Bollywood and the Beatles

There have been some interesting things going on out here in sunny LA in terms of music but I may wait to write about em-just to make sure things come about like I think they might. Until I write about those I'll tell you about my two nights in Hollywood. My friend Farrah invited me to a Bollywood/Indian festival in Hollywood where they would be showing the highest budgeted Bollywood movie ever. So Bollywood is pretty much a Hindi film...combining the name Hollywood and Bombay...(which is odd-isn't it Mumbai now? It should be called Mollywood)....anyway- according to Farrah these films are usually much longer than Hollywood movies and has a lot of dancing and singing in it...sometimes very randomly. Outside the theater were small carts and trucks serving Indian food...i had a lamb frankie, which to my knowledge was some sort of a curry and lamb burrito looking thing. There were also two fellas Dj-ing and rapping over tabla type grooves which made for an interesting sound scape as our group made our way into the theater to grab a drink and our seats before the viewing of “Robot!”. At this point I would like to describe the plot but there were so many strange things about it! I guess a scientist creates a robot and can program him to do whatever he wants and learn things beyond what a human could do...and the scientist has a girlfriend, the robot learns human emotions and falls in love with the girl, and there is an evil bad guy that wants the robot for destruction and yada yada yada its the craziest thing I've ever seen! So in the midst of this partially comical terminator-ish plot there are in fact a lot of very random song and dance scenes...like a bizarre music video in the middle of a scene. And the music videos aren't always in the same spot as the original scene from which they decided to start singing and dancing. At one point, after the two main characters reunite after having a long fight there is a song and dance scene in Machu Picchu...with no reference at all of Peru or south America at all...i figure they had such a big budget that they all agreed they should just go travel to a ridiculously random spot on the other side of the world. I can't really blame em though...if someone gave me a bunch of money to go sing and dance somewhere, Machu Picchu would be at the top of my list. And after the song they were magically whisked back to India. Its hard to describe the 4 hour movie but it was definitely a unique viewing experience!
So, I had also been invited to a Beatles tribute band called Rain a few nights later by my friend Svetlanna. It was kindof a last minute decision to go but I am very glad I went! Quite a few years ago my Dad took me to see a Beatles tribute band called 1964 on my birthday in Norman, Oklahoma. They were really good but I remember thinking I wish they had done stuff from their later years. 1964 was pretty much a show of the Ed Sullivan Beatles...and I understand now that performing songs from their later years would be difficult to actually perform live. That's what made Sgt. Peppers and a lot of the other great Beatles albums really unique was they were not written to be played live rather just a piece of work done in the studio...which I think really revolutionized how you could make music etc...(the Beatles are awsome!!!!!) so the show starts with an announcer saying there are no pre-recorded parts...everything is done live. Then a tv screen shows different clips of the music and news reels of that time...Rock around the Clock, JFK being sworn in, Little Richard etc...then news clips of Beatlemania and them landing in America...then the actual reel of Ed Sullivan introducing them-and it starts with the stage set up exactly how the Ed Sullivan theater was set up. It even had the applause sign flashing when they ended a song. The screens on either side of the stage showed the footage of the girls screaming and going nuts which was pretty funny. After a set of the old Beatles songs the curtains came down and they showed an actual full set of commercials from the 60's including Barney and Fred Flintstone taking a Winston smoke break, and two women discussing how to keep their pantyhose from stretching. Then we get the Shea stadium Beatles and some newer songs and wardrobe change with different clips of news reels and beatle interviews along the way. Intermission allowed them to get into their Sgt. Pepper outfits set up a psychedelic stage with fog machines...we get more news clips of Vietnam and moon landing etc...and the show I guess added a Billy Preston character on keyboard to help out with all the strange noises the Beatles throw into the mix of the music. Anyway, it was a really great show! Chronicled their whole music career. My only problem was that the only song they played from the white album was revolution...i guess that's just my favorite Beatles album. It was really really good though! So those are my two stories from Hollywood. Hope everyone out there is doing well! it is tuesday which means i'll be playing some tunes in Venice at the Whaler! I might have to play a Beatles song!

