Rockin' Out at Rockin' Horse

Drums? Check.
Harmonica? Check.
Totally rad and wildly inappropriate Iron Maiden t-shirt? Check, baby.
Let's rock.

Today I got to spend the day at Rockinghorse Studios slapping down some fat beats for my buddy, Steve Blunt. Yeah, baby. I was droppin' them like they were hot.

Every year, Steve records a new song for the library summer reading program.

Steve at the studio. He is obviously not ready to rock, as he is NOT wearing a rad Iron Maiden shirt.

 I feel obligated to whine a bit about how hard it is to be a drummer.

1. Lots of stuff to schlep around.
2. Very hard to whip out your drum set at a party and impress the ladies with your smooth music.
3. Lots of stuff to schlep around.
4. That stuff is heavy.
5. And there's a lot of it. Did I mention that?

To help with the schlepping, I conscripted my charming 14-year-old daughter, Tori, to give up her entire Saturday so she could come to the studio with me and help me schlep equipment.

"Plus," I explained, to sweeten the deal, "You'll get to see me in my totally rad Iron Maiden shirt."

Tori rolled her eyes so hard I could hear it.

She packed 2 books to bring with her because she has been to the studio before and knows firsthand that creating masterpieces of rock and roll basically involves playing the same song over and over and over and over until you want to claw chunks of your brain out just to get the song out of your head.

I swear this is true - these are the two books that Tori chose to bring with her. Anne of Green Gables and the Special Forces Survival Guide. She is one strange little cookie. But don't tell her I said that because now that she has read that survival guide, she can probably kill me and make it look like an accident.

We arrived at the studio and were met by Brian and Josh, the evil masterminds behind the mixing panels.

Brian setting up the drums. I refuse to touch microphones at his studio as most of them cost more than my house. Plus, Brian doesn't let drummers touch anything. Ever.

Brian indicates that he is through by throwing up devil horns, the universal signal for "I am through setting up microphones around these drums. Do not touch any of them, you filthy drummer, as they cost more than your house."

Joe, the fabulous bass player arrived and the party really got rolling.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... calm down there, Mr. Joe, you crazy man. This is a recording studio, not a kegger. And where is your rad Iron Maiden shirt? Doesn't anyone read my emails?

Here's how making a song works:

1. Steve writes a song
2. Steve sends us a demo version of the song that he recorded at his house.
3. We listen to the song and come up with some cool parts to go along with it.
4. We practice and practice along with the demo.
5. Two days before entering the studio to do it for real, Steve sends us a new version of the demo that he recorded at the studio. This is called a "scratch track".
 6. We realize that the "scratch track" is completely different than the song we have been practicing with.
7. We cry a little.
8. We go to the studio and completely make it up as we go along.

(Please note that when I say "We", what I actually mean is "I", because Joe is actually a really good, professional studio musician. He can fake it like a boss. I cannot.)

Before we started playing, Brian made sure that I, as a drummer and therefor prone to drooling and sweating and dragging my knuckles across the floor, was properly insulated from the rest of his studio.

Brian closing me into "The Drummer Box".

Brian closes me in even more tightly to assure that none of my drummer fumes can contaminate the studio. Please note my totally rad Iron Maiden shirt.

Once I was securely in my padded enclosure, I took careful note of my surroundings.

Tissues, conveniently located within reach for the inevitable weepy breakdown when I find out that we have to play the song "Just one more time."

Personal sound mixer so I can "unintentionally" turn the click track off and Brian won't know.

The view from behind the drums. Please note the protective glass between the studio and the booth, where the producers and engineers sit in luxurious comfort, far from the reeking drummers and their rad Iron Maiden shirts.

Little jellies stuck to drum heads to prevent ringing sounds. Brian hooked me up with one that looked like a little man and I was distracted throughout the entire recording session watching the man jump around every time I hit this drum.

Steve brings beer and tells us that we can't have any until we play the song perfectly. He cracks it open, takes a long pull off it, licks his lips and walks out of the studio and into the booth where he proceeds to smoke giant Cuban cigars, drink fine, imported beer, sit in a hot tub, and get a massage by the in-house Swedish masseuse. At least, this is what I assume is happening. I can't actually see out of my drummer cave.

Tori did manage to snap this candid picture of Brian hard at work during the recording session. I can't see the masseuse, but she's there somewhere. I know it. I just know it.

After we're all settled in, we play the song two or three thousand times and we're done!

Almost.

"How about playing some harmonica?" Steve says, waving a beer in front of my sweat be-dewed face.

