Ah yes, that's my motto . . . I haven't posted much lately due to travel and work. Here it is, July 30, and Vernam's big gig at the Lisle downtown festival is nigh. From 2:00 to 4:00 this Friday afternoon, attendees of the Smile Days fest will have their senses assaulted by yours truly.
Acting all professional-like -- as this is not just a paying gig but also a chance to reach lots of people, since they had about 30,000 attendees over two days last year -- I've had some printed materials done up, including business cards and a display board that both look like this. That may appear to be a typewriter, but it's actually an Enigma.
Coming up w/ two hours of material wasn't a problem. I'm going to split each of the two 50-minute sets between acoustic and electric guitar. Here's the planned setlist. (BTW, You can hear many of the original songs in a stream from my Cipher Songs weblog.)
ACOUSTIC
1. Justine
2. Your Family Lives X Town
3. Common Desires
4. Robert Ryan
5. Sing Me Back Home or What's So Funny 'Bout PLU (Cover)
6. It's Not Like It's Love
ELECTRIC
1. She Knows It All Too Well
2. Choir of One
3. Turned Away
4. Shouldn't Something Happen
5. If You Hadn't Told Me, I Never Would Have Guessed
ACOUSTIC
1. Pigeon-Toed Girl
2. He'll Have to Go (Cover)
3. Don't You Wonder Why
4. Easier Said Than Done
5. Easy as She Goes
6. Out of My Way
7. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (Cover)
ELECTRIC
1. Second to None
2. I Heard You the First Time
3. Tide Me Over
4. Secondhand Soul
ACOUSTIC
1. As You Were
2. Home Sweet Gone
I know the cover choices are kind of obvious. As I told a friend who encouraged me to go with my original, seldom-heard cover choices: If the audience is going to tune out a song because they don't recognize it, I want it to be my own song they're ignoring, dammit!
Posted by Vernam at July 30, 2003 07:27 AMGlad to hear it went well. Good choices of covers. I think covers are very useful, like you said, as ice-breakers. Hell, even established music acts throw a few well-placed covers into their sets.
Keep on rockin'.
Posted by: Jim at August 12, 2003 10:23 PMThe gig went swimmingly -- thanks for the good wishes, you guys. Slightly preoccupied by running my own PA for basically the first time, I forgot to roll tape until more than halfway through. If any of it turned out, I'll post some audio.
The scene was kind of dramatic, with a huge storm rolling in from the north. It held off just long enough for me to play the full two hours and then pack up (another 30 mins). I felt kind of bad for the headliners who got rained out; going on early isn't always bad! Considering it was Friday mid-afternoon, there was a fair number of people there. Lots of goldbrickers, moms with kids, and tattooed slackers. The stage was covered, one of those semi-trailer flatbeds where one side folds out to create a redneck proscenium. Just my style!
I enjoyed getting to play some newer songs that hadn't been played in public yet. And I added some covers, which made useful icebreakers. The choices were ones I'm most familiar with -- I Beg of You by Elvis, He'll Have to Go by Jim Reeves (on which young Connie Cipher joined Dad to sing her grandma's favorite song), I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry by Hank, and What's So Funny 'bout PLU by Nick Lowe. I learned There Stands the Glass by Webb Pierce just in time, 'cause it's fun to sing. My secret weapon was to be In Dreams by Roy Orbison, which is a pretty demanding song. But my voice got scratchy and would have been trashed by doing that one. Yes, I bailed out! Some other time . . .
Also played electric guitar much more than a token amount. In past, I'd break it out for just a song or two, mainly slow ones. But most of my songs are pretty well-suited to the electric, and I've come to prefer it, no matter what tempo. Full band is the next step.
Posted by: Vernam at August 4, 2003 03:04 PMSo, how did it go?!?!?
Posted by: amy at August 2, 2003 07:26 AMYou're probably applying the grease paint right now - break a leg... er... string!