Well, the turns a musician’s life can take on a day to day basis can be weird. I was supposed to get together with Mark Luna to do somewriting. Unfortunately due to something nutty going on in his world it’s now been postponed until Friday. Oh well. It happens. I had some more people coming in to record last minute, so it worked out. I love when that sort of stuff works out.
Poker last night was a new dynamic. One of the players has moved to Boston. He was probably one of the craziest players I’ve ever come across. Actually, he’s still learning to play well, but has this bizarre thing where he’ll make a bunch of incorrect plays in a hand and get lucky on the river. So because he’ll win huge hands making horrible calls, he continues to play that way. Often ignoring the fact that he’s losing more often than winning when doing that. Anyway, without his play, the game went longer because less crazy play was going on. Lot more strategy and maneuvering occurred. It makes the game more fun and I love that.
The weird thing is I woke up this morning with a headache and drained of energy. Not sure what that was about. I’m wondering if it was my dinner choice. Maybe my food didn’t love me. I normally get up and run, but at the moment, I’m down for the count. I could use a dose of TLC from a lover. I took a little advil. I’ll probably attempt to get back to sleep for an hour as I need to be a bit more alive this afternoon and evening. I got people coming in to record again.
Getting around to Betty. I came across Betty on CD Baby, as I often do with lots of the non-signed music I find. The first thing I noticed was how smooth her voice is. That’s what drew me in. While I’m not a huge show tune type of person, I’m diggin this one. It’s got that swing! Remember if means everything if its got that swing (of course I know the old saying is it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing). You know what else I enjoy about it? This is coming from an old master recording from the 50’s. There’s some breadth in this recording that we don’t get in the modern recording techniques. It’s funny how different mixes go these days, compared to then.
From the little digging I did into Betty’s website, it seems she’s been doing this a long time. That’s pretty awesome. I know about a year ago I fell into the underground world of cabaret in Los Angeles. I was having some fun doing some open mics and found a few that were mostly cabaret and showtune singers. I was the outsider doing alternative rock. It’s a great way to test new material and get a handle on performing without a net (i.e. band). I met some singers that really had the showtune thing down, they were amazing people. I learned that their community is very tight knit and they all help each other out. Something I’ve rarely seen in my corner of the music industry.
Looking to expand your musical showtune library. Look into Betty, she’s got a lot – and I mean a lot of material to pick up. In addition, she’s recently finished an audio auto-biography. It will be available for sale soon to.