Tuesday's Tonic Show...
Tuesday night really turned out to be a much mellower evening then I thought, yet quite a few people did show up. I forgot how mellow those acoustic nights can be. My friend Jayda went on right before me. She was a little nervous, but she has an AMAZING voice, so it all works out!!! She's a really nice/cool person too. Cal opened the show wearing the cowboy hat. Jasmine ended the evening, but only played a few songs because it was so late (she had some karma to burn). She has her record release thing going on this weekend though, at the Goodfoot over on SE Stark. Her album sounds pretty good (albeit, I've only heard the unmastered version). It sounds really professional. She even recorded her 'Dear Christopher' song. Heh. Her first one was solo/acoustic, but this one is with a actual band (albeit, only a STUDIO band, consisting largely of local musicians from various bands). Pretty good for a person who has only been in Portland for 8 months and only been playing guitar for less than two years! Makes me feel like the most unmotivated person on the planet! I fancy thinking of myself as having a 'wide focus' though (which is really nothing more then an excuse for never really getting anything done -- not to THAT level, anyway). Heh. We all create our own realities. Lol. Apparently she’s going to be heading to L.A. in a few weeks to do some preliminary songwriting/recording with Meredith Brooks. Not a huge fan, but good for her. I told her to give me a copy of her EP when it’s done so I can get a copy to Aimee Mann.
Anyway, I'm not really sure I like the actual SOUND of my guitar (I had some minor technical difficulties with having it sound overly trebley). I'm not really the best guitar player in the world, and like to think of myself more as a songwriter. The guitar is just my physical medium. I also really need to work on my voice as well. It's not that I have a BAD voice, per se, but I've just never really been formally trained before, and don't really utilize my full range as well as I could. I HAVE been trying to write songs in a more comfortable vocal range lately (as per some good advice from The Goolie who has an AMAZING voice).
Anyway, I received some compliments that the guitar playing was pretty tight. That makes me happy to hear because, despite some MAJOR technical difficulties I had prior to heading out to the Tonic [ie: losing the two packages of guitar strings I purchased earlier in the week, having to rummage through my junk in the basement to find an old, hidden pack & THEN breaking three guitar strings in the process of trying to familiarize myself with some lyrics I was having trouble remembering as I was going through the set list, then trying to restring and piece together a complete guitar by salvaging from the three miscellaneous carcasses lying on my bedroom floor!!! -- what a mess] I HAD been practicing ALL WEEK!!! My place is a TOTAL wreck right now. I’ll have to get to that before my roommate gets the wrong idea or something. I’ve just really let things go this last week (since my 4th of July BBQ) and I really need to finish cleaning. It's not that I'm totally anal about cleaning (well, sort of, sometimes, in a way) but I like to leave the bar raised pretty high because I have a roommate and I need to set some kind of a notion of standard because I leave one thing out which is inevitably followed tenfold by her (if you've ever had roommates, you'll know what I mean).
Anyway, the reason I originally scheduled the show in the first place (a little insight as to how truly chaotic I operate) was because I needed to finish some songs I've been working on since the not-so-recent demise of Dead End Crush. I work much better under pressure though, so knowing I would be playing a show got my ass into gear. Hey, whatever works, I guess. Unfortunately, there are a number of unfinished songs that I really wanted to get to, but I opted to just play the ones that I was most comfortable with.
Needless to say, despite my best efforts, I still managed to fluff a number of lyrics. Oh well. I'm pretty good at plowing unfazed through mistakes on live performances (I talent I gathered from literally, YEARS of on-stage fuck ups). They're only really prevalent to people who are REALLY failure with the songs, or if I'm doing a cover (like the few lines from that Liz Phair cover I sort of botched up). I generally try to become so failure with a cover that I can go through it in my sleep, but the Phair cover was a last minute decision. I figured I knew the song well enough, and I actually learned it a long time ago, but, for some reason, when I actually got up to sing it my mind went blank for this one line (which managed to happen on BOTH times I came to the verse). Oh well. What are you going to do? I generally try to remain unfazed by it, and not draw a lot of attention to it. Jasmine's not very good at that though. She becomes visibly unraveled, makes a face or laughs or something. I try and tell her that no one would notice if you just pretend that everything's cool, but she's young and still learning.
