Author: Adam Johnston

don’t get around much anymore

~ Adam Johnston ~ 1 Comment

As we’ve navigated the pandemic and all of our distancing, we’ve been trying to figure out how to make music together while separated. There have been comedic failures and overall it’s just kind of sad not to be in the same space and work on things at the same time. Playing in the same room and riffing off of one another is how we naturally function.

So, we’re kind of proud to show this off, our first pandemic demo, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, by Duke Ellington. This is the product of us each working on our own track, building on what each of us creates separately, and then mixing it back together. It’s inconvenient and inefficient, but it’s fun to hear it work when everything is layered correctly:

Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, from our pandemic demo sessions

We thought this worked to share right now for a few reasons. First, we all don’t get around much anymore, and especially since this refers to Saturday evening social events, this Saturday felt just right. Also, it happens to be Ella Fitzgerald‘s birthday, and she puts out classic renditions of this standard.

But mostly it’s just fun to share and for us to keep working on stuff. We learned this from scratch and we have never actually played this all together in the same room (yet). This is not as much fun, but we’re learning new things as we go. We’ll see what it sounds like when we actually get to play it live!

Our separate spaces for making our separate tracks.

Stay tuned! We think we’ll be able to share more things like this in the near future.

virtual & physical

~ Adam Johnston ~ Leave a comment

There’s not a lot of news to report these days. We keep to ourselves in our 4 separate units, keeping in touch in all the ways that people do, emailing and texting and Zooming to connect with each other and figure out how to share and play music when we’re only connected by long wires and radio waves.

This gives us a little bit of a chance to experiment with new ideas. We talk a lot about how to remove hiss from a microphone recording and how to synchronize tracks we’re all working on individually. So, there’s new music we each get to work on and some potential new ways to share stuff and connect with the world virtually.

Along those lines, Spotify just gave us a way to setup our profile and establish more of a presence on that platform, which is fun to see, in addition to our place on Apple Music. Take a look and add us to playlists to share with friends.

In the more real, physical world, we have 500 really great, holdable and present new business cards. For the time being, one of them is making a great bookmark until these have a chance to come along with us to gigs in person.

Business card as bookmark.
S&S custom bookmark in Adam’s reading on science teaching. Best of all worlds.

Until then, stay tuned for side projects and other updates. Be well and take care!

at home

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Like you, we’re at home. It’s ironic that we have brand new business cards. All 500 of them sit here in a box with their fancy rounded corners not finding their way into anyone’s fingers, at least for now.

This pandemic promoted change is tough, both because it means we can’t play in public — our slate of gigs uniformly canceled through April and May — and because we can’t work on stuff together. I think it’s safe to say that we’re all better musicians when we’re working together, and we’re probably all better people when we’ve had a chance to mesh our musical gears. Plus, in a time of crisis, music is a great cushion to soften things. Being socially distant makes the spread of disease more controlled, but it removes one of our usual ways of coping, too.

Still, we’re working on things. We all have other stuff we’re tied up in, working and child-raising and home-schooling and breathing, so it’s tough to be particularly creative. Yet, when we each have moments we have projects we’re trying to tie together, like a 4-track mixtape where we each contribute bits and pieces and learn new things. Hopefully we’ll have stuff to share, sooner or later. It will make our own days a little brighter, at least.

As we’re experimenting with different ways of recording, I just demoed this piece that I sit down and play for my own solace. It’s what I test pianos with, just to see if how they feel, and it’s what I play to myself just to settle into my own breath. For a long time, just to myself, I’ve called it “Home.” That seems fitting now.

home (Adam, alone on the piano)

Maybe someday we’ll have to write a song we can call “out” or “not at home” or “hugs for everybody.” We’ll look forward to that day, with more to come before that, too.

Quick update: We sold a couple of downloaded albums last month, and we’re donating those proceeds to Lavender Vinyl. While Lavender doesn’t have their physical doors open, they’ll bring stuff out or deliver to you directly from their store. (I’d bet they’d even deliver our CD right off their own rack.) Or, you can order from their warehouse. I ordered from them directly, and I’m pretty tickled that I have a used copy of Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson on its way to me now.