going home

Just back to California after two weeks going to see family in Oklahoma and Texas. Good to see everybody but also good to be back! I feel like its kinda chapter two in LA. Pretty wild first one so we'll see how this next one goes. When I left I picked up two of my managers who live together and took them to breakfast since I was going to be leaving my car in their parking spot. Breakfast consisted of pancakes, eggs, bacon, coffee...and this pretty much started two weeks of good eats! At the Dallas airport a BBQ joint called Dickey's greeted me to Texas-which was nice because California, as far as I can tell, does not have the best BBQ....something with a limited ability to smoke things. Anyway, the rest of the time was full of chicken fried steak, chicken fried venison, t-bones, backstrap venison, tacos, pumpkin bread, poppy seed cake, home made biscuits, waffles...and plenty of gravy. Apparently everyone got my memo to fatten me up when I came home. Well done!
An unexpected highlight in the trip came from a one club golfing venture to the quartz mountains in Altus, Oklahoma. It was the first full day at my grandparents house and my uncle jeff and aunt kay and I were going to be waiting on the rest of the family to come hang out for the weekend. And seeing as the California weather followed me to Oklahoma we thought we'd take advantage with a golf trip....now in the past I have not exactly been an enormous fan of golf. I seem to always end up with an overwhelming desire to throw metal sticks as far as I can into the nearest woods or ponds. I really just went to walk off the pound of pumpkin bread, eggs and sausage that had just been consumed. And like I said it was a great day and its in the mountains...so-count me in! I think I was playing with a borrowed 4 iron from my granddad's golf bag. One club golf is sorta self explanatory...you just take one club, which makes putting and your short game a little more interesting but it does speed up the walking. I think Mark Twain said that “golf is a good walk spoiled” I used to think he meant it made the walk spoiled rotten-like it made a good walk just awful...not spoiled like grandparents spoiling their grand kids. I still don't know which way he meant it but I agree with the later on this particular trip. Needless to say I had a good time! I hit the ball well and I only lost two balls-but in the process of looking for those balls I found three totally different ones...so in my book I shot a -1 YES!! Other highlights were sitting on the front porch on our farm in Nacogdoches, Texas watching a thunderstorm roll in, walking through a soon to be vineyard on the same farm, getting to participate in my dad's wine club, seeing my cousins and cousins kids growing up and especially seeing my new niece! She couldn't crawl yet when I left but was running all through the house and even barking like a dog when she ever saw one or was asked to do so! She's a bit of a ham and would put her whole body into the barks! She could also give a sign for “more” which was funny when I gave her a bite of pumpkin bread....more, more! Don't blame ya Darby! That stuff's good! Well the trip was definitely full of lots of love and laughter, family and friends!! If y'all are reading this I LOVE YOU! Hey, I love you even if you're not reading this!!

