Turn the Page – East Village Opera Company

October 9th, 2008 - by Eddie

Turn the Page

Peter Kiesewalter on keyboards with Tyley Ross

We’ve been doing one-nighters for two and a half weeks now, often driving 12 hours after loading out our gear after the previous night’s show and arriving bleary eyed at some other theater in some other state just in time to set it all up again at 1pm in the afternoon.

By touring standards the routing and schedule would be called “brutal” – an insane amount of distance to be covered followed by a work day that lasts 12 hours with a 30 minute break to scarf down the venue’s offering of some variation of chicken and soggy vegetables.

But it is made bearable by a well-organized itinerary wherein every detail is addressed, a technical set up that provides maximum quality and consistency from show to show with minimal gear, and a group of musicians that make it all worthwhile for the 2 hours spent onstage every night.

Those 2 hours are a necessary reminder of why we’re out here in Logan, Utah or Bremerton, Washington – a time in which the stress of the whole operation, the separation from loved ones, the inane questions from lazy and annoyed writers who want you to write the piece for them, the bad road food, lack of sleep, and other minor irritants are exorcised by the shared ritual of music making. We are a nomadic tribe – 13 people united in our mission to keep our collective sanity alive and play MUSIC for PEOPLE.

We will experience our first two-show day today. One show alone is draining – a selection of deceivingly difficult pieces of music that tax the memory and the muscles, all delivered with a grand rock stadium energy that taxes the stamina. But two is hard to imagine.

We played here last night so at least there is no set up involved, although there are a few adaptors and cables to purchase and test before the first show at 2pm. Like almost every venue on this tour, almost everyone in the audience has no idea what to expect.

Most think we are a legitimate opera company and have come expecting arias sung in a “legit” fashion by a “legit” ensemble, albeit slightly younger than traditional orchestras and opera companies.

You can see it the second you hit the first power chord of the first tune – a look on people’s faces that ranges from total shock (the older ones) to total glee (the skeptical kids and adults who thought they were being dragged to “the Opera”).

Let me tell you something – the battle of winning over unsuspecting and skeptical people every night is more rock & roll than playing in crappy rock clubs. I’ve done both.

The crowd this afternoon is old, really old. Jokes about them being around in 1744 when these arias were written are met with tepid and nervous chuckling. The Saturday matinee is traditionally attended by the city’s senior citizens and today is no exception.

And while I loathe tailoring the show to the audience’s general demographic, we ease into the set and sprinkle it with a few more of the “stripped down” numbers. It goes well, they go ballistic, and we sell more merchandise than we have so far on tour.

The 3 hours between shows is barely enough. There is much to do – advancing the show to the next week’s venues, travel details to solidify, interviews to give, video to shoot, batteries to change, set list to shuffle, a few numbers to rehearse, email to write, gear repairs to attend to, phone calls to loved ones, calls to managers and t-shirt manufacturers who are late with merchandise, laundry to do, a nap would be great but there’s no time left…

The evening show is great – word of mouth has spread here in Yakima. Young music geeks and music lovers in general have been served notice – there is an unusual band in town doing something unlike anything ever heard before. We’re finding out that when people hear about the band or they’re alerted about the shows (otherwise known as ADVERTISING), they come.

And they’re with us from the downbeat – an ecstatic response from the opening notes of whatever we’re playing that spreads through the theater like electricity. It feeds us and the music lifts like a hovercraft – the songs begin to play themselves and it’s a wonderful feeling. It becomes effortless. We meet people in the lobby afterwards, something we do every night.

Tonight a few of our new Harley friends are here, again. They’ve come to the last four shows here in Washington State – a seemingly unlikely demographic when witnessed pulling up to the theater en masse on their bikes. It’s thrilling to see them mingle with well dressed seniors who were born when Puccini was still alive, high school music students, young progressive rockers with band names like “Captain Electric and the Anorexic Puppies,” and the boomers with eclectic record collections who come with their kids or their post-divorce first dates.

The shows are over – the work starts. Instruments and amps to pack up for starters – it would be sweet if that were all there was but there’s a lot more. We’ve brought our own FOH (front of house) and monitor rigs – racks of gear, a large console, massive keyboard rig, all microphones and cables, personal mixers for every musician, a mile of CAT 5 cable, drum screen, in ear buds, DI’s, string music, Pro Tools rig… 90 minutes after the last song we’re loading the gear into the trailer. The bus will head across the country back to New York while we get into rental cars and drive 3 hours to Seattle.

After a short sleep in a Red Lion Hotel where our rooms weren’t ready (at 1:30am no less), we’ll fly back to New York for a few brief days off. Half the band will do a live TV show with a 3am call time after landing in New York.

By the time we get home from the TV studio we’ll have had 3 hours sleep in 2 days. But I don’t care – I get to play with my little girl again, at least for 2 days until the bus arrives to pick us up for the second leg.

Long live rock.

East Village Opera Company – You’re Not Alone

- Peter Kiesewalter Oct. 4, 2008