No Biz Like Show Biz

I’m struggling to get the arrangement right for a new song, so in the meantime I thought I’d talk about our first experience in a music biz showcase. I still hold out hope that we can find a sizeable audience somewhere somehow, so when this opportunity fell into my lap I figured we’d give it a try. I’m not sure we’ve made much progress on the bizness side, but the band is much improved. And here’s how it came about:

With the idea that we would play a short set intended to impress music bookers and promoters, I wanted the band to sound as good as possible. And I realized that I had never really been happy with our live vocals. Our recordings contain lots of 2- and 3-part harmonies, which I love, and we’d never really focused on them in our live gigs. I’m not the greatest singer anyway, and while our bassist Rick Wagner is a fine singer, the harmonies were mostly an afterthought, with no 3-part harmonies at all. (Listen to Rick’s expressive vocals on his Luther Black and the Cold Hard Facts project.)

I was pretty sure that the guy who booked us for the showcase had listened to our song Eugene, whose chorus prominently features 3-part harmonies – and the song begins with those harmonies all naked and a cappella. I figured we had to do that song and that it needed to sound great.

So I asked our “hardest working man in show bizness” keyboard player, Charly Roth, to recommend some backup singers. Without hesitation he recommended local musicians Rembert Block (gotta love her name) and Erica Smith, both of whom are singer-songwriters in their own right. They are fast learners, have great ears, and sound great, and after precious few rehearsals they nailed it.

The guy who booked us for the showcase is an interesting character. Mojo, from Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, leads Mojo & The Bayou Gypsies, a zydeco/Cajun band that has been performing for nearly forty years. Mojo has produced a showcase for new talent at the APAP/NYC conference for twenty-two years. Mojo took the time to listen to a couple of Storytown songs and then called me up to offer us a slot in his showcase this past January 14.

Anyway, I thank Mojo for his advice and help and for his offering us this opportunity. We don’t really fit the mold of APAP showcase artists – no manager or agent, all original songs, not much of an existing following. But it was a good impetus to get the band back together, make our sound bigger and better, and get us ready for the next step, whatever that may be.

I have to thank friend Alyson Palmer for telling me about APAP to begin with. Aly is a founding member of BETTY and is a great singer, bass player, and lover of life. THANKS ALY!

In the end the band really sounded great, IMHO. Maybe there’s no tour forthcoming, but I’m excited to figure out how to get this better Storytown out there somewhere, somehow. In the meantime, I leave you with some pics from the showcase:

A new song next time. In the meantime, thanks for listening.