I knew this was coming. I was ready for it. I even went out and bought a brand-new harmonica, just for this moment.

A few weeks earlier, Steve had hinted that I might want to check out the harmonica solo in the song "What I Like About You" by The Romantics. He thought something like that might fit well into his song.

So I learned it. I played it over and over and over and over. If you have never played a harmonica, you should know that they can be played by inhaling or exhaling, each direction producing a distinctive sound. The solo Steve had asked me to play had almost no place for exhaling. But I played and played and played, risking debilitating pulmonary damage each time.

But I learned it.

I told Steve about it and suggested that he might want to start saving up for the iron lung (NOT the Iron Maiden shirt) that I was going to make him buy for me when my lungs exploded.

"Oh," he laughed lightly," I didn't mean that you should memorize the solo. I just meant something like that."

"Ha, ha," I wheezed from my perforated, tattered lungs.

But when harmonica time, I nailed that solo.

This is the view from behind a shiny gold harmonica microphone that probably costs more than all our houses combined.

Inhale.

Inhale more.

Carpet on the floor for when I pass out.

"Ha! Ha! We're not even recording this! Where is that masseuse? Steve, pass me another beer!"

"Sure thing, Brian! You can have Marty's beer because he's coughing up blood from his hemorrhaged lungs. Ha! Ha! Ha! That's so funny. Hey, masseuse, you want a beer, too?"

Still playing! Must be the super powers I've developed because of my rad Iron Maiden t-shirt.

When we were finally through, I staggered from the studio, gasping for air and dripping with sweat.

"Hey, man. Don't sweat on my carpets," Brian said as the masseuse massaged his feet.

I collapsed in a quivering heap on the floor, but fortunately for me, Tori had her Special Forces Survival Guide. She whacked me on the head with it a few times to revive me. That thing really works!

Then we headed home so we could start schlepping equipment back into the house.

I can't wait until it's time to record next year's song!

I'm A Rock Star, Baby.

This whole rock and roll lifestyle thing isn't all glitter and glamor and unbridled debauchery.

Sometimes there is also pizza.

Last Saturday we had our second big show at Tupelo Music Hall. It was a noon show and we were scheduled to begin loading in and setting up equipment at 10 a.m., so naturally I went to bed nice and early Friday night and slept for almost 30 seconds before my wife developed some sort of Exorcist-style stomach bug that had her spectacularly sick for the rest of the night.

At 8:30, well rested from a night of tending to my sick wife, I loaded all my drums into my rock-n-roll, heavy metal Toyota Camry and headed to the show.

Setting up for a show is easy if you're a bassist like Joe. You stroll in with a bass and an amp, plug in and you're all set.

A rare glimpse of Joe setting up.

Being a drummer requires lugging endless loads of heavy equipment all over the place, setting it up, adjusting it, fixing it, and then hitting each drum 6,000 times so the sound guy can make sure that each thump of the bass drum is loud enough to make people in the front row lose control of their bladders.

Personally, I don't enjoy all that lugging and setting up stuff. It reminds me too much of work. So, rather than spend my valuable time doing my own work, I grabbed Noelle's daughter, Isabelle and asked her if she was interested in a high profile career in the music business as a roadie. I talked it up and explained that being a roadie is sort of a short cut to fame and fortune. "Beyonce was a roadie for Iron Maiden," I explained. "And look at her now."

Isabelle was thrilled with the opportunity I was affording her. In an effort to help her gain some valuable life-experience, I allowed her to haul all my equipment from my car and set it all up for me. Because I care about children.

Isabelle has a bright future as a roadie. Please note that Joe is already set up and is sitting there playing while Isabelle hauls my heavy drums all over the place. I am back-stage in the drummer jacuzzi. Steve is showing off his posterior for the camera.

Isabelle adjusts my drums as Joe pretends he's practicing. We all know that he's so good he doesn't need to practice. I am back-stage getting a massage. Steve continues to display his back-side to the camera.

After Isabelle finally got my drums set up the way I like them she told Noelle that she didn't want to be a rock star anymore. She explained that she wanted to be something fun and exciting. Like an accountant. Noelle, naturally, was heartbroken.

Isabelle breaks the news to Noelle. Joe has now settled in with another cup of coffee. I am backstage getting a foot-rub and Steve has moved his derriere to another part of the stage. 

Soon, the doors opened and people started filing in. That's when Steve announced that he had a few new songs that we had never played before that he had added to the set list. I was unfazed, as Steve does this at every show. Joe didn't even hear Steve's announcement, because he was slurping his coffee. Plus, he's so good, he can play new material while slurping coffee.

