Strange but fun: a New Year’s gig with two extremely different bands. This entry is extremely long… YHBW.

I went back to town with Bread. At the hotel, he split for the bar to order himself a burger and a beer, and I headed up to 265 to put on my face and change into my gig clothes.

WTC and KO were there; W. was trying to meditate and rest a bit since he’d been on the run all day, and K. suddenly remembered he only had white socks – which he announced would look terrible with his black pinstriped slacks – and left in a hurry to rush home and remedy the situation.

We’re So Beautiful!

Someone emerged from the bathroom; I could smell the steam from where I sat cross-legged on the credenza in front of a mirror, and I didn’t dare turn around for fear he, whoever he was, wasn’t decent. He saw me, though, and uttered an amusing and heartfelt, “Oh shit!” before explaining, “Damn, I couldn’t figure out what you were, sitting up there like that!” WTC chuckled from his spot on the bed behind me. The showerer was BvB’s hubby and our sound man MvB, and he was, I was glad to see, completely dressed. He put on his new shoes and left the room.

W. settled back down in the bed behind me for a few more minutes of rest. In the silence I discovered, after applying black liquid eyeliner, that I only had brown mascara – and an old and dried-out tube of brown mascara at that. (I am plagued by dried-out mascara. I should start using false eyelashes again; they’re fun and they look cool and they solve the problem.)

W. must’ve abandoned the idea of rest as he got up a few minutes later. He sat on the floor next to the credenza I was perched on and ate a sandwich while we chatted and I finished my make-up. When I took my hair down from the knot I’d put it in to keep it out of my way, the nice wave I’d troubled to create earlier was gone. I put a couple rollers in briefly but didn’t bother to heat my hair so they didn’t really help. I need a cut and color anyway. Plus beauty’s a pain in the ass, really.

K. returned and dressed, and I have to say the man looked astounding. W. asked our opinions on his two shirts – one black with pinstrips, the other I think was red – and we voted for the pinstripe. I went into the bathroom and changed. We really did look fantastic together, I have to say, in our black, red, and silver. As we congratulated ourselves on cleaning up so good, K. said he felt like a million bucks and W. put on his shades. Laughing, we went down for the gig.

I got a ticket for my hubby and got him into the ballroom, socialized briefly, and went to the bandstand. PK looked at me admiringly and said, “You clean up nice, girl!” I hugged him and suggested the same was true of him – he had on a great suit. BvB looked great, and GSW was wearing a black suit with a red shirt so he and I matched. Then K. counted it off and we were doing our first tune.

The Difference Between A Trainwreck And A Brick

There were weird problems in a few of the first six tunes or so. No actual train wrecks, but some form problems. I’m not really sure what happened and would have to hear the recording to know, but there were a few stumbles. I think once a solo section went longer than usual, another time maybe we started singing a verse early, another time maybe we sang the chorus twice where it should have been once? I don’t know, but while there were a few odd glitches at the beginning I doubt anyone in the audience but musicians would have even noticed.

Once we hit our stride, the rest of the set went well. People were dancing really early on in the set, which is a good sign. The room looked like it was close to full, and the applause seemed appropriate to the number of people in the room. (An important distinction in gauging how much your crowd likes you; sometimes only a percentage of the crowd claps and if they’re all your friends you’re playing the wrong venue.)

My personal fuck-ups were these: on Smooth I only played cowbell on 2 and 4 and not on every beat like I was supposed to. On Black Velvet, I forgot the words and sang a messy combination of words from the wrong verse and total nonsense syllables that probably slid by the live audience but which I expect will be horribly obvious on the video/audio recordings (and might get me totally laughed at by the band). On Darwin, I usually watch PK for the lyric but last night he was just a bit too far away and I ended up singing a lot of slurred quasi-words.

My voice felt fantastic by the time my lead, Reelin’ In The Years, came up, and I’m not too shy to tell you that I nailed that bitch to the wall. The important note in the chorus (the word ‘years” in the phrase ‘are you reelin in the years’) is right smack dab in my break, so I have to choose to either sing it in my head voice or in my chest voice. When I’m tired, it’s too high for my chest voice (so I crack) and sounds thin in my head voice (too breathy). But last night I had great control and was able to choose between the two ranges depending on the impact I wanted. Ooh yeah.

A trainwreck, by the way, is when the song fucks up so utterly and completely that you can’t recover and have to stop altogether. A brick is a mistake from which the song can be recovered. There are varying degrees of brick, but usually a brick requires more than one player to make a mistake at the same time.

Mommy, Where Does Groove Come From?

