FRIDAY and SUNDAY: Official CD Release Party & The Knitting Factory!

Now that November is pretty much at an end, and the busiest leg of the tour behind me, I'm able to take a little breather. BUT, there's still time to party. The CD Release Party, of course! :) These next shows are back in NYC... check them out if you're in town!

8 pm Friday, Dec. 11
"Second Skin" Official CD Release Party!
Sidewalk Cafe - 94 Avenue A, NYC
Tip jar (and cake!)

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6 pm Sunday, Dec. 13
Tao Po? Benefit Concert w/ Kitchie Nadal and other guests
The Knitting Factory, Brooklyn
361 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn
Suggested donation: $20
http://organichumanity.org

"Love or Fate" at Tufts University, 11.19.09

My friend Eric shot a lot of the show at Tufts last Thursday, and this is a song called "Love or Fate" that didn't quite make the cut to the album. However, I really enjoy performing it when I find the right kind of crowd. It's a bit different from many other songs I write - one of the reasons it didn't make the album - but I really love singing it. Sorry about the banter, but at least you get to hear the background story!


<3 Alfa


PS: Eric put up 7 videos from the Tufts show. Check them out in his channel, here!http://www.youtube.com/user/25AMDG

Deja Vu in Ann Arbor

It was kind of strange being back in Ann Arbor. I'd only spent 2 months last time I was there in '06, but everything kind of came flooding back in the few hours I got to spend wandering the campus with an old friend of mine, Justin, who I'd met back in 2002 in Governor's School and is in Michigan Law now. He had been responsible for booking me at Amherst College 4.5 years ago, and that was the last time we'd seen each other.

Anyway, playing the U. Michigan show was a lot of fun, and everyone was so friendly, gracious and helpful with all the logistical stuff. I spent 30 hours there but it felt so much shorter. It doesn't help when the departure flight required waking up at 4 in the morning - but there you have it! It's late right now, so I will post the few pictures I took another day.

I've got a busy week ahead of me! Fordham U. is on Friday, followed by an 8 a.m. flight to Pittsburgh on Saturday, to speak at Carnegie Mellon. Yes - Speak. You don't understand how nervous that prospect makes me. Give me a guitar and a microphone and it's not a big deal... speaking, in front of a 100 people? Oy, pass me a Motrin. :P

Seriously excited, though. I love challenges, and I guess this is just one of them. I'm supposed to speak about pursuing music for 45 minutes... but part of that will be performing and the other part... I haven't decided yet, but I hope to make it interactive. Goodness knows who'd wanna hear ME drone on for 45 min! =)

Family is trickling into town starting Friday night, from Ohio, Arkansas, Trinidad, et al. I'm sorry that my schedule is as busy as it is while they're around, but I'm going to try to spend as much time with them as I can. At least they'll be around for the Hometown Band Show on the 20th! Wahoo!

More thoughts for now... but I leave you with a quote from a song in my head:

"Tension is to be loved when it is like a passing note to a beautiful, beautiful chord."

- Sixpence None the Richer.

The quiet after, and before.

Last weekend was a blur, but a blast all the same. And what a blast it was!

Last Sat., I got to speak at a workshop all about being an indie artist, and then played two songs during their variety show. Plus I got to meet some new fans of the music - probably the coolest part. :)

Here's my performance of "Love as Tragedy: A Play in 3 Acts" at U. of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

This is my manager, Jon, after hijacking my camera while I was taking a shower in the hotel room, haha...
This is Manny Garcia - an excellent singer/songwriter from Chicago who reminds me of Michael Buble... sigh. :) I think he's perusing my echinacea pills (I had to bring it to help keep my sickness down, as I was really under the weather all weekend). The next dawn I flew out to Baltimore to catch a benefit show in Fort Washington, MD, hosted by an old songwriter friend, Rod Garcia (wow, a lot of Garcias last weekend, I'm realizing!). The show was to benefit the victims of the recent typhoons and floods in the Philippines.

It was really neat meeting Charmaine Clamor, an acclaimed jazz singer, who was gracious and friendly and such a talent. Check her out if you can.

And this is Gina, who came up to me before the show and told me she'd figured out the piano parts to "Supergirl" and pretty much memorized all the tracks on "Second Skin." She just really rocks, so she gets a shoutout! :)

Here's me with the guys from Lucky 28, a DC-area band. Their sound brings me back to the 70's - think BeeGee's meets Bread. They're fans of my music too, which is really cool to get from others involved in the same art.

Anyway, it's been a relatively calmer week. Had a chance to rehearse with Laura, Jon and Dave (btw the band just joined Twitter! Add them at www.twitter.com/alfamadeustweet!) and got to update the website a bit (www.alfa-music.com). I also played a private show on Friday night for a bunch of partners at a law firm... I can't say much about it for obvious reasons, but enough to say, it was definitely more fun than I thought. I can only hope to get some inspiration from it... law puns are welcome.