A History of Musicianship (part 1)

Oh hi blogosphere, long time no see.

Probably you're reading this via a link on my Facebook page, in which case it's redundant to tell you I've composed and a score to a production of Titus Andronicus, and I've played it as a live accompaniment to the production four times now (with two more performances to go in this iteration of the production). But I'm taking a moment to frame that anyway, because that's what I'm writing about.

After tonight's show, I had multiple people come up to me and say something to the effect of "the music was great, I couldn't have conceived of the production without it" which means a lot to me, because the majority of the work that happened in constructing the show (which if you don't know, used a lot of devised theater techniques in the tradition of Lecoq, which is this French movement theater practice) took place before I was involved, and most of my compositions are a direct response to the work I encountered when I entered rehearsals.

Not all of it, if I remember correctly some percussion motifs were in place, and one of the central themes I wrote after I knew the production was looking for a music director. In fact, although I was familiar with the major details (the hands getting cut off, the people being baked into pies, etc) I'd never fully encountered Titus as a text until I saw a production last summer. When I saw the director post on Facebook that he was looking for someone to do music, my mind began whirring with all the potential dissonant and angular themes that would go along with a play about madness, dissonance and angularity being two themes I take a lot of inspiration from in my composing, I put my courage to it's sticking place, and responded "yes, me, I want to do it".

And now about a month later, here I am!

It's arguably the best work I've done as a musician (or at least the work I'm proudest of) but then when I think that, I think back on my whole history as a musician, and I want to write a blog post about it, so here we go.

I come from a pretty musical family, my father is a very accomplished classical pianist from when he was younger, my older brother was a flautist and a very gifted singer, my maternal uncle played guitar and sang in country bands all across the South, and for much of my life I felt like I had the potential for that same gift, I just never knew where or how to express it. The piano never spoke to me directly (it still doesn't, although someday I'd like to become proficient at it), and when the opportunity arose to learn a band or orchestral instrument in elementary school, I kind of shrugged. My parents bought a damaged classical guitar for me from a garage sale when I was in middle school, I took some lessons, but it never stayed in tune and it was hard for me to play at the time, so I didn't stick with it.

But at the same time, I knew music lived inside me. At one point, I thought I'd learn the sitar (which I'd still really like to do someday, it's such a beautiful instrument). I remember my mom describing the role my father's piano playing played in their courtship and thinking "ok so yeah to get a girl I should really learn an instrument". I vividly remember this one dream I had about an other worldly spherical lute, like a combination of a stringed instrument and a globe that didn't exist in real life, but in that dream I could play it proficiently. I've never told anyone about that before.

When I was in high school, my Mom bought me a Fender Stratocaster. Again, it didn't stick like it could have, and it gathered dust in my room. Around this time though, I was becoming closer to the burn out/musician crowd at my high school, to be fair not all of them were burn outs, and for a while I was the singer in my friend's goofy metal band, which we called The Devil's Agents.

I was deeply depressed about being stuck in high school (and being too awkward to get a girlfriend, and various other things), and I think that combined with the other members getting into other stuff, along with my penchant to turn everything into satire (even then I was a natural comedian/clown) which I don't think they were crazy about, lead to the band breaking up without ever officially breaking up.

That following summer between junior and senior year, several things happened. I started playing Guitar Hero, a lot. Like, I got really good at Guitar Hero. I could play all the songs on expert. I loaned my Stratocaster to my dear burnout friend Jason, and he was going to get it set up and give it back to me. He may have pawned it. He may have taken it to get set up, but then never picked it up. I'll never know. He died of a heroin overdose several months later.

Needless to say, what was already a state of depression deepened. I wrote a lot of poetry. Most of that was bad, some of it was passable. I asked for another electric guitar, my family, god bless 'em, bought me one, that I still own and play when I go home to Boston.

