Early May Southwest minitour
A month ago, I did a minitour of the Southwest with Thea Lawson as co-cellist. Here's my rather late recap of it all.
4/28 travel day, AZ -- stayed with Lisa, David, and Raymond (@rihk on twitter). They had a cat who hated me (a very rare thing). We slept well. The next day Lisa took us to the Phoenix Zoo. We rode a camel. We hung out with spider monkeys. It was a very nice zoo. We ate lunch at Chino Bandido, which was awesome but made me horribly sick after the show (I may have some kind of problem with garlic. Not awesome.)
Show 4/29 was at Martini Ranch, which was really a terrible place for us to play. A bunch of people came out to see me, and they were fantastic, attentive, and enjoyed it despite the noise (or at least were kind enough to say they did), but the patrons not there for the music were loud, drunken buffoons. (See video for an idea of how ridiculously loud that crowd was.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw5kTDDtuc4
There are bands who can play to drunken rowdy crowds, and some of them are good music in addition to being accessible to rowdy beer-drunk cavemen, but I'm not one of them. Call me a diva (yeah, actually I'm fine with that!) but I am unwilling to shout over that kind of idiotic noise. Stripmall Architecture played right after me and I don't know how it was for them, but they sounded great from behind the stage, at least.
4/30: Anaheim -- we woke early and drove to Anaheim. I made Thea stay awake and play the Alphabet game with me so I wouldn't fall asleep while driving. We dropped off stuff at our cheap motel near Disneyland, then went to soundcheck at the hotel where Bats Day in the Fun Park events were taking place. We met Noah, the promoter, and Carl the soundguy. (I had actually met Carl before when Aphotic put on a show at the DNA where I opened for Conjure One, many years ago.) Our dinner performance at Bat's Day was the most stressful thing we'd prepared for. We practiced 2x a week for nearly 2 months, which was a lot of rehearsing. We stressed about our arrangement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which we hated and which we were sure everyone would hate, but which I was firm that we were expected to play, because we'd been asked to play 3 classical pieces, 3 original Unwoman songs, and 3 goth club hits. Our other shows would be all about a handful of my songs from Casualties that we'd play together, a piece of cake, though this was the only show in which we had any guarantee at all. So the tour was kind of built around this show.
It went fantastically -- eventually. Our first two pieces, Couperin's Air & Eine Kleine, went relatively smoothly and completely unnoticed -- people were having dinner and totally ignoring us. However that makes what happened next an even greater triumph. We played an Unwoman song, followed by Killing Jar by Siouxsie, and slowly people started finishing their dinner and turning their attention to us -- and loving us! And before our last song, I roasted Noah just a bit and people loved that, and they cracked up, sang and clapped along when we played "Bad Romance" to end the show. I spoke with a bunch of sweet, enthusiastic people and felt really terrific about how the night went, as well as relieved that we could throw the Mozart away. The next day a photographer from Las Vegas shot us, then we had lunch with my mom's old good friend from Sacramento, who along with her daughter are now into goth & steampunk there, then we went back to the convention hotel, browsed the goods for sale, and when the vendor area got too busy for comfort, we did a short guerilla acacella set in the hotel's main lobby, which interested passersby of the goth and non-goth variety and sold 3 CDs before we headed up to Burbank.
In Burbank we met our gracious host Darrin. That night I took Thea out for Sushi at Tomo. It was delish. And that sake was the only alcohol we had on the whole trip, hah. Then we went shopping on that cool street, San Fernando, and I actually found a pair of ridiculously awesome gold & black uberpointy boyish shoes for really cheap, AND a perfect square-necked little black dress in futuristic fabric, also for cheap. Then Thea egged me on to go into Backside Records and ask if we could do an in-store show. I did, and they welcomed us, and we set it up for the next day. It's a cool store that sells a lot of vinyl, and also clothes and merch.
5-2- Burbank -- We started playing Sunday at noon in Backside because we had a thing to get to later in the afternoon, and the store had just opened for the day and there was hardly any foot traffic, and no one who came into the store was even the slightest bit interested in what we were doing. We would have done better busking on the street. However, the owner, Jojo, was very nice to us, and took some CDs on consignment. We chatted a bit about pressing vinyl as well. It's definitely on my want-list. Our next stop that day was meeting up with @EmilyCello, an awesome cello teacher, blogger, and very cool lady. We jammed on some fun weird duets, and some Unwoman tunes. I've bought the pdf of her book, in hopes it'll help guide me with the couple of adult beginner cello students I've just begun working with.
Then of course was the show -- the fantastic Veronique Chevalier pulled together a bunch of us to perform in a weird-awesome shop, Echo Curio. It was packed, and the other performers were fantastic. Here's Thea & myself playing "Is She Secretly On My Side" acacella,
It seemed like people really liked us, and Darrin said the show was overall great. Darrin was extremely cool, smart, great to talk to, but as a good host had mainly left us to do our thing and we only really got to talking as we were packing to leave for Santa Barbara. Bummer, but our paths will probably cross again.
