Back to that shaky nervousness, in my previous post I talked about how doing the Mr. Nakazawa’s Book of Surprises songs were great for me because I somehow shook the nerves by having an onstage support team aka a band. Having my gf Jill there was great (having a supportive gf at one of my musical performances is a brand new experience) too. I think have the focus partially split from me may have helped also.

Also, there was such a large difference between doing the songs live and the recorded versions. I have come to the conclusion that what I put on a “record”, I want to be able to duplicate live.

In a roundabout way, all my roads are still pointing to the idea of a band. Having a core of people to work with and hash out ideas. If you are a long time reader of this seldom posted blog (thank you!), you already know that I find this difficult. After the SF show, I felt such a pang of jealousy at Spud. Spud was a phenomenal guy and no, I wasn’t just jealous of his 8 string fretless bass (that was a fucking awesome guitar) but of the fact that he was so able to create his artistic vision. The music of Octothorpe is very unique and Spud works hard to craft it. And I wondered how he got other on board. There was a full band of people dressed in very specifically styled Octothorpe shirts, playing this crazy meta-jazz-rock while Spud dressed in a Santo mask and kilt. I was awed. 

The question in my mind is how do I get people on board with an idea. I’ve got them a bunch of them but how do you get others to hitch their wagons?  I hope to figure that out.

Then there was my performance. I definitely wasn’t happy with my set. Sometime before my set began, I started getting a wave of nervousness. This isn’t completely unusual. I’ve dealt with that before and laughed it off and pulled off a good performance. This time, it wasn’t the same. I don’t know what happened. There was a face in a crowd I didn’t know, dead center in front of me which was awkward in a room full of people I had already met. That started me off shaky. I did “Between the Rain”, a song that I feel that King Arthur performs much better than I do. I only did the song between it’s in my songfight discog, not out of some love of performing it. I think I did okay with it.

Then I did “Cuts Like”. That’s when things started to go downhill because I couldn’t get the rhythm together. The song is untested live. It’s a song that was all about production experimentation and it just didn’t translate well at all. I think it was an unmitigated flop, especially when you compare it to the recorded version. I tried to salvage things with “Lessons Learned Over Summer Vacation”. The song came out well. I think it was the song I practiced the most and it paid off. I whistled well and it wasn’t a bad song to have in the mix. But I still felt shaky and I was stumbling on the guitar. I would really love a situation where I can just sing and not have to split my focus between playing and singing because if I fuck up one of the two, I start falling apart.

I think “Cute Boots” was next and that song went over very well. On the inside, I felt like I just wanted to get off the stage. I wasn’t feeling right and I somehow was able to channel that into the raw emotion necessary for a song about a father talking about his missing daughter. I followed that with “Love is a Battlefield”. I thought the cover would help win over the crowd a little. I think it crashed and burned. At the previous NYC Songfight show, it was a highlight of my set. This time, it was a lowlight. Just a different crowd and a different set, I guess.

I prepped to cut my losses and move on the song “Experiments in Living”. The song was the first song of my collaboration with DJ Ranger Den (the group is called Mr. Nakazawa’s Book of Surprises). But Den went to the bathroom, just went I was going to call for her. To stall, I broke into the song “Woebegone”. I had been ready to cut “Woebegone” out of my set. I felt like I wasn’t going to be happy with the sound of it, because I couldn’t match the sound of the recording and the chords were a bit funky making it a place where I could make some mistakes. And boy, did I ever. The song was a mess that I wish I had ever played.

Then a funny thing happened. Den came back and we did “Experiments” with some help on the bass from Noah McLaughlin. I suddenly shook a good deal of my nerves. I don’t know what it was about the band situation that I found comforting but it worked and I played the song and felt good about it, as if I ended my set on a high note. Things only got weirder as the livefight approached, it nearer time for Mr. Nakazawa to perform again. My nerves were gone. I went into the song “Isle Dauphine” with a little confidence and had, what I felt was, my best performance of the night.

So, where am I now? Musically, I am at a bit of a crossroads. Here are things I have learned. One thing is that the whole solo live act thing may not be the thing for me. For one thing, I’m not the greatest guitarist but I am a good songwriter and a decent singer. If I focus my efforts, I think I can get a better performance. So, again, I need to find a collaborator. Another thing is the feeling that I am not producing the music that I wanna produce. Music is all about expressing yourself. I’m just not doing that in the way I want to. I want to find ways to storytell in my songs. I also have certain sounds, like drones, that I wanna touch upon.

Now is not the time to whine or to walk away (and I will sadly admit that I considered just walking away from music and sticking to writing). I need to figure out ways to create what I envision. There have got to be ways to do it. I just have to think outside of the box. It’s going to take some creative thinking, some brainpower, some social skills and a whole lot of determination. There’s an artistic path that’s calling out to me. I just have to figure out how to maneuver the roads. And hopefully, the next time I play live it will be a different story.

