The Musical Schizo

I’ve been inspired by a few dorks from Teignmouth.

The new Muse record, “The Resistance” came out recently, and I’ve been wearing it out.

I just love their complete abandon, stylistically, and their willingness to pretty much try anything that suits them. It WORKS on this record.

And so, it’s inspired me to remember what’s important to me where music is concerned: Fun!

Taking that brave leap and writing a sexy electro-R&B song with slap bass even if you’re a progressive rock band known more for distorted bass lines under soaring guitar and operatic vocals. Unabashedly aping Queen’s “massive choral harmonies and orchestral-sounding harmonized guitar parts”. It’s just great stuff, and all done well.

I’ve always been a bit of a genre-bender, at least in spirit, so for me, The Musical Schizo, this is MY prog band right now.

So thank you, Muse (Matt, Chris, and Dominic) for making a record that really touched me and reminded me what’s important.

I think I’m going to go record a song right now. We’ll see if I post it…

Had a great (though too sunny) show at Lake Belton for the 3rd Cavalry and their families. It was cool. Big props to George and John at Veteran Sound (www.veteransound.com) for their great work. Also to the Army for having us. It was truly an honor.

Had a less great show two weeks prior at Hayashi. Well, the show was great, but a discussion about our fee after the show soured the night. We won’t be back there, not because we don’t like the place, but apparently we’re too expensive, even with the discount we gave them.

We’ve been playing “Rebel Yell” at the shows, with me on Ned’s guitar (and him on my bass). It’s been pretty fun, but it’s still weird because I’m just not really used to playing his guitars. They feel weird to me, especially after playing a bass for the rest of the show. It’s harder to play and sing than I remembered, but only from a rhythmic standpoint – I can get through every part, it’s just kind of pat-head-rub-belly at times.

On the songwriting front, I wrote a chord progression yesterday, and had some ideas for a melody, which is good. I also recorded some drums just for fun and they ended up sounding pretty decent despite my crappy playing. I definitely need to plan out times when I can cut real drum tracks for all my songs. That would be splendid.

I think I just need to start writing as much as possible again. The juices need to be kickstarted to flow, and they just haven’t been.

And away we go! Roman Holiday’s got some time off now, perhaps we’ll schedule a rehearsal or two. Or not…

Mother Nature is a cruel BITCH.

Our gig on Friday got rained out. In the driest summer in recent Austin history (AFAIK). First a light sprinkle that didn’t seem like it was going to lead to anything that lasted for a while, then slightly more driving rain, followed by immediate deluge, Florida-style. We were set up outside on a deck next to a pool in a really dangerous thunderstorm. Needless to say, lightning hit really close, scaring the shit out of us more than once.

Seems like everything’s okay – we went to a dry garage (thank you Greg) and toweled everything down. Fortunately it’s supposed to be really hot all week, so the stuff should dry out well.

My biggest bummer was not getting to use my new bass. I got a great deal on a used Carvin B5 bass, and so far, at least at home, I’m loving the thing. It’s a little “loved” (way more loved than I expected based on the pictures on Craigslist), but worth the money I spent on it, for sure. It’s light, very flexible in tone, and an utter joy to play. Here are some pictures:

Public gig this Saturday night at Hayashi up in Cedar Park…it should be a gas!
TMS

It should be fun.

It’s definitely made me realize that I’d really like to get another band going to play maybe once a month or so, booked around Roman Holiday. I’ll probably play guitar and sing lead in the new band, which will most likely be a trio (to keep it lucrative), and most likely feature a lot of different songs than we play with Roman Holiday.

More liberties will be taken with song selection, though many of the usual suspects will appear. And my original songs (at least a few of them) will be part of the repertoire.

I’m not sure who else will be in the band with me, but we’re going to work that part out before the end of the year and hopefully get the band up to speed and ready to gig by early next year.

Time to put on my big boy pants and take control of something for a change.

Of course, we all know (from reading this blog) that it will not happen, since I haven’t managed to get my acoustic act (which is just ME (!)) up and running, either.

But you never know…
TMS

Cancellations:
So the two gigs I previewed in my last post, the apartment party on 7/16 and the Tilted Kilt gig on 7/18 were cancelled. The apartment party because Greg was still recovering, and the Tilted Kilt because they had new owners. So all gigs with them are cancelled, meaning we don’t have another public show until – get this – SEPTEMBER!

Which is fine by me. Public shows are nice to have friends come, but they tend to pay really crappy.

Frustrations:
Not enough time to write music or do anything creative musically, and even less inspiration right now. I don’t know why this is, but it’s extremely frustrating.

Machinations:
The tracks are coming along well – we should be ready to go with at least five of them at the next show. It’s exciting…and scary. And I need to invest in some really good rechargeable 9v batteries, because buying them over and over is not only environmentally insane, but EXPENSIVE.

