gigs #3 and #4: the hub and the hydrant.

we kind of need to find a new place to play.

#3 was pretty standard, with a few interesting things to note. it was a benefit deal for one of the art groups we have on campus, which my friend paige is a part of, and she was the one that actually asked us to play. interesting too, we actually played last, this band called the beat strings opened, which was kind of funny because they were an actual band that sounded kind of like franz ferdinand, really upbeat, high energy, and then we took the stage. two dudes with an acoustic and one with an electric. weak sauce. but anyway. we played with bruce again and i played my electric, which really made a big difference in my playing and made me NOT want to play acoustic on stage again. i just feel so limited in what my hands can translate from my brain when i play the acoustic. it suits me a billion times better to play on my strat. so it was a lot more fun this time around and i got into my groove a lot faster than before. one thing that plagued our set was the lack of practicing though. eli and i had played quite a bit the week prior to this show and we worked a lot of cool things out on certain songs and even added a brand new song to the list, but we were unable to coordinate a time to practice with bruce so he came into the gig not on the same page as eli and i. we still played well i think but it definitely could've been tighter among all three of us. another cool thing about this gig: paige sang with us. that was cool to have a girl's voice amongst our sound. the most interesting thing about this show for me though was my process of relaxation on stage. i felt alright from the get go, a titch nervous but still ok. as we played on though, it got late, and people obviously got tired and started to go. as i watched people get up and walk out, i stopped thinking completely about the audience and just started to goof off and play what i wanted. that was a lot of fun, i almost just stopped caring about whatever eli and bruce were doing and started making jokes to owen and colleen and joel, who were all sitting at a table together. it was a lot of fun. less people = more fun for me. and we debuted our new song, "mess around" by ray charles. such an awesome tune, and i'm glad we have a ray charles cover in our set. super fun to play, with a chance for me to really dig into a 12-bar blues solo, which was awesome on my strat. problems: too freakin' short. we played it and out of nowhere the song was over. it's literally done in like two and a half minutes for us, which is just far too short. not good for our set and not fun for me. so overall the gig was fine. i can tell i'm getting better about being on a stage.

#4: best gig so far, by far. absolutely the most fun i've had on a stage, and i felt like i played my best so far and really got into it. started off the show with about 0.1% nerves, which is basically negligible for me. so that was great. it was just eli and i again, with me on electric. i was a bit wary before the show whether or not it was gonna sound good with just eli on acoustic and me on electric but i really felt like we found a good sound with this set up. the crowd was great, which to me means it was mainly our friends. it was the thursday before finals week so the hydrant didn't have many patrons, and i was kind of behind a speaker so most of the people who i didn't know i couldn't even see. that relaxed me a lot right from the get go. and i finally got to see how i performed with a bit of alcohol in me, which is not bad at all. around the middle of the set i started to get a bit of a buzz and instead of making me worse at playing it was just a lot of fun. it also helped me take the song omar bay on a lot easier. omar bay is the one tune where i've got a solo but i just haven't figured out yet how to make it a good solo; it's such a weird chord progression and trying to find a good melody to solo with over this progression has stumped me. but after having a few drinks, along with playing it later in the set after i've gotten comfortable, when eli looked at me and said "omar bay?" i was like "yeah....i'm gonna get you this time, omar bay." and it was awesome.

and my strat. gosh i love playing electric so much more than acoustic. it takes a ho-hum set list for me and turned it into something really enjoyable to be a part of. we played some really rockin' tunes too, the weight sounds great with me on electric, and we finished off our last set with hooch, and kevin actually came up and freestyled a little over this super funky groove we found. that's the kind of stuff i wish we played more of. stuff where i can really forget about being on a stage and just bob my head and play. it was super fun.

on top of that, a super fun one was mess around by ray charles. we ended our first set with it, and it's such a good set closer, except that it is just so short. solution is just to figure out how to medley it with another tune, preferably another ray charles tune if we could. i'm thinking i don't need no doctor, i got a woman, possibly what'd i say. figuring out how to medley a few tunes will be my project as soon as this week is over.

no more gigs on the horizon right now, but whatever else comes, i sincerely hope they are like #4. oh yeah i'm done with the semester too. awesome. two more classes and i'm out of college. holler.

-jon

p.s. my font changed for some reason unbeknownst to me. i tried for like thirty seconds to get it the same as the others but then i got lazy. so i guess just deal with it for this one post. sorry.

rashida jonz.

i am watching an old episode of late night with jimmy fallon, and he introduced rashida jones (most well known as karen from the office) and the roots played "jonz in my bonz" by d'angelo for her walk-out song. the roots are incredible.

