Tour Diary, May 28-June 6, 2023
Dear dedicated readers of the tour diary, I apologize for being lax on my duties but I was on vacation right after this show and was actually trying to relax a bit.
I’m backing up here a bit because the first show of this northeast tour started in Dennis Port, MA on Sunday, May 28. Tracy and I arrived in Boston on Saturday morning the 27th, took the bus down to her parents place in Dennis Port and since our instruments are actually 130 miles north at my Mom’s place, we had to borrow some gear.
Tracy’s cousin Tom lent her an Ibanez bass (that was tuned down B, E, A, D!) and my in-laws friend Rick let me borrow his Taylor acoustic.* We got to Buckies Biscotti and I checked out the PA system - I was told they had a system that folks used and I neglected to check on what things I would need to go with it. So, yes, there was a PA system and it was perfect for the venue but there were no mic stands or xlr cables. Tracy and I plugged in our guitars with the wireless Xvive things and then just sang loud. Stories were told, sing alongs happened, the venue liked us - all was good.
And it seemed to work perfectly. We will play here again next year. Very nice.
EZ-PZ.
Then we relaxed for almost a week until Tracy and I took a bus to Logan Airport, Tracy flew home, I then took a bus to South Station, a subway to Porter Square and the commuter rail out to Lunenburg, MA. Which all together ended up being about 6 hours for me to do the 130 mile journey.
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Tour Diary - June 4, 2023
Today there is a house concert at my Mom’s place. This is the first time she’s ever done anything like this and it’s all very exciting and a little stress inducing. She wants everything to be perfect but the weather is not cooperating. Yesterday was hot and sunny. Today is cold and rainy.
I start the day by running up to Gary’s place in NH and borrowing his Fishman SA220 (Fishstick PA), a mic stand and his Fishman Princeton amp.
Weather decisions have to be made. I push for living room show and no PA but I’m told too many people are coming and they won’t fit. My…not so pessimistic, but maybe more seasoned realism is telling me it won’t be an issue, not everyone ever shows up that says they’re going to. Mom tells me she has like 50 rsvp’s. Mom’s garage is set up for all the food - of which there are copious amounts. Trays of cookies, crock pots full of meatballs, chicken and kielbasa, chips, drinks - I think everyone brought something. And then I set up the PA in the next door neighbor's garage. I say “next door neighbors” but the garages are right next to each other, sharing a wall.
I message Morgan and tell him to show up early, around 3 or so, so we can run over a few things if we want to play some songs together.
At 1:30 people start showing up. I think this is odd since I’m not supposed to perform until 4 but you know, that’s cool, more time to hang out. At 2 pm I’m in the kitchen making a cup of tea and my Mom comes in and asks if I’m about ready to start. I apparently missed the memo about the show starting at 2 pm.
I make up my tea, text Morgan and tell him about the time difference thing - he starts heading down earlier now and I go out and start up the show.
There’s over 60 people under a few tents all hanging out listening - just a fantastic listening crowd. I tell stories, I take requests**, play for nearly an hour. It’s fantastic.
Morgan shows up, I plug him in and he says to join him so I plug in my #7 telecaster and play along with songs that I haven’t played in years. Years!! And it goes great. It’s a great warmup for him and I getting back together playing.
I sell t-shirts and CDs, I sign a ukulele and it’s just a fantastic day and show.
For those that don’t know - Morgan Keating and I were in the band The Gypsy Mechanics together for nearly a decade. He started that band after he left Mallethead who were a late 80s Boston punk band. I’m glossing over a lot of details, maybe someday I will do a more detailed musical family tree but not today. The Gypsy Mechanics recorded a few albums and we wrote a shitload of songs, a lot of which was Morgan and I challenging each other to write more, which he did, and his songs were amazing. I talk a lot about inspiration and songcraft and where I learned shit and for the craft of songwriting, Morgan is my personal ground zero.
Which brings us to Monday, June 5, 2023.
Morgan and I have been talking about writing and recording together for a while. The last time something we did together came out…it was the last century.
Oh! And the first time I was ever in a “real” recording studio it was in the winter of 1993 and we went to Mike Clark’s studio in Amherst, NH and recorded our demo “Friendliest Place In Town”*** So this has a bit of a full circle feel to it, you know, back to where we started!
Mike Clark is the owner/engineer/teacher at Clark Creative. He not only uses ProTools but he actually teaches it too - so he knows what he’s doing and I’m pretty sure we drove him crazy back in the day. He once told me that he had over 24 hours of our music on tape. I don’t know what happened to it as it was ADAT’s at the time and probably just in some closet or maybe at the dump.
Anyway.
Morgan and I have decided to book two days in the studio and see if we can write and record a few songs.
I roll into the studio around 2:30 or so on Monday, take out my guitar and play a chorus of a song that I think would be a great place to start. Morgan jumps in and we sing it together and then sketch out a verse. He suggests a chord change, we keep singing and strumming and pretty soon we have a new song.
Mike asks what we want to do. “Set up the mics!” I record the acoustic guitar track in the tracking room while Morgan sings a reference vocal.***** As I’m doubling up the guitar part, Morgan goes into the other room and starts writing another song. I join him and he sings a melody to me and I find the chords and the changes and then we start recording song number two. At this point Mike’s son Mikey shows up and he plays drums and so we get him on the kit and start putting the drums down on the song. While they’re working on that, I go outside and start writing another song and then Morgan joins me and we finish up that song…then I start adding organ and bass on the songs and they're really coming together.
This continues for Monday and Tuesday. All told, we wrote and recorded 6 songs in those two days. It was frantic and we had a creative energy pushing us forward and I can’t wait for them to be done so I can share them.
The last song we recorded took the most takes because we decided to do both our guitar and vocal live and we started recording it technically before we finished writing it. After the first take it was like “shouldn’t there be a thing here to get us to that part?” “Yes.” And then we wrote it. And then “how do we get out of the bridge?” and then we wrote it. I think this song took 7 or 8 takes and feels a bit like an older song of ours but still new and different. It even reminded me a little bit of a Big Star song and I can’t say that for anything else I’ve ever done or been a part of, so that’s cool.
I’m still riding this creative high. I can’t wait for Mike to send me rough mixes of what we did because I can’t even remember the names of the songs we wrote right now. It was that fast.
To folks reading this that are wondering about songwriting - It never goes like this. It’s always harder. It’s almost always difficult. We were just present in the room, in the moment, and the muse decided to visit us and we were very lucky.
Tomorrow is Thursday, June 8 and I will be playing at the New Hampshire Magazine offices for their Cubicle Concert series which will be made available sometime soon and then I drive up to Pittsfield, NH to play at Over the Moon Farmstead with Dan Moran.
That’s all for now.
xo
*This was my first time ever performing, playing a show or in any way using a Taylor guitar. It was very nice.
**My mom requested that I NOT play “cold war” but then it was requested so I had to play it!
***Not to be confused with the album “Friendliest Place In Town” that we released in 1995 and to make it even more confusing - we bundled our demos and album of the same name into one release online. That is why if you look up “Friendliest Place In Town” on iTunes, it has 27 songs on it. Songs 16-23 are from my first recording with the band. So much history and so many songs!
*****A “reference vocal” refers to a recording that is not a final vocal. It’s just done so we know where the changes are and can record and play along with it. Later on it gets replaced by a “keeper vocal” which is done with a nicer microphone in the tracking room and the first “reference vocal” is muted and not heard from again.