Peace!
TMS

So in the past couple of weeks, here’s been the deal with the band:

Scene One:
We played up in Killeen, and saw a lot of our favorite people from up there – both the awesome staff (including the great waitress-who-I-managed-to-forget-her-name but who decided to actually work on her day off because WE were playing), and our great friends/fans who made the trip up there. It was a fun show, though a little weird.

Scene Two:
We played a 4th of July party for the same awesome lady who hired us last year – but this year was a little fucked up. Why? Well, Greg had just returned from a trip to Florida to take a cruise with family, and it seemed like he had a good time but was a little under the weather. Add his “coming down with something” to the BLISTERING heat (it was 104 degrees that day), the fact that our covered stage was situated facing the setting sun, a few unfortunate hot dogs, and well, it was a rough night. Oh, and did I mention what it turned out Greg had? A little thing most people know as “swine flu” – H1N1. He’s been sick all week, sometimes worse, sometimes better, but he’s going to be okay. I feel horrible for him, but I’m thankful I didn’t get it. Fortunately he had basically zero contact with people at the party (he was usually off laying in the trailer, trying to save energy to finish the show, which he did as much as he could, and he’s a real trouper.

A nice side note was that while he was tearing down his stuff, I kept playing – did acoustic solo stuff for the remainder of the show. Here’s what I played:
Don’t Stop Believin’
Hotel California
Baby One More Time
Cheap Sunglasses
Brown Eyed Girl
and maybe a few others – I can’t remember.

It was fun, and people really enjoyed it (from what I could gather).

Scene Three:
Because of Greg’s illness, we were left sort of scrambling for someone to be at the ready for this weekend’s big wedding gig – it was a big payer for a kind of high-profile person – so we wanted to make sure the show could go on even if Greg was still too sick. Enter (or more appropriately, RE-enter) Rob Wade.

Yes, our dear departed drummer Rob came through for us this weekend – we called him early in the week to find out if it was even possible for him to make the trek to Austin to come play with us if necessary. As it turned out, he was available – and actually excited at the prospect of playing a show again. The money didn’t hurt, either. So Ned sent him the setlist and he got to work, and we hoped Greg got better, happy to have a great back-up plan. Come Thursday, Greg’s fever came back a little, so we had him make the call, and he said to get Rob to do it. So having no idea what to expect from a guy we hadn’t played with in over a year, who really hadn’t been playing all that much himself since he moved from Austin, we nervously all got set up for the show. We ran through a few songs as a sound check at the beginning, and it went surprisingly well. Save for a few moments during the show, no one who even sees us regularly would have any clue that this wasn’t the “regular” band. Rob did an EXCELLENT job, and the couple who hired us were VERY pleased with our performance. Greg’s still recovering (baby steps), and we hope he’s all better soon.

For a variety of reasons, we’re still not running the backing tracks yet, but they are coming. And if things go well enough, we’ll be identifying more songs that could use the help and just fleshing it all out. I plan on tracking bass and backing vox on the “acoustic” songs I do with the band, and we’ll go from there.

Thanks to Greg for trying so hard even though he’s suffering from our current plague, to Rob for driving all the way down here to play with us again (and for investing the individual practice time to get everything together this past week), and to our clients for being so awesome to us. Honorable mention goes to the staff at the Stephen F. Austin Intercontinental Hotel for being great, too.

Public gig at Tilted Kilt on 7/18 (come see my ever-so-sexy headset mic). Private party at some apartment complex (I don’t know which one) on 7/16.

And I am really going to start booking my acoustic show. After sitting in with Alon and half of “More Cowbell” last Tuesday at Molotov, I find it just stupid that I’m not doing that. I LOVE just strumming a guitar and singing – I love the creativity involved in coming up with interesting ways to flesh out arrangements of songs with just one guitar and one voice. It’s rad, and I’m actually pretty damn good at it.

It’s a gift, and I find it sort of shameful that I don’t share it with more people (and have them pay me for it…)

Until the next outbreak…
TMS

Roman Holiday is becoming a robo-band, at least partially.

Yes, we’re acknowledging our shortcomings on certain songs and fortifying our performance with some backing tracks.

I’m not sure if I’m happy with the concept, because I feel like tracks are better as an all-or-nothing proposition. But I’m not sure what it’s going to mean or how it’s going to work for this band.

I think (sub?)consciously I’m really frustrated with my current situation, because almost everything we do engenders some sort of negative reaction in my brain, usually leading me to shooting off a semi-pissy e-mail. I’m just now recognizing this, although it’s been going on for a long time. I don’t know why, because I do like these guys, and I like the songs we play, and I like playing bass and singing lead. I just have this weird chip on my shoulder about all of it. Maybe my previous blogs about being burned out were manifestations of these same feelings.