-jon

test blog.

let lily lick lionel's lusty leathers, let lily lick lionel's lusty
leathers.

just a test, i set up email blogging on blogspot and i wanted to give
it a whirl.

-jon

gig #2: the hydrant.

well second gig has come and gone. it kind of came up much more suddenly than the first one and it was more of a hodge podge i guess you could say, but it was still a ton of fun. little back story, eli lets me know that he's playing on thursday night at the hydrant and bruce can't due to a prior gig the next day for which he wants to save his voice (bruce's actual band stable daze was playing friday night and recording the show for a live record) but eli asked me if i would be interested in playing with just him. the problem with all of this is that the week ended up being full of stuff and we weren't really able to practice at all until thursday afternoon. by "practice" i mean eli coming over at 4 pm (gig was at 10) and us talking about songs we might want to do and not actually playing any more than one song together. ironically, it was the song i flubbed up big time at the gig but i'll get to that.

in the end, we decided that since it was just two of us, it'd be better if i was just gonna play along since we didn't really have time to practice at all. not really a night for me to play solos since there was just the two of us. and that was a good plan, but it would've been better had i been able to play some of the songs first. anyway. fast forward to later, we go up to start playing. and let me tell you, the hydrant got packed quick. i had invited more people than i realized and i think every person i told showed up. there were school friends, work friends, church friends, old friends. even a professor. it was pretty nuts. so the place felt really packed. which didn't really make me nervous, and just the fact that i wasn't really nervous was great. so eli and i go up and i just say to him play whatever and i'll catch up and we start. and i don't catch up as fast as i had hoped.

this was the result of a few little problems. first, i should've asked eli to turn my guitar up louder in the monitor. i could hear it ok, but not great during the one or two solos that i had in the beginning and i'm not one to play my guitar loud anytime at all, especially when i'm playing along with someone else to a song i've never really practiced before. so that was problem number one, and probably the biggest one. secondly, we played the song omar bay as we had at the hub at our first gig, and boy did i suck. eli gave me a solo and it was like will ferrell's devil character trying to join in. i couldn't hit notes and i was just struggling to play anything that sounded remotely good. eli took the song back quick though so it was ok. but man after we ended i could feel the sweat on my forehead and knew i had ground to gain after that.

the bright side was, as far as i could tell, the night only got better after that first crappy omar bay. we played a ton of stuff, and for a long time. we started at like 10:15 and played for about a hour, then took maybe twenty or thirty minutes and went back on until like 1:15 or 1:30. and since it was just eli and i, when we were playing we were actually playing. no eli solo sets for me to take a break. by the end, my fingers were killing me and my hands felt like glue.

we played tons of stuff too. hooch, the weight, falling slowly, always lift him up and never let him down, gulf coast highway, arms of a woman, will it go round in circles, a few eli originals, what i got, candy, street corner preacher, sitting waiting wishing, more stuff. tons of stuff i'd never played and didn't even know he could play, like candy. that was super fun cause we had never talked about us being able to play it and then he started this little riff off and i was like "what's this?" and he was gonna walk me through the chords quick and he was like "it's candy" and i immediately joined in where he was at. and then we rocked it. it's a song very conducive to two guys on acoustic guitars in a bar. another one i really enjoyed was the weight. again, hadn't played it with him before, or actually ever, but since it's a total of three chords, i picked it up quick. and it's just a fun sing-along and we threw some funk into the last few choruses that eli wasn't expecting but liked a ton.

one reason it's fun to play for some of these new people is that they don't know all my old guitar tricks. i'm pretty good at guitar, but even more than being good, i'm really good at making it seem like i'm really good at guitar. and for someone who doesn't play guitar or doesn't know tons about music, it's not that hard to come across as good. for most of our audience at the bar that night, me playing the D chord as a 7th in the chorus of the weight makes it sound funky, and all i did was play one note differently than eli did. and yet people will cheer if i play that one note and bob my head like i'm really "feeling" the groove. i'm such a poser.

but it was still a lot of fun once i found my footing. what i really think would make me and eli sound better is a time to play and practice with no one else really around. a time where i could sing harmony loud, and we could go over songs multiple times until we got them down. not playing until showtime isn't good for me. we've got two gigs this week coming up too so hopefully we'll get to play soon.

gigs this week: wednesday night at the hub (benefit/charity type show for paige. i think bruce is playing with us? i definitely want to practice before this thing) and then thursday night at the hydrant. it'd be fun to have bruce but i haven't seen that guy since i think our first show so i have no idea if he still exists. so potentially a repeat of this second gig with just eli and me. and hopefully my name will be on the ad poster hanging up at the hydrant. that would be awesome. hope to see you out there!

