1st Concert in 4 years, Piano Fingers on Fire!

I've been sequestered, not pestered, alone with me and a piano for weeks now. For a few hours a day at least. Then it's time to pick up our son from school and do daddy time. I mentioned a couple months ago that I was gearing up to record an album of solo piano pieces, and it's all coming together. I've researched pianos and studios around the bay area, and settled on the concert Yamaha at Skywalker Sound, on their scoring stage. Lush, baby. My good friend Kent Sparling will be producing. We've decided to record 18 pieces, and 3 of them will have violin on them as well (played by the wonderful Irene Sazer).

Also on deck is my first solo performance in years - at one of my favorite places to play, the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz. April 11, 4pm. A show for the whole family (geared towards kids, enjoyable for all). So, in addition to practicing the piano for the upcoming recording sessions, I'm dusting off my guitar and voice, and playing through old favorite songs and working up some new ones for the upcoming concert. It feels like spring!

Cock-a-doodle-doo! love, Gunnar

The Ultimate Rejection Letter

I used to dream of being on a major label. When I was with The Bobs we dreamed of it, and held out for a few years, waiting for the offer that never came. (That's one reason there was such a long wait between our 1st and 2nd releases). When I left The Bobs and 'went solo', I was still pretty green as a songwriter and singer, and my demos from back then are, in retrospect, not great -The major labels were wise to pass on me. But I had chutzpah, and I sent my demos out in the world with confidence in my talents. I was going for a major label deal!

Some people in the record industry were kind, and recognized my potential while politely declining a contract. A few were more brash and brutal in their dismissal, and most simply didn't return phone calls. But one guy in particular sent a form letter that purported to help me (and countless others) figure out what was 'wrong' with their music.

So nice of Tom to offer his assistance!

Performing as Catharsis

I was watching Janis Joplin in "Festival Express" recently. She was cathartic. I don't think she knew how to hold anything back. Performing for her seemed like an all-or-nothing thing. I was thinking how other blues singers "know" that they're putting on a show. They're not faking it, but they know it's a show, they save a bit of themselves, in the best sense. They deliver the message without hurting themselves irreparably. I get the feeling Janis was really going through hell up there, even if the release and catharsis felt good to her.

Performance used to be catharsis for me, too. If I didn't go through something real, if it didn't somehow hurt, then it hadn't felt or been real. I needed to break through, or break, something. Performing was about salvation, breaking myself so that I could be real. I had no other way of being true to me.

Nowadays, performance for me is about being present, being real. I no longer have to go through primal therapy onstage. I don't have to sweat to be a good performer, tear my vocal chords raw or make my fingers bleed. And I'm not knocking what I used to do, those days had a special something to them. What would rock and roll be without sweat? And I don't mean to say I hold back now. I simply take care of myself. I give from a quieter place. I feel like now I "give" more, whereas before the performance was about me gaining release, and appreciation. Now it's about giving of myself to an audience.

I went to a harpsichord recital a couple weeks ago, Davitt Moroney at UC Berkeley. He has chops to burn, one of the most respected harpsichordists in the world. But there was no flash on display, no pyrotechnics, nothing virtuosic. He attended to the music, he made it clear, and he had tremendous patience, giving each note all the time it needed to sing out. The attention to what the music needed was stunning. I suppose that's more of where I'm at these days. My "Janis" days are behind me. Now I aspire to the kind of musicality of a Davitt Moroney. Rock and roll, baroque music, it's all music, eh? I would love to witness some sweaty, cathartic Baroque music - that would be pretty damn cool.

New Year, New Hope, New Stuff...

I promised in my last blog entry, some time back, that I would be working on new piano instrumental pieces. I have been, eagerly, and I'm very pleased with the results. All I need now is a few weeks of practice time before I can get them all recorded. Which won't happen til February, most likely. Because I've got a few other fish to fry:

Over the past year I've been talking with novelist Barbara Quick, author of "Vivaldi's Virgins", about a musical adaptation of her book. We hadn't gotten anywhere substantial on the project, but I had some thoughts about how it might work, using Vivaldi's music to construct songs that would work in the context of a musical. Yeah, I know, Vivaldi's music is already pretty good, why mess with it? Well, because I'm just not into Opera, and that's the genre that Vivaldi's vocal music falls into. And, I don't really have an interest in just compiling a bunch of Vivaldi's music. It's just not my bag. But the idea of using his music as a springboard into writing new material is intriguing to me.

