A Dearth of Heroics

HELLO friends!

it has been quite the couple of weeks since our last rejoinder here. so much has happened. the second Burundanga show (now with Sita!) — making it two for two. more music is up on the site (myspace.com/burundangamusic) from that show. my younger sister graduated from Dartmouth College making it 4 for 4 for the bermisses and college. an essentially unprecendented percentage. and finally, the purchase of a long-awaited new keyboard. ever since about early fall 2004 (when my old Korg kicked the bucket after i flipped my car on the NY Thruway at 2 o’clock in the morning after the whitespace recording session AND all the older cats were making fun of me for trying to gig out with my rhodes) i’ve been using the first edition of the Casio Privia keyboards. lightweight (extremely light-weight), weighted keys, on-board speakers, and usuable (if not fantastic) acoustic and electric piano sounds. for a while that worked. i spent most of ‘04 - ‘05 using the Privia as my practice keyboard in my apartment. and i gigged with theFoundation on the rhodes exclusively. good thing to since the Privia was not really made for gigging. it was great for at-home use though. i remember writing “tuesday night lights” on it. in something like October of 2005, when i was just… ridiculously broke… mostly jobless… after John had put me in as the accompanist for the Bard Jazz Singers Workshop and i was getting a little bread… Bugalu called me to play the gig at the Black Swan in Tivoli. it took me a while to figure out how to connect my keyboard to an amp (it had 1/8″ inch outs… most instrument cables are quarter inches… i had to find a suitable adapter. it was a frackin’ nightmare). well after a couple of gigs there, i learned how to make the Privia sound, at least, acceptable coming through an amp. and have used it since on jazz gigs, blues gigs, weddings, and all that.

but in the winter of 2006 i saw the new keyboard player for the Eric Person band play a tiny red keyboard that, when he was finished with the gig, he put in a little red bag and put on his back. that was the first night i heard the Clavia Nord keyboard. in hindsight, i think he must’ve been using an electro, cause it was super-tiny. 66 keys. but the sounds this thing could make… i mean: wtf?! (to borrow from the hipsters). and this was in a jazz setting. anyway, i was jealous, but knew my place. and, at the time, had no idea what keyboard he’d been playing. just been amazed. a year later, i catch Aaron Steele’s Group A at a little dive in alphabet city, and his keyboardist is using the same little piano. richly, sexually red and a beauty in sound. some of the sounds were obviously home-made. mmm… it was good stuff. Aaron put me on the Nord Electro. and when it came time to buy (its been time for years): i looked to Nord. the stage pianos seemed the thing. not so light as the electros… but great power in processing… and weighted keys (which is a creature comfort of mine).

anyway… all this is pretty boring, i guess. the point is. i bought the 88 Nord Stage model yesterday. bit a hope and a prayer. but its about time i had a real keyboard. i love pianos… but i don’t get to play them often. and i certainly can’t drag my sustain-pedal-less rhodes out to every gig. so the Nord. mm-mm! i got it home yesterday afternoon… and basically haven’t stopped playing it. sent my eldest brother a happy birthday recording. and, in the heat of the excitement, started recording all sorts of things. things for the Mimetiks. things just for me. things for no one at all.

anyway… there’s this whole story i could tell you about Bach and the Well-Tempered Clavier…. but i won’t bore you further. instead… how about a reflection of my ecstaticness with this new instrument. the singing of songs, i wouldn’t dare have sung on the Privia… and only quietly sing in my room on the rhodes. please enjoy. there are more to come…

—

prettygirl (nordstuff)

akie

i face 4am with a steely resolve to wake up despite the nearness of dawn. though i have much to say, i think more can be gained by forestalling the saying to make you listen. last time i wrote about Burundanga. today: i give you the means to hear the past.

myspace.com/burundangamusic

be thou, then, satiated.

akie

here’s how it goes… a couple of months ago.  Daniel Jose Older — a bassist, composer, and filmmaker — comes into Saje while theMimetiks are cooking and raps at me about a band he wants to put together for a gig.  at 169 bar.  over the course of about a month i learn a couple of his songs and rehearse a bunch of times.  eventually we do a hit.  and it goes over pretty well.  but that’s it.

