As I pick up the accordion by its straps, the house music scales back and all of a sudden everything around me is jet black. My eyes dart up and search the room, and I sort of wonder if the walls, floor, chairs, and the people sitting in them, are still out there.
A complete absence of sound and sight, I thought it possible that this room might have actually been erased from existence. I turn to Nez on the drums, and am comforted knowing that I wasn’t entirely lifted from time and space. “I’m ready. Go for it.” He starts the marching beat, and I can breathe. That nothingness was killing me.
After the first song a group starts to gather on the floor right in front of the stage, a little to the left. It’s like having your favorite pet hamster come out of its hiding spot-you know its in there, but without showing its face you have nothing to connect to. I’m just grateful for the faces, for the connection. I can’t get over how quiet the room is… and start with:
Would you listen to me?
I’m coming back home…
I need a place now to
Fall apart.
Unseen.
To untangle my twine
To unbutton my sleeves
To lie awake with the
Buzzing
Til dawn
As I’m singing, the room feels warmer- like each hidden, breathing being out there is my confidante and we’re hiding in a blanket fort, flashlight shining on my face. It’s my turn to tell all my secrets.
I switch to the piano, play a love song full of optimism, which tonight feels more ironic than hopeful… I sort of feel like I’m lying, singing that song tonight, and am relieved to change the topic with the next two songs.
At this point I’m lifted from the room. My voice echoes and I storm on the piano. When all else fails, the keys are always there for me, and I return to them tonight. The air around me feels electrified and weighted. With the last note, I mumble “thanks” into the microphone, and am yanked back to Earth by applause from the room and backstage. The response is heartwarming. It’s time to move on.
I hoist on the accordion and hear some whispering…then someone says, “Yeah!” This makes me smile. “Yeah!” I say into the microphone. I’m glad we’re all on the same page.
We launch into two up-tempo songs before bringing it in with “Falling Down,” my newest and therefore favorite song about falling in love, and learning to let go of your barriers like the trees letting go of their leaves. My eyes have adjusted to the dark and I see a man sitting in the back with a white collared shirt, and I wonder what his story is. If he’s loved, lost, and had the courage to hope again. We are all in this together.
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.
I’d like to tell you about a festival we played recently in Scotland. It was the last of our festival gigs of the summer. It took us 12 hours to get from Brighton (which is on the south coast of England ) up to the beautiful foothills of the Scottish highlands .
The van that had been picked was in between a tour bus and a minibus, meaning it had beds and a little seating area but really not very much space at all. It reminds me of when I went to Norfolk as a kid and I remember coming across a field which had in it two horses and a sheep. Hilariously, the sheep would run, eat and generally act like a horse. This is what our little bus looked like as we parked up next to the big shiny, expensive ones in the festival artist parking lot.
The next day we got up and to our surprise and pleasure found that showers were available and ones that actually understood the concept of heat (no offense V festival …)after that we found bacon rolls and tea which filled us with a deep felt and deep fried joy.
We walked around the site for a couple of hours and admired the views of the castle and the loch and the majestic rolling mountains that looked as though they had won front row tickets to the festival (maybe after entering a competition in a magazine only issued to mountains…. sorry, its been a long day).
We then headed back to the stage we were to play on as the rain that had been promised started to tumble down.
The band on before us were a refreshing combination of fiddle, accordion and guitar that got the locals all up for a party. Pity then (as Robin our keys player pointed out) that Passenger was on next. We took to the stage and after a quick sound check began our set.
We started with a song called Walk You Home, or Night Vision Binoculars if you’re from the states (don’t ask!) a chirpy little number about a stalker. As the rain cleared, the crowed started to swell in front of us. It felt incredible to play in such a beautiful setting! Compared to the usual beer stained venues, the beauty of our surroundings made me feel quite emotional and as a result I felt every song as intensely as I did when I first wrote them (which I’m sorry to say isn’t always the case.)
Passenger - Night Vision Binoculars
We went on to play two other songs whilst the crowed continued to grow. It was a great sight to see over a thousand Scots in waterproof clothing. I love Scottish people for many reasons but none more so then they’re ability to have fun in any weather.
The fourth song I attempted to play was called Stray Dog. Its a gentle and tragic solo piece describing the plight of a … you guessed it .. Stray dog . Unfortunately at this very point, my guitar decided it was going to make really disgusting feed back noises, screeching and ringing across the audience as though some sort of winged dinosaur was swooping down to pick them off one by one, when this sort of thing happens at a gig, you suddenly become very aware of what you’re doing, getting up and showing off in front of loads of strangers. Its like one of those dreams you have when all of a sudden your back at school, maybe at the front of a school assembly when you look down and find yourself totally naked.
The crowd was amazingly supportive and after abandoning Straydog (which is ironic as that is the story of the song) we finished with “Table For One” and “Do What You Like.”
It was not without incident but nonetheless a truly enjoyable and memorable gig.
I step onto the stage. To my left, Marc picks up his bass. Carl sits down on the stool and reaches for his sticks. Brian does some quick twiddling with his pedals, looks up at me and grins. “We’re gonna do this, V”.
I pick up my guitar, throw the strap over my head and wrap my fingers around the neck. It feels…easy. Natural. I smile and look up at the people that have started to filter into the room from the bar. A glance back at the guys. “Should we just start?” I ask Brian. He gives me a nod. We’re ready.
