The Carousel Lounge: December 17, 2009

The Carousel Lounge stunned us as we loaded in. Pleasantly. The stage area was clutter-free, neat and all the power outlets worked the way you think power outlets are supposed to work, without having to hunt along yards and yards of cable to discover: no outlet. Yes, it's still dark and murky at the back of the club (in deference to the plastic elephant, I suppose), but the ceiling-height Christmas tree worked fine as a source of illumination.

Usually there's a happy hour act, or at least there's been one in the past, but not last night. So in went Andy's drums, and the rest of the stuff, and we set up at our leisure. The regulars at the bar (big, old pick-up truck = barfly mode-of-transportation of choice) are the nicest in town, nodding hellos and politely holding doors open as we lugged in the gear.

The set went well, too. Nothing like playing a tight, 45 minutes worth of music to a rather large and appreciative crowd (special hellos to Andrew S., my parents, Katie L. and Shawn P. (go, Street Team!), Shane's friends and Scottie's entourage). Patrick did the set list (see below) and it worked really well, not least when I broke a string on the Rickenbacker and, thankfully, only had two songs left, both of which are acoustic guitar-friendly. (Thank you, String Gods.) The snappage occurred at the end of Everybody's Going Away, but I'd planned on swapping to the Gibson for the following Jam tune, anyway, lucky me. Sorta.

Oh, that tune: That's Entertainment. I think this is the second time in three gigs where I've completely lost touch with the words of the song. It's like having an out of body experience during an out of body experience. I praised "the smartest band in Austin" afterward, as the other four managed to keep going through what turned out to be an extra, lyric-less verse and several verses of word/synapse misfires and some sung gobbledegook as cover for my blanking on what I was supposed to be singing! I know why I went up, too. Mea culpa...Hank Schwemmer, a long-time fan of the band wandered in during the song, and I am always happy to see him in the audience. Not so brilliantly, I thought about looking for a way to incorporate his name into the song and, of course, as soon as I thought that, I forgot where I was (the first time) and gargled my way through a line or two before I recovered. The song's not hard, it just has a lot of words and it's imperative that I think about the first line of each subsequent verse in order to stay on track. Sure enough, as we entered the final verses, I reminded myself to pay attention and not lose focus as I'd done when Hank walked in and, bam! I went up again. This time it lasted for that extra verse...good thing the song only has verses and choruses. Its lack of complexity (easy for me to say) means we can survive an empty round (uh, or two!). At least I got the outro right and we finished nice and tight.

I dug Place:Away, too. We've set it up now to cut Scottie loose on lead guitar and, seeing as he had friends in the crowd, he really cut it up even better than usual. Makes for a grand finale, that song. Andy put in a stop in the final verse that we'd rehearsed and rejected, but Patrick kept playing bass through it. Shane, Andy and I were talking about it afterward. Total silence hadn't worked in rehearsal the night before because it killed the song's momentum. But with Patrick carrying on as the only accompaniment to my singing, the song's climax felt really punchy. We'll have to recreate that in the rehearsal room to see if it's worth keeping or if our satisfaction last night was just "performance-enhanced."

Kudos, too, to Shane on Windsor Road and Big Girls, where he's adding riffs and runs and more and more color. Now we'll take a couple weeks off and then back at it. New songs to learn and some more to clean up. Feels good.

Oh, and my mom snapped some shots from her front seat cabaret table. You can review the evidence here.

Robi


Set List
Weight of the World
Windsor Road
The Long, The Short And The Tall
Waterloo Sunset (Kinks)
Wigan Pier
Like Big Girls Do
Town Called Malice (The Jam)
Twisty System
Fascinated
Everybody's Going Away
That's Entertainment (The Jam)
Place:Away

Robi's rehearsal notes from 12/10/2009*

Rocked through tonight's 45-minute set for the Carousel, and it went rather smoothly. Uh, too smoothly? This, of course, disturbs if only because you want there to be some kinks in the works so you go into the gig feeling as if you still have work to do. No coasting! As they say in the theatre, "Bad dress rehearsal, good opening." On the other hand, it feels good to crank out a dozen or more tunes as fluidly as we did.

