companies who specialize in steel strings and try their hand at a hybrid design so they can sell a nylon string to their loyal fans. For example, Taylor currently has a number of hybrid guitars and Martin has discontinued their design. The Hill company is coming from the other direction. They know how to build nylon string guitars and have designed one that is easier for steel string players to play. Theoretically, they do a better job of getting the guitar to sound like a real classical is supposed to sound. The word on the web is that the Hills do just that and sound amazing. It should arrive late next week. I'll write more about it then.

In the meantime, I've sold an amplifier and have an electric guitar for sale on e-bay and a violin on craigslist.

Saturday, my friend Jamie had a significant birthday and she had a great party... except I bit into a piece of a baguette smothered in a wonderful tapenade... and broke a tooth on a piece of olive pit. So, I'm off to see the dentist on Weds. It was still a great party with wonderful friends, great food, and fantastic music. Happy b'day Jamie!

gigs

I've been playing with Jamie Green for a while now. She is a great songwriter and a wonderful performer and I've had a lot of fun working with her.


Recently, we've added a percussionist named Bob Terry. Bob has played with folk like Eddie Money, John Mellencamp, and Wang Chung and is one of those wonderful drummers who can lay down a groove that moves your very soul.

The next steps are a bass player and maybe a keyboard player.

In the meantime, we have two gigs this weekend...

Saturday, April 5th, 2008
@ Border's Books
2-4pm
900 State St. (Outdoors)
Santa Barbara CA
Price: Free

Sunday, April 6th, 2008
@ Stearn's Wharf Vintners Tasting Room
2:30 - 4:30
Stearn's Wharf - Outdoor Patio
Santa Barbara CA
Price: Free

If you're in beautiful Santa Barbara, stop by and have a listen and be sure to say "hi!"

gigs!

Some of you know that I had a very frustrating time trying to put together a funk project with my good friend (and amazing vocalist) Stephanie - working title The Broken Hipsters. We found a great bass player in Johno Dunn and had problem after problem finding a drummer. It began to feel as if they were exploding like in Spinal Tap! Every time we found a good drummer something would go wrong. Finally we found one and it felt as if things were finally going to work. Then we tried to find a keyboard player and had more difficulties. Then the drummer quit the project and we were back to square one. We found another drummer who was very good and clicked extremely well with Johno and then other personal issues got in the way and I tore the tendon in my finger. Needless to say, the project never got off the ground in spite of showing lots of promise.


Just as the Hipsters were disintegrating completely, a great drummer friend of mine, Mike Golden, called me. He had met a singer/songwriter named Jamie Green who had recently moved to Santa Barbara from LA and was looking for an acoustic guitar player. I had been playing mostly electric for a while but Mike was so enthusiastic I thought I should make a contact. We connected and things clicked nicely.

It has been an interesting experience. Jamie is extremely professional and knows exactly what she wants. She played with the same guitar player in LA for about 5 years so it has been an adjustment for her to deal with a new player.

All of this is to say that we have three gigs scheduled over the coming days:

Friday July 13, 6-8 at Borders Books in Goleta, California
Sunday, July 15, 4-6, Northstar Coffeehouse, 918 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA
Saturday July 28, 8, Northstar Coffeehouse, opening for John Cragie.

If you're in the area, stop by and give a listen. If not, check out Jamie's music at the link above.

music

A few months ago I blogged about one of the joys of being a musician... I get to meet some wonderful, talented folk, and sometimes get to perform with them. It is a mystical experience when it works.


Last night I met with a wonderful singer/songwriter named Jamie Green who has recently moved to Santa Barbara and is looking for a guitar player. (Thanks Mike for connecting us!) So I'm going to learn some of her tunes and we'll see whether it works. Hopefully, I'll be performing with her sometime soon. I'm excited about the possibilities... and at the very least, I will have made a new friend.

In the meantime, do go and listen to some of her songs and then purchase a CD or two. Wonderful music!