then Dan has to move.  and he does.  and then he wants to put another band together.  a more ambitious, more honed outting.  i intoned that i’m, of course, down.  over the course of a few MORE months, DJO holds some rehearsals at multi-instrumentalist Vince’s house.  we learn some new songs.  i give him some rides home.  we smoke cigars and all that.  eventually we he brings in Sita on vocals.  Omar on trumpet.  and finally (like three days ago) Dai — VERY recently from Japan — on drums.

most of march and april Dan, on bass, Omar, on trumpet, and I, on keys [wow.  that’s alot of commas…] work over Dan’s sometimes very idiosyncratically complicated songs.  it works out lovely.  Vince is out of town touring.  Sita is doing the same.  so we tighten up the “rhythm section.”  there’s alot of piano stuff to learn for Daniel’s Cuban-influenced compositions.  lots of lead trumpet.  we get that settled.  Dan books a gig at Saje for Monday night the 12th May.  On friday the 9th, he tells me we have a drummer finally.  a cat named Dai who is japanese and doesn’t speak very much english.

we all get together on sunday afternoon to rehearse for about two hours.  Dan, Omar, Dai and me.  it clicks.  we get to the gig on monday night.  vince is on the congas.  we set up.  and we play.  and, really, its good!  very, very good for a first certainly.

so now.  its looking like first Mondays at Saje.  maybe i speak too soon.  but the name of the band is the Burundanga Big Band.  and… we’re coming.

akie

i find myself, suddenly, awake in a gas station market. buying toilet paper, libations, and a sandwhich. it is 1am.

and damn it: i’m tired.

i believe, strongly, that one must believe strongly in the things one does. is this what is called conviction — or it is merely ego? i do not know. but in order for us to hear ourselves (and in that moment judge if we should be heard by others) we must believe first that all the work that goes into it is worth it. that the world will truly be made better by this song, this photo, this painting, this novel. one must believe strongly that one’s art is worth the struggle and sacrifice. or else one will constantly fall short of even the most minute artistic goals.

one will always fall short. belief must spring from us constantly like wet from water. it must fill up as much of the empty doubting space as can be (not all, mind you, not all. one cannot be merely brazen and self-righteuos. one must use the blade of doubt to cut away the unnecessary lard of the creation.

and artist who does not doubt themself? a mean artist, if that. a maker of false breads.

finally, one must believe in oneself. and that the work is going to be important. and that the world… the world, will see it!

i spend my days in nights in hopeless longing.  and yet there is little i can do to write the wrongs we seem to persistently perpetrate.  that people are by nature base, greedful, mind-weak creatures is a truth i am beginning to fear.  a whispy truth that presses for corporation.  like a spectre of wind.  a powerful avatar of the nastiness.

i’m not sure what can be done to silence this dissonant choir.  the plentiful distractions are like sweet perfume applied to already pungent rot.  it does nothing.  i open the windows of my mind.  attempting to thereby create a constant draft.  which lets nothing sit too long.  and yet it seems i can’t quite get the circulation going.  the mundane, Mr. Bermiss.  that is all there is to save you.   the tireless grinding of small, necessary actions.  whittling.  cobblering. the masonry of sounds.  applied thoroughly to my craft i am made, in some ways, better.  strengthened (or perhaps, numbed) to the iniquities of the common world.

i would be alarmed.  were this new.  but this is an old song.  i stand in the running water of my shower and hear my ancesters singing it.  there will be no rest now.  the future is darker, darker, darker.  the keepers there are unmoved by my farsight.  they go about their tired business.  howling, perhaps.  whispering.  whimpering in silence.  like so many unchecked gears in the Great Machine.

and i haven’t been able to sleep a great deal.  this is due, most likely, to other things.  other situations.  music work has had this effect on my before.  in my best musical periods, honestly.  and so its nothing new.  i sleep, instead of a block at night.  several small spurts in a larger period than a day.  perhaps eight times in a five day week.  for a couple of hours each.  in this way, i suppose, i stave off the worst insanity that could befall me.  but i am also, never truly asleep.  i feel perpetually conscious.  how can  you beat that?

if i didn’t think it was in some crucial way: unhealthy.  i might advocate for more people to join me in the perpetuity of wakefulness.

i end here.  in the interest of continuing.

