Love In The Time Of H1N1

May 4th, 2009

One never knows how a four o’clock rock show is going to turn out. We’re not talking the Iowa State Fair here. We’re talking New York City on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Ends up it’s one heck of a time to rock.

Chris Abad and I booked the show months ago not because four o’clock in the afternoon is prime time, but because, well, what the heck? I figured I’d get all my married friends out with their kids (as I did at last year’s post-op all-ages show), get in a paid (well, tip jar anyway) rehearsal, and get our Saturday night started early.

As the week unfolded, though, it became apparent to me that our casual, all-ages show was going to be fortuitously timed with a pretty major event. Judging by the increased frequency of advice-oriented calls, it looked like Abbi’s sister, Pembry, was going to get engaged to her longtime boyfriend, Pedro, Friday night. It reasoned, then, that The Kellers would join us from Delaware on Saturday, and that our little rock show was gonna’ play a bit part in a broader celebration. So I planned accordingly.

Now, as is presumably evident from all the songs I’ve written about its failure, I don’t purport to know a lot about love. Best I can tell from what I’ve learned is that romance is nice, but it has a lot more to do with commitment, respect, inspiration, communication and trust.

So I endeavored to write all that into the narrative arch of the set list.

The story was intended to begin at the moment when one relinquished his romantic fantasies (“I’ve given up on the daydream”), pass through desperation (“I waited up!”) and aimlessness (“The scenery was nothing more than something there to see”) to discovery (“I’m going down for the last time”), revelation and commitment (“I promise you”) and resolution (“You feel like home to me”). With impromptu additions and deletions, I also managed to include some other, darker notes too, like loss of self (“Live Forever”) and transgression (“Leaving On A Jet Plane”).

Factor in anecdotal storytelling here and there (trust me when I say I was feeling remarkably comfortable up there Saturday afternoon), I think I may have managed to impart, if not some of the lessons I’ve learned (and/or am learning), then certainly some of the feelings I’ve felt.

What remarkable to me is that the whole time I was sitting there singing (in broad daylight, which is weird in its own right), people just kept streaming in the front door. Soon enough, there was a collection of toddlers dancing in front of the stage, their smiling parents dancing behind then, and my younger, hip friends tugging on beers behind them.

What’s more, when it came time to sing-a-long (“You Are My Sunshine”), everyone did. Twere four generations in that bar, all singing along. (And I didn’t even have to stand on a table to inspire that level of participation like I used to in halcyon days days of The Smith Family.)

Afterwards, mere seconds after my buddy Ron, his father Fred, wife Jodi and daughter Talia walked out, Abbi’s father, Richard, bought Pedro, the band and I a round of shots. In retrospect, standing there sour-faced and laughing in the half-light of early summer with my wife, my friends and my family basking in the afterglow of a rock show may have been a glimpse of what’s to come, or — if nothing else — what is. I mean, that’s it, right? That’s all there is, everything that matters.

That’s love in the time of H1N1.

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Tags: Love & Marriage, Rock & Roll

Serious Business

May 3rd, 2009

Used to be, I thought that rock bands solely made records like The Rolling Stones, Warren Zevon or Guns ‘N Roses: late at night, loaded with gin, and stuffed with amphetamines. And maybe some still do.

What’s more, I held some sort of anxious romance for the studio, like the magic there is intangible, elusive and fleeting. And sometimes it is.

These days, though, I approach recording with workman-like rigor. It’s a task, one made real by rehearsal, repetition, and the right teammates. At least, that’s how I approached it Saturday morning.

That’s right, “morning.” In an effort to kill numerous birds with a minimum of stones (actually, no animals were injured on this project), Chris, Tony, Jamie and I booked at Travis Harrison’s Serious Business Studio from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The task at hand was our cover of The Nadas “Feel Like Home,” my contribution to the band’s forthcoming tribute album. My secret agenda (don’t tell Abbi), though, was to begin bagging basic tracks to a few songs for my next album, a loosely-affiliated collection of songs I’ve started thinking of as “Random Notes.”

Jamie was already a few bites into his ham, egg and cheese when I arrived Travis’ Spring Street studio. Chris and Tony were running late. So the three of us fell into a conversation I have frequently these days, the one I’m thinking of calling “The Revolutionary Road Conundrum” (so named for the novel and film of the same name in which a young couple’s self-assured exterior masks a creeping frustration at their inability to feel fulfilled). It’s a conversation I tend to start with Jason Walsmith and Chris Abad in particular (of course, Abbi gets it all the time) debating (as I’ve done here for pushing ten years) the relative merits of an independent, entrepreneurial life spent chasing ones passion with little promise of return versus the safe, corporate executive route (or, as I often describe it “Becoming one of those soulless dudes riding Metro North every morning).

All of which is potentially relevant to a song (“Feel Like Home”) whose lyrics ask (rhetorically, I presume), “What is a skyline / Chilled to the bone alone and dirty?” I haven’t asked Mike Butterworth about it, but I imagine inspiration for the lyrics hay have come in some small part from the few night he’s spent in New York. I know he doesn’t love it here. And I don’t blame him. It’s an often hostile, always challenging place to call home. It’s a place people come to be Masters Of The Universe, whatever universe that may be. Of course, it’s a hollow pursuit (now more than ever), one that leaves many successful in business, perhaps, but bankrupt in life. That’s always been the “home” to me in “Feels Like Home,” the home you feel wherever you are when you’re with someone you love.

All of which occupied my thoughts still as I stood in the vocal booth hour later singing the song over, and over and over again. Artists often like to boast about capturing the magic on their first take. Heck, I’ve probably done it myself. But “Feels Like Home” isn’t out song. It comes with responsibility, one I felt weighing heavily on me as the band explored a final arrangement in the main room. I trust the guys implicitly. They always push my more-traditionally arranged songs into new, interesting places. Still, when their explorations traipsed too far into esoterica, I had to gently speak up.

I know Jason, Mike and Jon pretty well. They love a good, simple, richly-layered pop song as well as well as I do. It’s the primary reason I’m on Authentic. “Feel Like Home” is emblematic of that. It’s a classic verse/chorus/verse structure but with a simple twist: the chorus repeats unevenly in its second and third incarnation. And it’s loaded with ear candy: and tasty, little guitar licks; keyboard bleeps, and seemlesly layered vocals.

Somewhere around 1:45, we nailed our take. It’s classic Chris, Tony, and Jamie: arpeggiated, slightly-dark open chords and picked bass notes with toms in the verses and a driving snare in the choruses. Chris overdubbed the song’s signature hook, and we were done.

In the coming days, I’ll lay in acoustic guitars, tambourine, and as many vocals as I can stomach.

Our workmen-like approach notwithstanding, “Random Notes” didn’t make a ton of additional progress. We bagged a clean take of “Waited Up” before packing up and heading out. The sun was still shining as we walked further downtown for our Rockwood Music Hall double bill. Magic had been captured, sure. But there wasn’t an amphetamine in sight.