5-03 Santa Barbara -- My awesome cousin, Liz Powers ("Thumbalina" lyricist) set up this show, but the UC staff were very adamant that no one get the idea that the school had welcomed me (eg, we could only set up merch in the lobby not in the performance space). Liz had talked to 6 people about booking the Old Little Theater that night, and we had to wait till 8 till a class was done there but she had indeed been given the go-ahead, yet when we loaded in a grumpy professor yelled at us that he had the space until 10. But we chased him and his students (sorry!) to the library and began setting up, only to find that many things (the stacks of amps, and the mic cables we never found) were locked to us because the sound guy was sick. It ended up a mostly acacella show, starting late and harried, but the audience was truly amazing. They were so incredibly into it. Liz's friend Laura did a bellydance to Satin (we played the recording so I got to watch) & then improvised a sword dance to me playing Trouble live on piano. We ended with the Lady Gaga, I think. We stuck around to answer questions, sign posters, and just talk with the audience for a while.
Then about eight of them came with us to the car down the road a bit, even though we really only needed one person to help carry the merch bag, and we all sang the spooky oooooOOOOOooooo from "Haunted" which we'd had them sing along with during the show, and at 11:00 as the dew had started to roll in I'm sure it made for a haunting or confusing or fun sight for passersby. It was the most magical experience of the tour. However, a lot of things about that night reminded me why I despise academia, and why I'm glad to be completely unreliant on its opinion of me. (There's a long story there, maybe it will come out when I write the next chapter of my mini musical memoirs.)
Overall it was a terrific tour. By some calculations I probably lost money, by others I made about $200 which certainly doesn't pay me well for my time. However, it was extremely encouraging that I didn't lose my shirt on my first self-powered tour. Also encouraging was noticing that if I played for 25 attentive listeners, even if some already had my CDs, I would sell $90-$130 worth of merchandise. That's over $4 per attendee on average. Impressive, right? This figure held pretty well for my recent NW tour as well and it's great to finally have a good way to project how much I'll make on merch (though promoters always overestimate how many people will come to something) and will help me figure out where I can afford to go play.
5-08 -- A few days later we jaunted to the Retox Lounge here in SF, where Joe Pate recorded many many gorgeous videos of me playing, some with Thea and some alone. This is my favorite video (to date) of the Bad Romance cover:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X39YK4QbM6Q
No, I don't have an audio recording of this song available yet, but I hope to soon. I have some song poems to record first.
4/28 travel day, AZ -- stayed with Lisa, David, and Raymond (@rihk on twitter). They had a cat who hated me (a very rare thing). We slept well. The next day Lisa took us to the Phoenix Zoo. We rode a camel. We hung out with spider monkeys. It was a very nice zoo. We ate lunch at Chino Bandido, which was awesome but made me horribly sick after the show (I may have some kind of problem with garlic. Not awesome.)
Show 4/29 was at Martini Ranch, which was really a terrible place for us to play. A bunch of people came out to see me, and they were fantastic, attentive, and enjoyed it despite the noise (or at least were kind enough to say they did), but the patrons not there for the music were loud, drunken buffoons. (See video for an idea of how ridiculously loud that crowd was.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw5kTDDtuc4
Click to viewThere are bands who can play to drunken rowdy crowds, and some of them are good music in addition to being accessible to rowdy beer-drunk cavemen, but I'm not one of them. Call me a diva (yeah, actually I'm fine with that!) but I am unwilling to shout over that kind of idiotic noise. Stripmall Architecture played right after me and I don't know how it was for them, but they sounded great from behind the stage, at least.
4/30: Anaheim -- we woke early and drove to Anaheim. I made Thea stay awake and play the Alphabet game with me so I wouldn't fall asleep while driving. We dropped off stuff at our cheap motel near Disneyland, then went to soundcheck at the hotel where Bats Day in the Fun Park events were taking place. We met Noah, the promoter, and Carl the soundguy. (I had actually met Carl before when Aphotic put on a show at the DNA where I opened for Conjure One, many years ago.) Our dinner performance at Bat's Day was the most stressful thing we'd prepared for. We practiced 2x a week for nearly 2 months, which was a lot of rehearsing. We stressed about our arrangement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which we hated and which we were sure everyone would hate, but which I was firm that we were expected to play, because we'd been asked to play 3 classical pieces, 3 original Unwoman songs, and 3 goth club hits. Our other shows would be all about a handful of my songs from Casualties that we'd play together, a piece of cake, though this was the only show in which we had any guarantee at all. So the tour was kind of built around this show.