…it has been a long, frickin’ day.  at this point, i am sitting at home alone (shapel’s gone off to Colby on the midnight bus — i envy him his latenight busride) having had yet another penny-wise inspired meal (read: bread and oil — and i’m already thinking ahead to the delicious rice krispies i’ll have for breakfast) and about ready to lay me down to sleep.

i smoked two cigars today.  one with Woo and the other with Daniel Jose Older.  in each case good conversation was pervading trend.  it has been a terrible, jarring, revolutionarily musical day.  coming off of yesterday’s goodness it makes me double tired in the evening.  i rarely have this sense of justified exhaustion anymore.  back in the old Bard College road-warrior days of ‘06 - ‘07 i was always completely crapped out come friday night.  and i usually spent it as i am now: writing on my journal and seated at the couch.

i keep wanting to take my shoes off.  but then forgetting or being too tired to remove them.  my feet tingle with tiredness.  and my eyes keep losing focus.  i have the strange hankering for a third smoke.  a residual echo from those road-warrior days?  when i lived and died by BLTs (minus the ‘T’), coffee, and cigars.  drab, drab, drabbery.

drudge, drudge, drudggery.

melancholy melan-y.

i am, at this point, in the night, completely absorbed in myself.  the world, outside, i hear it.  but don’t care.  i keep thinking it might forget i’m here.  but then i look up and see the books and the keyboard.  and i write in this thing to carryout some futile wish to be heard; or understood; or, even, misunderstood.

i am satisfied.  but with that cold cruel feeling on me.  as if i might stare down bullets and walk through.  i am tired and upset.  and, as i told Woo, a little bitter.  but here i am, nonetheless.  still a little hungry.  more than a little wild-minded. my unkempt hair sits inoffensively on the couch next to me.  i was considering pulling down the keyboard and playing it.  but now.  now i think i’d rather sit across the table from death and ask her too too many things.

goodnight.

these days its hard to figure out exactly how i’m getting from nightime to nowtime.  whew!  i am tired.  but, alas, it is morning (almost noon).  and time for me to upping myself.

i do miss the two stints i had working daytime jobs on the regular.  i’ve heard people don’t like it.  but, for what its worth, it was definitely healthiest when my body had a regular schedule for things.

last night was epic!  my second day of abject brokeness and i woke up and had some bread and olive oil (which has actually been one of my favorite meals since college).  i did some waking up rituals (that is, watched some tv on my computer… that is: star trek voyager).

finally, i began to do the actual written scoring for Belinda’s play (Grace and Mercy Me) and around 530/6p some of the actresses started showing up for the musical rehearsal.  we didn’t really get cooking until six and Belinda — stuck in Beltway traffic — didn’t make it until minutes before 8.  but when everyone was there and ready and working.  it was pretty hip.  and the singers can sing.  and for the acting — i trust Belinda and i’m sure she’s picked people to do the parts.  and so this may very well be a fortuitous outing for us all.

the one ‘complete’ song i’d finished the music to (”This Is My Advice”) really came off nicely once the back up singers (and i’m one!) were in place.  we also hashed out one of the later big numbers (”Fly Away”) and i’ve begun working on some of the intermediate stuff.  there are three songs at the very end of the play for which parts have yet to be cast and i am hesitant to write without having a singer to write for.

but i’d forgotten the rush and excitement of trying to get lyrics and music to work together.  Belinda is giving me most of the lyrical material and i am applying music to it.  sometimes moving little bits of words around for phrasing.  but all in all… this is really coming to gether.  and the vibe is very amiable.

i put some hopes in it.

