A Little Help from my Friends

It's easy to commit to writing a blog, and then slack off. It really is. You start writing, you have all of these ideas, it's still a novelty... And then you feel you've reached the point where you might not have anything interesting to contribute, but keep sludging on anyway. If I had to describe my blogging mindset right now, I would probably say... Metallica, late 1988ish.

There are things worth writing, though. I believe that this chronicle is a worthwhile endeavor. Reading back over the past couple entries, I noticed that there is a lot of negativity and frustration in there. I'm a big-time bottler (yes, deliberate double-entendre), and any blackness I might harbor comes out through creative expression, which includes writing this blog.
At any rate, this is not a therapy session, although I wish it could be. I wish that I could just bleed and spit all over the page, and display it openly. For a sick sort of validation. My friend Johnny Res(igliano) says that an artist is just someone who FEELS things in front of the whole world. Overgrown children, we stamp and pout on the enormous public stage because we're not happy until everyone else is engaged in our misery. See, I try not to do that. But I want to.
So, back to reality- this is a music blog. This is something that I am doing because I wish I had someone to talk me through my first open mic, to warn me about shady club promoters when I started playing gigs... and I keep doing it because... well, at first I didn't actually expect anybody to read it. I published the first post as sort of a public journal entry, because I was hurting worse than I've ever hurt in my life after being crushed between the dual semi's of Randall leaving me and my dear Dad passing away 5 days apart in December. But a handful of people have actually claimed to enjoy this, so why not keep at it?
So, to catch up... there's a lot of catching up to do. As some of you know, I am a solo singer/songwriter, and the lead guitar player in an all-female Ratt cover band. Both are gratifying in very different ways. I played my last solo gig a few weeks ago, and am not booking any for the moment until I get a real set list together with my "collaborator."
I have had the very great fortune of meeting E. E is a New York City native, growing up in the Lower East Side when it was still really "rock 'n roll." He is also a lifelong professional bass player who has worked with a ton of big names that you all know and, for some crazy reason, has decided that he wants to work with little ol' me. I met him outside of the Studio, the music rehearsal building on 30th & 8th. I was there for my Hail-Mary last-chance practice with my band- the week prior I had shown up visibly intoxicated, didn't really know my parts, and proceeded to continue drinking vodka like water for the rest of the session. And I thought I sounded good. The following day I get this email from the lead singer, acting as spokesperson, that I was not to show up to practice drunk ever again, and if I didn't have my act together by next week that was it.
Well eff me. I was ready to say "screw this," but I didn't really want out of the band. In the aftermath of December, the last thing I could stand to feel was the alienation and shame of being booted from this group. So I got it together, and steeled my jaw planning to arrive at practice with my head up.
Walking up to the building, I could see two characters outside standing in the pool of golden light emanating through the 9pm darkness from the glass doorway. They were smoking. One was very tall and dark, with black spiky hair, a black leather jacket, black Converse sneakers, a big black instrument strapped to his back, black eyes, and a Marlboro Red wedged between two fingers. The other- I don't even remember, to be honest. Thinking I had a second (and a few pre-redemption practice jitters) to kill, I asked them if I might steal a drag from someone's cigarette. Tall and Dark responded, "Here sweetie, I can give you your own cigarette." He gave it to me, and lit it with matches. We all introduced ourselves, and then E gestured towards the guitar on my back and asked me if I could actually play it. I replied in the affirmative. In the rest of the time window between this exchange and me going inside to battle off the executioner, E told me he was a pro bass player, name dropped a bit, I acted unimpressed, he mentioned working together, I didn't rule it out, we exchanged information, I finished my cigarette, and went inside. I'm not sure why, but he radiated sincerity. I didn't get the impression that he was one of "those." I determined that that didn't mean that he wasn't, but that perhaps I shouldn't rule out the possibility that "collaborating" might be a legitimate offer and if it proved false, well that would reveal itself soon enough.
