Amsterdam Bar and Hall Part 2

Last night I had a show at the Amsterdam Bar and Hall. It was my second time playing there and it was lots of fun.

I put the bill together, which is always a bonus because you can fill it with people you really enjoy being around and listening to. The bands that joined me on stage were The Broken Bicycles, Brynn Andre, and Fairfax, AK.

The sound guy at the Amsterdam is really great and for the first time I think ever Shawn could hear me while he played drums. I just told the guy to crank my guitar in his monitor. Maybe I need to do this all the time. Probably would have been so helpful at so many shows. Lesson learned.

For a Monday night we had a pretty good turn out. Downtown St. Paul isn't really known for its bustling nightlife, so the fact that people came to hang out and listen was really cool. The Amsterdam is also a destination place itself - just a really great venue.

One of my Broken Bicycle friends took some video of one of my new songs, "Adore". I posted it below. The few times we've had a drumset at our shows recently, we never get around to playing this song because I usually put it on the setlist last and then we run out of time - mainly because I babble too much. So last night I put it second to last and we finally got to play. So much fun to play. Enjoy!



Setlist for the Amsterdam Bar and Hall 1/30/12
- Good
- Float
- The Paul Simon Song
- Can't Even Tell
- Beg, Borrow, or Steal
- Here
- Adore
- Cohabitate

Next Up: This Friday, Feb. 3rd at the Studiopolis Black & White art show in the Northrup Kling Building in Mpls. Details on the Upcoming Shows page.

I Thought We'd Play Again

Another one of my 10 things for 2012 is to get some of my old guitars fixed before I consider going out and buying new ones. So I brought in my oldest guitar:

I got this guitar when I was around 17. It wasn't expensive. I had no idea what I was doing picking out a guitar. I'm pretty sure I got it some place weird like Sam Goody or something. But, it honestly sounds pretty good. It has a deep warm sound that I've always enjoyed. And it has a built-in pick up for easy amplification.

It was the first guitar to join me on stage at that open mic night back in 2010. I played it all my shows and open mics for the first few months of my performing. I thought I would play it forever. I imagined it being like Willie Nelson's beat up guitar. It would gather dings and stickers and permanent marker drawings and scribbles. It would be my constant companion. When asked in interviews, I would say: This guitar? I got this guitar when I was still in high school. I've written all of my songs on it and I'll never play another.

Me and my old friend on stage for the first time.

But then it started falling apart.

You see, I'm really bad at taking care of my guitars. I don't keep them in perfectly humidified rooms. Sometimes I leave them lying on the floor. I've just never fully researched how to care for them because 1) None of them have ever cost all that much and 2) I always just played them to myself at home.

But then I started performing. And it seems that all those years of treating my guitar like a rag doll and then suddenly taking it out on the town was just too much. Pieces fell off and out of it. The pick-up stopped working...all within a few weeks. And once the pick-up stopped working, I couldn't use it anymore. I'm not someone who can stand perfectly still with my guitar up to a microphone, I have to move around. It needs to be plugged in.

So it got put back in the corner and I went out and bought a new-to-me guitar.

But that guitar has now been giving me problems - probably because I don't properly care for it - and so I thought I needed a back-up. So I pulled my old guitar out from the corner and brought it in to get fixed. Once again, visions of us taking the stage filled my head. I love every dent and scrape on this thing.

But it's not meant to be.

The guitar tech fixed the pick-up, but showed me a big problem looming that would cost way too much money to fix on a guitar that probably originally cost $150.

So, even though it can be amplified again, the bridge could snap off at any second and that would be a terrible thing to have happen on stage.

So, now it sits in my "guitar room". I can still pick it up and play it occasionally. Guitar tech guy said it'd make a great campfire guitar. Like I go to a lot of campfires.

I feel bad I didn't treat it very well.

I'm sorry we never got to live the dream, guitar. But thanks for being there for me in the beginning.

Woohoo!

I can't believe I almost didn't post about this...

I am officially employed again!

The best part?

It's part-time! 32 hours a week with a flexible schedule.

It's not dog walking, but it's a good job at a good company that does good things filled with good people. And they all seem to understand what my post-work musical life means to me and encourage me to pursue it, hence the flexible schedule.

Things happen for a reason, everybody.

Victory 44

One of my 10 Things for 2012 is to go to a new restaurant once a month. And so far I'm off to a good start!

