Duh. This one is a no-brainer!

Because it benefits a damn good cause.

The New Orleans Musicians Clinic does some seriously important work. They provide medical care and wellness programs to musicians who otherwise couldn’t afford it. These men and women have spent their lives creating beautiful music. I know from personal experience that this is not exactly a lucrative endeavor. The Musicians Clinic provides an incredibly important service. They could use some of your money.

Because it’s going to be a fun night.

Along with me, you’ll get a chance to hear special guests  Boston Babydolls, Dennis Brennan, Holly Brewer, Joey Pesce and Linda Viens. And possibly others. Plus the house band which has an all-star lineup. That I’m too lazy to type out.

Here’s the pertinent information:

Where? T. T. the Bear’s in Central Square, Cambridge.
When? February 13th
How much? $12

Where can I go to find out more information? Click here, my friend.

Within 48 hours of losing one of my guitarists, we’d invited a new guitarist to come play with us, decided that he rocked and invited him to join the band.

I wish that this music business was always this easy!

This band business is tough. You want to find the best musicians possible… but the best musicians possible tend to already be in other bands. Plus, I have no interest in working with total assholes. I’m bitchy enough for one band. Hell, I’m bitchy enough for like 11 bands.

So, this is how it works. You need good musicians with lots of free time who are fun to work with, dedicated to the music and not too likely to get drunk before gigs and throw up all over the sound guy.

Sound guys hate it when you puke on them.

Door guys, too.

Finding people who you mesh with and get along with is super important. Band drama is toxic. It sucks the happiness out of something that should be fun. It can be that thin line between moderate success and total failure. I’ve been really lucky that, in all of my years of working with other musicians, I’ve never had to deal with anyone who has been a bigger diva than me. In fact, all of my various band-mates, wether in the studio or on the stage, have all been incredibly nice people. And talented musicians.

It’s a little bit like winning the lottery.

Every day.

For eight years.

Lucky for me, my drummer (Matt) has a replacement in mind. And I know enough other musicians that I’m slowly getting the word out. Because I refuse to go the craigslist route. So, if you know anyone in the Boston area who is talented, easy-going and not prone to puking on sound guys, definitely let me know.

We ran through a couple of the songs off of Beer and Pie and then we started working on two new ones. These are the ones that I work-shopped with Dave last week. I’m glad that we took the time to get stuff ready, because it gave us a much more solid base to build off of. One song was super easy. It’s fairly straight-forward with some good potential. We banged out a nuanced version with the full band in short order.

The other song? Let’s just say I’m glad that we have no pressing need to get it performance-ready.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good song. In fact, if you’ll allow me to indulge my ego for a bit, I would say that it’s a great song. And it has real promise. Band promise. As in, everyone in the band contributes promise. We added space and pauses and changed phrasing and nudged chords and an extra chorus and lions and tigers and bears.

Oh my.

We were too tired to fully flesh it out, but I’m confident that we’ll de-zombify it next week. I’m excited about its possibilities.

I’m also really, really freaking tired.

Band practices will be on Monday nights. On Tuesdays, I don’t have to be at work until 11am. This is definitely a good thing.

It’s just that I sometimes need to take a deep breath and remember that the essence of my songs is mine all mine but that the details are up for interpretation.

I think that my album was successful because I put my songs in the hands of people who I knew were talented and let them work their magic. It’s my plan to do that with all of my new material as well. I think that the major difference is, with Beer and Pie, we were working on songs that I had been singing for up to eight years. These songs were mine. Their very essence was infused with me.

These new songs? They’re babies. Young, weak, impressionable.

This is where you have to tell yourself that you can either sing the songs as written and hold onto them tighter than a nine-fingered hobbit. Or you can let go a little bit and ask the people who you know have mad skills to add their voices to the choir. Sure, it means sharing a little… But I tend to enjoy my desserts a little more when there are two spoons involved. Maybe the songs will be 80% me and 20% my band, but they’ll be, like 1,000% awesome.

And that’s what counts.

The songs themselves, you say? I’m so glad you asked.

We took my two new songs that I think are my strongest (so far) and we changed them up a little bit. Added a couple of bridges. Reworked the chord progressions so that they were a little more interesting. Added in some space. It was nothing earth shattering, but I sometimes feel that songcrafting is all about the subtleties. The difference between a good song and a great song is sometimes just a few notes, a couple of words and some extra syllables.

We can’t all take, “Scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs, my baby’s got a nice pair of legs” and turn it into “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.” But some of my favorite songs on Beer and Pie started off as my least favorite. And all we had to add was something like seven guitar parts.

Anyways, it was a three hour class where we talked about the song-writing process and how you can write songs that really tell a story. Listening to Ellis (can I call him Ellis? I’m going to call him Ellis) talk about his aims in writing songs (capturing a mood, telling a story, creating a moment) it made me realize why I love his music so much. We’re both coming at this whole song-writing business from a very similar place.

He also vocalized all of the things that I have subconsciously been trying to do with my songs. Adding the details in that make it come alive. Showing what you mean instead of saying it directly (I lost track of the number of times he said, “show, don’t tell”). And he added in a new dimension (at least for me) which is to engage the senses. Bring in sight, smell, taste, touch and sound and people will feel like they’re right there with you. It doesn’t have to be completely literal (if it did, there would be a lot more songs about burnt hot dogs), you can actually do it very subtly. But I had never really thought about adding kinesthetic elements to my songs. With that idea in the back of my head, I think that I can write some songs that have a lot of the same elements as some of my favorite songs. I’v added in a lot of those details in the past, I just never did it consciously.