I made it through practice. I wasn't great, but I was better. The ladies were pretty understanding. They got the idea that I had just kind of died inside, and it was a little difficult to keep the focus when trying to learn these '80s metal songs about nothing. But that's where the whole concept of being in a band comes in to play... it's not about me, whether I happen to be ready to paint the world in rainbows or garrote myself with braided dental floss. It's about the unit. And if I'm so torn up on the inside that I can't live up to the task of playing these songs, I need to let them find someone who is. Unfortunately for them, mwahaha, I wasn't willing to do that just yet so I pulled it through. They stopped being hardasses after that.
E and I kept in communication, and eventually I agreed to go uptown and meet him and his roommate Dave for dinner at their house. Dave is a guitar player on Broadway, so by the end of the evening, 3 people, 4 hours and 5 bottles of red wine later, the three of us were having a prolific jam session that I never wanted to end. We played, sang, and it was amazing. Something that I had been searching for for a while- a good jam session. Lots of musicians around my age and my skill level like to talk about jamming, but it never seems to happen. Either no one can get together on the same days, or we have nowhere to go. OR, and this is the worst, a few people get together, with instruments, and then just sit there and talk about nothing because nobody knows what to play or how to get started.
 It took a few weeks, but after that night E and I have started meeting up on Sundays to practice. The practice sessions have been a wonderful thing, for both of us I think. He's learning my original songs, which is great, because that means they're getting objectively processed in his brain and often they come out differently. The first day we sat down to work on an original tune of mine, we completely reworked it. Took out an extra bridge, reformatted the pattern, and made it into something complete. Before, it was long and rambling, and while every piece fit together perfectly, there were some fragments of the song that were just not as necessary as I believed.
I have also found a great friend, which I've really needed. I have plenty of friends, don't get me wrong. There are a lot of wonderful people in my life. But I feel that with a lot of my friends, our fundamental understandings of things are different. And losing the two main men in my life in December has left me feeling very isolated, alone, and totally insecure regarding my place on this planet. E has been through many losses as well, including the loss of his own father relatively recently. So we have an understanding. We probably burn up a good 20-25% of our Sunday rehearsals in "therapy," talking, venting, commiserating. He's a little older than me, in his later mid-thirties, and has been around the block in this business. There is no "scene" in him whatsoever. He gets a big kick out of my stories of bands and open microphone nights, experimental gigs gone awry, misadventure and Disney-level debauchery, and I can often see an almost wistful secret smile on his face and know that he's fondly remembering a stage in life that he is happy to have outgrown. I also think that our collaboration is good for him because, after working professionally with big names for so long (many of which come with horror stories so vile that if not the truth, would fall nothing short of character assassination), it's probably nice for him just to get back to music again. Sitting with me, an absolute little nobody, in a studio room, writing out chords on a piece of paper, letting me point obnoxiously at the fretboard in his hands when its time for a chord change and working out music with no pressure or expectations. Not orchestrating a big show for some celebrity product.
In the end, music is supposed to be a community thing, a group activity. I don't believe in competition, one artist trying to outshine the other. I don't want to waste my light in a continuous effort to extinguish someone else's. And it's great right now, because I have my band. I have my E. There's no feeling like being onstage with my ladies, all five of us grooving along to the same rhythm, making a packed Brooklyn crowd full of metalheads go crazy, looking over while our other guitar player rips her first solo live and KILLS it like a pro. Knowing we're a band, friends, pushing each other to be better. There's also no feeling like getting together with E on a lazy Sunday afternoon, sharing my personal songs that I've written, and hearing them come to life just because one person in the world cares about the things I've created other than me.
And I have.... well, another Ace up the ol' sleeve if you will. See, I'm starting another band. I'm tacking this on as a footnote at the very end of this long blog, because while I am in a childlike state of ecstatic, uncontainable excitement about it and I want to start screaming about it everywhere I go, I can't. So those of you who cared enough to read all the way down to the end, you get some inside information. I can't say too much until things get a little further underway, but it's a punk cover band, I am singing, and I'm forming it with three guys. This does not mean that my Ratt guitar project with the girls is ending, it just means that I might really have absolutely NO life other than music for a while. But hey, a life without music is no life at all anyway! Thanks for reading this far... Maybe more on the new band next time.