When the Neurotic Side is Unleashed

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, musicians are a curious lot, full of life, talent and contradictions.  There is one contradiction in particular I have been thinking about lately: the conundrum presented by the contrast between our seemingly independent and often renegade spirit with our pathetic need for external validation.  In full disclosure, I have been thinking about it because of how it affects me personally.

The process of creativity, by definition, requires an ability to look at the world and the things in it from a less than average and alternative perspective.  Rather than acceptance of norms, customs, rules and socially acceptable values, creativity demands the creator to push the boundaries and think outside the parameters these establish in order to come up with alternative themes, ideas, techniques and ways of thinking.  Throughout history, successful artists have earned their success in spite of, or perhaps because of, their inclination to give the proverbial middle finger to what was up to that point normal or acceptable.  Think of Mozart and Dylan, Da Vinci and Pollock, Hitchcock and Tarantino… all recognized geniuses in their art, yet considered at best quirky, if not anarchic and anti-social.  It would stand to reason that in order to reach this independent thinker mindset, the artist would need to disassociate himself from the common denominator that is public opinion.  More often than not you will find that in any conversation with an artist at his most euphoric creative bravado, they profess not to care what anyone thinks about them, me included, by the way; and I can honestly attest that when I say it I mean it.

But then… comes the time for a creation’s commercial release, whether it is a song or a movie or a painting.  All of a sudden what the audience or critics or industry professionals opine about the work becomes the bar by which the artist measures his artistic worth, which stands to reason because this ultimately influences the creations commercial or practical worth.  At this stage the tables turn and we are suddenly engaged in a popularity contest.  At this point our fragile self-confidence is easily shattered by one naysayer, which we intently pay attention to while ignoring the praise of others.  And thus the insecure, neurotic side of the artist is unleashed.

In my preoccupation with this apparent contradiction I reached my own conclusion: there is no contradiction.  The fact is that both the wildly independent thinking and the need for validation are rooted in perfectly human characteristics reacting to two different phases in a process.  The phase of creation, as mentioned before, requires the disassociation with the norm, where the “I don’t care what you think” attitude is an essential ingredient in asking the questions that lead to a new approach or solution, and which give the artist sole control over the task at hand.  But no artist can live off of their creativity if the creativity is not commercially viable, and that’s where the popularity comes into play.  At the point where the creation phase transitions to the commercial phase, the artist loses control.  This creates uncertainty and, ultimately, insecurity.

I would argue that, ultimately, these reactions are not limited to artists.  I believe basically everyone except for maybe Buddhist monks, have similar reactions to equivalent situations.  The effect may be magnified in artists because the same hyper sensibility required from an artist to create manifests itself when the mindset shifts and control is lost.  And alas, we are just insecure control freaks, which sounds like the majority of the people I know, only hyper-sensitively so.

Naked Cowboys in Death Valley

No, this is not a Brokeback Mountain themed blog, so rest at ease (or sorry to disappoint you, as the case may be).  

Because I tend to write fairly dark songs in spite of my being a fairly happy-go-lucky kind of guy, I have been asked at times where I draw inspiration from.  For some reason the question always catches me off guard and I am ill prepared to answer it.  But a few days ago I found myself wondering the same thing: where the hell do these songs come from.

I decided to track back through my influences for answers.  It is important to note, however, that while I am both a musician and a music fan, I believe my writing is more influenced and informed by the literature I have read than by the music I listen to.  Therefore, while my music composition style may be influenced by the likes of Chris Whitley, Joe Henry and Tom Waits, and my vocal delivery by Howling Wolf and Louis Armstrong, my lyrics have been informed by literary figures such as John Fante, Nelson Algren and Charles Bukowski.

The first person that nudged me in the direction of writing by encouragement was a college professor that taught creative writing.  She told me I had a knack for storytelling and said I should nurture it.  She gave me reading suggestions and when grading assignments she provided feedback that was meant to build up skills, rather than provide reassuring “atta-boys.”  She knew I liked music and one of the books she said I should take a look at was Hammer of the Gods, an unauthorized Led Zeppeling biography written by music journalist Stephen Davis.  I devoured this book because I was already a Zep fan and being these were the days before internet, this was the only way to get some formal information and historical perspective on the band.  In this book several authors were mentioned either as quotes or as influences, mainly, the occultist Alister Crowley, the novelist William S. Burroughs and the journalist Hunter S. Thompson.  I promptly went out and read everything I could get my hands on from these three authors.  I found Crowley pompous, boring and disorganized as a writer, perhaps because the subject matter did not hold my interest.  But Thompson and Burroughs became my first true fascinations of the written word because both, although in different ways, were renegades in  their trade.  

