A while ago I wrote about the best Brad’s Brunch that I have hosted, and then for several weeks in a row – up to last week – they got even better. So in order to make sure that people believe that what I write here is what I really feel, I will now write a post about the worst Brad’s Brunch ever.
I don’t know what happened yesterday but the weekly brunch I have been hosting at the Mecano bar since October just failed to attract many spectators or musicians. To top it off, there were not as many regular clients in the Mecano during the brunch hours as there usually are. So it just fell flat, it felt empty, and I felt terrible for the few people who did show up – especially those who came for the first time – and who must have thought that all the sound and the fury that I might have put on this blog in the past was for nothing….
Having said that, I WAS delighted that a few regulars showed up, we had some new sounds, one great discovery, and actually played until 8:30 PM for a brunch that is scheduled to finish at 6:00 PM. And I have not lost faith in the thing – it takes a worst ever to have a best ever, after all.
But as I said, there were discoveries. Tory Roucaud did a new song she has just completed, and it sounds good and different. And the biggest surprise for me was Felix Beguin, the lead guitar player of The Burnin’ Jacks – who, more importantly for me, was my lead guitar player on my recordings and at my concert at the Disquaires two weeks ago – not only played my acoustic guitar like a folk guitarist, but he also sang some songs. I had never heard Felix sing, outside the harmonies he has done on my songs, and I was massively impressed with his voice. He has a naturally good sounding voice and can hold a note. A little more work and experience and he’ll wipe us out.
Finally, I got to sing a duet with Felix – Cat’s Cradle – and a duet with Tory – Mad World – and both were fun and different to do. It was weird how I made a mess of so many of the lyrics on Cat’s Cradle while singing with Felix, since I never have a problem with the lyrics when I do it on my own – but that was fun too…
The day after my gig at the Disquaires with Félix and Virgile it felt really odd to be back at an open mic all alone with just me and my guitar and a mic. I arrived late at the Tennessee Bar on a night where there were a massive number of musicians, so I opted to watch a few acts and then leave for the Galway.
So it was at the Galway that I found myself “naked” behind the mic with just me and my guitar. I practically could not recover from the sensation and did my four songs feeling there was a lot of sound – and even emotion – missing. Just goes to show what a good practice it is to play alone without a band so that when you do get up with other musicians you are that much more prepared.
ANYWAY… I thought I would just put up three videos, two from the Tennessee Bar and one from the Galway. The common thread to these is just different sounding voices – oh, and also that I thought the American guy singing at the Galway looked a lot like Don Henley of the Eagles does today!!!!
Haylen did a very cool gospel number with her friends at the Tennessee, and as I arrived I heard this young man with the beard and cap who I had not heard there before and who had some definitely interesting qualities and personal style in his voice.
Did it! Played a gig with Félix Beguin of “The Burnin’ Jacks” on lead guitar and Virgile Arndt of “Natas Loves You” on bass. Both contributed some harmonies too. It was the first bona fide gig that I have done with a backing band, aside from playing here and there in open jam sessions, and we did it last night at the Disquaires bar in Paris, near the Bastille.
The evening started with Calvin McEnron, who played his set with his songs, including everybody’s favorite, “After the Rain.” In fact, Calvin invited about five of us up on the stage to sing the chorus to that song. I did not realize that I had placed the Zoom Q3HD in a bad position, so we get the sound, but very few of the faces. Want to put it up anyway.
The Romantic Black Shirts played the final set and they entertained us with their great covers from everyone from Bob Dylan to Daniel Lanois, and a nice sound of violin, jazzy guitar, cool voices… very nice ambience.
I played five of my songs – including one I wrote at about 22 years old and never ever played in public before – and three cover songs, “Crazy Love,” “Mad World,” and “Father and Son.” The ambience was wonderful, a great warm audience, and the sound system worked out okay, and Félix and Virgile were brilliant. Unfortunately the limitations of my Zoom Q3 – operated my son here – does not do justice to the whole vibe. But I would say that, right?