-jon

colleen's wall post.

follow-up:


























spitting image.

-jon

p.s. colleen wants credit for finding this picture.

compliment.

tonight, colleen and i were sitting in her living room watching tv and doing homework and cheers comes on and she goes, "you kind of look like that guy," referring to sam, played by ted danson.

i love that girl.

-jon

spring music preview '09.

so rolling stone has recently released their spring music preview, showcasing bunches of albums coming out in the next six months or so. here are the ones that caught my eye for one reason or another.

1. bob dylan - together through life (4/28)
bob dylan is an enigma to me. his music isn't exactly campus-walking music to me because i wouldn't necessarily call him all that good. like technically good. he was revolutionary, ground-breaking, all that, but he played simple guitar tunes and sang his lyrics through a weird wail. not saying it's bad, but i just wouldn't call him a virtuoso. so i wouldn't say i'm excited about a new bob dylan album, and i certainly won't go get it right away, but it will eventually find it's way into my itunes library.

2. ben harper - white lies for dark times (5/5)
this is more noteworthy just cause ben harper is a artist i respect, even though i hardly ever listen to him. he's one of those artists that i know is incredibly talented, his live shows are out of this world, he has a very cool style, but i've just never really focused on him or his music. i have his live at mars album but that's it. and the main reason i have that album is cause of his sexual healing cover (so freakin' sexy). so for me, seeing he's got a new album coming out is more like "oh. i bet it'll be good" but that's about where it ends.

3. dave matthews band - big whiskey and the groogrux king (6/2)
this is almost the same as the ben harper release for me; i almost wish i was a bigger dave fan so i was more excited about it. when i was around 15 though i fell in love with the dave matthews band and absolutely ate up all of their albums. for the last 5 years or so though, i haven't really listened to them at all. so this album i'm kind of iffy about. maybe one day in the future i will find all my old dave cds and put them on my computer and introduce them to my kids and fall back in love with their music. at that point i will probably get this album and not like it as much as under the table and dreaming.

4. ok go - title tbd (august)
i guess i can't say i'm excited for this one either, but i'm interested to hear how it sounds. their first album was great and i never really got into the second one more than like three of the tunes, but i think i would've liked it had i really spent time on it. but when lead singer damien kulash says this album sounds like "purple rain through broken speakers," that's definitely enough to intrigue me.

there were a bunch of other albums that made me say "hm interesting" but nothing i was excited about. even these four i'm like "eh." other ones i noticed but don't care about were eminem's new album, lil' wayne's, 50 cent's, green day's, jonas brothers, mos def, black eyed peas. i have thoughts about all these, but only like a sentence long so it wasn't even worth writing them down. on second thought that's wrong. here's what i think about those 7, respectively:
- you can rhyme like nobody but that doesn't matter when you don't rhyme about anything substantial and your music is SO childish.
- you had the biggest album last year but none of the songs were good. how does that work? i hope this new "rock" style you're exploring shows everybody that you actually do suck.
- no one cares anymore. what happened to the no more solo albums pledge if your album lost to kanye?
- stop trying to make epic punk music. those two words don't belong together.
- you got your fame from the DISNEY channel. how can you look at yourselves as real artists?
- i wish i liked your music more. you are a great emcee but your stuff's just not accessible to me.
- holy cow you guys stopped being good before you ever even started. pump it was kind of a fun song, yet nothing good came before it and nothing good has come since. your new song is awful. how are you still popular?

the other thing of note in the rolling stone article is how many old artists are releasing new albums. elvis costello, dmb, depeche mode, bob dylan, steve earle, flaming lips, green day, willie nelson, sonic youth, wilco, neil young. these people have all been around for at least like 15 years, some much much longer than that. that's incredible. and at the same time, disappointing that really none of them i'm big fans of.

so that's about it. really kind of a disappointing year. last year i had coldplay, ben folds, al green, john mayer. some of my absolute favorites. this year...nobody. sucks. guess it'll give me time to focus on my surplus of older music.

-jon