photocynthesis

Friday, September 30, 2005

"In The Mood" Fall Tour, Part One

Our Tour started on September 12 in beautiful Sand Point, Idaho

That's my "road" hair.

We rehearsed for a few days, played the show and then headed off for additional shows in

Kent, WA

Kirkland, WA

Nampa, ID

and Twin Falls, ID

The Snake River, in Idaho

That's Carol, our bus driver

The scenery in Montana was stunning. We played three shows there on consecutive nights in Butte, Helena, and Billings.

An amazing view of Montana from the bus

Montana Highway!!!

Montana does indeed have a big sky!

We played a show in Gillette, WY and the next day we had a 500 mile travel day (no show), during which we also visited Devil's Tower, the Crazy Horse Memorial, and Mt. Rushmore - all in one day.

Look! Prairie Dogs!

Crazy Horse Memorial, under construction

Mt. Rushmore

Lincoln

Goat #75

Thursday, September 8, 2005

How I originally became inspired to play the bass

My roommate from my senior year in college played the bass. I played piano and accompanied her on her junior recital. She is one of my permanent lifetime best friends. During college I was so wrapped up in the piano that I never dreamed that I would end up playing bass. I was always fascinated to watch Jennifer playing in all of the school ensembles. It just looked like so much fun! I was so happy that I got to play piano for her recital, and she even gave me a bass lesson. I had no idea at the time that this would eventually lead to me starting lessons for real several years later. It was a strange feeling to be a beginner on a new instrument at that age, and since I was just doing it for fun I did not expect much to come of it. Little did I know that it would eventually take over my life. Thanks Jennifer!

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Carol Kaye inspires me too

For some reason I often think about Carol Kaye when I’m playing this show. She was the first-call electric bassist in LA during the 1960s and early 70s. She played on hundreds of hit songs. Name a song from that era, and it was probably her on the electric bass. I got to know her via her website and then I was lucky enough to take a couple of lessons with her when I first started playing electric bass. She is amazing. Before she took up the bass she was a working guitarist in the jazz clubs around LA. She also toured as the guitarist with a big band in the 1950’s and her husband was on the gig too, playing upright bass. I know that things were not the same at all back then with the touring bands and that we are in no way in the same category, but it is fun while I am on stage to imagine her out there on the road doing the same thing. Her circumstances were so completely different from mine but it is also fairly likely that there are some similarities as well. It is fun to think that I am continuing something or other by being a woman touring with a mostly male big band show all of these years later. I hope she enjoyed the performances when she was on the road as much as I do now. When I am performing this show, it really is the music that makes everything else worthwhile. I wonder if it worked that way for her too. I enjoy imagining that it did. Anyway, check her out at http://www.carolkaye.com/

Monday, September 5, 2005

One of the reasons the "In the Mood" show is so special to me

I have always loved playing this “In the Mood” show that I am currently touring with. It is excellent, very well written, and a real crowd-pleaser. It is very rewarding to perform because it touches so many people on so many different levels.

As a woman on the bandstand playing 1940s music in this day and age, it is particularly moving to me whenever an elderly woman comes up after the show and tells me how she and a number of her friends played in bands during WWII because of the vacancies created by all of the boys going to war. And then inevitably comes the comment about having had to give it up after the men came home and how much she missed playing, and how meaningful it was to see me up there on the bandstand playing “her” music.

That always brings tears to my eyes. And that same conversation has taken place at least five times during the past three years of this tour. I know that most of these women probably weren’t playing with the “big boys” in the major bands during WWII, and neither am I now, but it is still thrilling to realize that my presence on the bandstand is so appreciated by certain members of the audience in such a special way.

This past summer I met a woman during the Victory Day celebration at the “White Cliffs of Dover” My ship just happened to be in docked in Dover on that particular holiday and I went up to the castle to check out the festivities. This woman had worked in the secret tunnels under the castle during WWII and she also played drums in a military band, but she said she was only allowed to do that during the war.

It is a such a shame that so many women were basically forced to stop playing after World War II ended. I told her about my gig playing bass for “In the Mood” and how I always enjoyed meeting fellow musicians, especially those who had been musicians during the era of this show. They are the real deal. And here is my new drummer friend from Dover:

Friday, September 2, 2005

Looking forward to hitting the road....

The fall tour is starting soom and I am thrilled to be able to have a piece of my former life back and to get away from all of the depressing fire-related issues that we have had to deal with. The inventory is finished and all of the receipts are accounted for and all we have to do is have fun touring and planning our new house. And it will be nice to have a steady income for a while because our credit cards are almost completely maxed out. The insurance company has not reimbursed us for much yet, and we really need the money.

This will be our 4th year doing this show. It's a musical revue with singers, dancers, and an on-stage big band. We travel all over the country in a big tour bus, playing mostly one-nighters. It has been great to have a gig like this that we can both do together. The show is excellent and we both love to travel so it is a really nice situation over all.