Is this two blogs in January? Look out now!...So in a few minutes I'll be trying to attach some video of a girl named Rachel or Rae and myself...when I first met her she said her name was “Rachel...Rae....wait...not Rachel Rae just call me Rae.” Anyway I met her one night at the Whaler in Venice. She was going to be playing right after me but needed to borrow my guitar...of course you can borrow my guitar Rachel Rae! At first I thought it was kinda funny that she didn't look too much bigger than the guitar, then I was hit by the memory of the dude smashing his guitar and hoped that wasn't some LA dirty trick people pulled...but then she started singing and I was kinda blown away by how big of a voice this little girl had. So for a few weeks we would see each other perform at the whaler, but then kind of randomly we ran into each other at the viper room in Hollywood. Actually it wasn't too random-we both independently decided to check out this guy who we both saw play at the whaler the week before. So after the show and hanging out with quite a few other whaler regulars I ran into her again as I was about to leave...she was waiting for a friend so we started talking about where we worked, food, music and somehow...I'm not even sure how exactly but tattoos came up and she decides she wants to get one...so we literally walk across the street to a tattoo parlor, she tells the guy what she wants, they draw it up, we grab a beer and I sit and watch Rae get inked up. Somewhere during this time we decide we should work on some stuff musically...i think she was getting some music notes on her arm at this time...so that's the little back story of the girl I'm playing with...no Granny Jane I did not get one! It was tempting to be able to say I went to Hollywood and got a tattoo-I met a girl out there with a tattoo too. Oh and the video camera provided by my dad for Christmas...that's the other story! If this works I'll be sure to add more video...we'll see how it goes.
So other things going on...i played on the rooftop of the mall where I work which was really fun-played from 5 to a little after 7 and then went up again from 8ish to a little after 9...the whole day before the show I was busy running errands to get ready for the show-buying new strings, batteries, changing strings, burning Cd's, but the best errand I had to run was to make it to Kinko's to sign and fax the agreements over to Julie the marketing director at mach speed! So I think that deal is a go! I'm playing on the rooftop again on February 11th which is Valentine's day weekend...I'm not sure if I can pull off any Marvin Gaye but I may have to try. So, I've been pretty busy working and playing places and what not but it feels good! Ok...let's see about this video...keep your fingers crossed!

happy new year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the west side of the world. The new year is feeling good! I got my pay first check from itunes for albums sold-which is pretty cool...it wouldn't hurt my feelings if those became a bit more regular. Also...don't want to jinx myself here-but long story short- I'm talking with a marketing director for a company called mach speed technologies. Mach speed makes units similar to ipods and other mp3 players. They are going to pre-load songs and albums and artists onto their systems before they sell them and I may be one of these artists who are pre-loaded onto the unit. So...hopefully in the next few weeks Indigo Blue will begin to get into the hands of many more people than I would be able to get it to. Anyway...looking forward to that and pretty much feeling good about the new year! I'm also looking forward to seeing my family in February.
I'm feeling very good but things weren't exactly awesome there for a while, mostly due to the fact that someone actually got under my car in the middle of the night and sawed out a part of my exhaust called the catalytic converter. I obviously noticed in the morning when it sounded like someone had replaced my engine with a supped up v8 race car engine...i didn't really think anyone actually did that but that something was really really wrong. So I sorta coasted down the hill in which I live and into the jiffy lube at the bottom. The guy said it was probably just a hole in the exhaust and that I could drive it for a short while but get it fixed when I could. That was actually a pretty funny time because I was driving it around nice areas of Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Malibu etc...i mean literally my car sounded like a tractor! So needless to say I got a number of odd looks; car alarms would go off as I passed by and it really sounded good when I would enter into an enclosed cement parking garage...i really couldn't even listen to music due to the loud rumble underneath me. I felt like I should don my John Deere hat put in a dip and a gun rack in the back...but I felt like I should go ahead and fix the problem and hide the fact that I am indeed a redneck out here in LA. It was however bad news that I had to pay for a whole new part instead of a simple patch up job. The cost difference in those two are definitely in the hundreds.
So a few days earlier my friend Matt tells me him and his brother bought me a ticket to see Roger Waters perform the Wall in Anaheim. I had told them no I couldn't really afford it but Matt insisted that if I was a Pink Floyd fan that I absolutely had to go and actually he had already bought me a ticket...so that was about the only arm twisting he had to do. So that was a strange day...i learn that someone sawed out a part of my car that cost me big time and my friend buys me a ticket to Roger Waters-talk about a pendulum swing of emotions. I think I said this somewhere in this blog but being out here so far has been a series of pretty wild ups and downs and that was definitely the case in the extreme on this particular day.
So got through that, spent Christmas reading through the first few chapters of Luke on the beach in Venice and then went to the movies. Spent new years eve and new years day working(which probably kept me out of trouble). The GM of the restaurant did pop a few bottles of our sparkling white wine as the ball dropped. Hmmm....what else? I think your caught up on the events in my life out here. One of my resolutions is to write more which hopefully will be in blog form for some of that. Alright! Happy New Year!

