There’s been so much in the past several weeks, I feel discombobulated. Chuck joining us for a Live from the Lair on March 16th.Chuck the Madd Ox is a JEDI.
I’m so grateful for this quiet Sunday morning. It is COLD and it is GREY but I woke up at a leisurely pace after having actually slept which isn’t something I feel I can say about any recent morning.
In theory, most of the edge-of-rob stressors are over, for a while at least, and I’m aiming to avoid anything that feels quite like that in the immediate and not-so-immediate future, but it’s been a rough March. Beginning with the trip to Georgia, the tension of the wedding in which we had to learn a couple of tunes, the Chords of Courage show where we had to learn a BUNCH of tunes, the Reba Heyman tribute which didn’t involve a lot of LEARNING but certainly involved a lot of physical stress and stamina… recording sessions and sound gigs – it’s a LUCRATIVE month but I’m tired and … grateful for this Sunday.
March 18th found me at Olney Theatre setting up for FocusMusic’s tribute to Reba Heyman.Dave Eisner soundchecking Ronny Cox. Ronny is, of course, not just a musician (performing for our Reba Heyman tribute in Olney, MD) but an actor… he played a villain in many of my favourite 80’s sci-fi movies. He revealed some Star Trek information to me as we chatted about tech problems and then threatened that he’d have to lill me if I told anyone. TWOFER! Star Trek insider info AND a death threat from the Evil Mastermind behind Robocop, Total Recall and that maniacal captain who’d threatened to destroy the McAllister C-5 Nebula with anti-matter mines!!!
Unfortunately this past week I DID lose my Sandy Spring Museum open mic. I’m disappointed, not just as to the how but I’m disappointed by the why, and unfortunately that’s going to have to remain a vaguepost – I’ll get to do other projects with the museum but the open mic itself allowed for too many variables, one of which eventually bit us in the ass.
Looking forward, April looks to finally have room for recording in it – we spent the weekend recording drums in between other projects (including running last night’s Anne Hills / Al Power / Jillian Matundan show) – and I am truly grateful that new music is heading out into the world soon.
Fingers crossed. Everything could blow up any second now.
Ronny Cox and Jack WIlliams soundchecking at the Olney Theatre on March 19th, 2022.cAnnie Wenz and I have beautiful flame-boyant shoes!!!Dave Navarro getting his act together for the show.A quilt made of Reba’s festival t-shirts.Sam, the lighting engineer, was amazing and I tried NOT to develop an unprofessional crush on them!After an 11 hour day I was actually doing fine with any ravening till I went backstage and all the prop food actually looked delicious…I’d be hard-pressed to be sure about SOME performers but ROUGHLY l-r : someone & Shelley Caplan (FocusMusic), Herb Levy (Focus), Judy Heyman (Vic and Reba’s daughter), SONiA disappear fear, Annie Wenz, Jack Williams, Lara Herscovitch, Terry Gonda, Kirsti Reeve, Kate McDonnell, Jenny Reynolds, TPR’s violinist, Tom Prasada-Rao, Ronny Cox, Dan Navarro, a muddle of people hugging and My One and Only. Stepanie Corby, The Kennedys and LisaBeth Weber are maybe in there somewhere! Totally bad photo!A big farewell. This was a really immense night that careened on the edge of catastrophe. I sort of feel like I could’ve been a good deal more aggressive in the planning stages to make it a lot smoother, but I was stressed enough about just producing the streaming side of it. Reba Heyman was not someone I knew (I played Vic Heyman’s venue once) but it was good to see such an outpouring of Love for someone who was fortunate enough to be able to pour tens of thousands of dollars into the local folk scene.