By a grand stroke of good fortune, we find ourselves enrolled in the Theatreworks Writer's Retreat this month. They put us up for a week, provide us with singer/actors, and we pound out ideas and try them out. A week of solid work should reveal to me whether or not my ideas of adapting Vivaldi's music will work. I'm excited about it. And I'm very much enjoying listening to the wealth of great music that Vivaldi has written. Don't worry, I don't PLAN on ruining it :)

I rented a FANTASTIC movie recently...

Jazz on a Summer's Day - A documentary film of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival and the America's Cup that went on concurrently. A documentary, you say? Snooze-ola. Of Jazz? Double snooze-ola. Au contraire, my friends. I confess, I like jazz. I rented it for myself, and it took ME a while to get around to putting it in the DVD player. As I did, I apologized to my wife, saying "you probably won't like this, but I'm curious to watch just a bit of it, okay...?". From the first moment, we were hooked. The images are stunning, like Richard Avedon portraits come to life. And while it takes place at a jazz festival, and there's lots of fine and fantastic performances therein (a young and un-guarded Chuck Berry, a stunning Anita O'Day), half of the film is of the audience, all caught unawares, and all tremendously fascinating. It's one of the most beautiful and unique films I've ever seen. I guarantee it.

New Piano Works in the works

A couple of years ago I got a case of pneumonia. NOT the rockin' pneumonia. Just the too-tired-to-get-outta-bed-and-my-lungs-hurt pneumonia. A shot of rhythm and blues did not, alas, cure it.

But as I slowly began to recover, I spent some time at the piano. Just 10 minutes at a time, then back to bed. I still didn't have the energy to confront emails or serious business, but I did have the energy to languidly noodle at the piano for short stretches. It was midwinter, I was really sick, and I enjoyed writing pieces that expressed the mood. I recorded these pieces on my little voice recorder, and later transcribed the ones worth keeping.

I added them to a folio of instrumental pieces that I'd been intending to record someday, a kind of follow-up to Spinning World: 13 Ways of Looking at a Waltz.

The folio sat on the shelf for a couple years while I busied myself with yet further education in "how to be a father". The folio continued ripening on the shelf, while my first major creative act since the birth of my son turned out to be recording and releasing of "I'm Growing" (in 07-08).

Only now, this fall, has that folio of material tugged at me for attention. I opened it up, and liked many of the pieces there. It got me in a mood, and I wrote a bunch more pieces. The idea of recording a follow up to Spinning World: 13 Ways of Looking at a Waltz had seemed daunting - It's a lot of work to score all that music for an ensemble, and it costs money to hire the musicians and rent the studio. But, I suddenly reasoned, why not just do a solo piano recording? It's cheap - Free, even, if I record it at home on the 1927 Knabe I inherited from my grandmother.

So, I set up some mics, and settled into practicing and then recording some of the waltzes. I'm very excited, the music is, if I do say so myself, and, heck, who else is going to say so since no one else has heard it, beautiful. Was that a sentence? Never mind. I really like what I've written, and I like the way I play them.

My piano is a decent, solid piano. Not a gorgeous piano, but a nice, upstanding kind of piano citizen. Hearing it in a recording, as a solo instrument, I have my doubts about whether it will be good enough. I want to hear a better piano. But I've got an emotional attachment to it. My grandmother's father bought it for her back in 1927, and letters from my Grandfather at the time were full of warm appreciation for his wife's constant playing of it. At the time of my grandmother's death, in the mid 80's, the piano had spent 25 years in the enclosed patio in her back yard. It was a mess. I had it totally restored and refinished. All the instrumentals I've composed were composed on this piano. It's a rare thing to hear music performed on the exact instrument that it was composed on. The limitations of the piano itself inspire me to play in certain registers and use certain voicings. A different instrument would inspire other music, other keys.

I may end up finding a better piano to record on. My inner jury is still out on that. But I'm really enjoying practicing and burnishing these pieces, many of which were still unfinished, and finding the structure that they call for.

I'm hoping to be able to post some of them in the coming weeks, to get feedback from my friends around the world as to which pieces move you, and why. It'll be fun to share the music while it's being made. A CD will come, hopefully in Spring of 09.