thanksgiving, new songs and a crazy guy at the coffe shop

Hi there-sorry I missed out on a November blog. My excuse this time is the fact that my internet went out and I just haven't gotten it back on. Now...when I say my internet went out-I mean the free Wi-Fi I've been picking up got disturbed and its been a no go. I didn't go get my own internet immediately because I thought that it would magically come back...seeing that it was magically there when I got here. I guess someone wised up and put a password on the thing. Anyway there has been a lot going on out here. I've been playing every Tuesday at a bar called Whaler's in Venice...so far it's been a really good time. I can try out new songs, play a few covers, improve old songs and hear other really good musicians do the same thing. So far the names of the new songs I've played are; tarot cards, the snake oil salesman, the Montana song and Medusa. A few that are aaalost ready to be tested are Whispers and Echos, Priestess, Almost home, Woman, Screaming Bloody Murder, Poison and the Irish song. Of course all names are subject to change. I remember seeing a thing on the band Blue Oyster Cult and a pretty common thing that other musicians said was that they had cool song titles-like Don't fear the reaper and Godzilla among others...anyway-that's a pretty fun part of writing songs is actually naming the song-sometimes there is not an obvious title amongst the lyrics so you just throw out something weird.
OK-so in November, I did spend Thanksgiving here in LA and actually house/dog sat again. It was a bit lonely but if your gonna be on the lonely side of things I was definitely in a good spot- over looking the pacific. And I don't have a TV in my apartment so being able to watch football was pretty nice also. I did make turkey eggs and a turkey sandwich and took a nap with fig and took her up to the edge of the canyon to watch the sunset. So, actually it was a pretty unique thanksgiving-just kinda missed my family. I do believe I'll be making my way back to Texas/Oklahoma in February so I'm looking forward to that!
And I gotta tell you a story of playing at this coffee house the other night...Friday I guess it was. I got to this place pretty early to see one of my buddies play a few songs and was just kinda hanging out....eating a Californian bagel sandwich and drinking a coconut tea-which was pretty awsome by the way. So as I'm sitting there I notice what seems to be an Alice Cooper look alike come in with an electric guitar slung on his shoulder-he had somesort of a police man style hat on, painted black circles around his eyes, leather pants, gloves with the fingers cut out, cigarette in hand etc...only in LA right? So this coffee house up until now had been really really quiet, very chill atmosphere-whispering to talk to people-that kind of vibe. So Javalyn the host introduces the next performer and Alice Cooper gets up on stage. I am veeeery curious at this point-with this get up he is either really talented and very eccentric....or he just kinda sucks and is crazy(i don't think there is any in between with guys like that). So he starts out by kinda mumbling something about the song he is about to play and starts sortof playing an out of tune chord and still kinda trying to mumble some lyrics.....after about 40 seconds of this he just starts to scream some choice profanities at his guitar and absolutely chunks his guitar on the ground and storms out of the place proving to me that he was definitely not eccentric and talented...that's right...he sucked and was way crazy!! or on crack, I dunno. I actually needed to go get my guitar out of my car so I kinda followed him out of the place and saw him get in his car and leave. I was playing last that night and figured if didn't come back I was gonna take that guitar! Well- he actually broke the thing into pieces so no new guitar for me. By the end of my set and the end of the night he had yet to come back, so I did actually take his guitar strap which is a pretty cool one. Part of it is pretty much a bandolier with bullets on it...which I think looks pretty cool. Other than that I thought I played well and was a good night!
Well-that's about it for now. Hope everyone who reads this is having a good day! gad
ps...i've been trying to post pictures of the busted guitar, me playing and the coffee shop but somethings not letting me do it-oh how i love computers! anyway-i'll get those up soon!

