The Morning After

I don’t want to make this too long, but I certainly feel like a blog post is required after last night. I mean, we did play the Pageant.

I think our drummer probably summed it up best in a Facebook Post:



(Please don’t ask me why he uses Jim Swinson instead of his real name)

What’s weird about huge shows like is I am often left feeling empty afterward, like there is so much build up to them: promotion, practice, anticipation, anxiety...there is 40 minutes of pure pleasure, and then you are slapped back into reality. I guess it is similar to a one night stand, except the chase takes months. When she gets up to head home, you feel kind of dirty and sad because deep down you really liked this one; you really wanted this one to hang around.

Maybe it is more like a birthday, you never really feel different the next day, but you wish you would.

So, I try to relive the moment. Through pictures…

Pat shot this from the stage on his Blackberry



This one came from my good friend Meredith aka @rockstarima



And Melissa, the awesome front woman for Peach (@peachlikethex), shot this



And when that is not enough, I go inside my mind and write. This is for all of you that made it out. Thank you, sincerely.

The Morning After

Alone
You in foreign bed my eyes have never seen
And I trapped between blanket and pillow

Dreaming

Dreaming of catching your glance
Across wood
And smoke
And bodies
You moving like serpent seductress
And I in the moment
Reveal head and heart from wicker basket

But I saw you all
You
Hiding behind the glowing hue of technology
You
With adult recess smile
Jumped from concrete to wood
Leading your followers to salvation
To freedom found in movement
You
With childlike excitement
Experienced an epiphany
One day
You would be me
You
With shy eyes
Hid in the shadows hoping to evade my gaze
But I saw you all

When lights faded
And smoke sat heavy on the floor
You baptized me in bodies
Arms
And hands
And chests
Saying what words could not

And I
Gave you everything I had
Amplified my animus so you could see the real me
So you could see just how pure I am

Welcome to My Insanity

I don’t think that I have OCD, but I do think I do some very peculiar things, mental tricks, games I play inside my mind. My favorite was in college. I was obsessed with getting straight A's. Back then almost all exams were done on a scantron which required a No. 2 pencil. Like many ball players will wear lucky socks or jocks, I had lucky pencils, but they were not lucky. They had been trained in the fine art of test taking. I’d use the same pencil for every exam until it was sharpened to an unusable nub. To ensure I was always prepared, as a pencil was nearing its sad demise, during tests, I would get the next one out and set it on the desk so it could watch and learn. Yes, welcome to my insanity. For the record, I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a 4.0 on my transcript.

This morning, during a Sunday cleaning ritual, I decided to swap out my CDs. Yes I said CDs. I am old school. I like to own the disc, the liner notes, like to listen to an entire album as the artist intended. In my car a carry a CD case with about 20 CDs. I do this because it forces me to listen to CDs I wouldn’t normally. Like everyone else, I tend to have go to CDs that I will spin a laser rut into, so when I swap out CDs I take 2 from each rack of my CD case—they are alphabetized by artist; artists with multiple discs are organized chronologically. Instead of a normal swap I one-upped my insanity. This time as I hit a row and was drawn to a CD, I could take it, but the second one from the row HAD to be touching the CD I took, unless it was the same artist, then I could move to the next artist on either side. Yes, welcome to my insanity.

As a result, I have a seriously diverse lot of music in my case:

Christina Aguilera – Stripped

The Allman Brothers Band – The Fillmore Concerts

Bush – Goldenstate

Vanessa Carlton – Be Not Nobody

Death Cab for Cutie – Photo Album

Gavin DeGraw – Self Titled

Helmet – Meantime

Jimi Hendrix – Band of Gypsys

ilyAIMY – Between Lovely and Twilight

Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation of…

The Little Willies – Self Titled

Live – The Distance to Here

Bill Miller – The Red Road

Morrissey – Viva Hate

Paramore – Brand New Eyes

Brad Paisley – Time Well Wasted

Duncan Sheik – Self Titled

She Daisy – The Whole SheBANG

Spoon – Transference

Train – Self Titled

Tool – Undertow

If you follow my blips, you will see a lot of these artists over the next few weeks, as I tend to blip the artist I was listening to on the way to work.

Alright that is it for this quick one. Surely I am not the only one, so what kind of insane things do you do? Let me know in your comments.

Reflection…Understanding…Acceptance…

I think we are all hardest on ourselves. We dream the great dreams and when the hopeful movies play out in scenes different from what was in our head we beat ourselves up. I am certainly prone to it, especially in relationships and with my music. Every once and a while, I am able to step back, reflect on the reality and accept the situation.

