I’m sitting in my lair contemplating the year gone by and the year upcoming. I’m trying to think of what kind of resolutions I’ll try to stick to this year, what’s realistic, what’s not, and what I simply have to do in order to stay sane. I spent an hour with my guitar tonight, just being fast-finger-friends. Last night’s PLOJ and the recent Trax on Wax open mics have been filling something I’ve long been hungering for, little jam sessions where I hear music in an entirely different light, twisting my own tunes on their heads and hearing everything from a different angle. Let doppler effects and sound twisting reverberations take their toll, add drum kits and flutes, banjos and citterns and occasionally remove me entirely – and it’s like I’m seeing it all again for the first time.
Brennan and I rocking out at PLOJ 43 in Takoma Park, MD. Frank Casell, the Banjo Man – added haunting things with his five-string… and he plays flute! I’ve known (of) this man for years! Never knew he played flute!
Next year is shaping up to be intense. A couple of mini-tours are already taking shape and we’ve finally joined NACA in the hopes of truly breaking into the college scene. Tomorrow I go to a Baltimore Songwriters Association board meeting in the hope of understanding some of my local musicians better, and there are plans for the Trax on Wax open mic, Java Mammas open mic, there are hopes of opening our own damned venue in Catonsville (though that’s a little pie in the sky) and just being masters of our own fate…
The room ended up filling up pretty nicely with around 40 or so people at the height of the night. Pictured above are Ana and Amy, and singer/songwriters Jade, Hannah Spiro and Dan Zimmerman. Huh. Dave’s TOTALLY here!!! I think it’s just cool that I know people who play tenor banjo and cittern and whatnot. And who play traditional forms of music that have been around for hundreds – even thousands of years. I wasn’t at ALL sure what would happen if I put my folky friends and my singer/songwriter friends in a room together and told them to go at it, but PLOJ 43 showed that it could work beautifully (even if they DID sit on opposite sides of the room!) Jesse Palidofsky! Erik Sharar performing at the PLOJ. With a cow perched on his guitar. Not really.
I’m feeling a little trapped right now. I’m very aware of the sentences that start with “oh yeah, I work here” and “I run this open mic” and end with “when I’m not touring” are becoming increasingly false. At the moment I’m working a LOT at House of Musical Traditions and becoming more and more invested. I run the open mics twice a month at Trax on Wax and generally only miss one Java Mammas a month… if that. I can feel my stomach twisting as these patterns become more and more ingrained, feeling the need to just GO and get OUT. I need some sort of change before I absolutely lose it.
This kept me awake all night a couple of nights ago. And again the night after. It got me up this morning, feeling panicked and trapped, watching grey light filter in through my bedroom window thinking “shit. I have a bedroom.”
Tomorrow I’ll go to work at House of Musical Traditions and I’ll probably enjoy most of my day. It’s not until afterwards that I’ll wonder what it is that I actually accomplished. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been so active there, asking to change this, asking to be allowed to change that. I need to have an EFFECT on the world around me. I need to warp it.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen. I need big, heavy balls.
(rubber sheet demonstration of gravitation? anyone? anyone?)
Damn. I’m still a geek. (looks at mirror where the Star Wars clock I got for Christmas is reflected and shares space with a Matrix Sentinel deluxe action figure…. shakes head)
