Geezer Rock: Fairy Tale Town Revisited

Band

Rockin' Do Gooders

KDOG played its first gig in almost three months at Fairy Tale Town at a benefit to raise money for an emergency housing for the homeless. Last year, Nick and I played this with my son Brett on drums. (Kenton was on a cruise he'd won. We were, as we so often are, in between bass players.) The event is at Fairy Tale Town, the kiddie park in across from the Sacramento Zoo in Land Park. We played on the Mering Family Stage - the biggest stage we've ever played on. This meant we finally had plenty of room for Kenton's drums.
The event is a gourmet wine and food expo. Hundreds swell folks pay fifty bucks a ticket. Local restaurants, wineries, breweries, caterers and chefs hoping to drum up business from rich people donate food and drink. You just graze your way through the tables. I was so busy I didn't get much food. I don't drink any more, so I had to settle for a few bubbly, delicious Diet Cokes.

Mak Shau

When The Beatles played at sleazy clubs in Hamburg's infamous Reeperbahn district, the tyrannical club owners berated the boys by screaming "mak schau, mak schau," which is German for "make it a show!" They wanted the group to jump and around and go wild to better entice more drunks into the club. The Beatles developed an unchoreographed, but berserk stage act, enahnced by free beer and plentiful supplies of German diet pills. This simple strategy worked and proved far more effective than music alone in attracting large crowds of German booze hounds. I kept this lesson in mind for this gig. I also recalled the words some classical musician who said, "If you're going to take the stage, give a performance."
I realized that our previous shows had featured far too much standing around and trying to impress people with our so-called "musical content." Trying to present yourself as a serious artist never works. Besides, we're amatuerish musicians. Standing their like Miles Davis at the Blue Note only emphasized our slovenly playing. I resolved not to make this error. I really put a lot of energy into the Fairy Tale Town gig throughout the night. I made full use of the stage and my 30-foot curly guitar cord. I did flying scissor kicks and Pete Townsend style jumps. I made sure to count off the songs at ultra-fast tempos. These antics made the gig a lot more fun for everybody. Also: the stage is huge and the audience is at least 50 feet away from the stage. It would be easy to get lost in all that space. I made sure that the people who were watching had something to look at.
The band rocked harder than ever, although the level of musicianship hadn't improved. But that didn't matter. The audience really loved the show. It went over better than gig in which we'd played a lot more accurately, but didn't put nearly as much energy into the act. Drew's contributions really kicked, too, producing the band's best musical moment ever: a thundering, up tempo version of The Beatles "Come Together." Everything worked. It was probably Kenton's best ever drumming, too. Somehow, we've managed to make our arrangment of this tune work in a blues band context. Even Phillip, the sound guy, said it was "powerful." Phillip is a refined person and not a big fan of our style of music, so that compliment meant a lot.
We got a lot of good feedback. So - a success. And before the biggest crowd we'd ever played to.

Nickdean

Microphone Technique.

For the second time, I hired Phillip Howard to help us set up the PA and run the sound during the show. This made a huge difference. It's also easier to get a good sound outdoors. You don't have to deal with the bizarre acoustics of the typical tiny club. It's virtually impossible for the drums to be too loud outdoors, which makes our music much more tolerable. The day before the gig, I met with Phillip to talk about what I expected from the show. He told me that one factor that really makes us sound like amateurs is poor microphone technique. Poor microphone technique is characterized by:
• Singing, talking and yelling too loud, too close to the microphone. "You can actually hurt somebody that way," Phillip said, explaining that yelling when you're already amplified simply blasts the ears of the audience with high-decibel assaults that can cause permanent hearing damage to any body standing near a PA column.
• Not maintaining a constant distance from the microphone when you're singing. One minute you're close. The sound guy as to turn you down. The next minute, you're five inches father away. The sound guy has to turn you up. "Nothing says 'I don't do this very much' like bad microphone technique." I'm paying Phillip, so I took his advice. After this gig, I rigged up the PA and mixing board at home, plugged in my headphones and spent a week listing to my voice as it came through the microphone. I plugged in my guitar and played the guitar parts and sang all the songs that I do, including the solos, and worked on always moving back to the microphone at the same distance I started from. I tired to sing at the same volume.
Phillip said that Kenton is a real "microphone violater." Phillip thinks lack of experience is a factor, but so is Kenton's use of earplugs. The muffled input he's getting makes him overcompensate by talking too loud and playing too loud. "Kenton," Phillip told him at one point Friday night. "You're amplified. You don't have to yell."

Drew

Drew Niebold, Rockin' Daddy

Drew is one guy in the band who shows up knowing more about the songs than he did the last time we played together. You can tell he's listening and learning the material. Nick, Kenton and I are still blowing shit that we've been playing for two years. More important than that, however is Dru's singing, which has really improved our vocal attack. His talent for singing harmony parts on the fly is a big part of that. Also, his voice sounds "rock and roll." He can hit the high "A" in "All Right Now," just like Paul Rogers on the record. His bass playing has a factor we've always lacked - that a big, soft, hole-filling quality that really supports the band. Even if he forgets where he is, or plays the wrong note, or can't remember the part and simply tugs at the root - he never breaks rhythm. This keeps the groove going and the sound full, which keeps the show rocking. I don't think he's even aware of this. He just does it. He's musical. He's not there to play the bass, he's there to play the songs. Kenton, by contrast, is there to play the drums. He told me once he doesn't practice songs. "I practice rudiments," he explained. I guess he meants paradiddles and seven stroke rolls and the rest of it. "Well, we're not leading a fuckin' drum clinic," I replied. "We're playing songs. The crowd is there to hear songs." Oh, well. I practice the songs, but I don't think my playing is improving much, either. I've hit another plateau. I'm having trouble finding the next set of steps going upwards. More gigs would help. So would more practice. It's gonna be slow from here on out.