In November of 2009 my band, So Much Closer, played our first show. We removed all the furniture from my living room and recreated a high-school scene.



On November 19, 2010 my band, So Much Closer, will play, possibly, the best venue in St. Louis: The Pageant for the Ticketmaster New Music Spotlight. One could debate that the Fox or RiverportUMBVerizon Pavilion are better, but for amazing stage and sound without losing the intimacy that I love in live performance, I do not think it gets better than The Pageant. Simply put, this is an amazing accomplishment.

Sadly, until we got this gig, I was really down. I didn’t think we had done enough because I saw other bands getting invited to events that we were not because the Hipsters were not showering us with praise and PBR because we had 1 poor CD review that destroyed my soul because I am a sensitive fool.

So let me quickly recap what we have accomplished in the last 12 months so you will be able to truly appreciate what a fool I am:

November:

1st Show

December:

Opened for the Matter’s CD Release at The Library; St. Louis, MO (RIP)

January:

Continued to write and practice

February:

Headlined a show at the Firebird, St. Louis; MO

March:

Headlined a show at Cicero’s; U-City, MO

April:

Proved that we could do it acoustic at Hartford Coffee House; St. Louis, MO
Opened for Jimmy Kennedy and the Wrecking Ball; Jefferson City, MO
Headlined the Old Rock House; St. Louis, MO
Recorded a CD in Denton, TX at the Echo Lab
Played the Aardvark; Fort Worth, TX
Headlined at Bash Sip Rock; Lubbock, TX

May:

Headlined at the Ten Mile House; Affton, MO
Played Silvie’s Lounge; Chicago, IL

June:

Went acoustic again at Vivirito’s; Maplewood, MO

July:

Rocked Foam; St. Louis, MO
Acoustic Show at St. Charles Coffee House; St. Charles, MO

August:

Ten Mile House; Affton, MO where we met the awesome Rhum Boogie
Played the Luna Lounge; St. Louis, MO

September:

CD Release at the Old Rock House; St. Louis, MO
Played Silivie’s Lounge; Chicago, IL
Rocked Market in the Loop for Play:STL Festival; U-City, MO

October:

Headlined Davey’s Uptown; Kansas City, MO
Played 2720 Cherokee; St. Louis, MO
Headlined Kix; Quincy, IL

And now, now we are going to play the Pageant for our one year anniversary. I think any band would be happy to have played the shows we have, done the touring we did, and recorded a pretty amazing CD in their first year out.

So how could I possibly be disappointed, besides the fact that I am a fool?

For me, this isn’t our first year, this is my 14th year. I played my first singer/songwriter show in 1996 in a little coffeehouse in Poway, CA. I gigged consistently there before moving to St. Charles in 1998 where I continued to focus on performing, playing any venue that would have me solo until 2002 when I formed my first band, Eric Ketzer experiment. After that fizzled in 2005, Whiskey Daydream was born. It died in 2007 but soon I was focused on Pawnshop Testimonies and the Frontline. I have never really stopped.

There were 2 years between Whiskey Daydream and So Much Closer and although there were projects none of them were really going for it, so I was mainly doing solo shows with some limited touring and lots of local coffeehouses. As a result, when we were ready to do it, it was like starting over. Many of the venue contacts had changed, local Bloggers now had a significant role in the scene, there were new venues to contend with and a slew of people that were convinced that Cherokee was Babylon. I mean we have still yet to get a response from Off Broadway, and that is a venue that EKe and Whiskey Daydream owned, did my largest CD Release there, played the coveted New Year’s Eve gig there 3 years in a row, but I cannot even get a response from them. It is a different world, and I need to accept it and embrace what I know to be truth.

Here are my truths.

We have had a blast. Has it been a prefect ride free from conflict, no; but, those incidents are so minor compared to the awesome times we have spent tooling around the country with hope in our eyes.

We recorded an amazing CD. When that review came out, it destroyed me, and I started to hate the CD, all because someone I have never met didn’t like it. But a few weeks ago I put it in and rocked it for a week on the way to and from work. Top was down in the Saaby, and the CD cranked. I love everything about this disc. Do I hear what the reviewer was saying, sure. Do I agree, not really. It is my truth, and we created a great disc!

We are very happy about the direction of the scene, the community that is being built and the use of Social Media to help merge musicians and music lovers.

We are so incredibly excited about this Pageant show, and we need all of you to help us make it special. All you need to do is print this image, and it will get you into the show for free. Or you can save a tree, and show the door people the image on your smart phone. Or, if you run into one of us, just ask us for a ticket, we have 500 to give out. The show is all ages and free for those with a voucher. There is a $5 surcharge for anyone under 21.