Of course two things diminish my concerns. 1. Patrick suggested that we probably didn't sound as good as thought we did. Oh, thanks, man! 2. He's right. Or rather, I think everyone knows he can do better (I speak grammatically; I'm not pointing out any flaws in Patrick's playing!). We all can always do better. That's what I love about making the music. Especially in the (dim) crucible of a live show. Speaking for myself, I know I'm not going into tonight's gig hugely overconfident. Uh, or overconfident at all. There are always way too many variables for that! Makes it exciting. Keeps ya young. But given the sounds last night, I'm looking forward to a good night of music. Let's say I'm confident and leave it at that.

After tweaks to a couple of songs in the set, we picked up Haymarket Rain and started some reworking. I swapped to rhythm guitar (acoustic) and Scottie picked up the lead. We slowed it down a little. I don't know. It's not done, so it's too soon to tell if it's any better than the "express" version of old (it's not the "local" version we've done when sans drums, that's for sure). Patrick suggested it was somewhere in between. Which is where I get uncomfortable. The last thing I want to do is smooth it out so much it's just all soft underbelly and no spiky dangerous bits. It needs teeth. Spines. It is, as my wife Michelle pointed out, a song about teen angst, after all.

Plus I realized in my insomnia last night that one of the things I like about the higher-energy version is that it recalls the sound and energy of a train clackety-clacking down the tracks; the fast train to heartache. Or it should! Maybe that's a clue to the rhythm shift we're searching for: Something driving, energetic (I like to say, "crisp") but not as out of control as before. It's early days on this one: That train's only just leaving the station!

Robi

*A note about these rehearsal notes. In an effort to expand my writing for this blog, I'm going to post about rehearsals, recording sessions, gigs and anything else in the quotidian life of the band. Those interested in the deep dive, dive on in!

The Long, The Short And The Tall

Robi: I wrote this one back in the days of Lower Wacker Drive, my Boston band, so it's one of the first songs I ever wrote. Date? eh...probably 1986. The Reagan years, when everyone wanted to look good in fatigues. We're all going on a summer holiday: in Grenada! If you're a Brit: oh, those summers in paradise, Las Malvinas!

In my little tune (a waltz; gentlemen, grab your ladies), the too easily tarnished shine of soldierdom provides the grist for this gritty tale of a young man who enlists, finds the perfect girl over a cheap drink, then gets shipped off to foreign climes and an untimely end, leaving her bereft at home. A sadly familiar story in these days of perpetual conflict.

The title came from a play I read in high school, a cliche-ridden yet intensely moving piece about a motley collection of British soldiers under siege in the steaming Burmese jungle. It didn't end well for them, either.

This recording is from our Saxon Pub gig, 7/12/2009.

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The Long, The Short And The Tall

Down on your luck or down and out
It gets so easy to say:
"I'll take the benefit of the doubt,"
And sign myself away

The uniform looks good on me
I walk to watch hips sway
And a dollar a drink and some mighty cheap talk
Is enough to make her stay

I don't want to go home
I just want to stay here all night
The animals moan or hide in the shadows
And everyone's afraid of the moonlight

Making a life out of making men dead
It impressed her so much she'd make me she said
But we lie to ourselves when we lie on the bed
Is that war game you play all in your head?

I don't want to go home
I just want to stay here all night
We're up with the sun to fly to the shadows
Where everyone's afraid of the moonlight

My face pressed to the glass of a greasy bus window
It runs on blood and gas and jokes about who'll go (first)

First off the bus, first in the ditch
We're pigs in the mud, a rifle's our bitch
And the sergeant's so cool but the heat makes me itch
And everything's too smooth, when it just takes a touch

I don't want to go home
I just want to stay here all night
I can't remember her face anymore
I can't find the letters she writes

A woman pressed to the glass watches the planes fly away
It's here and then it's past and I canít bear to see her wave

It's a "Come on, my boys!" to the top of the hill
We're rabbits with rifles we're pigs to the swill
And the first sign of life is the first sign to kill
And if you get dirty they'll send you the bill

I don't want to go home
I just want to stay here all night
The animals moan or hide in the shadows
And everyone's afraid of the moonlight

I don't want to go home
I just want to stay here all night
The animals moan or hide in the shadows
And everyone's afraid of the moonlight

It Never Rains But It Pours

Trying to outwit Mother Nature through old architecture, an elk and a break in the weather

Whenever The Late Joys are asked to perform at a party, a function, a fete or some other gathering of a celebratory nature, we say, "Yes! We'll be there!" And we mean it.

