29 November 2008

Last we left our hero, he was feeling cocky and had just returned from the Black Crowes show.

We had a CH rehearsal on Tuesday and it went alright. I did feel much better than the first rehearsal, that was for sure. Only one of the two singers that was supposed to be there made it, so we worked on the songs we are going to do with her. We rearranged one of the songs to be a bit funky. I didn't that night, but I've been thinking about and working on my part being a bit more funky to go with it. I want to be funky, I really do, but I don't think I know quite enough about it to be as funky as I want to be. We shall see what I can pull off.

Practicing in general is much of the same as it has been in previous entries, with the primary changes being adding more pieces to work on two handed playing, and focusing on whatever material we are likely to do at the next rehearsal. We have one today with four singers, but I haven't covered all that material myself yet. Ah, winging it.

At the last rehearsal, Ant told me he had read my blog and was laughing about it. So there you go.

Sat, 2008 11 29 at 4:04 AM |Permalink for this entry

21 November 2008 and Black Crowes

That was a lot of hair!

After taking Wednesday off to relax from the self-induced stress, I finally got to practicing on Thursday after taking care of some other business. I started with my normal basic practice stuff, and did a few of those two-handed pieces I've mentioned before. Then I went on to the material for the upcoming Collective Hallucination (CH) show. I mostly worked on the songs we did at the rehearsal Tuesday, and I have to admit, I was really pleased with how well it went. It just shows how much of the "problem" is in my stupid head.

That night, Lori and I saw the Black Crowes at House of Blues Houston (Buffalo Killers opened). Every guy in both bands had some sort of facial hair, and most of them had that full beard thing going as well as really long hair. If you've seen Chris Robinson lately, you know what I'm talking about. Lori and I agreed that was probably the most hair we've ever seen onstage at one show.

At the beginning of the Crowes set, I was watching Chris Robinson dancing and having a great time up there. I thought, "man, that looks like fun. I wish I could have a job like that." Then I thought, "I already haz one!" 😉

Later, the keyboard player was playing a spotlighted solo and I leaned over and told Lori, "I'm angling for his job. In fact, I'm angling for the job of any keyboard player in a cool band. Rolling Stones, Black Crowes, Little Feat, Carolyn Wonderland, Beth Black, any of 'em." I guess I was in a really good mood.

Edit: Added link to Houston Press review of Crowes show

Fri, 2008 11 21 at 7:24 AM |Permalink for this entry

Calendar

I hope I'm not jinxing it

Note: I have replaced this calendar with the one you can find at my main site. This entry remains for historical reasons.

I've created a Google Calendar for all my upcoming performances. At the time of this posting, there's only one. But, in the future, you will be able to find performances of mine with Blue Funk as well as with other bands. Use the "Calendar" link on the top of every page in the site to get to this entry and see all upcoming dates below, or if you're a Google Calendar user, you can search for "Joe Stone" in the Public Calendars and subscribe to it. Tell your friends!

(Note that some performances may be private events. I will note that on the entry. Also, not every Blue Funk jam will be included. This is because sometimes we don't open them to the public when not all the band members are at the jam, or it's been so bloody long since the last jam we need some time to blow out the cobwebs.)

Fri, 2008 11 21 at 6:52 AM |Permalink for this entry

Don’t Go Chasin’

I'm harder on myself than anyone

Last week I contacted a band (Collective Hallucination) that my friend Marie told me was looking for a keyboard player. Even though they're a soul/R&B band (their MySpace page says "soul/jazz/funk" and I would agree with that), I thought I'd drop them a line. If you've been reading my blog, you know I've been very focused on blues with some blues rock thrown in, but you should also know that I like most styles of music. This would be a step out of my comfort zone. Most say that is a good thing.

I contacted Ant, the band leader, and he told me that they don't always use keyboard players at gigs, but he was looking for someone reliable for when they do. I thought, "cool, but I'll probably never hear from him, or maybe in six months or something." I've gotten very used to people asking about me doing web sites, then getting a "I'll let you know" and never hearing back.

Four days later on Friday, I get an email from Ant asking me if I'd like to play with them at a gig on December 20. I thought, "oh boy, I wasn't quite ready for that," checked my calendar, and saw I had nothing planned. Darn! No excuse there. I told him okay and he said I could pick up a set list for the show and CD at their rehearsal on Saturday, with our first rehearsal for the show the next Tuesday. At this stage, I'm a little concerned and nervous, but nothing I'd think about too much.

The next day, I dropped by their rehearsal to get the stuff and check them out. They were doing final rehearsals for the Prince tribute they were doing that night. I watched a couple of songs, and thought, "damn!" I knew they were going to kill them that night. (Word is, they did. Great job, guys!)

Shortly after I left, I started feeling… something. This band was really good, and I had 24 songs to learn in a month, only a few of which I had ever heard before, and all of which I had never played. They also were in a style I'm not familiar with. I have gotten very comfortable with our blues tunes, most of which have just a few chords, and not many if any tricky changes. Most of these songs, while not hard, are structurally more intricate than that. Uh oh. I could feel the muscles in my head tightening.

That night I started listening to the CD. Let me put my reaction this way. I can't tell you how happy I was when one song was clearly just three repeating chords from beginning to end!

It's really easy to psych yourself out with things like this. If I'm good at anything, it's doing the easy thing. So, I was overwhelmed and stressed. Over the next few days, I got myself into a tizzy, and a really bad one at that. I got the chord changes for some of the songs from Ant and worked on a few songs before Tuesday's rehearsal. I even found the chords for the three-chord song and got that one down. But, I would not say that I was comfortable with any of them yet, and I was still really nervous.

