Last night Deception played to a packed house, at the Church of the Blues. The beer and other beverages were flowing, & the waitresses had to weave their way in and around the dancers on the dance floor, as they delivered the plates of food & suds to the customers.
I had a lot of interesting experiences last night, some of them were pretty strange. 😯 However that’s all part of being in a band. The sax in Deception is not a wall flower. I am front and centre with the lead guitar, and as such, get a lot of attention.
When Art hired me 3 years ago, he made the decision to fundamentally change the sound of his Blues band. He wanted a strong opposite to his lead guitar, which would give him the opportunity to lay back more, and play rhythm. I was tasked with filling in behind his vocals, and giving him a strong base to build both his vocals and guitar solos on.
Over the years Art and I have “clicked” in such a way, that we just know where each of us is going at any given moment. We have amazing musical chemistry, and the audience picks up on that very quickly. It is something we often get comments on.
Last night was a long night for me. We played from 9:00 pm to 1:00 am. It is the first time that I’ve played that long a performance since I got ill 2 years ago. I took it as easy as I could, but by the time the third set rolled around, I was dead-tired, and in a great deal of pain.
Because my neuro problems have left me with a balance disorder, I stagger like a drunk if I’m not using my cane. The more tired I get, the more I stagger. Well what better place to stagger than a bar? I was staggering like a drunkard during sound check already, while I wandered out to check our levels.
This shot was taken during our sound check while I was doing a solo. It was sure nice to have my Selmer back. It’s been 8 months since I’ve been able to play it at a show.
As the pm wore on, when I tried to “walk the bar”, it was rather unsettling for me, because it was really crowded, and I had a number of people grabbing at me, which threw off my screwed-up sense of balance even more. They were just trying to get my attention, to let me know how much they enjoyed my playing. But it takes all the concentration I have, to be able to walk in a reasonably straight line, when not using a cane. (And even at that, there are a lot of side-steps involved.) Being thrown off by people grabbing at my clothes, is just very unsettling.
This afternoon we are back at the Church of the Blues, to host their weekly Blues jam. It is another 4 hour event, with the potential to run longer, if there is a crowd, and the owner wants it to go on. Wish me luck. I’m going to need it!
“A female keyboard player who can double on vocals” would probably be doing a piano single gig already, or have her own trio. You might be seen as an expensive luxury in such a case. Musicians (male or female) who can both sing and play piano at the same time pretty much get to call their own shots, since they can do an awful lot alone.
I sincerely wish you luck in finding one who is both (1) good enough, and (2) not prior committed.
Cesar Morales y Sabor Latino was the name of the band he fronted in New Brunswick. I don’t remember the name of his band, or the bands he played in, in El Salvador.
Yes, “big bands” are so not financially viable. I’m struggling with that right now, as I am thinking of putting my jazz band back together after its hiatus. We were a 5 piece, and even that is too big really. I’m bringing it down to a 4, which means I need a female keyboard player who can double on vocals. Doesn’t seem like a big deal on the surface, but finding one with the right chemistry to fit into the group, that’s always the trick.
I love your last line: “Music as art is great, but music as business sucks.” It is so dark, but oh so true. I haven’t tried to make a living from only music, for many years. It burned me out. When I returned to music, I was very careful to not go down the same road. Now, I can’t do it at all for living, because of being ill. At this point, music & performing, are a form a rehab that my doctors and I have come up with. (As is this daily blog actually.) Never has my music been as (psychologically) healthy for me most likely, as it is now, despite what it might take out of me physically, for a few days after a show.
I’ve heard of Cesar Morales, but I’ve heard enough band names with “sabor” in them that I can’t honestly say if I’ve heard of Sabor Latino or not. I’m sure other people in the band would also recognize the name, since they’re mostly from Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and that general area.
If I had to be the only horn in a Latin band, I think I’d end up playing mostly flute, in Charanga style. Right now, the band I’m working with most has been pared back to two horns — a trumpet, and me on C-mel. I’ve also provided the book transposed for tenor, for those times someone else has to play it, but I am totally unapologetic for the liberal sprinklings of low-altissimo in the tenor part. I wrote the part for ME and a C-mel, after deciding the tenor doesn’t do a good enough job pretending to be a second trumpet, and alto similarly fails to pass for a trombone. Alto worked great in a three-horn section, but the economic reality right now is that nine-piece bands are priced out of the market. The C-mel has adequate range on both ends, a “tenorish” sound at the bottom, and an “altoish” sound at the top, and altissimo is a mixture of the two.