From Hunter Thompson I learned that bending the truth to the extreme of outright fabrication could still be journalism and was much more entertaining than the average editorial.  His streaming flow of consciousness full of drug-infused, colorful descriptions of the surrealism he lived, sparked my imagination and made me want to write.  Burroughs, on the other hand, was the literary embodiment of what Tom Robbins described in Still Life with Woodpecker as an outlaw: not a person who breaks the law, which is a criminal, but one that lives completely outside the law.  Of course I started my Burroughs studies reading Naked Lunch and, while I understood the historic importance of the work, I found it an excruciating reading experience.  But shortly after Naked Lunch, I read The Place of Dead Roads, which to this day remains one of my favorite books, and which many years later would serve as the inspiration for not only the western-flavored background of my act, but also of the title song of an album bearing the same name.

Through Burroughs I discovered the other beat writers, but none of them held the same level of interest for me as the outlaw Burroughs.  Around the same time I was reading Burroughs, I discovered E.E. Cummings in a college class; he sparked my interest because of his disdain for capitalization and punctuation.  In this same class I discovered Edgar Allan Poe, who hooked my imagination with his macabre and eerie themes, a flavor that seeps into my lyrics every now and then.  Shortly after this class, around the late 1980’s, while browsing the Beat Poets section in a book store, I noticed an image on a book that caught my attention.  The gruff, pensive face about to take a drag off a cigarette, along with the book's title Tales of Ordinary Madness, drew me to Charles Bukowski instantaneously.

Bukowski was a revelation to me because he managed to snatch poetry from the scholarly and deliver it to the streets.  He wrote of the derelicts, the drunks, the prostitutes and what happens at the fringes of society, where basic human needs and desires are redefined from the norm most of us know.  While he is best known as a poet, and I do admire his poetry, it was his prose and short stories that influenced me the most.  In addition to Tales of Ordinary Madness, Post Office and Notes of a Dirty Old Man were highly inspirational and influential to my writing.  Bukowski opened other doors as well, as I always tend to go back in history to see what influenced those that I admire.  Arguably, nobody influenced Bukowski more than John Fante and Nelson Algren.  I read Fante’s Ask the Dust and Algren’s A Walk on the Wild Side with the zealousness and attention to detail of a 13-year old watching a porn flick for the first time. And while both of those works remain important references for me, Tales of Ordinary Madness is to this day one of the literary works that informs my writing most, followed closely by the works of Elmore Leonard.  

As is often the case, I found Elmore Leonard through one of the movies his books inspired: Get Shorty.  His way of humanizing criminals and showing the “rest of the story” to a criminal character (i.e. what he dreams about, what he eats, what he discusses with friends) may not have been completely original (I had already seen it in Bukowski’s short story “A .45 to Pay the Rent”), but it certainly represented a stylistic upgrade to the approach.  It was Leonard’s Complete Western Stories, made up of material that was written and published in the 1950’s, that made me become a student of Leonard’s characters and planted the seed for he who was to become Banjo Bones.

Banjo Bones is an alter ego of sorts.  He serves as a means for me to explore the Yin to my Yang.  Because I was raised on a tropical island, the idea of the vast deserts of the wild west was enticing, dangerous, and exotic.  Which made the characters that ventured into this landscape the subject of my admiration, fascination and wildest imagination.  Because I enjoyed a very stable, healthy upbringing, the idea of outlaws and renegades was as appealing to me as the forbidden fruit.  When I write with my proverbial Banjo Bones hat on, in my imagination I am traveling through Death Valley, with the same elasticity and non-linearity of time that Kim Carson traveled in Burroughs’s The Place of Dead Roads, with the same moral relativity of Leonard’s Raylan, and rubbing shoulders with the skid row characters of Tales of Ordinary Madness.  

As I travel the dark corners of my imagination, I seek my own practical revelations, hopefully not unlike Algren’s three rules of life from A Walk on the Wild Side:  "Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own."  And the next time someone asks where I draw my inspiration,  I will know my answer… sitting at an imaginary camp fire in the middle of Death Valley, listening to Burroughs, Bukowski and Leonard trade stories.

A tip of the hat

Being a working musician is like no other job I can think of.  There are many reasons for this, but for the purpose of this discussion I will concentrate on one only: the emotional rollercoaster.

