Saturday, April 21, 2012

Boy Wonder: Professional Musician 293


Year Four

April 20th 2012

Los Angeles, California

Off Day....Sort of

With the Win that was San Diego behind me I had one more day between me and LA . No Gigs but plenty to do.

The Agenda

  1. Lay Around All Morning
  2. Meet Up With Melinda Rice at the Musician's Union
  3. Meet Up With Mary for a quick writing session for tomorrow's show

I had no problem with one. Laying around meant I could take some phone calls, mostly from family members and friends. I have a lot of thoughts on my life recently and it was cool to share them with people I care about. Coffee was involved once I got my ass out of bed.

Step Two would be a little bit harder.

I agreed to show up at my high school classmate and friend Melinda Rice's violin class to talk to them about music. At first I was like “Well what the hell do I know all your students probably read better than me” when she explained she wanted me to come in and talk to them about my life as a musician to this point I was like “Well I can probably do that”

I've always thought working with kids in some capacity is important to do. None of us shall be here forever so it's important to pass on whatever you think you know to the next generation so they don't make the same mistakes you did. Admittedly I was nervous. I wasn't sure if they would be receptive. Kids are smart for the most part and you can't really get anything past them and truthfully it was a little rough at first. I basically condensed this blog into a five minute introduction and then we chatted about music for a bit and I wondered how things might be different had I been exposed to music in the right way at that age.

Melinda and I also went through most of the set for tomorrow's show in front of the class and she basically taught them about how to interact with chord progressions as she and I basically rehearsed. I gotta say that I love the way she plays, she's not stiff, she gets what's happening, I can go ahead and add her to list of genius musicians I know. Then she asked the kids to play a long with Ex-Girlfriend. So there I am in the middle of this class with like 12 kids and Melinda playing along as I play my acoustic guitar and sing. It was an epic moment. I brought some CD's and they sort of all ran to grab them and they asked me to sign them. All in all it was a pretty amazing experience and I probably learned more from them than they did from me. I left not only having enjoyed myself thoroughly but pretty confident that tomorrow's show would be good.

Step Three involved me leaving towards the parking lot to meet Mary Scholz. Mary's an old friend from Philly with whom I have any stories. She's good people and we've done quite bit together show wise in the past year or two. So when I asked her if she could set something up for me in LA this weekend and she said yes I was over the moon.

Whenever we do shows it's customary that we pick a few songs to sing/play together. Normally they are covers but since we couldn't agree on anything we decided to write something together. Generally I hate working with people cause I've never found the right person to write with. I never found my Lennon or Garfunkel or Oates. But Mary and I are like minded in the sense that we like to get stuff done and the most important thing is that the song is good so I figured that this would work.

It was an interesting window into someone else's songwriting process. There are certain things she does that I picked up on and will likely incorporate. I love that she follows her instincts and kind of knows what the stuff should be about. Def be interested in doing that some more.

3 hours later there was a song an hour after that I was asleep.

LA Tomorrow

Get Excited

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