I'd realized at some point, "well shit, if I spent this much time learning the guitar as I have getting good at this guitar based video game, I'd probably be like, good at real guitar", so that's what I did. That year for Christmas I asked for some recording equipment, and I started recording weird ambient songs inspired by all the avant garde/electric Miles Davis and Pink Floyd I was listening to (honestly it was mostly Pink Floyd, now that I've been playing for ten years I can actually cite Miles as an influence but back then it was more an inspiration than anything you'd pick out in my music).

Jason also used to talk about how awesome it would be if we could be in a band together, we talked a lot about starting a technical death metal band (did I mention at the time I was also into technical death metal? I was).

But he died before we could do any of that.

There's more to this story, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'm going to publish this and call it Part 1 of my ten year history with the guitar (amongst other things), tune in next time for part 2 of however many parts it takes for me to be satisfied!

Walking back into the real world: Post Shakes and Co Diary Part 2

I find myself overwhelmed with thoughts and feelings every time I go to write in this blog since leaving Shakespeare and Company five days ago. It feels like months have gone by and not days, like I've been transported to a different dimension with nothing to show for it but an endless sea of memories.

Gah, and then it's metaphors like that being the only description for the experience that frustrate me even furher! "An endless sea of memories"?! While I was doing the intensive, the single greatest boundary to my "work" or I guess the most significant facet is my intense self judgement. A big part of the Shakespeare and Company training process for me (and in general, there I'll say it) is becoming aware of my judgements of myself and by extension others. In order to facilitate that, they make really, really specific use of language. In writing this blog I also try to make specific use of language. As a poet as well. And very often I find myself judging the "success" of that specificity in my writing. Was I able to clearly convey the thought of how overwhelmed I am by the Shakes and Co intensive experience? I'm fighting against the instinct when I find myself going for an image like "an endless sea of memories" (it's not a very creative image) to just stop right where I am, and go back to Facebook.

But I owe it to myself to persevere and do my best to write my truth to whatever I'm feeling as best as I can. In writing that sentence, I struggle with the earnestness of that statement, and it's obvious quality. But it's earnest and obvious because it's truthful, and inevitably if something feels overly earnest and obvious it must be because it's TRUE.

This self judgement I've been trying so hard to observe and understand no doubt stems from all kinds of sources. One I spent a lot of time working on while at Shakespeare and Company was my child hood. I've struggled a lot with my body image in my life, and with not liking the way I look. But I remember a time when I was very young when I was with my friends in a park in Berekeley California and I took my shirt off in public completely free of fears of judgement. After moving to Massachusetts, and first being bullied over my weight, I started judging my body as being ugly, or a source of shame.

Oh christ but who gives a shit? So I was intermittently alienated and made fun of as a kid, it's affected the person I am today, why do I need to write multiple paragraphs about it? Quoth the voices of judgement in my head.

Long story short, with the support of a lot of people, friends and teachers and teachers who are now friends, I made a lot of progress on a lot of stuff. In particular, I was really able to carry forward all the movement work I've been doing in intermittent starts and stops, and discovered a whole new path of development in Linklater voice training, which I hope to continue as well as the movement work (I've found a Linklater teacher and a dance class, I just need to follow up on them).

Gosh there's so so much I want to blog about, I feel it pouring out of my pores. Coming back into the real world has been an adjustment. Something about spending a month surrounded by incredible people with whom I share a common love of the craft of acting and in so many other ways connected with as deeply as I've ever felt connected to anyone in my life has made it very difficult to incorporate the experience into my daily routine again without emphasizing the reality that I may and not (and in the cases of some) will not ever see those people who I came to love and care for so deeply ever again in my life. True statement! But how true it is will be up to me to decide. And how much of the work I did in that workshop, not just the work on my own instrument but on my life as a piece of art (something one of my acting teachers talked about which is now beginning to resonate with me as I write this) is up to me to decide.