I’m not going to lie, there was a part of me that was hoping I’d get a chance to play one of my songs (we were encouraged to bring guitars for work-shopping) and he’d say “OMG! You’re the next coming of Joni Mitchell!”) and sign me up to open for him on his next tour. I have a strong suspicion that the other 24 people in that room were thinking the same thing. Which makes me feel a little less crazy.

A little.

In case you were wondering, I did not get referred to as the second coming of Joni Mitchell and, as of this writing, I will not be joining Ellis Paul on his next tour. You’re all shocked, I know. I’m sure that this has everything to do with the fact that my guitar stayed snugly in its case. And nothing to do with me not being the second coming of Joni Mitchell. I’m really more of a Lucinda Williams. We only had time to workshop one person’s song. But it was still really valuable. And gave me some good ideas about how to approach my new stuff that I’m trying to bring to that next level.

Everyone who attended the class got a copy of his latest CD. Which doesn’t come out until next January. So, don’t I feel special. Sortof. You can buy a copy on his website, here. Would it have been too dorky to have asked for an autographed copy? I figured it would be too dorky. So now I will just need to be content with knowing that I got my copy in person. I made a joke about “trade ya!” and gave him a copy of Beer and Pie. I hope he listens to it. More importantly, I hope he likes it.

I’m floating around some new ideas in my head. I think I have a few songs in there that are getting ready to come out. And none of them is about burnt hot dogs. I’ve also decided that I need to start doing what I did for years and years and years, which is to carry around a notebook and to jot down little snippets and the beginnings of songs. I stopped carrying a composition book right around the time that I started writing most of my songs on my lappy toppy. I will occasionally make a note on my phone, but it’s not quite the same. Although the song Beer and Pie was tapped out furiously while I was hoping and praying that my iPhone battery didn’t die.

I had a good time today. Just sitting six feet from Ellis while he played a song for us was well worth the price of admission. Throw in a free CD and I got a hell of a deal.

Hopefully, this will be the beginning of some fantastic new songs.

I’ll be playing a stripped down set with an acoustic guitar. I may or may not have my guitarist, Dave, play with me. Depends on how he likes being payed in apparel, I suppose.

Anyways, here are the relevant details:

Where? The GAP at Vinnin Square, Swampscott
When? August 20th from 7-9pm
How Much? Free. If you don’t choose to buy yourself a new pair of pants, that is.

I believe that there will be drinks and nibblies, but I’m not entirely sure. I will have CDs for sale.

It started with a scheduling mixup, it ended in broken equipment and we had a blast the entire time.

Things that went wrong last night:

• The headliner somehow decided that “headling” means going on first. Because headlining usually means going last, but last night was apparently opposite night. I went second instead of first. My poor, pregnant sister was a total trouper in staying late to see most of my set.
• My guitarist, Dave, was so totally awesome and tuned up my guitar for me last week. He brought it to the gig for me to use. I admired his handiwork, picked it up to start playing… and promptly broke a string.
• I grabbed my microphone and felt something rather… shocking. Being smart, I grabbed it again. Yup, it was definitely electrocuting me. Mike (my bassist) was getting shocked by his mic as well. The sound guy’s solution? Don’t touch the mic. Ouch.
• Things started going better, the crowd was into it, people were dancing, everyone was super into it… and all of a sudden Dave stopped playing. Well, Dave didn’t stop playing. But is amplifier stopped making any noise. He was frantically checking cables, changing plugs, doing everything that he could to get the music going again. Mike and Matt (my drummer) turned to each other and gave each other a look that said “well, at least Hope is still playing.” I think we all know where this is going…
• While Dave was trying to get his amp going again, he accidentally knocked over his microphone. It fell over, hit me in the face, bounced onto my mic knocking it over and then wrapped itself around my guitar, preventing me from playing a note. Amazingly enough, I managed to not miss singing a note. But we definitely ended that song with only bass and drums playing.

You’d think that I would have been miserable at the end of a night like (getting shocked and hit in the face is usually not so much fun), but I had a blast. I love it when the audience gets into the music. And I love it when the other bands are fantastic (scheduling issues not-withstanding, it was a great bill). We all pretty much said, “Fuck it, who cares that stuff is going wrong. Let’s just play the hell out of this music and have a good time.”

I think that we succeeded. 

I’d love to have all of my gigs go like that in the future… but maybe with a little less electrocution.

I’ll have to think about that one.

At any rate, I have a facebook fan page. Which, up until a couple of days ago, had a respectable but not overwhelming number of fans. It was a little under a hundred. My ego was slightly caressed, but nowhere near inflated. I started putting my gigs in facebook and it was more effective than sending emails out to my mailing list. I was thoroughly satisfied with my facebook fan page experience.

That is, until facebook started letting people have vanity URLs. So, instead of being www.facebook.com/pages/Hope-Roth/33965014123, my facebook page could be www.facebook.com/hopeISsoTOTALLYfuckingAWESOME. Much easier for putting into emails and whatnot.

Except that you need to have 1,000 fans to get one of them thar fancy web addresses.

If I had 1,000 fans, I don’t think that I’d be so concerned with how easy/difficult it was to find my fan page.

Anyways, I posted something on my wall about how I needed 910 new fans to get a fancy URL. And some folks took it as a challenge.

I’ve already doubled my fan base.

Sure, 2x a pretty damn small number isn’t so impressive, but it’s only been about 32 hours. And this was all friends and fans taking the initiative to get the word out all on their very own.

Very little nudging on my part.

I barely even used the cattle prod.

For someone who claims to be an egomaniac, I always find myself incredibly touched when people go out of their way to do things on my behalf.

Anyways, I now see it as a personal challenge to get myself 1,000 fans on facebook. The fact that some of them might accidentally click the play button and listen to one of my songs and then consider buying Beer and Pie is just an added bonus.

So, yeah, won’t you be my fan?