Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

relief

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The concert countdown is now officially underway! Seven and a half hours and counting until Gina and I take the stage awash in fame and record high temperatures. Am i nervous? Possibly; i’ve basically invited everyone i know to come see us play this tiny acoustic set of songs and we’re playing in the midst of some Drexel bands who i’m a minor-league fan of. And we’ve never done harmony on “Punk,” “Under My Skin,” “Never Say Goodbye,” or “A Perfect Day” live before. But, no reason to be alarmed – after all, part of the charm of acoustic musicians is their ability to entangle and then unknot themselves from oddball onstage situations without ever breaking a sweat. Or, at least, they don’t break a sweat from the stress. The heat might get to them, though.

Errr… right. 5:30 today between Market and Chestnut & 33rd and 32nd. 42 demos available for a to-be-decided price. And me pretending i’m a rock star.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3479239/

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Wanna connect some musical dots? Would they just be tied whole notes, then? Well, last night i saw Peter Mulvey in concert from less than ten feet away for the sixth or seventh time. He and his sideman David “Goody” Goodrich turned in a short and moody set of favourites as well as a new tune, after which they chatted briefly with me a few different times. This has sorta become the defacto post-concert behaviour, because i’ve seen Peter so many times now that he’s grown to recognize me (and the wild war-whoops i usually let out from the audience when i’m not losing my voice). I gave him my demo cd last year and he told me last night that he and Goody listened to it on the way to their gigs and then he put it on a shelf of things he tries not to lose. I gave him my new demo (the first finished copy, so don’t think he stole yours away), and he gave me one of his discs in exchange and hugged me goodnight.

Peter’s set was (too) short because he was opening for Erin McKeown. Erin is a bundle of frightening folk/jazz guitar prowess and vocals that sliced the room right open. She was totally enrapturing. Erin was a student at Brown Univerisity not too long ago, which was my first choice school. Oh well. But, even cooler, Ms. McKeown (who i viewed from a meager distance of a yard or two) just got through with opening for Ani DiFranco, who we all know i love and adore.

Ah, but it gets better. Ani DiFranco has had (since before i could play guitar) a dedicated tabber named Leigh Marble, who i think was the first independent folk artist i had ever heard of back in those naive times. Leigh and i grew to sorta know each other by email – in that he’d tab something and then i’d send him some whiney little corrections i noticed from obsessively rewinding and replaying my tape of Ani on David Letterman. I think a few of my tabs might even be up on his legendary AniTabs page.


The most interesting element here is not that i know Leigh, though. It’s that Leigh split a 7 inch single with Erin in 1999 called Anticipation et Denouement, and listening now to the album i bought from her last night i’m vaguely recognizing songs that i first heard two years ago while restless surfing through Leigh’s site while waiting for him to post a new Ani DiFranco tab.


Yeah, it’s a small damn world. Even smaller once you pick up a guitar.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3392757/

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I’m starting to hate “Under My Skin“. Sure, it’s a wonderful song, and i love to perform it alone or with Gina backing me, but it’s starting to make me feel like a one-hit-wonder in training. Despite my playing a whole host of songs for my friends here at Drexel for well over a year, the one they always ask for when i’m playing is “Under My Skin” (or, if it’s Renata – “Play ‘legends of the flesh!'”). While they recognize “Never Say Goodbye,” “Deadweight,” “Crashing,” and “Lost,” “Under My Skin” is undoubtably the one that sticks out in their minds. UMS is the only song my mother has ever complemented me on, even after listening to my entire demo twice last night. I’m truly flattered by all of the attention, but i honestly can’t make a prediction on how long any song is going to be sticking around in my performances for; some songs like “Other Plans” seem to want to hang around forever, but other early favourites like “Touch” have fallen off the face of my musical landscape and are hardly every recalled.

I don’t play things just because people like them – i play them because i have something to say. While it feels nice to know that someone might be singing along to something, there are nights that UMS feels redundant in the face of newer material. Furthermore, i come from the Ani DiFranco school of performing that states that i can leave out any songs i don’t want to play, and that i can feel free to change the tempo and lyrics of anything people seem to be too comfortable with. Of course, at this point i shouldn’t give a fig about challenging my audience – i ought to just find one. It’s just that i see all the attention getting funnelled towards the middle of my new cd, where “Under My Skin” lies, and all the other songs that i worked harder and longer on are being ignored. I think i’m going to leave UMS in it’s pre-mix for the album … raw, and unfinished. It isn’t a perfect song, and there’s no reason i should try to make it sound like one.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3346623/