Tour Blog 3.0

I left Chicago on Wednesday afternoon and had the day off before my Thursday show at Frankies in Toledo. I was pretty excited about this gig as I knew that I could expect a good turnout due to the success of the ticket pre-sale. I spent my first two years of undergraduate education at nearby BGSU and had recently seen a lot of my friends from the BGMC at a 4th of July party so I knew that many of them would be around for the show. Truth be told, this was one of the most fun (if not the most fun) shows that I've ever played. Pretty much everyone in the room was my friend or acquantance (JC flew in from LA for the show) and I played for an hour and a half. I've never been heckled by friends before, but it made for a good time. I even had some people singing along, and harmonies at that! The people at the club were quite pleased too and I think it's pretty much a given that I'll be back in Toledo soon.

That leaves us with one last show...the Berkley Front. I was asked to play this show by my friends the Wednesdees and I was the first of three acts. I played to a room largley full of strangers (which is a good thing) and was well received. I forced my friend Ryan Morgan to come on stage with me to sing harmonies on a couple of songs ("Stuck In a Rut" and Radiohead's "No Surprises") and they sounded pretty damn good if I do say so myself...especially considering that we worked them up about 5 minutes before I went on. I also tried out a new percussive strategy during this show that I think I'd like to make a regular part of my performance. Though it's not a particularly ground-breaking idea, I put a tambourine on the ground and stomped on it for some added effect and rhythmic support. This is definitely something I'd like to keep up (because it sounded cool) and may try to alter it in some way by adding a kick drummy thing or something. I don't know...I guess you'll just have to come see me play to find out.

So, there you have it. My three-part-though-it-could-have-been-done-in-one-long-part overdue tour blog. I hope it was informative and gave you some interesting insight into my trip back to the Midwest. If not, I apologize and I'll try better next time. Until then I must bid you adieu.

Thanks so much for coming to any number of the shows. It is very much appreciated and I hope to see you soon.

Aloha means goodbye.

Tour Blog 2.0

Alright, where were we?

Ah yes...the Windy City.

I got to Chicago on Saturday night just in time for dinner at my friends' house-warming party. They live in this great new condo somewhere on the north side of the city (I know next to nothing about the anatomy of Chicago). They've got a rooftop patio type area that came in handy later in the evening. Songs may or may not have been played and a sing-a-long probably ensued. It was fun.

Sunday was a lazy day. On Monday I got to go to the Art Institute of Chicago where I finally saw some Magritte's live and in person. I also saw some really great Japanese pieces, but unfortunately they weren't showing the Hokusai wave that I love so much. They have an extensive collection that is enjoyable even if you don't know shit about art (which is a category that I pretty much fit into). Lots of the big famous names (i.e. Monet, Manet, Picasso, Van Gogh, etc.). What's nice about it for non-art people is that there's a lot of stuff there that you'll recognize whether you're an art enthusiast or not...so it makes it fun.

This all leads us to the reason that I'm writing any of this and was in Chicago in the first place, my show at Uncommon Ground on Tuesday (July 10 for those of you keeping score). I had been trying for about 2.63 months to get a gig in Chicago and had accepted the fact that it wasn't gonna happen this time around when I checked my email after the Cafe Classics show to find one from UG inviting me to play there on the 10th. The place is pretty much a three room restaurant/cafe with one of the rooms being the Music Room. It's a cool place with nice people, good sound, good looking and smelling food (I can't vouch for the taste at this time) and is very artist friendly.

I played the show with this cat named Gordon Wright who I thought was really good and is worth checking out. He played with a keyboard player who was pretty great and really helped fill out the sound. The keyboardist also played accordion on one song which pretty much makes him 100% awesome in my book. It was neat.

After Gordon did his thing I went on and was surprised at the amount of people in the room. Friends and friends of friends started coming out of the woodwork towards the end of Gordon's set and gave this show a good turnout. I played for about 45 minutes mixing the old with the new. The smallness of the room and proximity of the audience made the show seem quite intimate and I feel like the performance went well.

UG makes a CD of every performance and gives it to the musician/band at the end of the night, so the whole show was documented on "tape". I'd like to go through the CD (read: have Nels go through the CD) and clean it up a bit if possible to see if we can get something manageable out of it. If I feel comfortable with the way is sounds I'll probably make it available one way or another. Either on myspace, my website, both...something, so keep an eye out.

So, to sum up, Chicago was fun and the show went well. I can't wait to go back and hopefully I'll have a booking there late this fall.

To be continued..........

Tour Blog 1.0

After nearly two and a half weeks in the Midwest (Michigan mostly) I'm back in the Golden State wishing that I had more gigs booked somewhere...anywhere. Thanks so much to all of you who were able to make it out to one of the shows. I had a fantastic time and the tour was a great experience...and a learning one.

On Saturday June 30 I kicked off my shows back East the easy way, in a cafe in my hometown. I was pleased with the turn out (the place was packed!) and it was great to see so many familiar faces in the crowd. Jacob Longton started the show with a solo acoustic set and sounded great. I was very lucky to have Brian Brodie play bass on 6 songs during my performance. I was in a band with Brodie for years and he recorded and mixed Trouble and Debris so it was really special to perform with him again.

After the Cafe Classics show I had a two day break before heading to Southgate, MI to play at the Modern Exchange. This place is pretty interesting. Back in my day it was a sort of thrift / costume store called Penny Pinchers. Now-a-days the front room is a vintage clothing/used record (as in the kind you play with a needle) store and the back warehouse-ish room where they kept the costumes is now a cafe/concert venue. It's actually a pretty cool spot. There are quite a few comfy couches in the concert hall and the stage is pretty large. There's also a band lounge area above the stage that gives you a really cool bird's eye view of the performance. So the place was cool, as for the concert ............. I was the second of four acts to perform that night. The act that preceded me was a high school duo who were extremely confused as to what type of a band they were. They were mostly punk rockish, however they also tried to do a bit of outlaw country complete with theatrics. So, as I'm sure you can guess, their fans really took to my introspective acoustic ballads as we were so similar. As the night wore on, however it became evident that the duo was actually the odd man out (odd men out?) and the other two bands were sort of similar to me. Band number three was acoustic based and sort of funky (like a Dave Matthews feel) and band number four was female led acoustic based roots rock. Actually, band number four sounded really great and it was a damn shame that there were only 2 people in the room (3 if you count me) whilst they rocked it out.

That brings us back to Monroe for an auto show that my friend DJ put on for the Downtown Monroe Business Network. These gigs are kind of weird because you're just background music (albeit loud background music) for the car enthusiasts. This fact, however, did not deter a small crowd from congregating in front of me during my performance (so what if the crowd was family and my mother's friends? Don't judge me. I'm a hit with the Baby Boomer Generation). It was a fun show because (a) I knew all of the people in front of me who were actually paying attention to the performance, (b) I got to play a bunch of covers, which is usually a good time and (c) I'm awesome.

To be continued...............