It went fantastically -- eventually. Our first two pieces, Couperin's Air & Eine Kleine, went relatively smoothly and completely unnoticed -- people were having dinner and totally ignoring us. However that makes what happened next an even greater triumph. We played an Unwoman song, followed by Killing Jar by Siouxsie, and slowly people started finishing their dinner and turning their attention to us -- and loving us! And before our last song, I roasted Noah just a bit and people loved that, and they cracked up, sang and clapped along when we played "Bad Romance" to end the show. I spoke with a bunch of sweet, enthusiastic people and felt really terrific about how the night went, as well as relieved that we could throw the Mozart away. The next day a photographer from Las Vegas shot us, then we had lunch with my mom's old good friend from Sacramento, who along with her daughter are now into goth & steampunk there, then we went back to the convention hotel, browsed the goods for sale, and when the vendor area got too busy for comfort, we did a short guerilla acacella set in the hotel's main lobby, which interested passersby of the goth and non-goth variety and sold 3 CDs before we headed up to Burbank.
In Burbank we met our gracious host Darrin. That night I took Thea out for Sushi at Tomo. It was delish. And that sake was the only alcohol we had on the whole trip, hah. Then we went shopping on that cool street, San Fernando, and I actually found a pair of ridiculously awesome gold & black uberpointy boyish shoes for really cheap, AND a perfect square-necked little black dress in futuristic fabric, also for cheap. Then Thea egged me on to go into Backside Records and ask if we could do an in-store show. I did, and they welcomed us, and we set it up for the next day. It's a cool store that sells a lot of vinyl, and also clothes and merch.
5-2- Burbank -- We started playing Sunday at noon in Backside because we had a thing to get to later in the afternoon, and the store had just opened for the day and there was hardly any foot traffic, and no one who came into the store was even the slightest bit interested in what we were doing. We would have done better busking on the street. However, the owner, Jojo, was very nice to us, and took some CDs on consignment. We chatted a bit about pressing vinyl as well. It's definitely on my want-list. Our next stop that day was meeting up with @EmilyCello, an awesome cello teacher, blogger, and very cool lady. We jammed on some fun weird duets, and some Unwoman tunes. I've bought the pdf of her book, in hopes it'll help guide me with the couple of adult beginner cello students I've just begun working with.
Then of course was the show -- the fantastic Veronique Chevalier pulled together a bunch of us to perform in a weird-awesome shop, Echo Curio. It was packed, and the other performers were fantastic. Here's Thea & myself playing "Is She Secretly On My Side" acacella,
It seemed like people really liked us, and Darrin said the show was overall great. Darrin was extremely cool, smart, great to talk to, but as a good host had mainly left us to do our thing and we only really got to talking as we were packing to leave for Santa Barbara. Bummer, but our paths will probably cross again.
5-03 Santa Barbara -- My awesome cousin, Liz Powers ("Thumbalina" lyricist) set up this show, but the UC staff were very adamant that no one get the idea that the school had welcomed me (eg, we could only set up merch in the lobby not in the performance space). Liz had talked to 6 people about booking the Old Little Theater that night, and we had to wait till 8 till a class was done there but she had indeed been given the go-ahead, yet when we loaded in a grumpy professor yelled at us that he had the space until 10. But we chased him and his students (sorry!) to the library and began setting up, only to find that many things (the stacks of amps, and the mic cables we never found) were locked to us because the sound guy was sick. It ended up a mostly acacella show, starting late and harried, but the audience was truly amazing. They were so incredibly into it. Liz's friend Laura did a bellydance to Satin (we played the recording so I got to watch) & then improvised a sword dance to me playing Trouble live on piano. We ended with the Lady Gaga, I think. We stuck around to answer questions, sign posters, and just talk with the audience for a while.
Then about eight of them came with us to the car down the road a bit, even though we really only needed one person to help carry the merch bag, and we all sang the spooky oooooOOOOOooooo from "Haunted" which we'd had them sing along with during the show, and at 11:00 as the dew had started to roll in I'm sure it made for a haunting or confusing or fun sight for passersby. It was the most magical experience of the tour. However, a lot of things about that night reminded me why I despise academia, and why I'm glad to be completely unreliant on its opinion of me. (There's a long story there, maybe it will come out when I write the next chapter of my mini musical memoirs.)
Overall it was a terrific tour. By some calculations I probably lost money, by others I made about $200 which certainly doesn't pay me well for my time. However, it was extremely encouraging that I didn't lose my shirt on my first self-powered tour. Also encouraging was noticing that if I played for 25 attentive listeners, even if some already had my CDs, I would sell $90-$130 worth of merchandise. That's over $4 per attendee on average. Impressive, right? This figure held pretty well for my recent NW tour as well and it's great to finally have a good way to project how much I'll make on merch (though promoters always overestimate how many people will come to something) and will help me figure out where I can afford to go play.
5-08 -- A few days later we jaunted to the Retox Lounge here in SF, where Joe Pate recorded many many gorgeous videos of me playing, some with Thea and some alone. This is my favorite video (to date) of the Bad Romance cover:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X39YK4QbM6Q
No, I don't have an audio recording of this song available yet, but I hope to soon. I have some song poems to record first.