I have had my share of day jobs, in fact quite desirable and committed white collar jobs, in which I had development plans, promotional opportunities and all those nifty long-term goals (some might call it bait) offered by business organizations, and the salaries to go along.  When I have been bypassed for a promotion, or when I’ve had a hard day at work, I get as stressed out as anyone, maybe even depressed for a few days.  But for the most part it has always been a fairly even-keeled emotional experience where one day rarely varied much from any other day, and the reward at the end of two weeks generally made up for whatever minor heartaches you suffered along the way.

But music is quite different.  It is an all or nothing game where you are the product, and every small accomplishment feels like a strategic victory, and every small setback fails like a catastrophe.  Especially if you are a songwriter, and every night you pour your soul out and leave it on a stage at the risk of being thrown out, booed, ridiculed or what’s even worse, ignored.  You bear your soul in hopes of making a connection with at least one person in the crowd, that connection being the real reward for the risk, as the vast majority of working musicians don’t make enough from gigging to even pay the rent.

I remember in my last gig in Folsom, CA, there was a gentleman wearing a cowboy hat, sitting alone towards the back wall, sipping on his beer.  He arrived roughly in the middle of my set, and then only got up to refresh his beer and sat back down in the same spot.  At the end of the gig he walked over to the front of the stage, tipped his hat in my direction, dropped three dollars in the tip jar and with a southern draw said: “nice set.”  He then walked out of the bar.  He made my night.  The three dollars, while not an insignificant gesture, was nowhere near as important to me as the fact that he took the time to acknowledge me and to let me know that he both approved of and enjoyed what I was doing.  I had another similar experience playing in Placerville, CA, where a woman actually got up at one point of my set and danced to my music, which is hardly dance music.  At the end of the show she bought my CD, asked to sign it and took a picture with me because she was sure that someday it would be worth more than a memory.

Then there are the other nights.  Nights where you play your heart out to an empty room because you can’t risk that somewhere, unseen, in the shadows, an important music industry player is silently watching; and the whole time you’re on stage you’re wondering how you will apologize to the venue for the lack of turnout.  Or the other “other” nights, in which you simply fail to make a single connection and you just get through your set hoping the stage will swallow you before you have to walk off and into the cold night, with a couple of bucks in your pocket if you’re lucky, which you would gladly give up for just one sympathetic listener in that crowd.

I have told myself and others, more than once, that my music is not everyone’s cup of tea and I don’t expect everyone to like it.  But secretly, I so hope for popularity.  I also tell myself and others, and I genuinely believe that music is not a competition and should not be rewarded on such a basis (i.e. the Grammies).  But every time I see a fellow musician in the local scene get an opportunity for a prime gig or a media feature, I jealously wonder “why not me?”

For all our bravado and renegade nature, musicians, especially those that create rather than pay tribute, are fragile creatures with very delicate egos.  While this may not be anyone’s problem other than our own, it would be just plain human decency not to viciously rag on music that is not to your liking, instead offer constructive criticism that, while hard to take, may be helpful in the long run to the artist.  And if you ever find yourself in the enviable position to presence a show you truly enjoy, take a few seconds to let the artist know how you feel.  All it takes is a tip of the hat.

Not so Sage advice on Adele, Pedaling and Pushing

As most of you reading this probably know already, Adele recently released a new album.   Let me just stop here and congratulate those of you who don’t know this as you are the only people I know to be sufficiently removed from pop culture to be able to claim that you have a life.  For the rest of us, read on…

I was watching Adele perform her new single on Saturday Night Live with my wife, and after listening to it I said to her: “I get that the songs is good, and she is a great singer, but I can’t help but wonder why this gets insanely famous while other music that I like so much more never even hits the charts.”  This led to what usually happens to me; I try to analyze as objectively as I can the subjective whys and why nots of art.

I am the first to admit that Adele is an exceptionally talented singer.  I can also say that her songs are crafted to the highest standards of songwriting, at least in the popular music domain, that the production of her albums is top notch, as is the skill of the musicians in her albums.  So why is it that I do not, nor will I probably ever, care enough about her music to buy her albums or go to one of her shows (or even bother to sit through a televised performance for any reason other than being too lazy to get up and do something else).  So here’s what I finally came up with: chemistry.  I am talking about the same intangible chemistry you refer to when trying to explain to a friend why the relationship with a dreamy, hot, intelligent and financially successful romantic candidate did not work out.

