…but it seems I’m posting everywhere most days and, in the end, something gets overlooked. When I’m expressing myself in a more personal way my tendency is to get the professional items out of the way first (contracts, press releases, etc.) — to be honest these things are easier to do. While I generally drive myself a bit crazy whenever I write something, I’ve gotten the ‘promotional approach’ together and can minimize the anxiety for the most part. Writing a first-person account of my activities is another thing….
Well, several performances have come and gone; the most visible was the Taste of Woodbridge with the group last Friday evening. This is an annual event which we been featured on for the past three years and it’s great. It seems the township of Woodbridge wants us to play the way we prefer to play with the energy and complexity that (I hope) is our trademark. My son did shoot some video footage, but the ever-moving crowd of attendees walked in front of the camera too often and, while that’s a professional hazard in these sort of gigs, it does get tedious. We’re going through the footage, nevertheless, and may post at least one tune. The group sounds exceptional (in my humble and un-biased opinion) and we’ll be working on live sound and video recordings as much as possible. In addition to a private event in Woodbridge NJ next week the group will be at the Kimmel Center on November 12th for a free performance on the ground floor lobby. I had the opportunity to perform last year as a solo on the same bill as Flamenco virtuoso Paco Pena — I am so glad to be able to bring the group in this time. The Kimmel is Philly’s Regional Performing Arts Center and, in addition to being physically impressive, it’s a great venue with a great staff.
My favorite solo venue Avril is still on hold — I’m hoping we’ll have that moving forward again soon.While it’s become a catch-all phrase, the economy is strangling a lot of small and not- so-small businesses. Christian and April are working very diligently to establish their restaurant and, being a small-business proprietor, I do understand. I’ve lost quite a few festival dates this year due to reduced or non-existent budgets.
The almost-CD is still in post production — I’m having problems with the sonic integrity of my studio environment (Professional-sounding, yes?) and it’s almost impossible to EQ and tweak and do all the necessary things when your listening space isn’t just right. I know I’m famous for laboring over the albums for weeks beyond reason…. One weekend I’ll just sit down and get it done.
Also, in the event that the Lab L3 is still of interest to anyone (if you recall, Matt had achieved one of his dreams by locating a pristine single-speaker version of his much-loved Lab amplifiers — however, the evil powers at FedEx intervened and dashed our hero’s dreams by dropping the well-packed container containing the magical amp from a fantastic height and literally cracking the front panel allowing the speaker to become a free and unattached party in this fiasco). I’ve disassembled the amp and rebuilt the front panel with cross-beam style reinforcements (Lowe’s employees are now my friends) and will, hopefully, screw and glue everything in place this weekend and power it up, It actually sounds great with the speaker connected lying on the floor, so I can only imagine what the end result will be….
Man, am I long-winded? I’ll post more a bit later.
