Whoa.
I played a solo acoustic gig last night as a fill in for a friend who couldn’t make it. The infamous Universal Bar & Grill in North Hollywood. Nothing fancy, a stage, a mic, a guitar, and me. It was a surprisingly good show actually. I’ve seen a few friends there before and never really thought much about playing there. They usually complain. I’ve played there before and had issues, but wednesday nights are pretty low key and it was casual. That’s how that place should work.
The most bizarre thing was a friend of mine that I haven’t seen in a really long while happened to walk in not knowing I was playing. She walked right up to the stage and gave me a hug. Afterwards we sat for a while chatting and catching up. Turns out she’s now working for Days of Our Lives, the soap opera. She heard me play my song Days of Our Lives, which has absolutely nothing to do with the show, and loved it.
Here’s something you don’t see often as a performer. The bartenders and staff stop to watch you and clap rigorously. I also spied the bartenders bopping their heads to my songs as I was playing. In fact after one song Closer To Ourselves, the main bartender yelled out, that was amazing dude! Seriously, that’s probably one of the biggest compliments because they see tons and tons of live bands. The other bartender came over to me to tell me how beautiful she thought my voice was and then said, we see so much music that just isn’t all that good.
That makes a performer happy don’t it? Sure does.
After catching up with my friend she treated me to sushi for dinner. Hell, I can like that. Catch up with a friend and they buy you dinner even after you say you can’t possibly accept the gracious offer. I have some great friends even if I don’t see them all that often.
Today was late due to having to put out some fires with my sister, my dad, and a friend of my mom. Nothing like getting up to do a run and get back only to find out people need your help and it suddenly becomes priority over what you were already planning to do.
Which leads me to picking my song today. It’s late, and it relates to what happened last night. A day in the life of a rockstar right? I particularly like to play this song live. Somehow I get way more power out of it. That’s not to take away from the version you’re hearing now. Not at all. Actually there is a live moment for this song that I remember well. I had a band that was playing for APCA where we were nominated for band of the year on the college circuit. That was a pretty cool honor. At the time Henrik Linde was playing 2nd guitar in my band. A fine guitar player, cool dude. I remember seeing him lower in a rock stance and do a huge arching strum over a section of this song, it was so perfect for the situation.
Anyway, I dig the vibe on the song. I hope I would, I wrote the thing. I especially love the bridge. When it hits that point I really dig in and hit a whole other level. Many times I get goosebumps as I think about who I’m with when I singing certain lines. I feel a change deep inside. It’s that moving to me. How about you?