Noelle didn't hear Steve either, as she was still wallowing in self-pity that her daughter has decided to chuck the steady life of a roadie for something as frivolous as being an accountant.

We spend the next 20 minutes milling around on stage watching Joe drink coffee as the audience filled the place.

Then, it was showtime.

To look like awesome professionals, we walked backstage (actually a small closet, located directly to the side of the stage and fully visible to the audience) and strode onstage in true, dramatic rock star fashion: tripping over cables and hissing "What song are we starting with again?"

Steve, the consummate professional, opened the show by explaining to the audience that he has a huge booger stuck on his finger. At least, I assume that's what he was talking about. I was desperately trying to remember what song we were about to play.

Then we started to rock.

Actually, Noelle started to rock and the rest of us just stared at her because we weren't even playing anything yet. We do love her enthusiasm.

It was a pretty full house and we did have fun.

The crowd included some of my very good friends who traveled a long way to see the show.

Steve leads us all in a game of "Let's Eat This Gum From My Shoe."

The Grand Finale of the show was the much anticipated dueling ukulele version of Steve's song, "I Love Ukulele". I sat behind my set, giddy with the promise of fire and explosions in this ukulele death match.

I was slightly disappointed that the promised pyrotechnics didn't happen, but it was probably a wise decision, given the flammable nature of small children. If any of the kids in the audience had been engulfed in flames and run onstage, it could have ruined some of our equipment.

I took a moment during the show to snap a few quick pictures to show you the awesome view from onstage.

This is what a show looks like from behind the drum set. The only thing that isn't obscured by the blinding lights is Steve's butt.

And a slightly different view of Steve's butt.

After the show, we hustled out back and were swamped by throngs of fans, clamoring to buy stuff from us.

I signed books slowly to give Isabelle plenty of time to break down my equipment and load it into my car for me. She's only ten, after all.

Once the equipment was all packed up, we headed out for pizza. Steve and Joe ruined the meal for everyone by ordering a pizza with anchovies, green olives, and onion. The waitress actually made gagging noises when they ordered it.

I was going to take a picture of it, but the noxious fumes wafting around it like a miasma made it difficult to focus. We suggested that they might like to eat it outside, but they declined. Steve's wife, Sheila sat next to him for the meal and was a delicate shade of green by the end of the meal.

When we were finished eating, I headed home to wash the stink of anchovies off me and bask in the glow of rock and roll fame. And to explain to my kids that unloading my stuff from the car is the pathway to fame and fortune.

(Click here to see a short video that our good friend, Laura made at the show.)

What Would You Do For $112.50?

We were just sitting down to a delicious dinner (homemade soup with crunchy homemade sourdough bread, should you be curious) when the phone rang.
"Let the machine get it," I mumbled, soup dribbling down my chin and on to my lap.
Conversation ceased at the table as we listened to the answering machine, curious about who would be so bold as to interrupt our tasty dinner.
"Hey Marty. It's Steve. So, I'm wondering... What would you be willing to do for $112.50?"
I excused myself from the table, soup still dribbling from my lips, and raced to the phone.
The question really is, "What would I NOT do for $112.50?"
It was actually the precise amount, including that provocative fifty cents that intrigued me so much.
If Steve had asked "What would you do for a hundred bucks?" I probably would have finished my soup before returning his call.
But $112.50?
An amount like that warrants immediate and undivided attention.
As it turned out, Steve was inviting me to participate in a performance he had booked.
For the following afternoon.
My buddy Steve is very kind and generous about inviting me to some of the many musical extravaganzas he regularly performs. My suspicion is that he enjoys watching me squirm when, mid-performance, he turns to me and whispers, "You haven't heard this next song before because I just wrote it this morning. I haven't got all the words or the structure of the song totally worked out yet, but just play along. It'll be fine."
Steve is a hardened, grizzled veteran musician who can easily and competently operate under such conditions. I, by contrast, am a hack who occasionally plays the drums for my own personal satisfaction or to annoy my neighbors.
The gut-wrenching panic I feel during these moments on stage with Steve is generally its own reward.
But now he was offering $112.50!
With only one song in the entire set that I had never played before, the performance was much easier and less stressful than normal.
But that's because Steve was using the performance as a clever ploy.
He had asked me to arrive at his house a few hours before the performance because he had a new song that he was working on and wanted me to play the drums for him.
At the recording studio.
In two days.
A song I've never heard before? At the studio? In two days?
No problem.
We sat in Steve's living room and he went over the song, stressing the fact that it was going to have a sort of Bo Diddly kind of feel to it. Rock and roll with a chunky sort of back-beat.
No problem.
We practiced it a few times and it seemed to go well, which really should have served as a sort of early warning to me.
I dutifully arrived at the studio at the appointed hour, expecting a fun-filled afternoon of pain, suffering, and humiliation.
Possibly followed by pizza.
As it turns out, there was no pizza, but the pain, suffering, and humiliation I had expected were nothing compared to what I actually experienced.
Steve breezed into the studio and cheerily announced, "So, I've been rethinking this song and I think it may be better if we forget about the Bo Diddly thing and go with a reggae sort of feel. What do you think?"
"Did you bring Jamaican rum?" I asked.
Steve chuckled warmly and ignored my plea, evidently imagining that I was joking.
Steve played his new reggae version of the song and I tried valiantly to think of WWBMD?
What Would Bob Marley Do?
Of course, the answer to that is obvious, but was entirely out of the question.
I've never been particularly proficient at playing island beats on the drum set.
I trudged into the recording room and spent the entire afternoon proving that fact to everyone at the studio including the unprecedented tour group that wandered through the studio at the very apex of my suffering.
Seriously.
A tour group.
"What's that whimpering heap over there in the corner?" asked one of the people.
"Oh, that? That's just a drummer. He'll be fine." came the answer before the tour wandered away.
Six and a half hours after we had arrived, my 3 minutes and 30 seconds of drumming was all recorded.
I woke Steve up from where he was having a restful nap on the studio's luxurious leather couch, and we made our way homeward.
Next time, I'll think very carefully about what I might be willing to do for $112.50.
And then I'll pick up the phone anyway.