Think of why you like the music that you like.  Some people might say because it is good to dance to, or because it is relaxing, or because it pumps them up.  Whatever the reason cited, it can be boiled down to how that particular song, artist, or style makes them feel or, as I put it, whether or not the song, artist or style “speaks” to the particular listener.  At the end of the day, it has very little to do with production value, musicianship skills, literary value, etc., except in the case that any of these makes a person “feel” one way or another.

This all creates a very real dilemma for independent musicians when it comes to how to market their music.  The major artists, such as Adele, have a business machine behind them that ensures that masses of listeners will have multiple chances to hear their songs and hopefully make the connection.  You will hear her songs on SNL, on James Bond movies, on commercials and in ringtones, to name a few.   While I am sure that, like me, there are many others that even if you locked them in a room listening to Adele records over and over, would likely emerge still not liking the music, Adele’s sales have proven that she connects with a gigantic mass of people. But independent artists don’t have the business and marketing machine behind them.  We are left to our own devices to figure out how to not only identify, which is a vastly complicated task in and of itself, but then to reach out to the audience that our music may make a connection with.

I don’t have sage advice for the indies on this, I can only tell you how, in my infinite ignorance, I approach it.  As I heard in a recent industry seminar, you have to start with the song.  If you can’t write a good song or a hit (not always the same thing, that’s why I make the distinction), then no matter what you do or how big of a machine you have behind you, financial success will not follow, at least not sustainably so (read Gangnam Style).  If and once you have a good song, let’s call it “the product,” then you should develop a strategy to spread that song in ways that maximize opportunities for an audience to hear it.  Your strategy needs to be sensible and logical; notwithstanding Judas Priest’s cover of Diamonds and Rust, you should probably not include in your plan live performance at the local heavy metal joint if you are a folk singer-songwriter. 

Here three initiatives you should consider in your strategy:

1.     Live Performance Initiative.  The power of live performance cannot be understated and you should be particularly careful not to undermine your product by delivering a poor or misguided live act.  It is through live performance that an audience makes a connection with the artist, not just the song.  So you should be conscious of developing your brand, which includes the aesthetic presentation of your live show as well as your delivery.  I wear a hat.  Not always the same hat, but always with aesthetic consistency to the image I am trying to project.  I also always dress in dark colors and make sure I don’t shave for a few days prior to a show.  This is all consistent with maintaining form to the brand I am selling: the gruff, whiskey-infused philosopher.  The name I came up with for my act is memorable and I have received very positive feedback from industry representatives: Banjo Bones.  It always begs the question, what does it mean? You want to keep the conversation about your act alive.  Finally, you should have the utmost respect and appreciation for your audience.  There is no such thing as too small of an audience when it comes to your show.  As an example, I recently had a gig at a remote venue and the show only drew 6 paying customers.  I happened to be really “on” that night and delivered one of my best live performances ever.  I noticed a lady that got up during my set and danced to my music (which is hardly dance music).  After the set she bought my CD and asked me to sign it for her.  She then joined my Facebook page and she went out of her way to ask me to let her know when I was back in town and to let me know that she would reel in friends to my next show.  To me, that was a very successful night.  Had I delivered a half-assed presentation, I may have missed out on the great opportunity to make a new fan and supporter.

 

2.     Airplay Initiative.  While live performance is the historically tried and true way of “spreading the word,” it is by no means the only one.  Although its value is highly debated and disputed, radio stations still claim, based on statistics they say, that traditional radio continues to be the number one means by which fans discover new music.  There are promotion services that, for a fee that varies between two and three digits, will distribute your music to a network of stations in their portfolio.  None of these services can guarantee airplay, but I do believe that a station is more likely to play something that has been referred to them by some of these services than they are if they receive the same material directly from the artist; if for no other reason than the ongoing prejudice that if you don’t have “the machine” behind you, then you’re probably a “nobody” and undeserving of their time and attention.  There are exceptions to this, especially in the smaller markets, but it is still an unfortunate reality for the most part.  Whether you go through a promoting agency or you decide to plow forward on your own, there are ways to improve your chances to get airplay.  The obvious one is to target stations that play material that is stylistically similar to yours.  This can be based on the station’s programming as a whole (i.e. a Country Station), or specialty programs they may have (i.e. “the Blues Hour with DJ Famous”).  Be ready for rejection, which will come in the form of “thanks, but not thanks” in the best cases, or in a traditional cold shoulder, which is what most often happens.  Keep in mind that, like job hunting, this is a numbers game: the more contacts the better your chances.