Part of that needs to take the form of this blog, and through writing bringing all or as many of the parts of my artistic life as possible into one medium. One of the things I've been taking a great deal of comfort with in staving off the melancholy... no that's a bad choice of words, in expressing everything I've been feeling has been through my guitar. Indeed being reunited with my electric guitar and having the time again to practice has been one of the great joys of returning back to regular life. Something my teachers talked about was the ability of iambic pentameter to contain any possible emotion an actor could channel into Shakespeare text (apologies if that doesn't make sense, I'm moving on, this has been my briefly allowed moment of self judgement) and I believe the same could be said of the Blues, the musical form. Mind you for me, the blues encapsulates all of the creole music founded in the union of African and European influences which have taken place in the context of American music, and it's the feeling I have when I play that music on my guitar. Especially my electric guitar. I think if I could be anything in the world other than an actor, it would be an electric blues guitar player (and maybe singer but I'd settle for being Jeff Beck and not Eric Clapton). When I connect to my guitar, any emotion I could ever feel becomes accessible and expressible through my music. It's an incredible feeling, and something that's been incredibly pivotal in maintaining my mental health during this difficult time, as it has been during other difficult times and will no doubt continue to be in the future.

The same is true of writing. And the feeling I get knowing you read this. The hope that some part of you understands what I'm talking about, and hopefully if you're one of my fellow participants encountering it that it helps you in some way too. Until we meet again!

Theatricaling

Oh my... so! Let's blog some shit! Yeah!

What have I been doing? Uncle Vanya, that's what, five times a week for the past four weeks, that's how much. After tonight's show, a young guy introduced himself to me, and complimenting my guitar playing, asked "so how is doing this show for you? Stressful?" and I said "stressful? Shit no. I hang out, play some guitar, chill out back stage, do my three lines, play some more guitar, hang out some more, do a few cues off stage and then have a beer." And that's the way life should be. My friend Anne, who's playing Nanny, said to me the other night "you're probably ready to play a bigger role now, right?" And thinking about it, I've made so many little discoveries with the music from night to night, and with my few little interactions on stage, as "small" as my part has been I've got nothing to complain about. Especially with my guitar playing... I've gotten to be so much better of a musician from this show. There's something very pure and simple about jamming out on a few russian folk tunes for thirty minutes every night, solo on stage. You really do develop a different level of chops playing in front of people, which despite the fact that I've been playing since I was 17 (which is what, six or seven years now?) I haven't done that much of in my guitar playing career. So that's been really satisfying. And hearing myself develop and change how I approach the music night after night, finding new nuances, new variations, new ideas in these simple melodies. Again, totally solo. And in front of crowds of thirty people, which forces you to focus and when an idea gets tired move on from it because even though it's a very private moment on stage, ultimately I'm performing for a room full of people. Among other things, I hope it's really solidified my confidence as a musician. As an actor, I have no problem doing my thing in front of people because that's what it's all about. But like I said, I haven't done a lot of live music performance before this and the times in the past when I had I used to get surprisingly nervous, believe it or not. But I think I have my sea legs under me. And it helps I played these tunes for the entire duration of the last run of the show, and now coming back to them and playing them for four more weeks I really know them in and out.

And I've discovered so many new things in the process about playing the classical guitar, for the first three weeks of the run completely with my fingers, a technique I've become light years more comfortable with (again that thing of chops from playing in front of people) and now this week I've started bringing my very anachronistic plastic, bright red "jazz" style guitar pick on stage with me (jazz style in this case refers to the dimensions of the pick which are very small and subsequently make it ideal for the kind of precise technical stuff you'd be doing in a jazz setting, that's it) and discovering brand new things in the process.

So that's all been very fun. Don't tell the cast, but I've been meaning to sit down and record all of this music at home to make a nice CD to give everyone as a memento of our experience. Oh wait probably some of my cast will read this... well don't tell those other people! Or do, and then they'll be expecting it and I'll be forced to put up or shut up and get it done this week because only five more shows to go, oh my god!

In other news, I've begun auditioning for things as opportunities that fit within my schedule have been springing up. In between the relatively close proximity of this show with Rosencratz and Guildenstern and that show with Three Sisters, I haven't been able to audition for a lot of things I would have liked to have gone out for, but oh well. And now I'm doing the winter intensive at Shakespeare and Company, which is very, very exciting, but limits even further what I'm able to audition for. But, now things are coming down the pipeline that don't start rehearsing until February, and as they trickle through Stagesource I've been responding. What are they? I don't feel like saying, because two of them I didn't get and the third isn't until next weekend and I don't want to go and jinx it!