Tuesday night I went to rehearsal, and I wish I had recorded it. These guys are great. This kind of band needs a great rhythm section, and boy, do they have one. That will help me a lot. Despite my struggles, they seemed to think I did pretty well. Chris, the drummer who is also a keyboard player, said that what I played on one song was, "perfect." In fact, he came over and shook my hand to tell me so. I'm not bragging here, I'm actually amazed and sharing it.

Despite the apparent success of the rehearsal, after I got home, I was still feeling the stress, the nervousness, the tension. Jeez, will it ever go away?? What the heck is wrong with me? A lot of things, most people that know me will tell you. But in this case, I somehow, for some stupid reason, just freaked myself out. It's stupid really. I finally decided that the only way through this was to change my attitude. It has taken a while, but I think it's finally taken. It would not have happened without the support of Lori and a visit from Jeff yesterday. (I don't mean like a doctor's visit. We just hung out and talked about crap which helped get my mind off of it so I could remember what stress-free felt like. Sheesh.)

Am I still nervous? Yeah, I think so. Do I have a lot of work to do in the next month? Yep, no doubt about that. But, it doesn't seem overwhelming anymore. At least, not yet today. I'll let you know how it goes and update the blog as I go along.

[Disclaimer: I know Ant has read this blog and probably will read this entry too. I debated about posting it, but decided to because if I ain't posting the truth, then what's the point of having the blog? I'm the only one that might have thought he has anything to be concerned about regarding me. No one else I talked to agrees with that, so why should I worry. I expect he'll read this, and laugh. Hi Ant! :waves:]

Thu, 2008 11 20 at 5:51 AM |Permalink for this entry

13 November 2008

Cloudy days

It's kind of ironic that I'm making this post today as I didn't practice all day. I did some music related stuff on the computers like go through the band's songs and updated when we played them last, but nothing really significant.

On Wednesday, Jeff came over. We had lunch and then came back to my place to work on some of our new songs. His are good and will sound good whenever we get the band together. Unfortunately, I don't know when that will be. We were hoping to get another jam in before Thanksgiving, and then revive our Friday-after-Thanksgiving Thanksgigging, but we won't be able to do either. It's a bummer for me, because I like to have something to do on what's an otherwise lame-ass holiday weekend (Lori and I are going to see Arc Angels at House of Blues that Saturday, though).

I'm still working on the two-handed stuff as well as that jazz piece, but I've also added something else to the mix. I'm talking to a guy who has an R&B/Soul band about doing some gigs with them. They don't use keys on all their gigs, but he needs someone for the ones he does. So, I pulled out a book I have about different piano styles so I could learn some of that before I try to play with them. I don't know if it will help directly, but it's something else to learn.

Thu, 2008 11 13 at 4:23 PM |Permalink for this entry

9 November 2008

Still alive and well

The last few days have been much of the same sort of practicing as I described in my last post. I've been playing a few different pieces to work on the two-handed stuff. I think one of the issues is that I just have not been doing it. For that jazz piece, I've switched the melody part back to playing it straight instead of swing. This has allowed me to count the whole thing and do a better job with the tempo.

One question I have is, why am I self-conscious about practicing when Lori is home? That's pretty stupid. She has heard me play.

I've talked to a couple of people about gigs. One forwarded me info for a "soul" band that's looking for a keyboard player. I will need to see what they want and the level of commitment they are looking for. And, of course, whether they'd be interested in me. 😊

Sun, 2008 11 09 at 5:07 PM |Permalink for this entry

6 November 2008

Jeez, I'm bad at this.

One of the better days I've had practicing. I'm trying to get my chops up, because I really want to be able to play with both hands adeptly. The problem isn't my left hand by itself. In fact, I'd say I use my non-primary hand more than most people. I even mouse with it most of the time. As far as playing, it's probably no worse than my right hand. No, the trick is separating your brain so that both hands play the instrument independently.

The first step seems to get the left hand on autopilot, where it's just playing a repeated figure while the right hand plays other stuff. Really, that's not quite enough for me, though. Ideally, both hands can play independent, even improvisational lines at the same time. I don't know if I'll ever get there. First I have to simply get the left hand to not screw up and lose its place while the right hand plays. I'll need to spend a lot of time working on this, and I realized that I needed to go back to some pretty basic pieces to build upon.

I also went back to another piece I've been playing and found my notes on a comping section. This is where you pay the tune, then you play a simplified version to accompany or "comp" behind another performer, then perhaps you play a solo, and then you go back to the "head" or beginning of the tune and play the full version again. Comping and soloing can be repeated as many times as you wish in order to let everyone take solos. At least, that's how it's done in jazz. 😉 Finding how to comp on that tune did two things. First was to show me that I wasn't really paying attention to tempo, and second, it will help me do similar arrangements of other songs.

I've written a few songs lately, but only one is complete enough to bring to the band. For various reasons, we never got to it the last two jams. I hope we can try it for the next one. I still need to finish up the other songs I've been talking about.

Lastly, I've been considering trying to get gigs as a hired gun with other bands around town. I'm not really sure how to approach this. I probably need to get out more, go to some more blues jams, and see what happens. If I sit in with some people and they don't invite me back, there's my answer.

Thu, 2008 11 06 at 6:23 AM |Permalink for this entry