 

3.     Media Reviews Initiative.  There is another type of specialized promotion service that you can tap into: the media reviews.  There are promotions services that, again for a fee, will distribute your release to a network of printed and virtual media organizations for review.  They also cannot guarantee that their network will review your release, or that if they do it will be a positive review, but I do believe that like the radio station promoters, they have a better chance of getting you material reviewed than if you send it directly.  One important word of caution: the vast majority of mainstream printed media actually operate in a combination of the printed format, enhanced by virtual content in their website.  Many of these will reach out to you once they have written the review, and tell you that because of the volume of reviews, they can’t guarantee yours will reach the printed edition and may be only posted in their website along with two thousand other reviews.  They then proceed to offer you the opportunity to increase the power of the review by securing advertising space in their publication (maybe printed, most likely virtual).  Now I am not suggesting that there are no benefits to advertising, nor am I accusing these publications of being underhanded in their approach.  I am simply suggesting that you make well informed decisions.  Ask them if your purchasing an ad will guarantee your review reaching the printed media, and if your ad is guaranteed to be on the printed media irrespective of the review.  Once you know the answers to that, then you can decide if you still wish to proceed with the ad or not.  There are benefits to these reviews beyond the outreach to potential new fans.  Specifically, you can use quotes from these reviews, along with the reference to the publication and author, in your website and other promotional material.  This gives you another layer of formality and credibility.  So don’t be so quick to disregard the virtual reviews in the 2k+ database they can still be useful.  The good news is that publications that are inclined to offer you ad space will likely only do so if the review is a good one.  You get my drift…

These are just three examples of how you can increase the mass you are targeting.  You may not be anywhere near Adele masses, but you will certainly go beyond the mandatory Facebook announcement to friends that probably already know you have a new CD out, many of which have no intentions of buying it and expect a free copy. 

One final word of advice…  Artists, and I am not exception, tend to see their creations as children.  We nurture and protect them, and treat them with care.  We get personally offended at the mere suggestion that our songs are not someone’s cup of tea, and we protect them with the bravado of standing up for a damsel in distress.  Big name artists can afford to stay in this state of mind perpetually, but the same is not true for indies if we want to reach any level of commercial success and stay independent.  As soon as the creative effort is over, we must remove our creative hats and put on our business hats.   We must look at our creations as product to be pushed and pedaled, and give them every opportunity to reach commercial success.  We must avoid the tendency to blow our entire financial wad in the creative process (i.e. recording, mixing, mastering, and packaging), and be cognizant that in order to reach critical mass we must invest in promotion, advertising, marketing, etc. 

As you embark on your next recording project, think of this and make sure to consider it in a mid to long term budget.  You owe it to your good song to give it the best opportunity to succeed financially.  Rock on Boneheads!

About the singer-songwriter format…

For most of my almost 40-year relationship with music, whenever I have done live presentations, it has been in the context of a band, where I was NOT the front person.  Since I re-started my live performance career this year, for the first time in my life I’m not only fronting, I am the single performer.  I come out with my guitar in hand, stand in the middle of the stage, and sing songs that I penned.  So why is it that I resist the term singer-songwriter?

Full disclosure: I have absolutely nothing against the singer-songwriter format.  I happen to not only like, but treasure certain albums in the format, such as James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James.  But I don’t believe that what I do live properly falls under the label singer songwriter, and here’s why…

Singer-songwriters, as defined, are musicians who write, compose and perform their own material, and most often provide the sole accompaniment to an entire composition, typically with a guitar or piano.  So far it is spot on what I am doing.  But the key difference, I think, is that the singer-songwriter generally composed the song within the framework of that format, whereas I wrote a fully orchestrated song that I then adapted for the purpose of performing it solo.  Therefore, the live song is going to be materially different from the recorded version.  Artists that come to mind that are more associated with my approach are Chris Whitely, Rocco Delucca, and Warren Zevon, all of who have rocking albums that they subsequently break down to their essence, and perform them solo with a guitar or piano.  Another example was the original acoustic frenzy that overtook the industry in the late 80’s and early 90s with the MTV show Unplugged.  Granted, it eventually lost the essence of the “naked” songs on which it was premised, but in its inception, it was exactly what I am suggesting here.  In fact, I clearly remember being floored by Stevie Ray Vaughn’s presentation of his rocking blues on an acoustic 12-string guitar.  But nobody would label him a singer-songwriter, right?

So while a folk artist may be presenting a fairly faithful representation of their recorded product, focusing on the beauty of the lyric, the melody and the message, I am more concerned with presenting the song in a way that captures the energy of the original in a radically different format.  I am not suggesting it is better or worse, simply different.