Other than that, with Uncle Vanya wrapping up I can look forward to getting out and seeing more of the local theatre (with a Boston accent, theatuh)! This afternoon, I made it out to 44 Plays for 44 Presidents from Bad Habit Productions and directed by my buddy, Jeff Mosser! Who I interviewed about it! So I was pretty excited, because the last show I saw from Bad Habit in this same space, Much Ado About Nothing With A Twist was awesome so I'm a fan of the company and of Jeff. How was it?Well, I can't be critically distant because it's Jeff, but I liked it! It brought up some really interesting questions about how we interpret history and also the darker epochs that reveal themselves of colonial aggression, genocide, racism and war that make up the fabric of American history. I mean, have you ever thought that essentially the entire political climate beginning from the decision to allow slavery to be abolished in the North and continue in the South was one big build up to the Civil War? One of the most violent conflicts in world history up that point? Have you? Well I did after seeing this show! Oh and it was very funny and entertaining. So I recommend checking it out! Here's a tagline for Bad Habit, "Both fun and thought provoking, 44 Plays for 44 Presidents is a People's HILARIOUS History of the United States!" There you go! Use it, I dare you.

Getting There!

Swimming in the Shallows is swimming along towards our opening March 8th... holy crap that's soon! Well, it's not too soon, because I think the show has been in really great shape. This week for me was about tying my performance down to Earth, to the reality of the character's situations and really listening to my fellow actors. I think my best strongest assest as a performer is the energy I bring on stage, I'm full of it! This works well for a lot of my roles, it helps me do what I do comedically and when I can really focus and harness it, I think it makes me particularly well suited for certain kinds of film roles (when Crooked Arrows comes out, you'll see what I mean). Sometimes this can get in out of hand, especially in a fast paced show like this one, with a heightened reality and heightened language. At times it's almost reminiscent of my old friend, the farce. But it's not! And I realized that was the mistake I had been making, was to treat this material as if it were out sized and non realistic... which it is, to a point, but the characters don't know that. Nick doesn't think it's strange that he would be in love with a shark, to him it's completely a part of his world. And this is true of everything he says to the characters, so I've been thinking of each moment where my energy had been getting out of hand, and sort of dying it down to the ground, "grounding it", so to speak.

And I think it's been working! I think. My director, Scott, sent me some notes on some sections where the connection to the situation and to the characters can be stronger so my work this week will be to make those connections really as solid as they can be. And now that we're all off book and the show is picking up steam, really running it and polishing it and all that good stuff. Like I said, the show is in a really great place, having been in as many shows as I've been in, I feel pretty competent about that.

Another breakthrough from this week, my fellow actor playing the Shark and I crossed over into actually doing our same sex kiss. And you know what? It's not that big of a deal! I mean, of course it never was, but hey this stuff can be pretty hard and awkward. I'm glad we didn't rush into doing it, because it feels more meaningful and truthful now that we've had time to develop the characters and generally get to know one another. I think it's going to be a great, truthful, touching moment. Exciting!

In other news, I've contracted the services of a monologue coach and I've been thinking about what pieces to start working on for potential usage in Stagesource and also for other auditions that are coming up. What auditions, you ask? Well today I auditioned for Bye Bye Liver: The Boston Drinking Play. It sounds like it comes in a mold similar to a Fishnet, Flanagan's Wake, you know Shear Madness knock offs but with more a sketch element and less of a narrative through line. I thought it went well! I'm pretty good at sketch stuff, and I read for a drag queen, which is strangely enough one of my strong suits... moving on, the auditions on the horizon are The Three Sisters at Footlight Club, directed by Caitlin Lowans who's directing the Romeo and Juliet I blogged about auditioning for in Stoneham. Three Sisters is one of my favorite plays, since it's by Chekov and he's probably my favorite play write. It also has one of my favorite roles of Chekov's, one which is on my sort of actor's bucket list of roles to play at some point in my career, Tuzenbach. If you've read Three Sisters, you know what I'm talking about. The other big audition is Coriolanus with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. This will be second time auditioning for CSC, I have no particular reason to expect that my audition will warrant a callback or what have you. But hey it's worth a try! If nothing else, I can try and get my pieces down to two minutes and make it a test run for Stagesource.