1. "Cuts Like"
2. "Mirrorball"
3. "Woebegone"
4. "Elephant in the Room"

I was never a OLTL watcher but I did have a stint watching AMC (back in the days of Sarah Michelle Geller and Keith Hamilton Cobb). Why did a soap connect with me? Because I enjoy serialized storytelling. I like watching the long term evolution of characters. Look at some of the other things I enjoy. I am one of the biggest prowrestling fans that you will ever meet. Prowrestling is serial storytelling in an athletic setting. I also love comics. The three things are all intertwined by the way they tell a story.

So what does this have to do with music? Nothing… but why not? As soon as I heard that AMC and OLTL were ending, I was upset. The demise of the soap opera is taking away from a form of serialized storytelling and there aren’t that many platforms. In this age of instanteous information and youtube; the idea of dragging out character development can be very passe. Sure, there are still tv shows but they have seasons. Serialized storytelling creates characters that grow along with the audience. You don’t have to speed through a storyline because you have a season finale on the horizon. There isn’t a season finale, your characters just go and evolve.

Episodic, serialized, whatever you call it, it’s definitely something I love. I have written some prose pieces that have been built so that I can come back and continue writing more and more and see how the characters evolve. Now I am wondering if that concept can somehow be put into music?? More on this later…

I came up with an idea for what is essentially a concept album. For the sake of easy typing, I’ll be referring to the album as TAS in the rest of this post. What does TAS stand for? Never you mind that detail. So, I came up with the TAS idea and figured that this needs to be a marriage between my music and my prose, almost a soundtrack to a story. So I began writing and got about 1500 words in and then tried to write a song to go along with those 1500 words and the pieces just didn’t fit.

I’ve done concept albums before such as Zinkline’s “Grace of a Car Crash” which is the story of a political assassination that is the first domino leading to the end of the world. The thing is, that was very abstract. Each song I wrote for that album could stand on its own. With TAS, this is a story with very defined characters and a world of its own. I feel like the song has to evoke those things. But I don’t want a song that sounds Broadway. There is an art to telling a specific story in a song. My immediate point of reference is Bob Dylan’s “The Hurricane”. I love that song. It’s got all this great and very specific storytelling (even if it lacks some factual accuracy). But I don’t want to write a song like that.

Here’s an example, the written prologue of TAS is all about the setting of the story. The story is set in an alternate version of our world. The prologue explains the idea of multiverses. When it came to writing a song that touched upon the same ideas, it was tough. It just didn’t flow in the way I wanted it to.

Then came the idea of referring to specific things. TAS takes place in a city called New Verity. If I mention that, it locks the song to the world of the story which is fine. But what happens when the song stands on its own. I think about a song like “Cable beach” by Ben Kreiger. That song is an amazing 15 minute tale of people retiring to a virtual world. It really needs to be taken as a whole for its full effect but it is really 5 smaller songs (don’t quote that number). The songs don’t stand up as well away from the whole. I still want songs that will stand up on their own but still be a part of a story. It’s a paradox that is making me take a completely different look at what goes into writing a song. I think if I’m going to pull this off, it’s going to take more that just write story verse, add catchy chorus. It’s going to take a reworking of how I present the story.

Then there’s the musical aspect. I’m still standing alone in this process. I know that there are great artists like Johnny Cashpoint, Heuristics Inc, and Billy’s Little Trip who are willing to work with me. And I want to work with them. I want to do some experimental stuff as a part of XTRG where we can deconstruct basic guy and guitar pieces, make them into electronic soundscapes, and then figure out how to recreate the experiments with live experiments. It’s brilliant fun. In Montserrat, I want to blend the two worlds of acoustic and electronic. And at the same time, try and have some fun by tapping into some different lyrical ground like history.

But you know that saying about how if you can’t love yourself how are you gonna love anyone else. That’s my feeling currently when it comes to music. I have to get myself into a good place. I’m a strong multitasker. I feel that’s one of my gifts. Fixing Niveous the musician and getting myself where I want to be musically takes focus and I wasn’t gifted with that.

Then there’s the strange dichotomy of needing to fix up myself and not being able to do it alone. And SF Live still looms in the distance. It’s all so confusing.

But there is some undeniable pressure, like the fact that SF Live is in 2 months. I have 2 new released songs and still no band. I am far from where I want to be. So much that I need to do.

And today also starts the Songfight spring classic, the Nur Ein. Let’s see what year six has to offer.

Meanwhile… XTRG is currently working on a new song. That’s exciting.