Lately, however, a run of bad luck -- or bad weather -- has meant that large gatherings to which we've been booked have been canceled. To whit: Last May the Oak Hill Youth Sports Association asked if we'd play the spring BBQ "Yes!" we exulted, "We'll be there!" Alas, that day a front steamed through the region. And by "steamed" I mean the way a steamroller might steam: lethargic, leaden, chugging along with no inclination beyond its own inclemency. In short, it started raining in the wee hours and didn't let up until late in the afternoon. The sodden day meant our gig was a wash out. Sod it!

Roll the clouds jauntily forward to October. Having survived a blistering summer, suddenly the fall offered more sopping than sunshine. Sure enough, having been booked for the fall BBQ for our area soccer club (to which we said, "Yes! We'll be there!"), we awoke to another day of stagnant action in the heavens, which shed their tears on our endeavors and washed out yet another gig.

A pattern, tropical, was starting to emerge. Perhaps a change in name to accommodate the shifting weather patterns that kept us at bay? The Wet Joys? No, we persevered: Better "Late" than...well, you know...and we accepted an invitation to perform for a large party for friends in another as-yet-untried venue. The forecast? Rain. And lots of it.

But last night we had the better of our most savage, saturate critic, Mother Nature, who again rained her negative review all over Central Texas yet couldn't dampen our spirits. No, this time the party to which we celebratorily declared "Yes! We'll be there!" was held indoors. Don't say we can't learn from our mistakes! The event took place at the Elks Lodge (hence that animal head tacked to the top of this tale; it's the first (and last) thing you see coming (and going) from the lodge). It's a fine old spot, with a shallow stage and picture windows that look out over downtown Austin, featuring a precipitous drop to the shimmering pool below that induces vertigo until you realize it's the pool that's shimmering, not the floor.

And a rare old time we had. Oddly enough the Oak Hill Sports liaison who had booked us for what turned out to be that May day mayday was present at the fete. I hope he liked what he heard!

Below: Though you can't see it, it was one wet night out there. Those little lights out the window, behind Robi's Ric and rig? Though you can't see it, it's downtown Austin's high-falutin' new skyline.

Say Fear Is A Man's Best Friend

Robi welcomes the pre-performance butterflies

I remember when I'd get butterflies before playing soccer games as a kid. I also used to get them as an adult: Yup, I'd get nerves before kicking off with my local men's Sunday league club, Havoc. Usually the butters flew in as I wondered how I'd last the first five minutes of the game. But once those five minutes had passed, I'd feel stronger and stronger. Dispelling the butterflies helped me to focus and (hopefully) play better. Now, sadly, I don't get butterflies before games, a sign that I've caught up to the freight train of life as it chugs towards some terminus best left undetermined.

But the nerves: I think they came down to wanting to do well, to prove myself, to be there for my teammates. Face it, I didn't want to let down the side by playing badly! I looked forward to the butterflies. That extra energy, unnerving, unfocused, when finally harnessed, sharpened the senses and filled me with exuberance -- how fun to be alive!

The same thing goes for my music. I'm quite comfortable getting up in front of people who've come to listen to the band. It's a blast to perform. And I don't feel nervous about the possibility of messing up when I play with the band -- we're all there for each other and that big sound hides lots of little faults. It's a team effort and it works well. But up on stage alone, when there's nowhere to hide, no other musicians to lean on, I get butterflies. Mostly I think it's because I don't want to perform the songs badly, because I wrote them and I want people to like what I wrote (it's a short hop from liking what I wrote to liking me, isn't it? and we all want to be liked, if not loved, right?). It's a horrifying thought I could do some disservice to my own material and have people walk away unsatisfied! That makes me nervous. Which is a good thing.

