Quite A Summer

This post is overdue. Summer has been dunzo for three weeks now, and it's only really because I'm sitting at my computer and my feet are cold that I've just now really clued in. But with such a realization comes an opportunity to give a backward glance to the music and music-related activities that kept me busy over the weeks of summer.

I toured with a country-singer from Vancouver named Jessie Farrell, playing the bass (as my large, impossible-to-ignore website header makes clear) and singing backup vocals. Behind the scenes I like to help with arranging the tunes, which the five of us do largely as a group at rehearsals. Luckily, I tend to not really care about peoples' feelings when it comes to trying to make the show better, so the tweaking process has evolved so that when someone is doing something that I don't think sounds good I just bring it up and we fix it. It's not because I'm flawless - that's ridiculous - it's because Jessie, and Jesse Tucker (the guitarist, co-songwriter, and hobnobbing gadabout) are more than capable of envisioning and actualizing the larger arc of the songs and the show. This is where decisions are made to create a mood and a feeling, and to hopefully leave an audience satisfied and glad they showed up. Kylee, the backup singer and acoustic guitarist in the band is seasoned and skilled to the extent that she memorizes new lyrics after hearing them once or twice and instantly creates harmonies to compliment Jessie's melodies. Jesse Godin, drummer, has emerged as the guy in charge of the shows' pacing, guiding the band through the transitions between songs and holding the reins over the course of the set.

These are all generalizations. Each of us does more than I've said so far, but it's safe to say that we each have our areas of expertise, we each have unique sensitivities to different aspects of the music, and we each contribute to varying degrees at various moments. This process of building the songs and the show has been happening for a couple years now, but this was the summer when the music started to arrive at, in my opinion, some level of maturity. For me, I think it's a case where the show gets easier and more enjoyable - not that it wasn't before, but there is a feeling of comfort when you're able to trust, anticipate, and respond to the stuff that the band is playing, and when you're able to let muscle-memory take over just a little so that you can look around at the crowd and the band and actually listen to instruments other than your own. I know from past experiences that this is something that mostly comes from playing a lot, and I suppose that's what Jessie and her band did a lot of this summer.

I'm trying to keep in mind that this isn't an endpoint, or even a place to have a nice little rest and to coast or to go through the motions. It's the setting of a new standard and a new starting point for getting better individually and collectively. We have a ways to go before we're in the same league as a band like Emerson Drive or Johnny Reid (if we're sticking to comparisons within the same musical genre). Likewise, this idea isn't the product of an unrealistically zealous commitment to any single project -- for me it is about doing work I can be proud of, whether it's with country music or jazz or Eurotrance Prague-rock. Playing is music is more fun when you can feel like you're getting better at it. This summer, the Jessie Farrell band got a bit better. We played shows in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. Some shows were short, some were long (and all of them strangely coincided with local thunderstorms, which was weird). We gained some recognition from fans and recognition from our peers, which are the two best kinds of carrots-on-sticks to hold in front of our noses as we carry on into the fall.

Comments

[Pasquale]

I think it's neato raise the idea of the physiological discoveries you make as things become less mechanical and more natural to bash out as you progress as an artist!

It sounds corny, but when you are one with whatever you are making - be it music or even drawing, you can really enjoy the experience.

P.S. I enjoy the term "hobnobbing gadabout".

[Lisa]

the lead up to CCMA's was a long and dusty road. *cough* i'm glad you finally got some limelight. you deserve it. even if your hair looked a bit like a lemon meringue pie.