In other, more guitar related news, I've been dabbling again in recording. A few weeks ago I bought a new recording toy, a Shure X2U XLR to USB signal adaptor. I think it sounds pretty good, technical mumbo jumba-what aside. Give it a listen, if you'd like.

Guitar Post

I've been playing guitar a lot lately. It's funny how these things happen. Guitar took on a really important role in my life from when I first started, and later started taking lessons getting more serious but I started finding real success of a kind with acting it took a back seat, and that frustrated me a little, that I couldn't keep taking it to the next level in the way I knew I could if I really focused. Of course, I've never set out to be a professional musician, music has always been about catharsis for me, and it continues to serve that role. It's always come in handy in my theatrical life, like when I played arrangements of the RC Peaslee score to Marat/Sade on my guitar which elevated my role from a very minor ensemble member to something more vital and it felt fantastic to be creative on stage in that way. A similar thing has happened with Uncle Vanya, the director saw an opportunity with my guitar skills, first to have me instruct my cast mate who needed to learn to play for the show and then use my musical ability as atmosphere. So, in the course of doing that show, I've been a lot of guitar. Mainly Russian sounding classical guitar, a couple of pieces the sound designer picked out and my guitar teacher helped me arrange and some improvisation on my part. It's been a cool experience, the whole thing. I've been playing mainly acoustic guitar, but today I picked up my electric and got the microphone directed at my amp and into Garageband and just noodled out this jam without thinking too much about it (which was the point of the exercise, to capture a spontaneous moment of music). I was feeling a blues, but a happy one. So there's plenty of major pentatonics in with the minor, and some wonky, jazzy, diminished stuff. Check it out, this is where I'm at.

Guitar Post

I had a dentist's appointment this afternoon, and it so happens my dentist is in Kenmore and before heading over there I had a significant amount of time to kill... Guitar Center time! For a musician, well I guess for a guitarist, there is a kid in a candy store quality to hanging out at Guitar Center. All those instruments and amps and toys to play with! Previously I hadn't been able to find the newly relocated GC and settled for Daddy's Junky Music by Berklee, where I greatly enjoyed playing a Godin archtop guitar, something about that guitar really came alive in my hands. Conversely, a Godin single bridge humbucker "shreddy" guitar really didn't do anything for me after well, shredding on it for 30 seconds. Today I really enjoyed a Fender Telecaster through a Fender Amp, I think if I were to get a new guitar I'd get a tele. There is a real beauty and versatility in the simplicity of those instruments, I think.

I find as of late I have less and less mental space for guitar, although it goes up and down. I know that if I really focused on the instrument and the study of music there is another level I could reach, but I'm frankly kind of too lazy, and too concerned with bringing my acting further. It's something I've written about in other spaces. Another contributing factor has been my inability to forge long lasting collaborations with other musicians, like say... a band, which is like being in a second relationship with no sexual intercourse but requiring a great deal of effort, and which doesn't work if all parties don't contribute.

Maybe someday I'll have the time to achieve what I want to on my instrument. I guess it's kind of a "first world problem", a lot of people are truly passionate about music but can't advance past a certain point. I can't really foresee music for me as anything other than a highly enjoyable hobby and a useful special skill. Someday I'd kind of like to be one of those people who are proficient at guitar, bass, drums and piano. Now THAT would take some doing on my part, as I'm not so naturally musically talented as to be immediately proficient at all those.

I've been downloading a lot more music now that I have a new computer with a big empty hard drive. Right now I'm listening to some pretty tasty jazz fusion from John Mclaughlin. Then again I find his newer stuff kind of sterile. I got some Grant Green as well, which is not sterile and some Derek Trucks. Lots of guitar music. And that's what this post has been about.