I feel like a psycho, because it’s almost like I’m denying something just to deny it, but I like it, but when I think of doing anything else I hate those ideas even though they seem appealing, too.

I think it’s just facing what change would mean: a lot more work.

Which brings it back to the tracks – I think the fact that now I’m not allowed to mess up and come back around on the tracked tunes makes me realize I have homework to do so that doesn’t happen, and I guess I hate the fact I have homework.

I’ve always thought I really had something to say as a songwriter or an artist, and as I get older, I just feel like I don’t, mostly because I don’t allow myself the luxury of concentrating on writing songs and creating stories or messages through music. Recently I’ve been more satisfied just parroting other crap and noodling around.

I’m such a whiny titty baby.
TMS

for reminding me that music should be about fun and passion. The show at Stubb’s last night was loose in composition, but really tight in performance. I love it when a band is really loose with the stage show and song selection, but super tight when they’re playing together…and that’s how his band was last night.

Special kudos to Ponderosa for taking the blues and rocking it HARD.

And shame on American pop culture for not recognizing how great Butch is. You are truly missing out.

The band has played a few decent gigs since the debacle that was Pappacito’s. We’re still figuring out how to move ourselves in a more fun direction, since the stuff we’ve been playing is getting kind of stale for all of us.

I’ve actually grown tired of making the set lists, so I’m going to ask the other fellas if they’ll make them for a while.

I finally tweaked my Variax so that it’s not too loud and sounds more authentic as a 12-string. It really helps on the two acoustic songs we do, since both were originally played with 12-string acoustics.

I definitely need to find an outlet for playing guitar soon, though. It might mean that the Acoustical Schizo (www.myspace.com/acousticalschizo) comes to life. We’re so absurdly booked for the summer that I think I’d get it together just in time to book some dates in August and September. I might see if Dave can hook me up to play a few solo acoustic shows at Latitude 30, just to warm up the material in front of an audience. I’m having a hard time finding regular acoustic venues.

We’ll see what happens. This coming weekend we’re doing a sonic overhaul to Roman Holiday’s PA – organizing it, getting really good monitor mixes without feedback, and basically putting together a system to make load-in and load-out easier (including labeling everything). I find that stuff fun, so that’s cool.

We have received regular bookings for the summer at a few places, including Hayashi Sushi Grille in Cedar Park and The Tilted Kilt in Round Rock, so we have some public shows – yay!

I do dig the private parties a little more, though, most of the time, because the load-ins are usually easier and the pay is pretty much double on average.

No gig this weekend, but we’re at a new venue (for us) in Pflugerville called “Hanover’s” – they have their own house PA and pay a sound dude (I think) so we should be in good shape playing there. I don’t anticipate a return gig there, because I don’t trust all our peeps to show up, but we’re going to have as much fun with it as possible.

Until the next time…

So a few days ago I posted a big, whiny “I think I’m burned out” blog, and it was precisely true to my emotions that day. I still sort of feel burned out, but I think that has more to do with how constrained our playlist feels than anything. I need to play some more new songs, and the ones we’ve been adding just haven’t been dazzling me. “Walk This Way” sounded pretty weak the one time we tried to play it (who knows, it could get better), and we haven’t even really tried the other two (“We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “Livin’ On A Prayer”). Plus we’re learning “La Bamba” and “Tequila” for our Cinco De Mayo gig. How original. Any-way…

I did spend some time in the studio and recorded a little demo of a previously unrecorded old song of mine. It’s super rough, but I figured I’d share it:
She’s Got It All – Stream
She’s Got It All – Download mp3
She’s Got It All – Info about the song

I really need to get back to writing. I think that will solve a lot of my “issues”.

I was also considering asking my friend mAndy (she likes to spell it that way) if she’d be interested in starting a little fun duo thing. I don’t know if she has the time or interest, but I’m fairly certain she doesn’t read my blog, so I can talk about it here before I ask.

She’s a really talented singer who can play a bunch of other instruments. Along with me, I think we have the voices and arms to be able to cover a lot of sonic ground and still keep it really fun for the crowd. I actually asked her if she’d want to play with the full band a while back, but she thought that might be bad (too many conflicts with her band UNB), and before that, we were going to try an acoustic thing that never really panned out.

Regardless, my wife’s been pushing me to ask her to do something, since we both (me and mAndy) will play pretty much any song and I think our voices will work well together.

We’ll see what comes of it. She might not be interested, or might be too busy, or something else, but it never hurts to ask.

I think I’m going to start figuring out which venues have acoustic acts and call them to book some shows as a solo. If stuff works out with mAndy, maybe I can convince them to pay a little more for a duo.

Come see me play these next few weeks – 5/1 at Hayashi in Cedar Park (on 1431), 5/5 at Pappasito’s (on I-35, I think), and 5/8 at The Tilted Kilt in Round Rock.