(The video is actually from a previous recording session with Steve. I couldn't bear to share the pain of this most recent one.)

Steve Tried to Kill Me!

I have written several times in previous posts about my buddy Steve Blunt.

Today he invited me to his house for a "nice little bike ride".
Those were his words.

Exactly.

I arrived at about 11 this morning and by 1 was eagerly awaiting death's sting. His "nice little bike ride" was a 25+ mile endurance test of pain, suffering, and more pain. Followed by a bit more suffering and punctuated by a little more pain. I do a lot of biking and typically 25 miles would be a long, but very manageable ride. What kills me about riding with Steve is the grueling pace he sets. He seems to operate under the misapprehension that I am some sort of biking hot-shot whose only desire is to leave other bikers in his dust. This is not true. I only do that when I'm biking with little kids, because it makes me feel like a tough guy.

Steve paces his rides to match how he imagines I ride, and I suffer for it. I spend the first 15 minutes chugging along and chatting and having a delightful time dodging the traffic through Nashua. As most of the rides I take are through the rolling, verdant pasture lined roads of rural New Boston, I find the multiple lanes of speeding traffic coursing through Nashua an energizing thrill.

There was a time, many years ago, when I was attending art school in Boston, that a favorite pastime of mine was to venture out on my bike into 5:00 rush hour traffic on Boston's main thoroughfares. That was years ago, and though I find that I don't bounce back as quickly as I used to from catastrophic collisions, there is still a tingle of a thrill when a driver roars past me, leaving a half a centimeter between me and his right front bumper.

By the time we had gone about 10 miles, I noticed that it was hard to talk to Steve, both because I was using all my available oxygen for other purposes (namely, remaining alive) and because Steve was several hundred yards ahead of me.

We slowed up a bit when we entered Beaver Brook (a delightful conservation area suspiciously devoid of beavers or brooks) and I was able to prepare for the ride back to Steve's house, which was brutal. I would not admit this at the time, but Steve threw his chain twice and I was delighted at the opportunity to stop and take a quick break while I watched him work.
I am proud to say that I made it all the way back to Steve's house without throwing up a single vital organ.

I don't consider my spleen vital.

Steve made all amends with a delicious Sangria and some tasty lunch comestibles. After lunch, Steve showed me his new didgeridoo (which he can actually play - he is amazing) and a tiny clay djembe drum that he was given as a gift. Naturally, we broke into song and his suburban Nashua neighborhood was ringing with the tribal beats of our drumming.

His daughter came home from school and said she could hear the drums from several streets away. My secret hope is that the neighbors were in fear of a takeover by some hostile native tribe. I figure that would distract them from the comical sight of me panting and heaving like an overheated buffalo in Steve's driveway.