***

it is morning, as i’ve said.  i was woken by Moni calling from my downstairs vestibule after her doctors appointment.  she came up for a bit and we had some tea.  once this chai is completed i will have to arrange a day for myself.  huh.  days are funny.

life is curious.

today is just about come and gone. its 1AM of the next day. i’m listening to some Bill Withers on my computer’s not-so-great speakers. feeling very old. you’re looking at a man just through celebrating his 25th birthday. and — honestly — wishing he had more to show for it. but — ah well. you know… what can you do?

today i finally had enough cash in my account to download the soundtrack to Gospel At Colonus. i’d forgotten just how much i used to love this score. and the singers. and the arrangements. truly a beautiful piece of music. when i first saw it in the late summer of 2002 on a rare visit home from Bard i was enamored. my mother was shocked that i’d never heard of it. it was on PBS so we taped it and we had it. (i believe Andrew and i may’ve watched it together). that Christmas, i ‘borrowed’ the videocassette from my mother and took it with me upstate. there i watched it over and over and over again. we spent that winter intersession trying to record a MotherMing album in the Bard Studio (before there was an actual studio)… just a protools booth and the performance space. and every morning, i got up well before everyone else. made coffee and watched that video. then, when the first person came downstairs i would make them watch it with me. it is one of the few videos that i can watch over and over back to back. even my favorite movies i just don’t love as much as all that.

so i’ve been on the train listening to the final track on repeat. and singing the little refrains under my breath all night long.

this weekend i am working the Jon Bates Band up at Daniel Js in Patterson, NY. and on Wednesday i’m working with the Grace and Mercy Me people. that score is finally beginning to come together. still trying to iron out the lyrics for some songs (since the stageplay writer is writing them) so i can set them. but i am pretty enthused for the whole shebang. it comes of age in late august.

dreaming on that keyboard. and starting to save toward that end. tonight, dinner was rice krispies. and so it shall be until the money is raised.

that is all. more on my birthday later. right now i need to get some sleep at last.

sing it, Bill. sing it!

apologies for the hiatus. sea changes. paradigms shifts. shiftlessness. and now: the return.

***

this is more like my old ‘notes from the road’ segments from the very timid beginnings of blogging. though i had thought to trailblaze a complete new path — no dice. here i am writing about, essentially, the same old shit (new friggin’ day). except i am doing SOME new things and playing a whole lot more than i have been. i enjoy it.

most recently, the wedding/party band. the JonBatesBand. and that just an awesome and fun experience. i’m learning, literally, hundreds of tunes in order to keep up with these guys. never before (except, perhaps when i did that weekly stint with Bugalu) have i had such a tidal wave of repetoire being slammed down my gullet. the temps, otis redding, patti labelle, van morrison, aretha franklin, shania twain, stevie wonder, steely dan, neil young, and on and on and on. its really been quite the challenge. first trying to stay hip and yet keep doing my thing in a modern way and secondly trying to keep all these songs straight in my head. not only do i play keys, but i’m singing back-up as well. so its kind of intense.

last weekend was the first great test. a weekend in the Carolinas. first in Myrtle Beach, SC at Molly Darcy’s On-The-Beach doing a clubdate move and then in Wilmington/Cape Fear, NC for a wedding. i mean, i’d done a couple of gigs with the band by then. I know most of the cats. I am at least familiar with most of the songs. some of them — i was happy to discover — i’d memorized. and i’d probably done a total of 7 to 10 gigs with them. My first two hits were in August when i was subbing at the Monticello Raceway. that was a hook-up that Kenny gave me. Recommended me for the gig. which i should try fervently not to forget in the coming years. these are the ways in which one begins to have serious work. two back-to-back nights. and i was terrified. and besides the book, i’d written out about 15 or 16 charts of tunes that Jon mentioned we might play but didn’t have charts for. all stuff i should have learned by then. but you know… ego… i was writing my own songs for the foundation and the Mimetiks and i didn’t really want to do the harder work of learning OTHER people’s songs. Anyway, then there was nothing til a call in November and Jon asked me if i would do a couple of gigs in December. two holiday parties and a bar gig in Patterson, NY. needless to say, i found my old charts. dusted them off and came in a screaming. and, after a couple of hits, Jon asked me if i wanted to sign on for the year.