Three segments to the night: Calvin McEnron playing from 8:30 on his set, my set around 9:30 and The Romantic Black Shirts will do their set after mine.
Ciao and à demain. Oh, the Disquaires: 6 rue des Taillandiers * 75011 Paris * M° Ledru Rollin ou Bastille
Oh, yes, and this means no Sunday brunch tomorrow.
Rehearsed for three and a half hours last night with Félix and Virgile in preparation for our concert of my songs and a few cover songs too, the first concert in “group formation” – at the Disquaires in Paris on Sunday. It was a lot of fun, and really cool to work with these two for the first time on my most recent song, Borderline.
I nevertheless got out of the studio at 11:30 AM and that gave me time to go over to The Highlander for the tail end of the open mic. And who should I see playing as soon as I enter but Rony Boy, who is also part of the bill at the Disquaires on Sunday, as he will play with his band “The Romantic Black Shirts.” So suddenly I had a theme for the blog….
Actually, it was cool to see the power of Johnny Cash songs in an open mic situation, as Rony played a Cash song and got the crowd clapping and banging. And the theme runs away with itself now, as Thomas Brun also got the crowd clapping and banging, but through a different method – as you will see in the video below. For my part, I managed to play two songs, starting with “Miles From Nowhere,” by Cat Stevens. And since that went over pretty well I decided on a theme and played for second song, the Cat’s “Father and Son”… which I had also been rehearsing with Félix and Virgile. (Félix of the “Burnin’ Jacks” and Virgile of “Natas Loves You.”
Normally you have to be at the Highlander by 8:30 to get a good spot on the list. But as I arrived after midnight, I had a spot immediately as the last performer – around 1 AM….
A day after the snow storm with all Paris closed down, I still decided to go out and try my luck at the open mics. I ended up with a back-up plan, too. It turned out that the open mic at Aux Copains bar on the rue Victor Letalle was just up the street from La Feline, the bar where my friend Syd Alexander was planning to celebrate his birthday with friends.
So what could be better than turnin’ up and doing a bit of both things? I assumed Syd’s party would go on all night, but it turned out to be a few drinks only. I assumed more than just a handful of people would turn up for the open mic at the Copains, but it turned out only about five of us made it.
So I had some quick thinking to do. I did a song at the open mic, and I went down the street and invited Syd, and his friends to come to the open mic too. After all, it turned out that Syd’s group, the Burnin’ Jacks, was there to celebrate his birthday. But the atmosphere at the Copains ultimately struck me as not right for the Burnin’ Jacks – it is mostly a spoken word open mic, and there was just another feeling, and so after I played I rushed back to the Feline to find Syd and the gang of about 10 people just about to come and meet me.
“Change of plan,” I said. I proposed to them that we all go up two metro stops away, to Belleville, where I knew there was the blues jam of the Cabaret Culture Rapide. This, I was sure, would be perfect for the Burnin’ Jacks, and for the jamming blues musicians and the audience.
Turned out I was right. The Burnin’ Jacks did four or five songs, got the place really rockin’ and rollin’ and even the Belleville Blues Band looked like it enjoyed the set. Then I played a couple of songs, and later in the evening I did more. The Burnin’ Jacks, I think, had fun, and they got to advertise their upcoming gig next Friday at the Feline….
I, at least, was happy that I could turn around an otherwise potentially boring night after the snow storm when few Parisians dared go out, into something fun and cool.
I mentioned last week that I recorded four of my songs live in the studio at the Point Ephemere last week with a couple of guitarists, a drummer, a bass player and me singing and playing my guitar. Here are the recordings. Remember, these are live: We are playing all together in the studio as if we are on a stage in front of you. First time I’ve done this. I hope you like it. I am happy with the experience, and what I found that was fabulous was the way the songs transformed from my living room experience of sitting in the corner playing by myself – same in an open mic alone – to this collaboration that changes the songs and helps them grow.
