We don’t get around much anymore, as the song goes, and live performances and live audiences are in short supply. But one silver lining to a pandemic is that we sometimes deliver music straight into your home through wires.Jazz at the Station was good enough to host us for a socially distanced performance for their monthly session at Ogden’s Union Station.
Performing on the stage of a nearly empty ballroom at Ogden’s Union Station. (Photo credit: Karyn Johnston)
For us, the best part of it all was that we had this moment to get dressed up and play from a stage for an hour, albeit without a physical audience. It was a nice chance to feel like ourselves. While it’s not the same as being there, it was recorded for the public record.
Someday, one day, we’ll see you in person again. We’re looking forward to that.
We have a few things in our demo recording pipeline, but none of them feel right at the moment.
Instead, we want to share this older demo recording, what was really just a soundcheck in the studio and a completely different take from our live performances of this song. People Get Ready implores us to get on board, no ticket or baggage required.
We’re fans of The Proper Way for many reasons. We’ve gotten to record in their studio and we love getting a chance to see them on a stage. They’re fantastic musicians and good people, an asset to the Ogden music scene.
And, they have an album out today. Ian plays drums on the record, so we like it that much more. You should give it a listen. Better yet, buy it.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Standards & Substandards 