But at the end of the day I am reminded of what a fellow musician told me before a gig when I was questioning my place in a lineup of heavy metal bands.  He said: “music is music, so just do your thing.”  Wise words…

 

 

 

Gig Report: August 7 @ Luna’s Café and August 8 @ Clubhouse 24

 

I really like Luna’s Café.  It feels like playing at home for me.  I think it has something to do with the fact that it’s cozy, that it is a Café rather than a pub, and that Art Luna is such a cool guy.  The night opened with singer-songwriter OLIVIA AWBREY.  She described her music as punk folk, which I think really nails it.  She plays with a very percussive strumming approach that is just short of aggressive, and delivers her thoughtful lyrics with a fantastic voice that I am sure can go beyond the range she pushes it in her performance.  I really enjoyed her set and invited her to join me the next night at a different venue, but she didn’t make it.  I hope our paths cross gain in the future.  I followed Olivia, and had a pretty good set.  I tried out a couple of new songs, one which I was not sure would go over well acoustically (The Guilt Trip), but I received very good feedback form the audience, both right after the song, and after the gig.  I had a really solid turnout, but unfortunately, Olivia was from out of town (Portland), so she had no local followers, and the headlining act never showed, and neither did their fans.  So the 12 headcount that was there were my friends and followers, which is cool, but for Art’s sake I would have liked to see a fuller room.

The next night, at Clubhouse 24, I played with Charles Gunn, and it was one of those nights… I was curious about this gig as it was an exploratory event for me.  I was playing at a gallery on Second Saturday (a once a month event where galleries stay open late and host passers-by.  My goal was to gauge what a Second Saturday gig would be like, if I could live with being little more than wallpaper in return for a significant exposure.  But as it turned out, there was no exposure.  This particular gallery had not promoted and their geographical situation is such that there are not a whole lot of walk-ins.  We did get one couple who peaked in and stayed for a couple of songs, and we had three friends show up.  But other than that, we basically played for ourselves.  The redeeming factor of the evening was that Mr. John Lowry, harmonica player with the Cash Cartell Band, sat in for the majority of my set and I had a blast listening to him improvise over my songs.  Charles was solid, as always, with his laid back approach and excellent songs.  I really enjoy working with him and I believe we complement each other well.  Thanks to Chris Whetstone for the use of the PA, it sounded great in this room!

Gig Report: August 1 @ Press Club

This was an eclectic and interesting show from its inception… the lineup was a roots rock band, a punk band, a modern hard rock band, and me.  Let me first off express my gratitude to Jessica Burke (J. Burke Productions), the promoter of the show.  She has been nothing but supportive and is quickly becoming a close friend.  There is nobody in the Sacramento scene that is more active, and more present than she is.  Hats off to my friend Jessica!

Back to the gig… I was up first and I had a pretty good set in spite of a couple of technical glitches.  I was told after the show that my set organization has improved tremendously and it is becoming a more dynamic set.  This makes me happy because this is something I had purposely set out to accomplish.  I opened with Snowy Mountain and finished with Sin Again, and I think both worked brilliantly.  The way I inserted my more up-tempo songs also worked well.  I will keep improving upon this in my two gigs coming up this weekend. 

The second band, Super Mega Everything, played a solid set of hard rocking numbers.  As I told the guitarist at the end of their set, I paid them the highest compliment I can pay a hard rock band: they were tight as brothers.  After them came The Losing Kind, a straight p punk rock band from Vacaville, CA.  As could be expected, they brought the energy and the attitude.  I personally liked them a whole bunch, but I think they were a little much for some in the audience. 

The show was headlined by the Cash Cartell who is my new favorite local band.  They are a roots based rock band in the best way possible.  They have a seasoned sound that is young enough to keep its energy and urgency, but exuding confidence and proficiency.  Each member of the quintet fulfills their role completely and never gets in the way of the other musicians in the band.  The harmonica player adds a fantastic dimension to the band that, combined with the rhythm section, often left me envious and wanting to put a band together.  And the front man, Chuck Schubert, has attitude, swagger, chops (both singing and playing guitar), and also happens to be a kind and generous soul.  Chuck shares guitar duties with a second guitarist and they trade licks, leads and rhythm effortlessly and seamlessly.  The songwriting is first rate and the showmanship… well let’s just say I was never compelled to go outside for fresh air.  Chuck and I exchanged pleasantries at the end of the show and he opened the door to doing some collaboration as he also dug my set.  I really hope we follow up on that as the possibilities are very cool. 

Peace out Boneheads!