So the last couple of weeks I have had the satisfying frightening pleasure of performing solo at Momo's. Driving to those gigs I've felt all those old soccer/soloist butterflies alight. This past Tuesday, I played to dark, cold empty room (yes, even when no one's there, ya still gotta perform as if your life depended on it). So I pulled a cafe chair to the microphone, sat down, tuned up and launched into a solo set. And, having confronted my nerves, I gotta say, it sounded pretty good! Felt good, too. When a pair of friends arrived for a drink and a listen, it was even better. Nothing beats interacting with folks you know while you share your music.

I love chasing a soccer ball and that is enough to keep me feeling spontaneous and alive when I play, even when I don't get the butterflies (though I still look for them as I drive to each Sunday's game). Musically, I reckon nerves help me to focus, to will myself to get it right. And then to dispel those butterflies, let myself go and have a good time.

The Late Joys (Nov.) Newsletter

Who ya gonna call?
October 29, 2009

Hi, everyone!

You may not be afraid of no ghosts, and, uh, neither are we...ahem...but seeing as we're about to pass from All Hallow's Eve through the Day of the Dead (a two-day affair -- what's with the dead getting to double...uh...down on their "day" anyway?), we're about as joyful as you can be that the days are shorter and nights longer and we're heading for November. And why not: four happy hour gigs at Momo's, some under-the-radar events, new tunes and, on the horizon, a first gig at Cedar Street: our joy meter is doin' the monster mash!

Peace,
The Late Joys
Andy, Patrick, Shane, Scottie and Robi

Check out the sound and the purple people eaters of The Late Joys.
http://www.latejoys.com/

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UPCOMING GIGS:

Tuesdays in November, 5pm-6:45pm
Momo's Happy Hour
618 W. 6th Street, 78701
http://momosclub.com/
No cover
All-ages show
Catch us in a variety of lineups -- from full-bore band to acoustic bandlet -- as we return for the happiest of hours at Momo's all month long! Read more below.

Friday, November 20
Private party!

Monday, January 11
Cedar Street Courtyard
208 W. 4th Street, 78701
http://www.cedarstreetaustin.com/
Lookin' forward to a big gig in the heart of the warehouse district! (Happy Birthday, Denise O!)

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MORE ON MOMO'S

With four Tuesdays to play with we're showing a little flexibility with our lineups (seeing as not all of us are available for all four gigs!). Please peruse the following menu and choose as many dishes as you like:

Tuesday, November 3: Songs You Ain't Never Heard Before*
Robi plays acoustic tunes that the band either hasn't performed in years or has never done, including the Wigan Pier Suite (or, in this case, maybe "suet" is the more apt word). *Disclaimer: You may have heard some of these songs before.

Tuesday, November 10: The Late Joys play all-out rock AND roll in our full lineup. Might even debut a new song or two...hint...

Tuesday, November 17: Songs You Ain't Never Heard Before II*
Robi's back for more acoustic strumming and warbling, swapping out some of those old tunes for still older ones. *Disclaimer: If you dropped in on 11/3, you may be disappointed at the novelty aspect of the proceedings. On the other hand, Scottie should be strumming along this time!

Tuesday, November 24: Another full lineup outing for the Late Joys. Technically our last gig of 2009, but you never know...

http://momosclub.com/

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FREE DOWNLOADS OF LATE JOYS MUSIC

Download our tunes via this way-cool site in all sorts of familiar and unfamiliar formats!

Get your free Late Joys music here.
http://thelatejoys.bandcamp.com/

A Late Joys Poll: Who's Your Favorite Team?

Do you follow the fall pigskin follies (pearls before swine)? Or are you an aficionado of o jogo bonito (not to be confused with a singer for U2)? Both games are enjoyed by 11 men (or women) and one ball. We're told the ball quite likes the attention. Who do you like?

We know, for instance that one Late Joy fancies himself a bit of Glasgow's blue team; another supports the Reds of Liverpool...

Let us know the name of your favorite team and we'll put in a good word for your gridiron egg tossers or Beckhamesque ball bashers at our next gig!