I just returned from playing a festival in Hue, Vietnam, with a four-piece band that my husband and I created. In the past year, rather than pursue commercial venues, I have limited myself to playing fundraisers and private performances such as hospitals and libraries. There are many of us who have noticed that live music doesn’t seem to have the allure that it once had. I get much more satisfaction from playing what I want, when I want, than pushing myself on patrons of coffee shops who just want the WiFi and a noisy frappuccino machine as the soundtrack. Did I mention I also have a day job?
My first few projects were with drummers and the mix time for drums is extensive. I finally decided not to use drums – not to save money but because my vocals sound better without them. It was a hard decision to make because the basic sound most people look for is rock. Rock has to have drums but building your sound around a full drum kit (live or in a studio) forces you to process everything differently. You need a bigger budget for recording, you need a more powerful sound system for live performances, you need a bigger room for gigs, which means larger audiences, which means selling more alcohol, which means playing a type of music that is conducive to drinking or dancing. After many years, I finally got rid of the drums. When people ask, I say “I took all the testosterone out of my music”. What I mean by that is that it’s finally ALL me and what I’m left with is a format that projects me and my message much better than trying to create a more standard Drum/Bass/Guitar sound. I’m also not trying to impress anyone anymore.
My CD has a singer-songwriter acoustic format, utilizing keyboard as the basic sound. I started this series of theme based topical songs 3 years ago and each project is a commentary on a subject. The first in 2008 is called “Empty Boots: Commentaries on War and Country”, the second in 2009 is a collection of Beatles songs called “We Can Work It Out: Commentaries On the Beatles”, the third one now in 2010 is “Hey Joan: Commentaries On Her”. The next project coming up in the Spring of 2011 is “Private Artist: Commentaries On Self”. I do all the tracks, including the (keyboard) bass parts and also flute on some tracks. I have been using a studio in Chicago called “Studio Chicago” for the past 6 years but I come into the studio with all of my midi tracks ready to import into the board so that I can add the vocals and flute live in the studio. I then do all of the mixing there. My trusty engineer is Chuck Kawal. He knows exactly what I’m going to say before I even say it. Even though I bring in charts, he is so musical that he generally just follows the lyric sheet.
I started taking piano lessons in the 3rd grade and always hated it. I picked up the flute on my own in the 5th grade so that I could play in the school bands. I played guitar (like everyone else did!) and played with a women’s band in Chicago in 1973 but later went back to playing keyboards and flute with a top 40 band. Then, at the age of 24, I started playing the tenor sax, as I decided it would be deemed less “feminine”. The sexism out there is intense, suffocating and although it might be invisible to the naked eye, it’s rampant. It’s absolutely crushing. However, if you mention it or talk about it, no one will believe you. With music, people liking you or calling you for a gig is so subjective that it’s hard to say it’s discrimination when you don’t succeed. Part of the problem is that it’s still a buddy system…and ALL the buddies are MEN. If women in the current generation say that they have not found this to be true, then I am happy to think that things have changed.
I attended Berklee College of Music in Boston as a keyboard player but wasn’t good enough on sax to switch my major, so I joined the Army Band program as a sax player in 1978. I finally went back to playing just the piano and flute, along with singing a few years ago.
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great post, thanks for sharing