I have decided to put them up here in the order we recorded them. On drums was Hervé, on bass Virgile, me on vocals and guitar. For the first two songs Félix played lead guitar. For the second two songs, Laurent played lead guitar. If you get bored with one, go on to the other. Oh, oh, oh – let me not forget the beautiful touch of harmony by Virgile on “Since You Left Me.”
But taste them all, if you get a chance, because they are all quite different…:
Lighter, shrimpy, easy to download but less good quality file versions:
I had been going step by step towards a musical epiphany since I returned to writing and performing music after a several decades long hiatus, and the next natural step was to get into a recording studio and record with a band. And I wanted to do it live. I did not want to piece together every morsel bit by bit, or I could do that almost by myself at home in my living room.
But the idea was not entirely mine. It was Earle Holmes who first suggested to me that I meet up with Hervé Bouétard, of the band Control Club, that Earle’s BPM company manages. Hervé had worked with another one of Earle’s musicians to do some good recordings in his studio at the Point Éphémère, and Earle thought there could be a good vibe for me to try working with Hervé too. Earle was right.
It was a dream come true my sessions on Wednesday and Thursday in the studio with four other musicians – three per day – and all of us recording live four of the songs I have written since my musical adventure really began in November 2008.
It took months for me to move on it, and it took another couple of months for Hervé to move on it – i.e., get the time – and then it took me a while to get together my dream group of musicians – including Hervé on drums – to record the four songs I decided to do. But it all came together on Wednesday and Thursday, and thanks entirely to Hervé and the generosity and professionalism and talent of the musicians that accepted to play with me.
Hervé was very cool in not only playing drums on all the songs, but also working the sound in the small studio in the back of the art/concert/cafe/restaurant space on the Quai de Valmy in Paris. Hervé used to be drummer for a very cool and successful French band called A.S. Dragon, that was formed as a back-up band for the iconoclastic French novelist, Michel Houellebecq. The band decided it wanted more than just to be that writer’s backup band when he went on tour with some songs, and they added a gorgeous woman singer and did very well after that….
I had a real conundrum to solve with the lead guitarist, though. I had two guys I knew I wanted, both for different reasons. So in the end I decided to do two days of recording and do two songs with each guitarist, if they accepted. Thank goodness they did. One was Félix Beguin, with whom I had played many times at Earle’s open mics since the beginning. Félix also plays in a band called The Wasters and another called The Burnin’ Jacks, and he is in his early twenties, and a bloody natural born genius guitar player. He is also studying sound engineering now and music will be his career, one way or the other. So Félix played with me on the first day, and we did “Memories” and “Except Her Heart.” The latter, remember, is the song that Félix so kindly arranged for me a few months ago with a midi system and added guitar lead, piano, bass, etc.
The second day my guitarist was the neighbor I’ve been working with for the last year and a half intermittently, who goes by the stage name of Zarby. He wrote the chords for “Let Me Know,” and asked me to do a melody and lyrics, and we were both happy with the result. So there was no question but to have him play on that, and I enjoy working with him anyway, so there was just no question of NOT doing it. We also did “Since You Left Me,” both of these songs on the second day, the Thursday. What was very cool too is that Zarby started his musical career as a jazz drummer, and so with “Let Me Know” he not only had an idea of what kind of drumming would sound good with it, but he was able to show on the drums to Hervé what he meant. The song, written about a Turkish woman I know, has a very Middle Eastern music sound to it, and indeed, Hervé’s drumming just gives this hypnotic, trance-like, mantra-like feel to it.