so, mid march, i find myself on a plane down to Myrtle Beach with Jon, Bill, Steve, Scott, and Dana. We play a ridiculous gig at Molly Darcy’s. Super loud and super funky. while, indeed, we’re supposed to be saving Steve’s voice for all the wedding stuff that’s coming up the next afternoon. the club was basically half-empty when we started. and basically, all guys. not much dancing. not much reason for dance music. but come second set, women started coming in by — what i can only believe was — the busload. soon it was easily even, perhaps the females even out-numbered the guys. and then there was dancing. sort of. really, there was grinding and shaking of the most furious variety. had it been any more frenetic, i might have feared our lives and our equipment. the DJ played music between sets. essentially all tunes slightly sped up and augmented with house beats. crazy, right? any way we hot footed out of there at midnight or one or whatever it was.

i should mention that earlier in the day (and this was friday) when we finally got to the hotel and saw the gear at the club and all was well. we decided to get hungry. and wanted to find some place to eat. we eventually ended up at a fine little joint called the Biscuit Shack not 200 yards from the hotel. but on the way we manage to pass a quaint, downhome joint called: Tar Babies. which, needless to say, caused us yankees to gawk and squeak. on the big sign out front: a black skinned sambo-style babie wearing nothing but a diaper. truly, truly heave shit. down just in Myrtle Beach, baby! in the morning steve was asking around for a place to eat and one of the ladies at the hotel told him there was a great place called Tar Babies just up the road. (steve insisted that he couldn’t eat there…)

i should ALSO mention that after spending the first part of the week laid up in bed with some kind of flu kind of thing. and my right left just below the knee decided to swell up with fluid and become, essentially useless. i tried keeping it elevated (sort of) and staying off it (sort of) but come friday it was still pretty bad. i assured myself that it could withstand the rigorous train ride out to Newark Airport. which was stupid. only the day before i’d been walking pretty much only with aid of a cane. then i try running to the airport on three separate trains, taking the stairs like a pro, to get squeezed into a window seat on an airplane. after like five hours of sleep. i’m a moron… perhaps. so, anyway, by friday night the leg was just… in a shambles. i could hardly walk on it and it had definitely got MORE swollen and reddish and hot. i ended my friday night by taking a hot shower and then lying, basically, on top of my covers in the hotel room until about 10 am. then getting up. and trying the leg. and find it… tender. so i hobbled down to check out and got some fruit and coffee. was good.

at this point we hopped in the rental SUV and drove up to Wilmington (with a quick stop at Hardees for: breakfast). we managed to get totally lost in Wilmington. trying to find the Hampton Inn and Suites. when we finally got there. we had about 15/20 minutes before we had to head back out to the reception site. so… bad leg and all, i got to my room. found it most pleasant. sat down. read an elegy of Rilke’s and then hopped back up in my suit ad hobbled out to the car again. back to the gig. we set up the gear at the joint which was RIGHT Cape Fear. i mean… we were basically on the boardwalk. the area was called: the cape fear river deck. and there was talk of rain (flash images of Deniro being scary as hell in Cape Fear… the storms, the darkness, etc). but it was a lovely day at the point… 1 or 2 as it was. we managed to get everything set up and play the wedding without much of a hitch. at the top of third set, however, things got dark. thunder could be heard in the distance. and JUST as i’d managed to light up my cigar (bought in the bar directly next to the wedding reception) Jon told me there was a tornado on the way and we had to get the last set in pronto. in began drizzling as i approached the band stand. we went through a whirlwind set. Sweet Home Alabama, some Elvis, and finally What a Wonderful World. there may even have been another song in there, but just as finished it really began to rain. with the help of two cats from the wedding party, we managed to keep everything dry and get it into the van before all hell broke loose. and i mean… about thirty seconds after we closed the door: all hell broke loose. as we drove slowly from the river deck to the hotel… we were caught in a deluge of truly biblical proportions. needless to say, i was pleased as a pig in shit. always liked a good strong rain. this, as Scott put it, was like someone was literally pouring buckets of water on the car. i worried we might run aground or, better still, float away. some of the puddles seemed to be higher than the tires. good thing Jon went with the SUV (and to think it thought it was too big!) Dana, Scott, Steve, Bill and myself… in the car. trying not to freak out in the crazy weather. there were many quotations about water. a short discussion about the lyrical content of Sweet Home Alabama. and finally Bill quoted James Brown saying: You can keep your Watergate/ Just give me some bucks and I’ll be straight.

