April 25, 2009 – “Good Morning San Juan,” the GallopAway show coming July 17-18, 2009.
It has been like watching a pot of water warm slowly without a lot to see since last fall. Plans laid and reshaped, song lists and casting lists revised, people contacted and engaged, song scores written and printed, early rehearsals convened – most of all, our daydreams and night dreams run and rerun with bold and subtle variations, collaborated in conversations and emails … all about putting up a performance that answers the questions, “What kind of music do you play?” and “What kind of energy is behind it?” Now steam is rising from the kettle, the coffee beans have been ground and poured into the French press. But unlike brewing our ceremonial Java, the heavy lifting is in full swing: mastering the techniques and defining the interfaces. Who will carry the focus after each song? Will it be spoken or mimed, dramatic or comic, theatrical or intimate, non-existent in a segue, or completely improvised? The new organism is exciting, it wakes us up at 4:30 in the morning. Our ears are calibrated for the teapot’s whistle. The season is crouching to spring into a summertime gallop.
~ Tim
February 3, 2009 – Plagiarism Unintended.
We finished the demo of our new song “Give My Lips Something To Live For” the day before our trip to the ASCAP songwriters seminar in Hollywood. Steve and Pat didn’t choose our song to be critiqued but we learned about our songwriting bent and why we don’t quite fit into the popular song form by experiencing other writers’ songs coming under the microscope.
* * * Skip a week to “Light Bulb” Tim. “This silly song keeps going around in my head. What is it?” He hums a tune, begins singing the words, trying to remember, “All of my love, all of my kissin’ / You don’t know what you been missin’, oh boy.” The second line is right out of “Give My Lips!” MY line. He Googles those words and instantly finds that it’s “Oh Boy” by Buddy Holly. I am an unintentional plagiarist. And we discover this on the 50th anniversary of his death in the tragic plane crash. Now we have to fix the bridge for our "Lips" song, minus Buddy.
Oh Boy!
~ Frances
January 31, 2009 – On the eve of Valentine's month.
The songwriting seminar (see below) was superb, over-the-top, a small group with focus: popular-song-form principles clearly presented and backed by lots of examples. We listened to 26 more examples during the 5-hour drive home, on the fascinating double CD set Steve Seskin Live. We highly recommend it. We also had time to listen to 22 of our own recorded songs, and they still kept us spell-bound after too many listenings to count and too many "broken rules" to masquerade as popular-song-form examples. The following couple of days saw me (not Frances) slipping into depression. What ties Blue Tail Fly together so nicely and makes it easy for new generations of kids to learn? The repeating chorus, "Jimmy crack corn and I don't care ..." Even though Steve and Pat warned against rewriting our old songs in quest of a "correct" form, the questions arose unbidden and snarling. Was I hampering my good old stuff by denying it the repeated hooks that are required for broad appeal? What about the songs in-the-works for our next 3 CDs; would leaving them as-is hurt their chances? Would "Mushroom Soup" be a light forever hidden under a bushel because I could not figure out a way to "wrap it up" with a catchy chorus, or worse yet, couldn't even see the need? Finally my gyroscope regained its balance. Many of our favorite songs by other writers are "through composed." Maybe that's why we like Rebo Flordigan's CD "February" so much: sometimes she just tells the story in song. How about "Norwegian Wood" by the Beatles?
* * * The GallopAway Stories wing of the web site has been growing. Today Frances appears in the Poems department, with much more to come.
~ Tim
January 14, 2009 – What kind of music do we play?
The perennial question, difficult for us to answer, but here is an attempt I found in some old notes I discovered today:
"Jazz-ignited classical folk-rock with integral strings, world music rhythms, tunes you can sing (OK, with a stretch), and lyrics that put the story first, more micro-movie than stream of consciousness, and rarely a repeating chorus. Good news, highly directional even in the improv's, often humorous but never coarse, rendered with care, mildly compressed, with a university eclectic. A broad spectrum that tolerates repeated listenings, invites onion-layer discovery, and goes easy on your eardrums but isn't easy-listening predictable. Would seem to appeal best to young children and mature adults. Teenagers and young adults in the difficult years may find the material lacking in rage fuel and too happy to support a wrenching catharsis. On the other hand, some of our most vocal fans are in that very age group, so surprise thrives."
* * * If it takes 143 words to say what kind of music we play, we're still in the dark!
~ Tim
January 4, 2009 – New song.
Can a deadline be a motivator? It works for us. In late January we’ll be down in L.A. getting new angles on songwriting with Steve Seskin and Pat Pattison at an ASCAP-sponsored event. We might need to present a new song that is "in-the-works," for critical analysis and improvement, so we put together three little sketches that Frances had written years ago. They were just short lines of words set to little tunes with basic chords. But arranging them in order of increasing tempo and leading story-line, then against a piano accompaniment that morphs from spooky bluesy jazz verses to perkier bridges to sprightly quasi-country choruses – we gave the medley a unity that had been hard to imagine before. "Give My Lips Something To Live For." Now, having improved the lyrics that we throw to each other, having harmonized the chorus, and having made a rough demo … the song may be too far along to be called “in-the-works.” Funny how the birth process for songs and babies drives all the way to completion. We may need another song for L.A., like "Old Pete And The Big Cat." The new song demo is too rough to share now, but we’ll be producing it for your enjoyment before we put on our live show that is in-the-works for this summer.
~ Tim
January 4, 2009 – Kitty.
.. Seven years ago or so, three tiny kittens showed up on our back porch. We fed the feral momma cat and ran off the mean cat-food-thieving chickens. Feral cats up against feral chickens.
.. Today, the third day of 2009, I cooked three pieces of chicken (made in China) for the remaining cat, Kitty. The Daddy Cat went off to die a couple of months ago. He had stayed with the litter all those years after the momma left, after the litter was weaned. He had been somebody’s pet; he let me scratch his ears; I even picked him up, though he didn’t really like it. We paid attention to Daddy Cat, let him in for treats, bought him a little house; he moved right in.
.. But he got old. Toward the end Daddy Cat was bullied by those mean chickens. Kitty stayed by his side, followed him around, protected him. After he died Kitty came around meowing, motioning for me to follow her. She missed him. Now she’s our cat, lets me scratch her ears, gets under my feet. She’s a calico; they’re almost always female. When the cold weather started I made a shelter over our back porch, put a nice rug and a soft towel in the cat house. A week later, cold at night, rain, no Kitty. Tim rigged up a heat lamp to keep it warm and cozy. No dice. Two weeks later, still no dice.
.. One very dark, very cold, very wet night I peeked out the window. She looked right at me, out of her house. Sometimes she stays out in the neighborhood till about eleven, and sometimes she’s home as early as 6:30.
~ Frances
January 3, 2009 – Christmas show picture taken Dec. 19, 2008: Cast and crew of El Teatro Campesino's La Virgen Del Tepeyac in Old Mission San Juan Bautista, California.
Warning: This is a 2.5 megabyte file that could tie up a dial-up connection for a while. But the picture is a high-resolution glimpse into an amazing tradition that has been staged here for decades of holiday seasons. Click here to download.
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