Album Release post-mortem

We had never attempted a “variety show” like this, mixing live performances by the band, live storytellers, and videos. I think it worked. We ran a bit long, and it was more funky than slick (a good thing IMHO), but we got a lot of positive feedback.

We kicked it off with a short video that introduces me and the band, beautifully edited by our bassist Rick Wagner:

I had a (much too brief) conversation with the fabulous Daphne Rubin-Vega, who talked about a hit-making dance trio she was in, “back in the day”, called Pajama Party:

We premiered a video that for our single Run Run that we recorded a few month’s ago. It’s a kind of “loving” parody of the sorts of videos made by users of the smartphone app TikTok (originally musical.ly). Appearing along with three of the four band members (Tony was unable to make it that day) are my daughters and some of their friends and their parents:

I also chitchatted with Al Houghton, in whose recording studio Dubway we recorded the album Welcome to Storytown. Here’s a little bit of that conversation:

Music lawyer Elliot Groffman is a friend, and he would have appeared live as a guest had he not headed to LA for a couple of months. We captured a conversation with him a couple of weeks before he left and screened it at the event:

We also screened that crazy video we released a few months back for our single I Thought We Had a Deal. It’s such a great video it’s a good time to celebrate again the great work of videographer/animator/musician Dana Schechter and Photoshop wizard Andrew Nelson:

My last conversation was with Jon Fine, an old friend who has had both an accomplished, though somewhat unheralded career, as a guitarist with a number of alternative indie rock bands, and a bit more heralded career as a media commentator and journalist. He’s also recently written an excellent memoir of the 90s indie rock scene called Your Band Sucks. Here’s a taste of our conversation:

We finished up with a live performance of our song Broken Promise Land:

For three generations we gave it all we got
Provided for our families and were loyal patriots
But the work it all dried up
Mounting expenses we could not catch up

I saw the lamp lifted beside the golden door
A no strings welcome I had not experienced before
But somewhere it went wrong
In the end it seems I don't belong

Life, liberty
And the pursuit of happiness

Guest singer Fawzia Afzal-Khan, who appears on the album, performed live at the event, including an extended improvised duet with drummer Tony Cruz at the end.

I know it’s backwards to share this at the end, but before the show we showed an extended video of clips captured from our augmented reality smartphone app. It’s a nice half hour of eye and ear candy:

If you weren’t there, sorry you missed it. But maybe we’ll do something like it again. So watch this space.

And….as always…THANKS FOR LISTENING.