So I am going into the studio finally to record my full length album in September, its a long time coming and I really cannot wait.
Once I have it I will be initiating Operation “Black Crowes” track down! : I will find a way to get a cd in to the hands of the Black Crowes.
For what purpose you might ask? well it is a little fantasy of mine to open for them and damn it I am gonna use every resource I have to get a cd to them.
Silly, dreaming you may ask? perhaps, but you never know what you can do unless you try.
My band is super-excited to be playing four shows as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival!! We will follow three award-winning, original short plays, all with stellar casts!
It’s only $10 for the whole evening of theater and music!
The shows are at The Woman’s Club in Hollywood at 8pm on June 17, 18, 25 and 26. Our first three show are with a full band and the June 26th show will be a three-piece acoustic set.
You can see our full-page ad on PAGE 2 of any of the 20,000 Fringe Guides around Los Angeles or online at: http://hollywoodfringe.org/learn/content/198
To buy tickets: https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/737655
Our Hollywood Fringe Website: http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/project/view/216
Become a Fan on our Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/The-Thread-Men/116912348325405
A description of the plays:
THE THREAD MEN: When a psychiatrist becomes trapped in an elevator with a bizarre acting man, he quickly learns his decisions have life or death consequences. Written by Thomas C. Dunn (Winner 2008 Best Short Play – Samuel French)
A GRAVEDIGGER’S TALE: A haunting black comedy about a heroin addicted gravedigger in crisis. Written by Mark Borkowski (Winner 2009 Best Short Play – Smith and Kraus)
PROPERTY: Two mothers meet in the property room of a prison and attempt to come to terms with their children’s violent crimes. Written by Thomas C. Dunn (Premiere)
Thanks again for supporting me and all the other musicians, writers and actors who have put their hard work into putting together four kick-ass shows! Can’t wait to see you there!
We have a last minute show going on Monday 26th April at The Cinema Bar. This show is gonna be a grab a pint, rest your Monday heals and enjoy some good music in your local tavern.
Also as a special treat Frank Fairfield will be opening up our set at 8:30 with some of his delightful music. check out his link http://www.myspace.com/frankfairfield
We will go on at 9:45pm and play for about an hour, there may be a few surprises in our set…. you will just have to come and check it out!!!
So mark it down on your B-Berry, iphone or attach a post it to your forehead… Laura Duncan, Monday April 26th 8:30pm till 11pm at The Cinema Bar 3967 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City 90230 310.390.1328 http://www.thecinemabar.com/
Just a quick one, we are trying to get some votes and invite new interest in the music. We are not expecting a win but it would be good exposure for us to get up in the rankings, so please if you have a minute please vote for us!!!!
If you read my last but one post you probably got the clue that this year hasn’t been all that fun for me.
Having said that, in the limited time I seem to have to spend on my music, I am writing and playing well and feeling a real release at rehearsals.
I am also feeling a small sense of assurance within myself that I have never experienced, I feel as though I am in battle but I appear to be winning, not won yet but definitely strategizing, pulling together my resources and seeing that I am not quite as useless as i had once thought. And i must say that its refreshing.
It also adds to my belief that I may be a swimmer not a sinker, throw me in the deep end and damn it, if i go down (possibly with some bitching an moaning), i will go down fighting.
…So it’s Friday night, and I am reflecting on my week, actually my month and a half and finally able to find a moment to put down some emotional reflection.
I am a musician, I play the guitar and I sing and write and I have never really wanted to be anything else, save may be the scientist / interior designer I had my sights set on at 11. And here I am with a mighty full plate, 27 years old and getting on in “musician making it years” and I am still desperately trying to hold onto the dream of doing this for my bread and butter, not even outrageous riches justas comfortable survival. Oh I like that, “comfortable survival” Erm… well… perhaps not…maybe the desperation is talking.
I am at that tipping point again, when it all gets too much and your love of playing is in jeopardy. Well not really but applying the kind of effort necessary to succeed is,there is an appropriate metaphor in my head right now but I am afraid putting it down and sounding cliché, ugh!!