I want to state here that I LOVE MY RHYTHM SECTION. I adore a clever bass line or a tasty drum fill, and tend to listen for them. I love musicians who are truly listening and watching. I love being in a band with a drummer who, after playing some groovy little fill, will flash me a huge grin when I turn around and make the “now I heard that, and it fucking rocked!” face at him, or a bass player who will cock an eyebrow at me and grin when he sees me catching him playing something hot.

If you’re not a musician you may not know this, but here I will truly tell you gospel: the musical relationship between a band’s bass player and its drummer is its absolute foundation. That relationship drives the music, and it is only from that platform that all those guitar gods and flamboyant singers and sax players of the world get anywhere at all. A band with a weak rhythm section is a weak band, period.

And I’m the kind of singer who loves her rhythm section ’cause I know the gospel: those two players are the ones who matter when it comes to the groove.

GSW and PK and BvB were all great. Both boys played some really tasty solos throughout, and they’re both great rhythm players – so many guitarists only wanna solo but being the rhythm whore that I am, I adore a tasty rhythm guitar vamp. G’s key playing was hot – I’m not sure when he turned into a keyboard player, but he certainly did. BvB sang great, but lost a few notes of her high range at the end of the night because she’s had a chest cold for a couple weeks. (I’m probably the only person who even noticed, and that’s mainly because I’ve been singing with her for a month and know she’d choose a lower note in a phrase only if she couldn’t hit the higher one. I don’t think she sounded chopped or anything.)

The cool things about singing backup for BvB are she always sings in tune and she always phrases the same. Her phrasing is the most amazing thing about her singing to me, because I am never consistent with my phrasing. (Ever. I am almost constitutionally incapable of singing a lead the same way twice, probably because of my jazz background and its focus on improvisation.) Her rock-solid phrasing is important because it means I can sing really precise harmonies with her. Since she always sings her phrases identically, I can learn and then match her intonation, vibrato, pitch, and even where she breathes. Trust me, this is actually way cool.

(In contrast, backing me sucks because I never sing anything the same way twice. I teach my backup singers how I want the backup phrased, and then I never do it that way again, so they start copying my phrasing which is never the same. It’s true, I’m evil.)

Change Of The Guard

At the end of our second-to-last song, Bambú’s bass player was hovering near the stage pointing at his watch, and I could just make out their guitar player standing in the entry on the other side of the hall pointing at his watch. So GSW went right into our ‘encore’ number, A Little Help From My Friends, before we could lose the stage – a move I silently applauded since I really enjoy singing that chart (and, truth be known, I really don’t like the two songs that preceeded it, which were Have A Drink On Me and Cold Hard Bitch).

Yes, our set list was totally schizoid: AC/DC, Allman Bros., Toto, Lynrd Skynrd, Steely Dan, Jefferson Airplane, No Doubt, and a couple of originals.

During Have A Drink On Me, a song I don’t sing or even play percussion on, I stood in the niche in front of WTC’s gear and tried to look like I was dancing while I watched the audience. Some very drunk-looking guy spent nearly the entire song toasting the band with his glass of whiskey. It was pretty cute.

So we finished our set and departed the stage. I found Bread and we made a beeline for the bar, where we sat with KF and AF and Derby for a bit before Derby had to go play.

Two cocktails later, Bread and I returned to the ballroom and found a table.
It was like a totally different venue. The House 11 crowd seemed to have dispersed – back to the bar or to party in their rooms, I’d guess – and in its place was a whole different crowd. Bambú was putting down their usual ultra-danceable material and the dance floor was full. GSW and KO, having already done a set, were warmed up and deep in the groove.

And believe me when I tell you that KO played the holy living shit out of that Bambú set.

A couple songs later it was midnight; people blew noisemakers and hubby and I kissed. The staff passed out champagne. Over the next hour or so I somehow managed to drink quite a lot of it while I bounced around socially and got my hubby introduced to everybody in the band one by one.

I danced some songs, I talked to some people, returned frequently to hang out with W. back at the board. He stood there and ran sound for the rest of the night. (After playing his own set. After doing two soundchecks. After setting up all day. After schlepping gear until nearly midnight the night before.) I told him he was a control freak and he grinned at me and made one of those “you have no idea” sounds, then purposely bumped me with his elbow as he readjusted mic volume for the Bambu vocalists. So naturally I had to find him a glass of champage.

