Hey! I’ll be playing a very rare Zirque Bois d’Arc solo set in front of the Pink Elephant on Saturday, August 26. I’m going to play at 7, and then Hugh’s new band with Richie, If You Know What I Means, plays at 8.
Solo shows are pretty terrifying for me. Which is weird, because
a: I will talk to a crowd of people about topics I know nothing about for hours, and
b: I will play an unfamiliar instrument on songs I don’t know in front of anybody (provided there is someone else on stage)
But, strap a guitar on me and send me up in front of an audience by myself and suddenly I have trouble speaking, and my playing becomes incredibly conservative, and who knows what else.
My friend Peter hipped me to a solution to this problem: rehearsal. Which is also so much more fun with other people – you get to catch up, interact, laugh, drink beer, all that stuff. One of my least favorite parts of acting was trying stuff in front of a mirror. I’m pretty tired of me already and then paying attention to myself, judgementally, ugh. Oh well, at some point it was bound to come to this.
What I am excited about is the program I am devising. I’ll do a couple of tunes from the Fence Canon – some that I don’t usually sing like maybe “Highways Signs” from More Blue Than Green, or “Lonesome and Low” from Extended Play (which gets released on Tuesday the 15th of August, btw). I’ll do a couple of Songs About Russia, and some from the upcoming Voo Doo Deux (which Peter and I have done some work on this month!), and a couple of what passes for standards for me.
I have been writing some songs with my friend Amy Hackerd, and I hope to give one or two of those a try (she and I will be playing out, but not until later in the fall). The Fence Folks are planning another album maybe, so I might have a couple of songs from that stack. I’m gonna do a couple of numbers from The Fall Will Probably Kill You and its as-yet unnamed follow-up.
Gear-wise, I’m planning on playing my Creston Spruce Triple through my Durham Electronics Sex Drive (sexy) and my Gurus Echosex (sexy) all into my 30 Watt Fulton-Webb 2X12 Combo.
Otherwise, life is going well. I miss you, and can’t wait to see you again. I just checked out I Say Me For A Parable – an autobiography of Mance Lipscomb (who I discussed in my list of Texas Blues Guitarists) from the library, and I’m pretty excited to read it. I just finished a short auto-biography about Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who came up with the concept of Standard Candles – a method for determining distance in the universe. I’m enjoying my month of writing for my website – I’m still a terrible writer, but maybe if I keep at it I will get better.