Tibetan Book of Balding

When you start to go bald, you face yourself squarely. You didn't cause it, you didn't earn it. It is not retribution or karma. It is simply destiny rising up in front of you. You can try to hide it with implants or fine woven rugs of hair, but you cannot escape it. It's like an early death. Except that it's only a loss of hair.

But it was, in my case, good practice in getting used to the concept of mortality. Baldness. Mortality. They both are final, non-judgmental, and jam-packed with unavoidable destiny. If you can learn to accept baldness and get on with your life, you can probably learn to accept death. It's coming; that's a no-brainer. Why worry about it? Hey, once you've gone through the grieving stages of losing your hair, you've got all the practice you need in dealing with the grim reaper. He carries a scythe, right? First he shorns you of your hair, later he comes back for the rest. Relax, already.

Reminds me of the guy who was afraid of relationships and commitment. Someone suggested he start with a pet. But even the idea of caring for a goldfish was more than he could take on. So he started with a houseplant. Got used to routine plant care, moved on to fish, than reptiles, then mammals, finally fellow humans. We should get used to mortality in baby steps, too. Include and accept all the little 'passings' that are constantly presented to us. Then when the 'big one' comes, you've got some skills to deal with it.

Of course, check in with me when my time comes. See if I'm so gosh darn sanguine about it.

(and even though 'shorn' is the past participle of 'shear', it just somehow sounded right in the sentence above. So sue me. You can't shear me, that's already taken care of.)

The thing about Singing Telegrams is...

Okay, so you've just graduated with a bachelors degree. You studied music theory and composition. You've somehow got to make some money. You've got to get a job.

You write music for (and direct music for) theatrical productions, but it's not enough money, and it's not steady work.

You dress up in your best clothes and go around trying to get a job as a waiter - no luck, but you do get hired for one lunchtime rush of dishwashing, at which you are horrible and which ruins your only good shoes.

You get a job as a sales clerk in a musty sheet music store, where all the music is stored behind the counter in dozens of file cabinets. Minimum wage, but at least it's a job in the music business.

You try your hand at teaching piano to kids. But you're just not the kind of guy who can get excited about "Hot Cross Buns", and you're not really the kind of guy who knows what to tell a kid who says "I hate practicing". Your instinct is to tell them to give it up if they don't like it. Heck, I did, and look where it got me...I ended up being a musician anyway.

Then you get your dream job. Singing Telegrams. Oh, it may sound hokey. It may BE hokey. But here's the thing about it...

Me and my brother, circa 1980

Every situation is brand new. All you've got is an address. You've got your bellboy outfit on, and you have to go find a particular person and sing them a witty song (memorized beforehand). You may be singing to a couple sitting at home watching TV. You may be singing at an office party where you've got to grab attention as if it were a bull. The recipient may be mortified - You've got to tone down the performance and work it to minimize their sense of embarrassment. The recipient may be thrilled - Give them the thrill of their life. The recipient may want to sing with you and take over your job - You've got to maintain control of the situation in the most friendly and funny way possible.

It was improv at its best. No, you're not making it all up, but you're paying attention to your own performance, you're paying attention to your audience, there is no fourth wall, the people you're singing to need to be reassured, your presence may embarrass them, but you have to take the sting out of it, and yet make it as funny and sweet as possible. I loved trying to take all that in and make the situation work.

And there was the down time between telegrams. Sometimes you'd drive 20 miles to deliver one, and then you've got another one in that neighborhood in 3 hours. You go to the local library, read some books. You go to the park, stretch out under a tree and write some music. The down time was a wonderful gift, too.

Nervous? Almost never. Singing to celebrities? No problem. Amazing to think that when I sang for Mrs. Walter Mondale (the Vice President's wife), I was not vetted, did not have to sign a loyalty oath, I just went to the restaurant and sang to her. Different times, eh? The one time I got nervous was when Jim Henson sent a telegram to Frank Oz on his wedding day. I was given an Ernie puppet, and was to sing a custom wedding song in the style of Ernie. I was out of my depth - I don't know puppets, and I'm not an instant mimic. I was nervous. I showed up at Frank's parents house somewhere in Oakland, and it was just Frank, his new wife, and 2 or 3 others. They looked at me like I was from another planet. I warbled the song, feeling foolish with the puppet on my hand. I was glad when that was over.