But its Friday night and I felt like venting after a hard days grind, I hope that there are a few people out there who feel this last six weeks has been a dream come true, if only so that I can have faith in the yin and yang of the universe and know my turn must be around the corner.
I don’t know what prompted me to write this blog, since I haven’t wrote in a good time.
But it sort of feels right today. Plus maybe this won’t even make it to the blog site and instead become just another word file clogging up my computer…
Anyway…
I think some people just have more drive than others. I find this hard, I find it hard to motivate others, book shows, write blogs, spend endless hours following leads for music festivals or competitions you have to dodge paying rent in order to enter an albums worth of songs. Or sweet talking venues to let you play 11pm on a Tuesday evening to your family, and girlfriends of the band. To be honest, I find it consuming enough to try and write something I don’t think sucks.
But what do you do? You can’t stop. You can’t stop trying every avenue that might hold hope of exposure for your songs.
I know I am getting older and I never thought I would be this age, it just seemed so far away. “Hey, didn’t all the best rock stars die before age 27?” But it is making me view things in a different way.
I was going through some old songs last night, amazingly I wasn’t totally horrified by what I was hearing, some of it was not half bad and I was listening with new ears. So I spent most of the evening trying to remember chord progressions and lyrics to these songs. I briefly enter the euphoria of naivety and the pure love of writing and it was great. But it’s like any high, there is always a low and the low was knowing I can’t get that time back.
So does that motivate me, does that make me say “Well then I can’t waste more time”?
Well yes and no….. Yes because I don’t want to look back in 20 years and feel even more like I wasted time and having less of a chance to make something of myself.
And no, because I am still not sure what I could have done differently and what would make all the difference now. “Ah, a time machine and the early days of you tube”
So I continue with, motivational spurts and slows. What else can you do?
1 hour delay, 5 hour flight, azing days in New York, 1 and a half hour drive, 2 glorious days in Long island, 1 hour drive to the airport, 3 hours sitting on the runway, a 5 hour flight, 30 minutes home and 7:30 wake up for work.
New YorkNew York.
I am walking through
Central park, and its 90 plus degrees. Ah I forgot how much I love that east coast wall of moisture, great for the voice.
There is a cluster of people crowding around the strawberry fields, John Lennon memorial but as we pass them, Friday morning in the park is pretty quiet.
We parked ourselves and our coffee on a park bench next to a woman who was setting up an instrument similar to a Santoor, with strings on a wooden frame and hammers to play it percussively. I got to hear a little of her playing before we moved on, but it was enough to remind me that, that really is the beauty of strings, twang em, tap em, slap em, slide em, so many options!
The next sound that pierced my ears, oh and I do mean pierce, was an old man playing the violin, not only unsuccessfully but also terribly out of tune.
I have so much respect for someone who will set up solo in the park and bang out their music with out hesitation no matter the talent. However, when the sound of sweet
New Orleans style jazz penetrated through the pained squeak of the violinist I knew where I was headed.
On a couple shaded benches sat a quartet of guitar, upright bass, trumpet and trombone players sat tapping and wiggling out music.
The trombone and trumpet would take turns between the rasp of vocal lines to bang out solos and then wind together again in and out of each others riffs.
I sat in wonder and was downright trilled for over an hour.
So there I was 3 month’s in L.A in a job I hated with no band or musicians that I wasn’t afraid to be around or totally uninspired by. I had left all my friends behind in
Florida and all I wanted to do was run home. But I had made a promise to myself to stick it out no matter what.
I had a day off coming from work and I was sitting around the house playing guitar and licking my wounds.
This will periodically happen to me, I think it must be the Taurus in me but something kicked at me, hard and I decided to go out by myself. There was a local bar in walking distance of my house and there was a band I was familiar with supposed to be playing. Although it was late I got myself up and walked to it.
Fortunately for me there was live music playing just not the particular band I had com to see but I sat at the bar and enjoyed the new scenery.
Its funny how you never really remember how you meet new people, you just kind of do. And I am not clear how or why I started talking to this girl, but I did and I am grateful.
We talked and found we had music in common and that she played mandolin. Fantastic!