Busy busy weekend... a lot of music, food and family.
Thursday night, we rocked Deerfield. Boy, was Deerfield rocked. Or was that us? Who is the rocker, who is the rocked? I think Sartre said that. It's a fundamental question with which we all have to deal.
Actually, in spite of a few technical problems, I thought we played pretty well. The weather was beautiful, the crowd was a little sparse but very receptive... good times.
Friday early evening we played at Taste of Randolph. I guess from the city festivals we played last year, I figured that we would be playing on a stage tucked underneath some train tracks on a side street.
Wrong-o, dong-o, Captain Stupid.
The stage was the largest stage we've ever played on. Just huge. The event was run by Jam Productions, a huge production company.
Basically, everything was huge except our performance. It was just one of those nights for the entire band. Tempos were off, notes were missed, I broke a string... of course it would happen on a giant stage in front of tons of potential new fans and the largest production company in the city.
Actually, the audience didn't seem to notice. They flocked to Gina every time I announced we have had free CDs, and Gina reported people were really into us.
Silly people.
My shortcomings were related directly to the fact that I was having trouble properly hearing everybody. I could hear myself okay, but the drums and bass sounded like they were down the street... so I found myself distracted, focusing on things other than my performance, then coming back to my performance in time to hear that I was not in lock-step with the drums.
Ugh.
But we got free beer, food, and the manager from Jam was nice and seemed to like us. And one of the organizers from the Sheffield Garden Walk was there and into it.
So maybe I'm in overly-critical musician mode. And if it's one thing I've learned to do recently, it's to shake off bad performances.
By late Friday night as we were sitting around the fire in our backyard quaffing Goose Island Summer brew, I was over it. I'm looking at it as a learning experience for our Summerfest gig. Apparently, we're playing the largest land-stage in the entire festival, so dealing with the sound issues of playing the huge stage at TOR was good preparation for Summerfest. We'll refocus, rehearse and re-... lax. Hopefully.
Saturday, I took a day off from teaching and went to the studio to try to finish up the last of the backing vocals. Close, but no cigar. I did knock out two tunes though, getting some nice stuff down on Revenant and Darkness, leaving only Bombs Away and a little bit of Fallout Grace.
We are so damn close to being done with this album and it's really starting to gnaw on me... I need to get away from it, let Dave mix it, and come back with fresh ears. I'm starting to hear flaws that I know are not there... but when you hear something 500 times in headphones you start imagining mistakes and problems... you completely lose objectivity (if you ever had it to begin with).
Bottom line, it looks like one more session for backgrounds and my contributions will be complete.
Saturday night, we went out to Athena in Greektown to celebrate my sister's boyfriend's graduation from a Master's program at Northwestern. Good times.
Sunday, we had the family over to our backyard for Father's Day. I felt incredibly mature and grown-up in that I got up, did the shopping for the barbecue, mowed the lawn, watered the plants, and power washed the house. Then I put together the meat for the hamburgers. Once company arrived (consisting of my mom and dad, Gina's mom and dad, my Grandma and Grandpa, and my sister and her boyfriend) I entertained and grilled up the food, while simultaneously power-drinking Heinekens.
The only moment of trouble came when my mostly blind Grandfather almost fell down our back stairway.
Not good times.
I managed to catch him after two steps and he was none worse for the wear... but it was a scary moment.
So now it's back to Monday again with a full week of the usual...
Perhaps I'll sleep this week.
Perhaps not.
jbg
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