We open with “If He Stays”, something we haven’t started a show with before. I starts with just me on the acoustic and then the band kicks in after four measures. When I’m on stage playing, it feels right. When I first started performing, I used to feel like I was a different person on stage. Maybe not a different person, but like I was letting another side of me out. Performing my songs with the same honesty I wrote them used to leave me unsettled; as if by singing the words I would reveal too much of my emotions. I’ve gotten more comfortable with just playing and singing what I feel now, so being on stage comes much more naturally. Tonight, the music fills me. I’m happy and glowing. Looking out at the faces in front of me - some familiar and some new - I pick a face and let my gaze rest. Our eyes meet. I smile. He smiles back. I move on, soaking it in, trying to connect with as many faces as I can.
“A year and a half ago, I set out to record my first full-length album. We finished it a few months ago and it got released on Tuesday.” I feel a bubble of excitement rise up in me. Even announcing it doesn’t make it feel any more real. The crowd cheers. They’re excited for me. It hasn’t hit me yet.
The clock reads 9:55. We have time for two more songs. I look at Brian, start playing and laugh. I forget that with this song, he and I start together. We start again. For me, every show has a song that captures my mood…takes me away from the stage and back into myself. Tonight the song is “Tell Me So.” Hope. The future holds so much promise. Regardless of whatever comes of this, I’ll be able to say that I tried.
We close with Silhouette and I hear voices. My friends in the crowd are singing with me, willing me to succeed. Under the glow of the lights, surrounded by friends and people that want the best for me, I know that I already have.
This show fell towards the end of a tour that also featured stops in Chicago, Des Moines, Omaha, Hays, Wichita, Oklahoma City, and Fayetteville, and I must admit right up front: the Amarillo show was the reason for this entire tour. The HPPR Living Room series is one of those shows that you book more than a year in advance on reputation alone. My reason for hitting the road set, I booked some other shows to get me down to Texas and back.
While I had great listening crowds all along the tour, the Living Room Concert takes the cake as the best I’ve ever played for. The deal with the show is that you play to an audience in the HPPR studio and it is recorded to be played later on the radio, with listeners throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and into Colorado. The really attractive portion of the show is that you play unplugged, COMPLETELY unplugged, not like MTV Unplugged. There is nothing better for acoustic musicians than playing with no microphones, cables, or other amplifiers directly to an intimate audience.
I was a little worried about turnout, seeing as I’ve never played Amarillo and nobody would know who I was at all. However, they had been playing my record on the radio for the last few days and that brought some folks out. When it was time to play and I entered the studio, a small room that holds 60-70 people, it was full! Man, they really like their songwriters down there in Amarillo, they listened, and I mean really listened. They weren’t just sitting there quietly to be polite. Even when I played a few obscure covers by Midwestern folksingers like Jeffrey Foucault and Greg Brown, I was surprised to find that most of the audience had heard of them. In between songs I told stories and described what the songs were about. Songs about World War I, delta floods, Dubya, and of course the occasional love tune. Looking out into the crowd it was great to see the back row straining a bit to listen, and the front row tapping their fingers or toes. Sometimes I’d just close my eyes and sing a song like it really was in my own living room. Two sets and an intermission and it was over, but what a treat.
After the show it was great to talk to some Texans and hear what they thought. I had played a cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Waitin’ ‘Round to Die” and was honored when it turned out one of the audience members had been a friend of Townes’, and he said that he enjoyed my version of the song. After talking to many supportive listeners, I packed up my gear and loaded up the touring vehicle (a classy 2005 Dodge Caravan). You can bet that I will be back to Amarillo as soon as I can.
-John Statz
High Plains Public Radio Living Room Concert Series
Amarillo, TX
August 1st, 2008
It’s our record release show.The theatre is packed.Friends, faithful fans, and a wash of new faces…the lights are down.We’re in the back, going over transitions and the final set list. There’s a moment – three seconds maybe – of heartfelt silence: four syncopated beats and thoughts. It’s been a year since those wintry nights at Bear Creek, recording these songs that only just now feel like our own.Just now, at this moment, before the lights come up.
On stage, the video crew sweeping in, the crowd has risen, pushing, pulling to be in the camera lens.It’s all for the making of our new video, “Everything Went Down” and it’s happening right now, as we play live before everyone.The crew gets one chance, just like us, to pull it off, to take their shots and capture the song.
When I sang on The Hours “Lost your shot at the stage this time” I thought to myself in the midst of it, “On no, not us, not this time.” I’m looking around, at all these dark figures standing just outside the blinding lights.I know what that place is like.But I’m not there tonight.
We form a clear spectacle, a bright box of light for the cameras and for all those eyes.My eyes begin to get lost in the darkness, moving around the room, from one figure to another, the crowd surging momentarily into my light, approaching nearness. I am thinking of words and worlds, the stories we tell and the songs that bear them up, the people who play the soundtracks for those living the stories.
I keep fixing my eyes upon a single figure up in the balcony, directly left of the main camera.It’s not the director, not of one the crew.I’ve already placed them.I feel funny for a moment, reminded of how that person, that mysterious figure standing stubborn in my central vision is watching me watching him or her or whomever…
Everyone is watching.So I dance.I look around.I think of how strange it is to be in this little box of light I call my world tonight.How lucky it is to have stories to sing and people who want to hear them.People in life who celebrate song.
It was a good show.I can’t wait to see the video.
-Kate Tucker Record Release Show at Act Theatre
December 7, 2007
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