$35,000 Worth of Drums

Kenton maintains his drum set is worth as much as a car. "The pedals alone are $2,000! They're titanium!" He made one reference to the drum value and the pedal price during the set up. He got his friend, Cliff Lynch, to function as drum tech. Cliff is a grown man with his own business and probaby other activities to attend to. What is Kenton's hold over these people? Is it that people are just dying to get close to rock and roll? Cliff says it's fun. He certainly seems to enjoy himself, always joking and volunteering to help anyone who needs it. I'm glad he's there. Less work for me.

Kenton

Rock and Roll is Work

I hate Friday night gigs. It's really the last thing I need after a long week of work. I have to knock off at three, load up the PA and fittings, plus my guitar rig, then set it all up at the venue. By the time we drop the downbeat, I've been working for two hours. This gig was complicated by the fact that I had to leave in the middle of the set up to drive my son to a birthday party way down in South Sac. I don't think Keith Richards has to do this stuff.

Musical Mayhem

I played okay, but had a lot more fun than usual. My solos on several songs were just terrible. Plus:
• We all forgot lyrics. Except for Drew.
• Everybody missed cues in at least one song.
• A lot of sloppy endings.
• Rushing. We just can't stop speeding up.

The good news: nobody in the crowd noticed or cared. People complain that I am quite grumpy about this issue. We're here to have fun, rock out and play music. We're just a bunch of buddies.
But we not acting like a "buddy band."
A buddy band practices two or three times a month and maybe plays out four or five times a year, for free, usually at parties thrown by friends.
Our presentation of ourselves is ambitious.
• We're putting ourselves out there as an act that's worth hiring and paying. We're asking bar owners to bet a night's receipts on us. We're saying, "We'll pack your club. We'll keep people dancing and drinking. You're going to make money on us." We've only had one show where we delivered this experience: the February gig at The Hilltop, just before Nick's heart surgery.
• We're investing a lot of time, energy and money in the project. A bunch of buddies would make do with a simple set up. We're doing the $35,000 drums, the $3,000 PA system, the $35 an hour sound tech, the drum roadies. We do e-mail blasts.
• Kenon has big plans. He want to open shows for Gov't Mule. (Really.) He wants to put the band to actually make money. Right now, we're just trying to get our price up to "free."
So, yeah, we're taking ourselves seriously. It's more than just for fun.
Musical mistakes that occur when you're out their on the edge of chaos, stretching and testing your musicianship and creativity, well, that's part of the program.
Musical mistakes that are the result of just not knowing the songs, not practicing and not listening would get your fired from a working band. A working band is what we're trying to be. On the other hand, as Jim Andrews of late, great Bittermen Blues Band put it, "The average person at a party doesn't know or care if I'm Carlos Santana. As long as I'm getting into the music and having fun, then they know to have fun and we're a succes as a band." We're getting this asepct down.
Regular readers know that I can be a moody, combative shit. I'm trying not to bum the vibe at shows when mistakes do occur. That's like lifting weights for me.

Nickdogdean

The Star Fits Come Out At Night

I only got into one battle with Kenton. A new mellowness record for me. The benefit's organizer signaled to Nick that he wanted to come up for some stage annoucements. Kenton went into a "not on my stage star fit" and ordered Nick to block the guy from coming up until the end of the set. "Not until 7:30! I had all this worked out!" Nick quite rightly let the man take the microphone. Kenton actually tried to start the next number. He started playing the beat, trying to drown the guy, sort of the way the Oscar pit orchestra fires up in the middle of over-long thank you speech. "What the fuck is wrong with you!" I screamed. "You don't fuckin' kick the fuckin' organizer of the benefit off his own fuckin's stage!" This is hardly the reaction of a man who is achieving self-mastery. I don't know if the poor devil heard me or not. Kenton did. He resigned himself to a mid-set interruption. An you know what? It didn't hurt the show at all. We needed a breather. Nick also improvised a lost child announcement during "Urban Spawning." Some kid got separated from her parents. He worked it all into the song. Moments like this add texture.

A Mission Statement?

Nick has proposed two mission statements for our band:
• Play music and have adventures.
• Everywhere we go, there's a party.
We're doing the first one. We're starting to fulfill the second. All in spite of ourselves. As much as I bitch about our playing, we have come a long way since we first got together two years ago. I could barely play a guitar solo. I'd been playing bass. I mean it was foul. The progress is so gradual, I tend to forget that there is progress.

Aftermath
Gigging is both a aerobic (jumping around) and resistence (lifting equipment) workout. Saturday morning, I could barely move. I'm in pretty good shape. Kenton's destroyed shoulder and arthritic hands must have been trobbing the next morning. I didn't feel rested until Monday morning - just in time for another work week. There must be an easier hobby.