unurban

Hello hello!! it's about 11 am pacific time-i'm just kinda getting up and around after last night's show. So...when I just got to LA and I was living in a hostel on hollywood blvd. I emailed a few places about playing out. I landed one at the whiskey which was pretty cool and a few others. I also booked a show a place called unurban cafe but they booked me so far in advance that I sorta forgot about it. At the time I was still in the hostel with no job and no real place to live...so I thought...umm-yeah if i'm still here i'll play. And it was really only for three songs(sort of an extended open mic night). So as things moved along for me out here, that show did slightly slip my mind until I got a confirmation email a few days prior to the show. Luckily enough I had the night off of work, got about two co-workers to come watch my three songs and things were good. The lady hosting the show is javalyn and she hosts indie music night called “java with javalyn”. Anyway, Javalyn later asked me if I wanted to be a featured artist on one of her nights allowing me to play a few more songs in the extended set. This was the first show that I had more than 2 or 3 people out in the audience. This is a really small room so It kinda felt like I packed the joint! I thought I played fairly well...definitely things to work on but probably the best I've played since being out here. One big thing I did was bring an amp and the g and l legacy electric guitar which I've never done in a solo show. So that allowed for some new sounds and a different vibe than the acoustic can provide. I think the highlight of the show were the two songs I did on electric which were “roll a cigarette” which allowed me to go off on a tangent on guitar and seeing as it was John Lennon's 70th birthday the previous weekend I did a version of “strawberry fields” in a sort of Jimi Hendrix style. Anyway I was pretty pleased with the whole deal-and afterward we all met up at a bar down the street which happened to have some karaoke going strong. My friend Brett and I did “Loser” by Beck and watched and sang along as other pizza antica employees did their best journey, garth brooks, and whatever else you can think of that's good to sing along to. So-good night last night! I'm gonna eat something and head to work later this afternoon!

Dustin Hoffman and Matt Lammert

Alright! Things are going well out west! The job is pretty good-as far as jobs go. It has taken a little bit of time to get used to the oddities of life in LA. For instance, it's a big win to get a free parking spot about a mile away. If you want to park closer to work you're gonna have to pay for it-which turns out to be $9. So...parking a mile away in my mind is like someone saying, “hey I'll give you 9 bucks to walk a mile”....well ok-i can surely get there early and listen to some tunes as I take a stroll on a nice day. Also there are certain little loopholes like knowing which parking garages open the gates at what time at night...so if you're closing and working late you can park for free. I've never given much thought to parking until I got here. Speaking of that, my parallel parking skills have greatly increased. That would be my advise for someone moving out here...save your money and practice parallel parking if you're not going to valet it every where you go. We also get random celebrities in, which is weird but pretty cool. I was taking an order from a table when a co-worker told me to look who was waiting to be sat-there was Dustin Hoffman very casually dressed with his wife waiting to be sat. “holy crap its rain man!” for the next 40 minutes I fought the urge to start whistling ...and here's to you Mrs. Robinson.
The music side of things is coming along as well. I played a small 3 song show at a coffee house and have been asked back to be a featured artist with a longer set on a Saturday night. Which is kinda cool. I think I'll try playing some electric stuff...but we'll see. And in a craaaazy turn of events I think I've got a bass player...or I'm recruiting one anyway. One of my very best friends in middle school was a guy named Matt Lammert. He was the one that got me totally into Led Zeppelin and was another really really good guitar player. We later joined a rock clinic type deal and played all Led Zeppelin covers under the name The Four Sticks...yes that's also from Led Zeppelin. Anyway-he moved to Kansas in about 8th or 9th grade and I hadn't really been in touch with him until we became friends on Facebook and realized he lives in Huntington beach which is about 30 minutes from where I am in Culver city. So, we've been hanging out and catching up and playing some tunes together. I'm pretty excited about all this-even if things don't gel right musically it's nice to have a buddy from Oklahoma to re-hash stories of us riding our bikes to Norman music to play on their new Joe Perry signature Les Paul and being turned away because we were too sweaty and spending the night at each others houses and daring one another to take drinks from my parent's boxed wine! Haha! So I guess I've been out here roughly 6 months give or take a few weeks and things are coming along nicely. Hope things are going well for you-whoever you are reading this right now! Take er easy!