The big problem from the beginning was to find a bass player, and I had all sorts of ideas, but nothing was panning out. Until my son, Paul, said, “Why not the guy from Natas Loves You?” In fact, I had thought of him myself, but I had only ever heard this fabulous young band from Luxemburg live doing acoustic performances. Paul had heard them electric, however, and said the bass player was good. So I wrote Virgile on Facebook, and he immediately responded that he would do it. And am I glad he did. I had met the band during their first week in Paris almost a year ago when they performed at their first open mic here, at the Truskel, in Earle’s open mic. I immediately thought they were great and I spoke to them. Only 20 years old, Virgile is not only a very cool guy to work with, but his bass playing was really good for what I needed and wanted, and I got the added bit of icing on the cake when this master of harmony – all of Natas Loves You are great at singing and harmonies – accepted to add some harmonies on “Since You Left Me,” which gives it a sudden completely different life in spots, and even, dare I say it, a little addition of youthful something.
What can I say about these two days in the studio? I think ultimately the statement will be in the sound of the music that resulted from it. And I will make that available as soon as Hervé has finished tweaking it. But the idea behind it was to do four recordings of four musicians playing live in the studio. This was not an overdubbing exercise, and it was very important for me to recapture the essence of my musical and emotional journey of the last year and a half and more as I have travelled around the world and played in open mics and jam sessions. It was essential to capture these four songs – at least – that speak my heart at this period in my life (even if much has changed since I wrote some of them), and to do that best, I wanted a live performance.
It was NOT easy, but it was smooth, and in the end, I was happy with the result. I don’t know if I will say the same thing next week when I hear the recordings after a while away from the studio, and a while away from listening to them – with a new perspective – but whatever may be the summation, it is clear that I spent two excellent days in the studio. Even if it was exhausting and I did not even sleep the night between them!
I’ve put up a couple of short videos of some quiet moments of taking a break in the studio on the first day with Félix playing my acoustic guitar with a couple of soft melodies, and then Félix on bass and Virgile on my guitar and Hervé on drums, just jamming away, the three of them. I had gone off to take a leak, what with all the water I had to drink in the heat of the studio and to protect my voice from breaking. And when I returned, there they were jamming away this funky tune, as if they desperately wanted to get away from my sad songs!!!! But the key point is, even when we weren’t working, all these music lovers were playing music for fun and amusement, which was for me also one of the biggest points of the whole exercise. And in that, it was a success.
The two days in the studio last week were the musical epiphany I had been working toward. But I’m now fired up for having many more….
I have been away from the blog since Sunday in Oxford – probably my longest hiatus so far – but that is not because I’ve been away from music. On the contrary, I’ve had a phenomenal week I will never forget, and I wanted to get a few words and videos down before it was too late.
First, briefly, the last night in Oxford I did go and play at the Old Bookbinder’s pub. Played four songs in two sets. There were some interesting muscians there as well, including one I had met last year, and one I had heard at the Catweazle Club three nights earlier. ‘Nuff said.
Monday back to Paris and a quiet evening listening to a new stock of LPs that Vanessa bought – some cool 80s stuff and some 70s stuff too.
Tuesday was the beginning of the musical adventure of the week. It was announced as the last of Earle’s open mics, and it was being held at The Panic Room, on rue Amelot, near the Pop ‘In. It was meant to be a celebration of the end of Earle’s open mics, which had ceased to happen for the last couple of months or so. The list of potential guests on Facebook had grow to more than 170 people by the day of the event, and that was a lot more than ever signed up for the regular open mics. So I had great expectations.
I had never been to the Panic Room before and found it to be a fabulous venue. It had a spacious upper bar on two levels with clean painted walls and a nice shiny bar. The basement room was a cave with a vaulted ceiling – typical Paris thing – and a big fumoir. The stage was small by most standards but big for an open mic, and the sound was good for the listeners and for the musicians.