I went to Victory 44 for a friend's birthday dinner. I was a little concerned, after going online to view their menu prior to dinner, because I'm a vegetarian and the menu picture they posted on their site showed only meat. I don't mind being around meat being consumed - I'm not one of those vegetarians - but when I go out to dinner, I like to eat something and there didn't appear to be anything on the menu for me. Also, everyone was planning on doing the Chef's Tasting which is a $50 for a five course meal, each course served with a glass of wine that is supposed to go perfectly with the dish. So, to spend $50 on food that I couldn't eat was a slight concern. But, I thought I could just sit and drink wine all night and that would be cool. I choose to be a vegetarian. I put myself in this situation and I was more looking forward to the hanging out with friends part.

But much to my surprise, the chef was happy to work with my vegetarianism and served me five courses all meat free that still each went with each glass of wine. And all of it was delicious. I would try to tell you what they served me, but I am no good with stuff like that so all I can say is that it was all very fancy and that one dish had roasted pears and I love pears.

Dessert was goat cheese and pomegranate seeds and it tasted just like ice cream. So. Good.

The atmosphere is great: Loud, but not obnoxious. Just loud enough where you don't feel like you have to sit and whisper. A very friendly wait staff. Good seating options. Clean bathrooms.

And the food was super tasty.

I'd recommend.

Grimm

 

I started watching the show Grimm for reasons I don’t remember. I think I was really bored one night and went on Hulu and saw it and thought, okay, I’ll watch that.

The show is ridiculous.

The show is based around the Mother Goose and Grimm fairy tales. The show revolves around detective Nick Burkhardt who finds out through his creepy dying aunt that he is a descendant of the Grimms, a family who has been fighting the villains of fairy tales for centuries. Yes, in this show, all those stories are true. Obviously this is a shock and a very strange thing to learn about yourself. As soon as his aunt dies, he inherits her “powers” to see the villains in the everyday people he encounters. You see, the bad guys live amongst us and are basically shape shifters. To us normal folk, they look like regular people, but when their emotions run high, to a Grimm, they can see their true features. Sometimes they’re wolves or mice or snakes or bees or bears or whatever other animal the writers can think of.

So already the show is kind of ridiculous.

But it’s fantasy and so you go with it. It’s kind of intriguing.

But it’s not.

But I keep watching.

The acting is so terrible. It reminds me very much of Prison Break. It doesn’t help that the Big Bad Wolf is played by Silas Weir Mitchell who was one of my favorite characters in Prison Break. This Big Bad Wolf is a good guy though. He’s reformed. He ends up helping Burkhardt solve the crimes committed in this town by these fairy tale monsters, which is apparently all the crimes.

Of course, being that this show is about what it is about, the bad guys this detective is up against are always going to turn out to be the fairy tale monsters. I mean, if they didn’t, it would just be another cop show. And knowing this, I should just go with that and not roll my eyes every time someone’s face shape shifts into some creature. But it just seems a little far fetched that every bad guy is a strange creature and it’s also seems completely unfair that as soon as Burkhardt sees them change, he automatically knows they are guilty and works around the system to bust them. I mean, isn’t that kind of racial profiling? Just because someone can turn into a bear doesn’t mean they are murderers - although, that seems to be the case with this show.

And I know that, as a television show, they are only showing us the cases he works on that involve the creatures, and I’m sure – day to day – he experiences regular crimes committed by regular people and the writers don’t show us this for the same reason they don’t show people going to the bathroom – it’s not part of the story they are telling.

Still, every episode begins with a crime being committed. Burkhardt and his partner Hank, who is there only to state the obvious and make really inappropriate jokes and Sgt. Wu (also formerly of Prison Break) who is always the first guy on the scene and also makes really inappropriate jokes about dead people, show up and investigate what is usually a pretty basic case of murder. As a viewer, you just sit and wait for him to find the first suspect who will inevitably shape shift into something else and Burkhardt will get this strange look on his face and then he’ll do everything he can to find a way to show that the suspect is guilty without giving away the fairy tale background of the whole situation. 

It’s ridiculous.

But I keep watching.

It’s now become something I watch when I am super bored, usually a Sunday night when I am trying to unwind before having to go back to work on Monday. It is pretty gruesome, though, and since I’m easily grossed out, it can make for a rough night of sleep afterwards.

If you’re not watching it, don’t start. It’s really not worth it.

But if you are really desperate for something to watch some night, I guess I would say go for it. You will be disappointed, yet, somehow entertained.