Scene Building

Over the past year or so, I’ve realized that my music and our band fit into a multi-tiered system of clubs, promoters, fans and musicians that makes up what most people refer to as "the music scene". Before, I always conceived of a scene composed solely of bands and their "groupies". I was naive to the business aspect of the music business at that point in life, and have come to realize that the everyday club owner has as much to do with the music scene as the next band or musician.

But it is how different bands and musicians coalesce, coexist, break apart and reform inside a given scene that really interests me. Right now I can count approximately twenty-five musicians I know, spread amongst 6 or 7 bands in Denver/Boulder, who are all between the ages of 21-25, went to all the same high schools and universities, and most importantly, have all played with each other in various projects for the last eight years or so. It is great to think that the same kids I grew up with, playing music in basements and garages, are now cutting albums and playing at festivals.

A case in point occurred last week when a good friend and highly visible member of the scene, let's call her Whitters for anonymity's sake, turned 22 years old. It was decided that a birthday party BBQ and backyard jam were in order. Several of the aforementioned 25 musicians were contacted by telephone and before we knew it, most every band in our scene was represented in the backyard, jamming aplenty.

This is a great example of what I refer to as "scene-building", an oft-overlooked aspect of the music business. The fact that Whitters herself is a musician and adept poet demonstrates that creative people tend to gather together. It is the friction between creative concepts in these settings that produce an even more fertile scene for bands to grow up in.

We would have had a party for Whitters the other night, regardless of any "scene" that anyone is involved with. In fact, that is one underlying prerequisite for a scene itself: that its members share more commonalities than just the qualities the scene is identified as having. In other words, we would have been in the backyard drinking beer even if French Moustache Art of the 1970's was our bag.

Unless your favorite pastime in life is being lonely, you gotta love your scene.

Guitar Hero DS

Over the top of my computer I'm watching my first hand-held Guitar Hero game across the room and it looks awesome. The Hero is deep in concentration, tapping her plastic pick against the colored screen at all the right moments. I think this is the second most important rock phenomena to come along in recent times.

The USA Air Guitar Championships (www.usairguitar.com) takes the prize as the most influential (albeit totally non-musical) rock guitar competition of the last decade. Since 1996, contestants have been judged on "airness", among other all-important characteristics.

To me, playing rock guitar can be divided into two major stylistic categories: shredding and wailing.

Shredding involves a high level of technique executed at an oftentimes high speed, made ubiquitous by dudes like Van Halen and those guys in Metallica, perfected by Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson. Wailing focuses less on technicality and more on feel, sometimes with an asthetic that mirrors the way a human voice sounds while singing.

My favorite players: guys like Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Derek Trucks and Trey Anastasio, all have a sense of both of these conceptions. They understand that while ultimately the sound of a voice will connect with human emotions (wailing), there is an undeniable element of showmanship and technique involved with being a guitar player (shredding).

Either Jimi Hendrix was truly a voodoo-child connecting with satan onstage by lighting his Strat on fire, or he understood the production value of the effect it would have on his audience. I think both possibilties are equally likely.

As much as I would enjoy sitting and pondering the idiosyncracies of rock legends all day long (while watching the Olympics), we are busy in Frogs Gone Fishin' promoting our upcoming Denver shows and booking Fall tour, not to mention improving the planned line-up for Mountainside Mardi Gras (brought to you by For/Sure Productions LLC). If you have even more time on your lunch break after reading this blog, please search the iTunes store for our album which just became available.

After playing two gigs last weekend (Boulder and scenic Basalt, CO) and sitting in on bass with our friends Hustle, it's time for a busy week.

Big Sammie/Fall Tour Preview

Frogs Gone Fishin' will play a very special show on September 11 at Dulcinea's in Denver with one of my favorite artists from New Orleans! Big Sam's Funky Nation, consisting of big Sammie on trombone and the rest of his funky nation, will funk you up all night long in a way that only a NOLA band can. Us Frogs will be working on our funky tunes until then... maybe we could have a Big Sam's Froggy Nation Jam, hmmm???

We will be visiting NOLA on our FGF Fall Tour, after Texas and before a run that will stretch up through Tennessee, Virginia, Washington DC around election time, and back to Colorado via the Midwest. Although I already know that our time in New Orleans will be short, I can barely stand the anticipation of absorbing every minute of it. I miss that city and its beautiful people every day.

"Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?
And miss it each night and day?
I know I'm not wrong... this feelings gettin' stronger
The longer, I stay away..
Miss them moss covered vines...the tall sugar pines
Where mockin' birds used to sing
And I'd like to see that lazy Mississippi...hurryin' into spring"

-Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong

Funky Obama

Hello this morning from foggy Boulder, CO. The clouds are misting their way up the flatirons and the result is magical, mysterious and unusual for Colorado weather; CO normally sees more than 300 days of sunshine per year. The natural beauty of mountains in the mist makes me happy that I can spend more than just a week in Denver and the rest of my beautiful state.

Although it will be comfortable for us Frogs to relax in our natural habitat, by no means are we ceasing the flow of booking, performing and rehearsing over the next month before heading out on tour through the South . In addition, I am focusing energy on the final New Orleans talent For/Sure Productions will be contracting to play at Mountainside Mardi Gras (exactly one year from today!). As usual, I can't release specific names... but one of the headliners is a Doctor, the other rhymes with prophylactic... I bet you can figure it out...

I've written about how Colorado inspires me creatively before. Soon, a major influx of minds both creative, political and otherwise will storm the city for the Democratic National Convention. Despite overly expensive lodging and no parking to speak of 17 days before the convention even starts, Denverites are tickled with excitement every time the convention comes up in conversation.