eventually, we made it in.

***

all the work done, we retired to the hotel’s Bar run by a lovely ex-vegas cocktail waitress who was originally from Wilmington. Apparently from a long line of musicians. she served us, rapped us up, gave us a free round, and talked a little more. told us about the area. about how northerners had changed things around making it hard to be what it was. it did seem a shame. i kept thinking how the same thing was apparently happening in Brooklyn. oh BK. and she told us where to go to get a good southern breakfast the next morning. So… despite tired as the dickens. we arranged to meet at 830a to get over to the Causeway Cafe and break the nights fasting. in the cold, clear morning following the storm. we went to the Causeway. Went to the cafe. had their coffee on the porch while we waited for a table. got a table and had some fine biscuits. gravy. sausages. bacon. pancakes. grits. and the whole nine. it was fabulous. truly worth the pains of not sleeping.

an aside: at 815a, my toilet overflowed. i am sure this had something to do with the storm. it was a not to pleasant occurrence. still, i made it down stairs clean and coiffed by 830. it was just a little more hectic than i’d of life.

***

we hit as Starbucks on the way back (me and Dana, anyway). Steve hit a convenience store. and we retired to the rooms until the 11am checkout. i had my cigar and wrote a little. actually made notes for this post. this inaugurational post. had a fine Avo smoke and drank the coffee. twas good.

***

an hour long drive back up to Myrtle. Lunch at Molly Darcy’s (mmm… burger…). and then i took a twenty minute stroll down the beach. thinking that i’d better get back down here ASAP and see the folks and country and where the family came from. not that i want to be some Macon Dead character. looking around from some foolish gold or some such nonsense. but i do want to go see what songs come out of my slave heritage. the american slave heritage, that is. the last time i’d been at the ocean… not counting Coney Island — which i don’t… was that april vacation with jaster, elijah, and johnny. where, on the last day, Johnny and i managed to get up at 5. eat breakfast and catch the sunrise over the Ocean at Virginia Beach. before checking out and driving up to DC to get Jaster and the back to Tivoli.

simpler times, really. i think kyle pushed a tree log several feet for some reason.

***

finally, an inauspicious end to things. the airline canceled our flight without notifying us and put is on a a flight two hours later. so we got to the airport at 4p to get on the six o’clock flight. only to find it had been pushed back to 810p. and THEN, that there were delays and it was going to be pushed back to 915p. so instead of landing in Newark at, say, 715. we got in around 1130. and i missed Arthur Lewis’ band playing over in Manhattan. and had to drag my lame ass all the way home. train, train, train. and then crash. i don’t remember eating anything. or if i ate. i remember going to sleep. and thinking: wow. it been some weekend.

***

i write this now. six days later. after a friday night gig with the band up in Patterson again. this time with Kenny in the guitar chair. and it looks like he’ll be doing most of the hits this year. the gig was hard. Bill had had some sort of dental thing and was in pain. Steve took a wrong turn and almost went to Dover. and while my leg is better, its still not 100 percent. making my pedal work sloppier than i’d like. still, the hit was good. the food was good. Emma Alabaster drove up in tandem with me to check out the band. and then drove on to Bard (it took precisely and hour so that wasn’t too bad for her. about a 2.5 hour trip total.) and even though i sort had this other shitty thing on my mind, i was temporarily — at least — elevated in music. and made good. and true. temporarily.