Last year Doug became the tour manager which is very much a mixed blessing. It pays a little bit extra, but it requires him to spend months ahead of time arranging the hotel and travel details. I've helped him quite a bit with that but he does most of it It's a huge job and it has been a good opportunity for him to learn how to become more organized. It's been nice to be able to plan some sightseeing along the way too.

Unfortunately we don't get to hang out as much as we used to while on tour because of all of his assorted duties. The overall experience of Doug being tour manager is really less than ideal, but I guess we need the money and supposedly that is why he's doing it again. He had been considering not doing it but I think he talked himself back into it while I was out on my cruise gig. I guess it didn't occur to him that if he'd spent the time that he spent working on all of the tour details making mouthpieces instead, we would be significantly better off in the money department. And we had so much more fun during the first two years of the tour than we did last year when he became the tour manager. Maybe this year will be better now that he's gotten accustomed to his various extra duties.

This fall the tour starts in Idaho and we'll be doing shows in Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, South Carolin, North Carolina, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Massachusetts. All between September 12th and November 19th. Should be fun!!!

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

August 2005

When I got home I finished the personal property inventory and finally turned it in on July 28th. While I was away Doug found out what the settlement amount was probably going to be and that it was based on them restoring our house rather than tearing it down and building a new one. Apparently the structure was sufficiently stable in spite of the fact that most of the inside was completely gutted. The insurance company would oversee this process and all we would have to do was wait until they were finished to move back in.

According to Doug, the problem with restoring the house was that we would have to spend an additional $50,000 or more of our own money to bring the basement up to code so that it would pass the various inspections. These code issues really had nothing to do with the fire – they had to do with it being an old house with a cellar that was dug out after the house was already built so it would have been an independent expense for us. Bringing our basement up to code would have been a very tricky and expensive process and Doug thought that it would not be worth it in any way. Actually I would have been happy to get the basement fixed and have the insurance company repair our house for us, but this was not satisfactory to Doug.

The solution seemed to be to take a cash settlement which would amount to 75% of the repair settlement and do things independently. This made me very apprehensive because in the past projects like our addition would last forever and never get finished. Our addition, which we started in 1992 wasn’t even halfway finished. That’s how fast we work. But I went along with it because I didn’t really have much of a choice. Doug said we would have time on the tour to design a really great house that met all of our needs. That cheered me up quite a bit because it meant that we might have an even better time on the tour than usual, with such an exciting project to work on together.

After the fire, we had talked about whether or not we would be able to do the tour again. Doug was kind of over it but he knew that I still enjoyed it. The tour had become slightly more interesting to him last fall when he became tour manager. We stayed in better hotels and had generally more interesting lunch stops and sightseeing trips. But he told me he definitely didn’t want to do the tour manager thing again if they ended up with the same bus driver. Doug did not enjoy working with her. She was kind of difficult. I think he even mentioned this to the producer. So things were up in the air for a while and eventually we decided that it would be good to tour again and have things get somewhat back to normal. He was still having second thoughts about the tour manager gig and I agreed that we would both have more fun if he just went back to playing the show.

Then while I out on the ship he was asked to be tour manager again and in a weak moment he said yes. I was still happy that we were not letting the fire stop us from doing the tour. If that seems naïve, it’s because it was. I was still kind of shell-shocked and I think Doug was too. We definitely made some bad decisions along the way.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Cruising, May - July 2005

My cruise ship gig was delayed for a month because of the fire. I was actually prepared to cancel it completely but Doug convinced me that I should do the last three months of it. It was going to take that long for the insurance company to figure out our situation, apparently. He had to give up a month of touring as well.

What was really nice about this was that we’d both be there together for the first section of it. Way back in January before all of this craziness ensued, I had noticed that a certain big band was going to be performing for the ship’s big band theme cruise and I suggested to Doug that he ask his former student, who used to play with that band, if he could find out if they needed a sub for the cruise. He did and they did, so Doug was there playing in the big band for 10 days starting the same day that I began my 3 month contract as a show band musician. Isn’t that cool?

So we had what amounted to a working vacation together for the beginning of my contract. It was definitely a vacation after everything we’d been through. We were crossing the Atlantic from Fort Lauderdale to Lisbon, so we also had plenty of time to get together and work on house things. We got started on his clothing list and we made some initial drawings of potential floor plan changes that we could make to improve the house. It was great to have all of that time together in such a nice environment. I also had fun sitting in with Doug’s band after I finished my gig each night.

After Doug got off in Lisbon, the ship cruised in the Mediterranean for a month and the rest of the time we were in the British Isles and the Baltic Sea area, which included St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Oslo, the Norwegian Fjords, Stockholm, Tallin, and Gdynia. It was a fabulous itinerary.

I got off at every port and saw as much as I possibly could. I took a lot of pictures. But every spare minute I had while I was onboard was spent working on that g*%@&#% personal property inventory. By the time the three months were up I had all of the items listed that I could possibly think of or visualize in our house. Internet access at sea was very expensive so I had to wait until I got home to do the rest of the pricing research.