Sunday night I went to Eddie’s Attic to see Sue Witty, Sonia Tetlow and Melanie Hammet play a writers-in-the-round.
So, lately I have been what I have been claiming I would try to be for the past, oh… 5 years or so. I have been getting out of the house and going to see shows and basically getting myself out there. Not just playing my own shows but going to support friends and meeting other musicians. Granted, my current job status gives me a lot more freedom to go out a lot (well, as long as it’s cheap), but also I have been fighting my own tendency to by painfully, pathologically shy. But since starting to get out lately I have felt like an actual part of the city’s music scene, something I’ve never felt before. I get recognized by other musicians, and that’s really something to me.
That this is an industry that lives and dies on the relationship doesn’t seem to be a disputable point. Here’s an example: Melanie Hammet. Just after I quit the band I played a show with Tammy Fowler at Eddie’s. We had played before. Anyway, she got a show at this place called Pine Lake, a community near Decatur that is sort of a nexus of a number of singer-songwriters and asked me to play there with her. I did, I was newly solo and needed shows. Melanie Hammet runs these shows and so I met her there at the show. Before the show she had asked her friend Rob Gal (my producer, and at the time we were recording Slumberland) if he knew who I was. I played the show, talked to Melanie. Linda Bolley (frequently mentioned in this journal, drummer for Gentle Readers) was at the show, saw me, bought my CD. Months later I got an email from Gentle Readers asking if I wanted to open their CD release party, Linda having played them the CD, as well. That show turned into a casual relationship with the band, eventually leading to Linda nearly playing in my band, singing with them at the Susi French Connection show, and the upcoming show I have with my band at Eddie’s on the 3rd.
I could carry this path further, but I think you get the idea.
Even so, walking into the club I began to feel a little like a stalker, because Rob and Becky and a number of other people I’ve been running into a lot lately were there. The doorman, who I know I’ve met before, maybe once, recognized me, called me by name and let me go on in (Sue had put me on the guest list). They were issuing numbers at the door to let people in, so I felt very odd. Linda was there, too. I also talked to Melanie after the show, who I haven’t seen since the Pine Lake show (that’s 2 years ago). She had apparently been to Rob’s studio recently and he had played some songs from my CD for her. She mentioned “Jeff Lynne” first, the third person who mentioned it to me that night. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s playing that one, actually, since it really does showcase his skill as a producer, managing to nail the ELO sound like that. Anyway, she was very complementary about the songs she heard, and also about the working relationship Rob and I have, the music that is coming out of that collaboration. She referred to it as “seamless.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that’s because it’s all Rob; I just bring my songs to him. But I didn’t. My self-deprecating inner-child was denied.