And so it is now that I, Trevor Colin Jones, officially endorse Barack Obama for the next President of the United States (I'm sure he'll be relieved when he reads this..). Considering this blog is about music and occasionally zombies, I have no problem operating on a completely biased, subjective basis. If you don't agree with me, start your own blog! The following is my perspective on American politics for as long as I've been jaded enough to follow them.

Bill Clinton was an excellent leader who got a great BJ accomplished. That's right, the Balance Job Clinton did on the budget in the mid-90's makes me wonder if Bush has ever done a BJ in his life (he now holds the record for biggest budget deficit ever). When Bush took over, some really scary stuff happened in New York and the scary images from that day played over and over on TV until we were collectively scared enough as a country to elect a tyrannical leader. That was our mistake and it wasn't a novel one. Abusive leaders have been coming to power in times of uncertainty for ages. I recently read that Bush was rated #1 worst President ever as determined by Worst President in the History of America Magazine's Worst President Ever Poll.

But now we can move past all that, and with the help of Denver and the DNC we have the chance to become a more progessive, even funkier country. Do I think Obama is funky? Yes. But, do I think that is a reason to vote for him? Yes. If we had a national dance during the Bush administration it would look something like a mix between line dancing, square dancing and a drunken wobble.

Obama can make America funky again.

Summer Tour Wrap-Up

Over the course of the last post-less week, Frogs Gone Fishin' have been wrapping up our Summer Tour '08 in the Midwest. Since playing Dubuque IA, we humped it to Minneapolis (again), Sheboygan WI, through Milwaukee to Chicago where we wrapped up tour two nights ago.

I was very impressed by this part of our country, most of which I had never been to. As I've said before, tour impressions are the most subjective kind because oftentimes, one night is the only time spent in a given place. Nevertheless, we found Midwest cities to be clean, modern and not without a hearty arts scene. In smaller towns, artists and musicians don't carry any stigma of being poor hippies with dirty feet, but are welcomed in some places as relief from the monotony that rural life sometimes produces.

FGF was lucky enough to have several very special Frogs follow us through the last leg of tour, all the way from Iowa to Chicago, even as their families and employers questioned their travel plans. I had not expected to be followed on tour for several years at least and the surprise was wonderful, as many bands depend on a traveling fan base for their very existence as touring musicians.

These tadpoles (some say "Froopies" [Frogs+Groupies], a term I don't necessarily embrace), embody the open spirit of the people living in the smack middle of the US. This spirit as it applies to live music is then indicative of a country-wide willingness to seek out new music and support it.

It has been well documented in United States history that, in times of war or economic stress, live music tends to flourish because the average person needs an escape from the daily grind of making ends meet. I cannot tell you how many times I've talked to a fan after a show, only to have the conversation augment into a wider ranging discussion about the state of our country. If my music is method of healthy escapism from George Bush's America, THAT IS AWESOME BY ME.

I fully believe in music as therapy (that psychology degree is paying off!), whether as a simple escape from the daily grind or a mechanism for literally soothing the cognition of an agitated mind. I'll finish with a story to illustrate my point.

Shortly after starting our last show of tour in Chicago, I noticed a socially awkward individual standing by himself near the stage with a musical instrument case in hand. Now, playing down in New Orleans has taught me to be a musically accepting person, realizing that the benefit of musical inclusion is far greater than the musical discontinuity a random sit-in might bring. Standing in front of the stage, instrument in hand, is the international symbol for "let me get up there". Most bands cringe at the uncertainty of an unknown musician possibly butchering a song in front of people. But, because so many of my musical opportunities have started with an unplanned sit-in, I welcome the risk.

So at set-break, I talked to the ambitious guy with what turned out to be a soprano recorder, and we agreed that John Lennon's "Imagine" would be a good tune for a jam. I don't know if you've ever heard a soprano recorder, but it's timbre is not what you would label as "soothing". The dude joined us for "Imagine" and played what could only be labeled as questionable. Despite his mistakes, our mystery musician received the loudest applause heard all night. He left the stage, and we finished our set.

It was only after the show that I learned that the guy's name was Jonathon. He is a regular bar patron who is also a functioning autistic. Autism is a cognitive condition which severely effects a person's ability to interact socially and verbally with other people. I had noticed Jonathon's lack of eye contact and skittish motions while discussing what song to play and now that someone clued me in to the situation, his mannerisms made complete sense.

Another curious aspect of autism is a need for a high degree of order in the external world. For many autistics, this order occurs in the form of music and sound. I observed that in the silent spaces between songs, Jonathon would become noticeably restless. Yet, when we grooved, he found solace in the regularity and predictable patterns happening in a schema (music) that is easier to perceive and understand than spoken language.

This is why music is truly the "universal language". Jonathon was smiling, happy to have played with us, to have related his way of perceiving the world to the band and everyone else in the bar. The audience, knowledgeable about Jonathon's situation, rewarded us with applause for being musically open.

This type of open musicianship is becoming increasingly rare, especially in genres like jazz, where a higher degree of technicality is needed for jamming. It is ironic that jazz has devolved into an elitist art form. It was the open jam sessions at places like Milton's Playhouse in New York that spawned the careers of artists like Miles Davis.

I want to focus my energy away from any sort of negative attitude on stage. If someone botches a section, the least professional thing anyone could do is say "that's the worst we've ever screwed that up..", especially in earshot of the audience!

I realize I grow long and I said I'd end this post already, but I will do so with a written quote handed to me on a napkin by an audience member at the same show:

"dear Frogs, the good shit never comes easy".... I'm going to remember that.