I don’t even TAKE the flute any more for this band, though I do keep a piccolo handy. None of the songs call for it, but it’s nice to have another sound in the sonic palette when I don’t have a written part to cover. I also don’t have to change my mental key any more!
We have a few session players on call to cover the trumpet book, and they generally won’t make rehearsals, so I’ll usually cover the trumpet part since that’s easier for the rest of the band to cue from. I could take the soprano as a drop-in replacement, but I rather like the challenge of un-transposing from Bb instrument parts. I think this will come in quite handy when I have to fill in for a band where I don’t write the arrangements. I don’t have to explain that what I’m playing is not a tenor if I can make it act enough like one.
Sadly, I’ve been making more of my “pocket change” from online poker than from playing. Even here in the “entertainment capital of the world”, things are thin, and I’m glad I’m not trying to make a living doing this. Music as art is great, but music as business sucks.
I hear your pain on the merengue accordion imitations. Cesar Morales y Sabor Latino used to play Tu Boquita. I tried not to fall asleep during it. Sometimes I was not successful. 😮 It was up to me to let the band know when the singer was to come in. So if I screwed up counting the patterns, we tended to crash and burn. Luckily I only did that a few times 😯 , and only at low key events, late at night, when everyone was half-cut, and no one noticed.
While we were a traditional Latin band in the sense that Cesar took traditional Latino songs and did original arrangements, or wrote original material from his heritage, our only having 1 horn, and that not being a trumpet, necessitated a more jazz focus at times.
I worked my ass off in that band being an ersatz-trumpet, and played as aggressively as any trumpet player would. When we did our low-key stuff, it was a nice break, and it took on a Latin jazz sound & feel.
Cesar Morales y Sabor Latino was a lot of fun play in. I learned a lot from Cesar. He was a very accomplished & celebrated pop musician in his homeland of El Salvador. His videos are still played on the music channel there.
I might actually enjoy playing merengue if I had a bass sax to play it on. Otherwise, it’s a frightful bore. Even though I make up my own parts more often that not, doing accordion imitations is just no fun.
Our band is as electric as anyone (electronic piano, amplified bass), which is why the trombone player had a tuba for the conga line. He had played in a parade earlier in the day (nicknamed the “Peruvian Death March”) and had the tuba in the car, so it wasn’t planned — but once he got wind of the conga line plans, he hightailed it back to the car for the tuba.
The conga line worked as intended, it moved the crowd from where they had been quietly eating dinner and sipping drinks, to where the stage was (which otherwise they might have missed).
Ah yes, hockey, the Canadian passion. It was Saturday night, and thus Hockey Night In Canada night. So every TV in the pub was tuned to a different hockey game. With 3 broadcasters in the country (CBC & 2 cable sports-only channels), each carrying a different game, many of them two games in a row, spread over 4 time zones, well you do the math… All hockey all the time!!
I too used to play in a Latin band. I was the only horn in it, so I had no trumpets to contend with. I was also fortunate, because we were an electric band (electric bass, guitar, & keys) so we didn’t do conga lines. I played my bass sax in that band for some songs, so there’s no way I would have wanted to conga with it. (Mind you that was before I developed neuro problems. But still, you couldn’t pay me enough to dance with my bass! 😀 )
Love the hockey on the TV in the background — and they even had the sense to letterbox, rather than stretch the picture. Even when the Ducks were in the Cup finals (both times), I had to sneak in my own pocket TV at gigs because nobody wanted to watch! But the Lakers would be on every TV in the club…
OK, so Jerry Buss (Lakers owner) was part-owner of one of those clubs, so they probably would have shown Lakers games even if they were on an 0-82 pace, but they’d show the World Series no matter who was playing.
I have never walked the bar. We’re usually set up a long way from the bar. I’ve led a conga line, but that’s not nearly so perilous. One outdoor gig we marched in playing Dixieland — which confused the heck out of everyone because we’re a salsa band. I blame the trombone player, he brought the tuba! Anyhow, once we had everyone’s attention, we did the conga line thing — it was only my second gig using the C-melody as a primary, so I still didn’t quite have the “hear F, play F” instinct in my head yet instead of “F > D” or “F > G”. Fortunately, we were ALL making it up as we went along, and mambos usually have a flatted 7th anyhow, so it went under the radar.
Which would be worse then — walking the bar, or being put at the front of the conga line where the trumpet player can play directly into the back of your head at point-blank range? 🙂