It's been a strange week, for sure. I spent a couple of hours Wednesday, the 24th, with my bro in a totally cool studio in Costa Mesa. It's a converted storage/warehouse space that also has a loft apartment, and is packed with all kinds of musical kitsch decor. I wish I'd taken my camera with me. The guy whose studio we were in is Corey -- a bit unusual at first, but quite brilliant. Visually he reminds me of a cross between Eddie Haskell of "Leave it to Beaver" and Ryan Stiles of "Whose Line is it Anyway." He wears really cool sweaters.
Guitarist Johnny Wickersham of Social Distortion was there (old OC pal of Tony's.) Johnny and I once hung out unceremoniously at my mom's and watched the Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn movie "Charade." That was ages ago. In 2003 I ran into him at Ruby's Diner at LAX before my flight to New Jersey. We chatted over our burgers. He's a very pleasant and friendly individual and if he wasn't genuinely interested in conversing with me, well, he's a great actor, and I appreciate that a lot.
The guys chatted about guitars: what was their first, trying out a few from Corey's collection, which guitar was used on what song, etc. Tony openly admired Johnny's cool striped shirt (seen photo) and by now may have already gone to get one for himself at a popular SoCal chain store not found in Austin, so not everyone will be wearing them! Yah! Rockers talking about fashion!
The mat in the bathroom was shaped like a guitar pick. The bathroom walls were adorned with pages from men's magazines....I tried not to touch much of anything in there. Actually, for all the stuff crammed into the entire unit it was quite tidy and organized. Everything had it's place. Johnny and I took a gander at the loft apartment and were amazed at the size of the living space and wondered how in the hell anybody got that full sized refridgerator up that steep stairway!
Dayna Lane, a singer/songwriter from HB stopped by to lend her voice to back-ground vocals AND SHE BROUGHT BROWNIES!!! Since Dayna got to the studio at the last minute we didn't get to do much more than chat together while Tony and Corey worked out his bass-line, but Dayna's a real pistol! (in fact, you can find her profile at MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/daynalane) Go to her profile and listen to her music! Dayna's moving to Nashville next week cuz she got signed by a label...yay!
We worked on a new Tony-song called "Hold Me Up," and I spent about 45 minutes in the booth with my violin trying to come up with something that I didn't think sucked...everyone else thought it was beautiful, but I've always been my own worst critic. Tony came back with a couple of bars he wanted for the bridge and that I managed to pull off beautifully. Give me a line and I'll give it back just how you want it, but god help us all if I have to improvise on the spot! I would have preferred I'd been given a night to go home and write a part, but that's not how it's done in the BIZ, I'm told. As it turned out I didn't go back again at all.
Some kind of bizarre dizziness and blinding migraine thingy came over me on Saturday so I've been trying to get over that all week. On Tuesday I stayed home from work completely, fighting a severe case of the spins. Tony's back in Austin, we're upgrading the electrical in our house, and life goes on.
Can't wait to hear the final result!
My Trusted MOGs
i practice my improv skills (or lack of) by putting music on the stereo that is similar to what i wold need to play with, and noodling around with that. i'm pretty much learning to play iprov dub guitar by throwing on some sly and robbie and just messing around until something sounds appropriate. you get a feel for which styles of music use which keys and such too. good luck. great story! mmmmm, brownies....