Anyway, the ice has melted in my Thai iced tea, which means it's time to go. Once I get going, I guess I just KEEP going. I went to bed relatively early last night (around 8pm-ish) in an attempt to recover from staying out so late. Needless to say, I’ve been up since around 2am. I even took out the recycling and the trash in time for my 'it's time to go running you pathetic motherfucker!' alarm went off. Needless to say, it was a brilliant morning. Heh. =]
Stay cool,
-Xtp
Anyway, I'm not really sure I like the actual SOUND of my guitar (I had some minor technical difficulties with having it sound overly trebley). I'm not really the best guitar player in the world, and like to think of myself more as a songwriter. The guitar is just my physical medium. I also really need to work on my voice as well. It's not that I have a BAD voice, per se, but I've just never really been formally trained before, and don't really utilize my full range as well as I could. I HAVE been trying to write songs in a more comfortable vocal range lately (as per some good advice from The Goolie who has an AMAZING voice).
Anyway, I received some compliments that the guitar playing was pretty tight. That makes me happy to hear because, despite some MAJOR technical difficulties I had prior to heading out to the Tonic [ie: losing the two packages of guitar strings I purchased earlier in the week, having to rummage through my junk in the basement to find an old, hidden pack & THEN breaking three guitar strings in the process of trying to familiarize myself with some lyrics I was having trouble remembering as I was going through the set list, then trying to restring and piece together a complete guitar by salvaging from the three miscellaneous carcasses lying on my bedroom floor!!! -- what a mess] I HAD been practicing ALL WEEK!!! My place is a TOTAL wreck right now. I’ll have to get to that before my roommate gets the wrong idea or something. I’ve just really let things go this last week (since my 4th of July BBQ) and I really need to finish cleaning. It's not that I'm totally anal about cleaning (well, sort of, sometimes, in a way) but I like to leave the bar raised pretty high because I have a roommate and I need to set some kind of a notion of standard because I leave one thing out which is inevitably followed tenfold by her (if you've ever had roommates, you'll know what I mean).
Anyway, the reason I originally scheduled the show in the first place (a little insight as to how truly chaotic I operate) was because I needed to finish some songs I've been working on since the not-so-recent demise of Dead End Crush. I work much better under pressure though, so knowing I would be playing a show got my ass into gear. Hey, whatever works, I guess. Unfortunately, there are a number of unfinished songs that I really wanted to get to, but I opted to just play the ones that I was most comfortable with.
Needless to say, despite my best efforts, I still managed to fluff a number of lyrics. Oh well. I'm pretty good at plowing unfazed through mistakes on live performances (I talent I gathered from literally, YEARS of on-stage fuck ups). They're only really prevalent to people who are REALLY failure with the songs, or if I'm doing a cover (like the few lines from that Liz Phair cover I sort of botched up). I generally try to become so failure with a cover that I can go through it in my sleep, but the Phair cover was a last minute decision. I figured I knew the song well enough, and I actually learned it a long time ago, but, for some reason, when I actually got up to sing it my mind went blank for this one line (which managed to happen on BOTH times I came to the verse). Oh well. What are you going to do? I generally try to remain unfazed by it, and not draw a lot of attention to it. Jasmine's not very good at that though. She becomes visibly unraveled, makes a face or laughs or something. I try and tell her that no one would notice if you just pretend that everything's cool, but she's young and still learning.
Anyway, the ice has melted in my Thai iced tea, which means it's time to go. Once I get going, I guess I just KEEP going. I went to bed relatively early last night (around 8pm-ish) in an attempt to recover from staying out so late. Needless to say, I’ve been up since around 2am. I even took out the recycling and the trash in time for my 'it's time to go running you pathetic motherfucker!' alarm went off. Needless to say, it was a brilliant morning. Heh. =]
Stay cool,
-Xtp