Just got back from a trip to L.A. where I played a show w/ Mike Isberto (my collaborator this coming weekend in Kollaboration X at The Shrine! Huzzah!), and also played at the Lunar New Year Festival in Chinatown. It was quite a trip... one that started with rushing straight from LAX to a taping of Kababayan LA for LA 18 tv, and ended with a marathon 5-hour songwriting session with Mike. We had been having a hard time writing our song for Kollaboration X between the miles...FYI iChat has a lag, which doesn't bode well when you're both trying to play guitar and sing together. :-/ So getting together those few hours was really needed. Me and Mike have really had a great time hanging out... even though we were a little bummed we couldn't have our own slots for Kollab (we were told we either had to compete against each other for one slot or perform together), it turned out to be a fun experience and collaboration anyway! :)
This past Friday I had a show at City Grace Church on Sullivan St. in NYC. Me and Jon held it down as a duo, since Dave had a last-minute taping in Budapest... I should probably have mentioned that he's a film guy. :) ha.
Before L.A. (stick with me, here), was a show at Best Buy in Chelsea, that had a pretty solid turn-out. Not to mention, The Kennedys showed up to support! For those of you who don't know, The Kennedys are a NY-based folk duo (husband/wife) that have really been making a name for themselves in the national folk scene. It was pretty awesome that they came out to check out my set!
To help publicize the Best Buy show, I did a really late night (like, 1 am) interview at WHCR 90.3, "Thermal Soundwaves" with Cee Truth and Kevin Lawrence (pictured above).
Prior to that, I had a benefit music/art show for Haiti at someone's apartment in the city. Yes... someone's apartment. :) It was big enough to fit nearly 200 people between a few hours... but it was loud! The crowd volume was a challenge at first, but there was something cool about having a bunch of people gathered on fold-up chairs and sitting on the floor, just listening to the songs despite all the ruckus in the back of the room. It's like you're in on your own secret, and working to put your ear to everything being sung. It ended up being one of the most fun gigs of the year so far.
And before that, I kicked off the year's shows with a band gig at The Stone Pony, as the feature for their open mic. We had a pretty solid performance, I thought. We're hoping to play there again soon...
... wow, that might have been confusing, me going backwards, eh? Woops. Haha... for whatever reason, my head's in a jumble and I'm barely in blog-writing gear. So, forgive me for this random rambling.
I know it's almost March and I haven't blogged properly about what's been going on with music this year. It's not even that things have been especially busy (cuz they're pretty much as they usually are, haha). But I'll try my best to do a better job at it! Hoozah!
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