I got my biggest tip in the same neighborhood some time later, At a house where there was big party going on. The telegram was addressed to "Stoney Feeney". The sweet smell of pot was everywhere. I was offered tokes, but Bellboys don't do that kind of thing. I found Stoney sitting on a bench in the semi-darkness of the back yard. I sang my song, and held out the telegram for Stoney to take from the silver tray. He took the telegram and, reaching into a large brown grocery bag, put a heaping mound of vegetable matter on my silver tray. It was the biggest tip I ever got (in terms of dollar value), but it was rather awkward trying to get it home. I ended up putting it in my leather "mailbag", and later spent an hour trying to get all the seeds out of that thing.

The singing telegram gig only lasted 2 years at most. "Western Onion" (aka "National Onion") was bought up and mismanaged into insolvency. But really, the days of the singing telegram were numbered anyway. Pet Rocks, singing telegrams, dance crazes- they all have their time, and then fade away.

Wedding Lover goes for Gunnar Music

Take a tip from the pros - if you're planning a wedding, get the wedding music that hard-core wedding afficianados get - Music by Gunnar Madsen. From "News of the World":

Andrea Tsarbos makes wedding plans despite no groom in sight

London, Aug 4,2008 (ANI): She might be looking for a groom, but Andrea Tsarbos, from Britain has already planned her dream wedding to the last. Lack of a fiance hasn't stopped 23-year-old Andrea from planning every last detail of her wedding, including the lingerie she'll wear on her wedding night. “I know people think it's mad I've planned my wedding when I'm single, but I've not been able to help myself,” News of the World quoted her as saying.

“I'm passionate about weddings. I daydream about my own and it's developed into a full-blown plan. “Of course I need a groom before I get married, but I'll meet Mr Right one day. In the meantime, why not start preparing?”

She devotes much of her spare time on planning her wedding. “I think about it when I'm walking to and from work and when I'm at the gym. I talk about it with my future bridesmaids. If a magazine has covered a celebrity wedding, I'll make a beeline for it and pore over the photos.”

She has chosen a waltz by Gunnar Madsen for her first dance, but concedes she may let her groom select his music. “It would be lovely to have a special song I share with my husband-to-be,” she said. “I'm not a brilliant dancer so I would consider having lessons to make sure our first dance was perfect,” she added. She has also planned a lavish champagne cocktail reception. (ANI)

What is Jazz?

I was in the drugstore a few weeks ago, picking up a prescription. While I was waiting a young pharmacist, a guy in his early 20's, was telling a co-worker about Harvey Mason's drumming on the Herbie Hancock "Headhunters" album. I really enjoyed listening to his enthusiasm, it was a great way to spend my waiting time. It was also refreshing, uplifting even, to know that a classic old recording was alive and being appreciated in the now.

It was funny, too, cause just a couple days before, I'd heard a cut from that recording blasting from a car driving past. Not the typical sound one hears from car windows these days. And, hearing it coming from the car, I had been mildly electrified, feeling again the intense pleasure of the sound of that music.

So, this morning I put it on. I still have the LP I bought when it came out in '73. And yes, it IS still so good. Classic. And I don't use that word lightly. Classics are very few and far between in my book.

I stumbled upon another classic when I was a teenager babysitting at a house where the parents were very cool - hippies. (My parents were decidedly NOT hippies). After the kids were asleep, I scrounged through their record collection, and came upon an old record from the '50s - Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue". I put it on. It was old fashioned, but it was not corny, like Glenn Miller or Sinatra. It was cool. Jazz fusion was the jazz of the moment, what I'd been listening to. Here was something that was old but fresh. I played it over and over that night. I saved up and bought my own copy.

"Headhunters", too, has held up over time. It was surrounded by 'controversy' when it came out. I don't recall if it was with my saxophone teacher, or the guys I worked with at the record store, or my band mates in the "jazz" band at college, but I remember heated conversations about whether or not "Headhunters" was jazz, about how Herbie was wasting his talent doing this simplified funk music. It was hearing these discussions that made me go out and buy it. Wasting his talent? Not in my book. This record cooks.

Is it Jazz? Now that "jazz" is any music that doesn't have words to it ("The Quiet Storm" and al), it seems like a silly question. Is Kenny G jazz? That's definitely debatable. Is "Headhunters" jazz? I say yes, but, aw, heck, who cares? It's just plain good.