And then I found GSW, who was playing keys on stage, a glass of champagne too. With hubby’s help I found the rest of the band a couple of open bottles. I found me more champagne. In retrospect, I guess I was the self-proclaimed cheap-champagne-for-musicians fairy. Ugh. I didn’t really realize at the time that I was drunk, but now that I recall all the time I spent flitting around trying to make sure everyone had some cheap compliments-of-the-hotel bubbly in a plastic flute, I guess I should have known. Heh.

At least I’m a friendly drunk – I was touchy and talky as usual and I hugged lots of people. I could scarcely talk to anyone without at least a hand on their arm if not around their waist. Everybody’s so dammed charming and cute when I’m drunk.

Eventually the music ended, there was drunken milling about as the ballroom emptied. GSW offered us a room since his family had decided not to use it. As I gave W. a backrub Bread called out, “You’d better have another of those for me, wife!” (He used to be indifferent, but lately he’s developed some form of jealousy that causes him to say something possessive if I’m interacting with a male he doesn’t really know.) But I grinned at him as I dug my thumbs into the muscles along W.’s spine and told him his poor back was a mess. Eventually I found myself in a small cluster of people near the coatrack. We finally headed roomward when the staff locked the ballroom doors in our faces.

We hung out in the room with GSW for a bit and talked about the gig, then I went down the hall to get my stuff out of the other room and ended up talking with KO for a long time. I gushed about how steady his kick was during his solo with Bambú. He lamented not having the time to follow up with a girl or two who’d hit on him. Eventually GSW showed up with Bambú’s guitar player; I went back to my room and hung out with hubby. He crashed, I sat on the balcony over the pool and talked to my brother on my cell. I went to sleep after four.

The New Year

Around nine, Bread woke me up and said we needed to go home to let the dogs out. I was really interested in sleeping more, but he was right so I got my wretched self up and dressed and collected my stuff.

While he went to get the truck, I went to 265 because I’d left my garment bag in there. I had a key card but was afraid KO was still sleeping inside, so I put my ear to the door. Almost instantly the door opened and a sleepy WTC was smiling at me. “I need my bag,” I said. He nodded and stood back from the door so I could enter. I think the other bed was empty. “How did you know I was out there?” I asked as he said, “What were you doing with your face pressed to the door?” “I didn’t know if someone was sleeping in here,” I said. “I wanted to listen to see if anyone was awake.” As I turned from getting my bag I saw there was a good 1-inch backlit gap under the door. I said, pleased with my deduction, “Ah, you saw my feet. Under the door.” He shook his head. “I saw you trying to look in,” he replied. I assumed he meant he’d seen the peephole go dark. “Sorry I woke you,” I said, “you go back to sleep now.” He smiled sleepily at me again as I departed; so cute. I actually spent several minutes of the drive home trying to puzzle out how he’d known I was at the door when I hadn’t made any noise and the beds were both out of direct line-of-sight.

Anyway, hubby and I hit McDonald’s first then drove home for pet duty.

I went right to bed, intending to sleep for a couple hours and go back to town to help with tear-down and load out, but I ended up sleeping all day long: a combination of all that champagne on an empty stomach the night before, old age, and being simply exhausted as a result of my never-to-be-sufficiently-damned and two-fucking-days-early soul-sapping goddamned period.

I didn’t braid my hair and apparently I slept fitfully. I woke with the craziest, rats-nestedest, Don King-est hair you’ve ever seen. I had had a lot of dreams; I usually don’t remember my dreams but I actually remember a couple from today. One was quite X-rated, thank you very much! *wink* (I mean, if you only get to remember a couple of dreams a year at the most, it’s nice when one is something other than a dream about doing the dishes or a jumbled montage of things you’ve experienced that you know is just your brain moving data into permanent storage, right? Right?) I’d tell you about it, the dream that is, but it’s personal.

So while I was asleep and tossing and turning and having sex dreams, I think Bread held the couch down and alternated between napping and playing video games all day. Eight PM found the two of us at Wal*Mart buying a frozen lasagna, greens, and garlic bread. Since the lasagna was frozen it took two hours to bake. By the time it came out of the oven I was no longer hungry because we’d already had the salad and bread, and hubby was asleep on the couch. There’s an entire 5-cheese lasagna cooling on top of my stove.

A Strong Conclusion? Hardly.

So it appears I’ve begun the new year as follows: by staying up all night and sleeping all day. With one meal of indigestible drive-thru crap and another comprised almost entirely pre-prepared frozen foods. And finally by laming out on my band and missing both the double-band brunch and all the work of loading out. I guess it could charitably be observed that these trends bode well for my consistency, at the very least.

Most importantly, though, Happy New Year to you, my many beloveds!