Rockin' The Bass!

Ya gotta love waking up and having offers for three gigs in your email!!!!!!! Even better was only having to turn down one...I'm only available for half of their dates. It's also nice to be hearing from some new folks. Don't get me wrong, I love my friends, but it's good to know that people are recommending my low notes.

The show in DC is winding down....more on that later this weekend. Looks like February is gonna be chill but then I'm slammed for the spring, starting in March!!!!

In other news, you may remember that I did a show with the Dizzy Miss Lizzie folks last summer called The Saints. They're recording the music from the show this week, so I had to get up early Tuesday morning and re-learn the stuff...it's been a few months since we played....and then head into the studio later that day. Tarek, our drummer, and I laid down our tracks later that morning and it went really well! It's been a while since I was in the studio, but nailing a song on the first take always feels awesome. I go back later this week to do my vocals.

Looking Back at '09

THE WORK
I made a conscious decision a little while back to try to focus more on playing my bass and a little less on the acting. I love doing the acting thing but I'm a better bass player and, frankly, it earns me more money. So there were lots of bass gigs this year. The theater stuff was....

Sophisticated Ladies
Chess
High School Musical
Into The Woods
Partial Eclipse
Sideshow
Aida
Rent
Rocky Horror
Meet Me In St. Louis
Rent...again

I did manage to squeeze in a few acting gigs....

Hunting The Anthrax Killer on National Geographic
Playing a biker in a Carmax commercial
Diamond Dead in DC and NY
Walmartopia

Dizzy Miss Lizzie presents The Saints


THE BIG FUN

Obama!!!
My first time skiing...ouch
Seal from the Front Row
Spinal Tap
My Vacation in Vegas and LA

Yeah, there was lots of cool stuff this and very little bad, but i already know that 2010 is gonna be crazeeeee! :)

Stay tuned!

Hunting The Anthrax Killer

Do you watch The National Geographic Channel? Did you see Hunting The Anthrax Killer? Then you might have recognized one of the FBI agents. We shot this back in March down in DC. It was a very chill shoot and everyone was very cool. I was surprised at how much screen time I actually ended up getting.

The show that was on right after Anthrax was really good too, so I just kept watching and now I'm hooked. I had never watched National Geographic before but now I can't turn it off.

Anyway, I know it's not exactly starring in this summer's big blockbuster, but you gotta enjoy the baby steps.

FRINGE - The Saints

The audition notice for Dizzy Miss Lizzie's Roadside Review asked for musicians to prepare two songs in which you accompanied yourself on your instrument. Unfortunately for me there aren't very many bass / vocal tunes out there. The first song was an obvious choice, "The Joker" by Steve Miller...."some people call me the space cowboy"...but I could not think of another song. The day of the audition I was driving around and had my Ipod on shuffle and Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears" came on. I knew right away I could pull it off and a few months later I found myself on stage in The Saints!

I really enjoyed this show. For me, it was mostly a bass show but I did get two featured songs which was very cool. The cast was amazing and it was great opportunity to work with some folks I hadn't hung out with since the Toby's days....a couple of years. We're doing a couple of showcase kind of things over the next month or so and there is talk of remounting the show eventually if the right venue and circumstance can be found. I hope it works out!

Father's Day

Miss You Dad!

Partial Eclipse

Three rehearsals, six performances and a new guitar.....all in about a week. That was the crazy, but awesome whirlwind experience that was playing Partial Eclipse at Signature last week. The show was part of the theater's cabaret series that they're doing this summer and was advertised as "A Rock Song Cycle by the Composer of Nevermore, Matt Connor". Basically, it was a collection of new tunes that Matt's written.

The first two rehearsals went fine. It was a lot of music and I was sight reading it, but none of it was too difficult....the most challenging part was figuring out the arrangements and the key changes.....I have a hard time modulating sometimes, but everything seemed to be going smooth.
I get to the final tech rehearsal and my bass decides to not work anymore. I had been getting some static from my volume knob the last gig I had played but did a little home repair and thought I had it fixed....obviously not. With the entire cast and production staff looking at me, I tried to figure out how to make it work but it wasn't gonna happen, so I drove down to Guitar Center in Falls Church, ran into the store, grabbed the first bass I saw and bought it. Back at the theater I plug the new one in and it makes the same farty noises that the old one had been. Turns out my cable wasn't plugged all the way in. I looked at the music director and just laughed and asked, "Do you hear that? That's the sound of God laughing at me! I hear that all the time!"
Turns out my bass did have a bunch of electronic problems which I got fixed the next day. I had been planning to return the new bass, but I figured I should have a reliable back-up, so I went back to Guitar Center and exchanged the new one for a nice, used Ibanez that only cost $30 more. It's so nice actually, that the guys in the band were trying to convince me to play it instead of my green bass. It does sound great but the feel is so different I didn't want to break it in at a gig.
Oh yeah, the gig. I really enjoyed the music. Don't hate me for saying this, Matt, but the show reminded me a little of Songs For A New World, not melodically but in it's vibe...a collection of theatrical rock songs that each tell their own story but have an underlying theme. That's not to compare the sound of the music though...Matt has a style of his own.

The voices were unbelievable!!! Nuff said!

Everyone involved with the show was way cool and I got to touch Eric Schaeffer's Tony Award! Overall, it was a great experience.

Next up.....Fringe!

Sophisticated Ladies

I've been playing bass for Sophisticated Ladies since January and we closed this past weekend. If you're not familiar with the show (I wasn't until I got the gig), it's a review of music by Duke Ellington...."Take The A Train", "It Don't Mean A Thing, If It Ain't Got That Swing", etc.

I struggled a little with this show at first because half of the show is charted as opposed to being written out. What this means is that instead of each note and rhythm, the music just consists of blank bars with the chord changes written over top. Jazz dudes play this way all the time but I don't have a lot of experience with it. I knew some jazz and blues scales, but went on-line to make sure what I was playing was appropriate for some of the weirder chords. Do you know what scale to play under a C minor chord with a flat 7th? I didn't.

Once I got comfortable with it, I loved playing this show and their were certain nights, when we all locked in, that were amazing!