Back to School

School year started. Man, oh, man, I had no idea the world worked on some kind of schedule. Oh, sure, I was once a kid, I remember the long lazy days of summer, the "Back-to-school" ads on TV and in the paper, and the nearly violent yanking from summer days to regulated Fall school time. But that was a long time ago. Since then, I've been a musician, for gosh sakes. Calendars and seasons mean very little to a musician. Sure, you can book a gig for triple the normal asking fee on New Year's Eve, and you have to always remember never to book a gig on Super Bowl Sunday (which isn't a holiday that shows up on regular calendars but is the absolute worst day on which to be playing a concert). But "Back to School"? Sorry, it doesn't cause even the tiniest ripple in a musician's consciousness.

But now I have a son going to school. He needs jeans that can reach all the way to his shoes, he needs shoes that don't squeeze his growing feet, he needs school supplies, the teachers need to meet his parents, he needs to meet his teachers, there's a whole ton of stuff that needs to be thought of and organized. And, while I know it was hard for me as a kid to gear up for a new year of school with a new teacher and classmates and all, it also just kind of blindsided me back then. I wasn't self-aware enough to know my own fears, and I just kept rolling with summer until all of a sudden I was being packed off to school with my lunch in a pail.

Now, as a parent, I am acutely aware of what a big deal it is for my son. He was, like the little Me of decades ago, merely blindsided by actual first day of school. He was overwhelmed and yet rolled with it all. By now, after a week and a half of school, he's enjoying the new routine. Loving it, even. And he has no idea of the preparation that went into getting him to his first day of school :) Parenting is a hoot, and a kick, and a whole lot of niggling work that I just never expected. Once again, I've been blindsided!

Mongolian Camel Bell Ringtone

I was at home with Q last Sunday when the phone rang. It was M, our wife and mother and fun companion. She'd found these beautiful Mongolian Camel Bells and wanted to buy one for me. But there were so many to choose from, and I'm so particular about sound and music, that she wasn't sure which one to get. Cell Phone to the rescue! Granted, a cell phone is not hi-fidelity. Not even lo fidelity. It's pretty much sub-fidelity. Nonetheless, she rang each bell over the phone, and I narrowed it down to one that sounded, at least over microwaves, like a beautiful gong.

It came home, and it's lovely. A rich, deep tone, like a cowbell slowed down to half-speed. The clapper has a gorgeous tassle on it, and the leather band which it hangs from still smells very ripe and dusky/musky - I suppose it's the smell of camel. (Hey, I'm not from Mongolia already). Here it is outside the studio...

Graham Cracker Smacker

Here's how it all started. My son, Q, is fascinated by all things mechanical. He has a book in the ISpy series in which there's a picture of a convoluted balloon-popping contraption: It involves dominoes, rolling marbles, teeter-totters, pulleys and the like. He has spent many hours looking at that picture. So, one day, I decided to look up Rube Goldberg, the original inventor of such wacky contraptions. And it turned out that were a ton of super-cool videos of amazing contraptions on YouTube, from around the world. Well, Q spent many hours memorizing those contraptions. Then he announced he wanted to build his own. He's full of ideas, that boy. Me, I'm full of ideas, too, but usually they're ideas about music or stories. I'm not really much of a handyman. So we invited a handyman friend, David Jouris, over to help us build a contraption. The goal: Pour a glass of milk, and cause a graham cracker to split into pieces so you can dip it in the glass.

I'm telling you - it may seem short, it may seem simple, but it takes a lot of tinkering to get even THIS little contraption to work. We learned a lot about the concept of patience :)

 

Novelty? No thanks.

Novelty songs. I generally don't like them. Yet I do like humor in music. Obviously. (see "The Bobs" or my family music)

But just because I end up writing humorous songs sometimes, I don't really listen to humorous songs very much. I love music so much that, even if it's funny, it better have some serious musicality to it, or it'll make me mad. So usually I'm listening to more serious music (from Leonard Cohen to Bach to Rufus Wainwright to...).

I had a roommate my first year of college who loved Fats Waller. Fats is acclaimed as a great piano player and all, but I just couldn't get past the fact that he was yapping all over his songs, like he didn't know when to shut up. Somehow, he crossed the 'humor' line for me, obliterating whatever music was going on with his patter.

Spike Jones? Even as a kid, that kind of humor made me slightly queasy. On a par with Jerry Lewis or the Three Stooges, the "I'll do anything for attention" kind of humor that makes me run the other way.