Upstairs, part of the evening was not just that it be an open mic, but it was also a photo exhibition of photos done by Olivier Rodriguez and Céline LiLi Faye, two friends who took photos at Earle’s open mic for years. They decided to organize this last open mic and do put up a photo exhibit of the ones in the previous years, and they did a great job both of the photos and the organization of this open mic. I’m putting in a video below that takes a brief tour of the photo display and includes a moment where we see Olivier looking at me with a face that said, “Camera shy.” Sure thing, Olivier! In the video there is a moment at which you will see the oldest of the musicians looking a little like Jacques Brel, c. 1966 at the Olympia, in a white shirt, face in a grimace behind glasses, and that’s me. Just below that you will see a photo of a young man with long hair and a similar face to mine – that’s my son Paul. Yep, Father and Son.
And it was in reference to those two photos that I sang Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son” when I went up on stage. I was the second person up. First was my friend – and my son’s friend – Calvin, whom I have mentioned here before. I also played “Just Like A Woman” and “Since You Left Me” and “Except Her Heart.” I know that I did a good job for two reasons: One was that I felt good, in the groove, and really delighted to be up there and singing for the audience. The second reason was that a few of the women who listened told me afterwards that they had been brough almost to tears by my songs. Sheesh!
The evening progressed at a nice cool pace, and Earle was at his best, promoting the singers, singing along, enthusiastic as ever. In fact, he said to me that he thought he might like to continue doing open mics, but perhaps only once a month. He just loves it. Despite this being the so-called last one.
A few of the big names of the many years the open mic has existed showed up to play and honor Earle and the audience. They included François, who is the singer from The Agency, and Stevan, the singer from The Parisians, as well as Xavier, the guitar player from the Parisians who backed Earle on “Teenage Kicks,” and Syd from The Burnin’ Jacks was there, as were other members of that rising band in the Paris music scene.
Among the aforesaid was the brilliant lead guitarist from the Burnin’ Jacks, Félix Beguin. I have played with Félix on and off at Earle’s since November or December 2008, when I first started playing at his open mics. And we were supposed to play my set together, not only as a tribute to the Earle scene, but also as a warm up for the following two days in which we were going to live out the next step of my week’s adventure, my time recording four songs in the studio at the Point Ephemere. This post has become so long that I have decided to do a separate post for the studio days. Coming right up… up there, up above this one…. î
Wow, just as I was preparing to fly off to China today for the Chinese Grand Prix, just as I was packing my bags, finishing my preview race stories, thinking about blog items and trying to remember things not to forget, I receive a message on Facebook from my friend Félix Beguin.
Félix is a guitar player who is studying sound engineering and who wants to make a career out of music. Since around November 2008 Félix has accompanied me on and off at Earle’s open mic in Paris, giving a lot more depth to my songs with his electric guitar support. A month or two ago I sent Félix a rough recording of me playing a new song called “Except Her Heart,” that I wrote about a failed relationship, in order for him to hear the structure so that the next time we played together at Earle’s he’d have an idea of where the song was going.
In fact, I don’t think we played the song after that. But this morning Félix sent me a WAV file of the song with a complete magnificent arrangement that he worked out for it, with drums, electric piano, his lead guitar, bass, etc. Man, this is the first time I’ve had a piece of my music completely arranged and orchestrated, and the result is inspiring to me. I hope it is also inspiring to other listeners.
Here is the low quality MP3 version of “Except Her Heart,” that will be quicker to listen to:
When you play music in your living room for years and you go out with your guitar and play in open mics, you have to do it first and foremost because you love it. It is often hard to believe in yourself and see beyond the horizon of the microphone that night, or your back garden and your own ears. But with what Félix sent me here today, I have a lot more belief in the possibilities of my songs. A million thanks to Félix, who plays his own music on his myspace, and also plays with a band called The Wasters and also a band called The Burnin’ Jacks, which is a very cool band, I last saw them perform at the Gibus in Paris last month, and they KILLED the audience.
Thanks again Félix! Now I can head off to China and wear out my batteries listening to your arrangement on my long, long flight to Shanghai. I’ll be singing the song there, too, in an open mic, I hope. Stay tuned….