Lavender support

~ Adam Johnston ~ Leave a comment

In these days of pandemic and physical distancing, we’re all figuring out how to cope. For us as a band this is hard, since playing together and with live audiences opens the valve on good juices in our veins that make things better. We’re making the best of it — and we’ll share anything we come up with to try to add to the common good.

Until those better days yet to come, we want to promote the greater good and taking care of one another on local levels. Here’s our own first attempt:

We’re donating all proceeds from purchased downloads in March to support Lavender Vinyl here in Ogden. They’re a community centered small business that supports local music, including by carrying our own CDs on their rack. (If you happen to buy our CD directly from them, we’ll donate our own portion back to them as well.)

So now’s a time to buy our music and feel especially good about it. The best way to do this is here on BandCamp where you can get files in multiple formats. BandCamp reports our proceeds much sooner than other outlets and you can tip whatever you’d like on their site, which we’ll also pass on to Lavender. In addition, BandCamp is waiving all of their own profits and passing them along to us on this Friday, March 20. So all of the money you put into BandCamp on Friday will go directly to musicians, and S&S will pass this all on to Lavender Vinyl. (But other days are good, too. Don’t hold back.)

We’d encourage you to poke around BandCamp and find other bands you’d like to support right now. You get music, and independent musicians get support at a time when they aren’t getting gigs and not getting paid.*

Besides getting our stuff on BandCamp, you can also buy downloads on:

If you’re so inclined, you should also visit Lavender Vinyl online or in person if you can. They’ve got great stuff all around, from brand new t-shirts to vintage vinyl records.

Take care of yourselves and one another. We’re looking for more ways to connect with one another, with you, and the local community, especially right now. We’ll reach out with more.

*Quick note about music buying: If you regularly stream music (and who doesn’t?) these days, you should know that the artist is getting a very small amount of money for those streams, something like one penny for every ten streams. The best way to support an independent artist is by going to shows (when you can) and buying their stuff directly. An artist will likely pocket 100x more from your purchased download than from your streaming of their stuff.

salve

~ Adam Johnston ~ 1 Comment

I don’t know if we’ll look back on the gig last night and know for sure it was objectively a wise decision. This was the night before the country completely shifted gears and went into all varied states of lockdown. Today, universities are seemingly universally switching to online instruction, large gatherings are canceled, and we’re being told to stay home. And for good reason. Even while we were playing professional basketball turned off the lights and went home. Ian noted after that it felt like the whole world collapsed while we played a 60 minute set. It’s as though everything deteriorated because we weren’t paying attention for a couple hours.

But while we were playing, it was all just right.

I’m not really sure what we’ll feel accountable for when all is said and done. Hopefully we’re just enough outside of the wave of the pandemic that our gathering wasn’t a point of concentrated viral spread. People kept their distance; there was no coughing; we sang a song to help everyone concentrate on washing their hands.

What I am sure about is that we would have played in that grand hall of the old train station even without anyone showing up. That’s what we started to picture, actually. And then people showed up and cheered and clapped (we love that, we’re not ashamed to admit) and were into the music and the focus on a collection of jazz standards, the most challenging part of our catalog. But most of all, we just got to play and people just got to listen, and for those 60 minutes we didn’t have to worry about the rest of the world. We just got to put the music out into space. It was a salve to the soul to be able to just push the keys and play the changes.

And when Caryn belted out “Feeling Good” and Tim played down that bass line I thought yes, yes that’s what feeling good is, and this is where I want to be. Ian kicked the drums into the second verse to drive it all home.

I start to wish that it could have been for more than that hour, that we could just suspend reality and stay in that hall and just keep playing and ignore the world of anxiousness and trouble. But I also know that everything is temporary, the good and the bad. I’m grateful we had that time and that reminder that, while there are things to endure and muddle through, we have these hubs of joy and art to tie it all together. I’m grateful I get to play in a band that gives me those moments and that perspective. It will carry me through until our next gig, whenever that may be.