“get out of town” tour…
October 4, 2010Time to do a little blog about my “get out of town” tour 2010…My tour is with pianist John Roney and cellists Dominic Painchaud and Bryan Holt who are alternating on this tour. One luxury is having Gorm Damborg (co-producer of my CD “out of town”) act as our driver and general road manager and supporter in every way.
At this moment we are driving from Toronto back to Montreal for our performance at The Upstairs Club tonight. It is a perfect autumn day with Ontario displaying it’s famous fall colors both breath-taking and awe inspiring. It’s a bit more awe-inspiring on a sunny day such as this is compared to a few days ago when, while we drove from Quebec City to Montreal and on to Toronto we were immersed in heavy rains that left the colors foggy in the background while more importantly we kept our attention on the highway conditions. Must arrive safe and sound! So, perhaps we’ll have some nice days in Montreal now which would be grand because we have a few days to explore that lovely city before heading to Ottawa later in the week.
My experience thus far on this tour is that one must be prepared for heavy traffic during rush hour in large cities and be prepared to live out of a suitcase (of course!) and to sit in a van for long periods of time since these cities are at quite a distance from each other. That is just the traveling part and certainly any touring musicians whether on a small independent scale (me!) or big time artists traveling the world will encounter challenges that come with traveling: delays, detours, weather, bad coffee, lack of sleep, lack of sleep (yes, I typed that twice!). Another observation so far is that it is ALL about the music in the end, it is (and can only be) about the wonderful experience of creating music each night because the other things really are quite a challenge to embrace positively all the time. Perhaps that is different for big name artists who have the “machine” behind them: the agent, the manager, the record label etc. I don’t know if I am correct about that but perhaps I am?
In any event after all the many many hours of trying to arrange a tour that is practical and suitable for presenters and for the musicians, there still remains the promotion of appearances in each city, the reaching out to the population to let them know that you are coming to their city or town to perform. How can they come if they don’t know about it? I have a little assistance on this tour in that regard but much of that “reaching out” is what I am doing on my own. In the weeks and months leading up to this tour, there have been disappointments and a double booking and a few empty dates to fill that left me scrambling but I do believe it will pay off, meaning all the scrambling and reaching out as time-consuming as it has been, the end result will hopefully be some nice sized audiences coming to hear us perform.
As I say it it ALL about the music. No matter how tired I become (and this is only the 1st part of the tour!) when I do being singing each night, my energy and joy and inspiration return and that is because of the wonderful songs I get to sing and, because of the incredible musicianship of my pianist for this tour: John Roney and both of the cellists who are alternating on this tour: Dominic Painchaud and Bryan Holt. My convictions about choosing the cello as the rhythm section instrument to add in place of the acoustic bass for this project have proven to be correct. The cello is not a bass and yet it plays the role of the bass in many cases not simply because it is playing the lower timbres but becaue it is walking bass lines like a bassist would do and then it also becomes a melodic instrument with the arco method of playing, bow on string, legato, smooth and direct lines. The cello for me has always been one of the most emotional sounding instruments and by that I mean that it causes me to feel a deep emotion of elation or sensitivity or sorrow. This is a good thing so long as it doesn’t make me feel a sorrow so deep that my voice is affected or swept by the emotion.
Pianist John Roney has played with string quartets quite a bit and is very musically adept at making certain suggestions to each of the cellists whereby no one is “walking on the other person” musically speaking.
So at this point of my “Get Out Of Town” tour, I’d have to say I feel a combination of fear of the unknown regarding who might be there to hear us in each city plus I have a feeling of gratitude due to the fact that I have such great music to sing with musicians willing to go on this journey with me. Since we are a jazz ensemble the music changes every night, even if the songs we present are the same, the end result always changes.
My analogy for this is as follows: baking cookies with a familiar recipe can still result in very different cookies each time depending on what else you decide to add in: chocolate pecans, etc. Playing these songs each night there is the unknown of what will be played in the solos, the unknown of what might take place harmonically or rhythmically if we are each listening carefully and together allowing the tune to grow and change and exist as a new creation each time. Of course some of the ingredients remain intact but there is always a freedom to improvise witih the recipe and improvising with a recipe is one of my favorite things to do.
Now I will fnish my writing and go back to viewing Ontario’s gorgeous color scheme on this sunny October day…