Weird Al? Yeah, he rubs me the wrong way, too. Then again, every time I think of "Another One Rides the Bus", I smile inwardly. So there's some kind of magic going on. His work, being based on hugely successful melodies, has the advantage of having musical cajones at its core. And, as silly as his lyrics may be, I'd much rather be singing the lyrics to "Like a Surgeon" than the original vapid version.

The Coasters - There was real music there sometimes, some hummable tunes, but the humor wears thin for me. I give them 2 and a half stars.

Zappa - some sublime music, then mixed with such low attempts at humor. A bizarre mixture. Still, his music had integrity, and lifted him above being just a novelty act. And, his championing of 'art music' led me to composers such as Stravinsky, Varese and Stockhausen. I was listening to all kinds of contemporary music in high school, all because Frank said it was cool. I thank him muchly for that. And I find myself humming and singing "Peaches en Regalia" quite often, and it makes me smile. It has no words, it's not trying to be funny, but it's an odd bit of music that just makes me smile.

It's a funny thing, humor and music. I think that, for me, it comes down to music being an essentially emotional art form. Even when it's striving to be detached and un-emotional, the effect it has on me is still an emotional one. And there's a difference between a funny song/lyrics and funny music all by itself. When I think of attempts at making 'funny' instrumental music through the centuries, they all fail. Music can be witty, but not ha-ha funny. Lyrics can be ha-ha, but I can't think of music that achieves that all on its own.

What think you?

Strangers in the Night

Some songs just don't go away. Even when it seems like they should. Even when every fibre of my being screams that a song is no good, I am sometimes drawn, against my will, into an intimate humming relationship with a particular song.

It came to me again this morning, as I did the dishes. I sing it mockingly, as the lyrics are laughable and unworthy of serious consideration. I hate the song. And yet it has been lodged in my gray matter since 1966, and hardly a week goes by that I don't find it wafting through my semi-consciousness.

Oh, there are tons of other bad songs that are hummable and memorable and get stuck in my brain, but usually they have more sinew, more of a self-knowing sense of their own silliness: "The Addams Family", "Sugar Shack", "Yummy Yummy Yummy". Not so "Strangers in the Night." It masquerades as a classic. I hate it for that. And yet, my god, it is so HUMMABLE! I must admit that, somehow, it is a classic. I love the melody, even though it is so lamely predictable. Perhaps this afternoon I'll sit down at the piano and analyze it, try to determine where its magic lies...

But as of right now, this morning, at the kitchen sink, I just put aside the soapy dishes, took off my gloves, and went to the computer. I had to know more about this damnable cursed song. Wikipedia Ho! (as in Westward, Ho!)

Both my fascination with and my revulsion against the song seem vindicated. It was a number one song in 1966, and the title song from Sinatra's most commercially successful album. Apparently, I'm not alone in finding it hummable. According to Wikipedia,'Sinatra despised the song, and called it "a piece of s**t", and "the worst song I ever f***ing heard". Hmm, I'm with Sinatra there.

Who the heck wrote it? Well, Bert Kaempfert is credited with the music, but he probably did not write it. According to Wikipedia: The music was originally recorded by Ivo Robic´ for the music festival in Split, Croatia. Robic´ later sang the song in German ("Fremde in der Nacht", lyrics by Kurt Felitz) and in Croatian language ("Stranci u Noc´i", lyrics by Marija Renota.

Aha! So it's some Eastern European hybrid/approximation of American Popular music. That explains it! That's why it feels and is so 'four-square', lacking in the jazzier syncopations and surprising phrasings that an American composer would have naturally put in. And yet the composer hit it spot on, making the stolid repetition of phrases balance near-perfectly. So that, when I'm doing a mindless task, I don't sing "I Got Rhythm" or "Puttin' on the Ritz". Nope. When I go mindless, I go for the gold. "Strangers in the Night".

I Wish I Were a Troubadour

A couple years ago I was in New York and went to Little, Brown & Co. to meet, for the first time, my editor for the book of "Old Mr. Mackle Hackle". I came into her office and she said "Where's your guitar?" A bit surprised, I said that I don't always carry one with me. She said "When Dan Zanes comes in, he always brings an instrument, and gets the whole office singing songs." Wow, that is SO cool. I sure wish I could be like that.

But music for me is more private. I'm a bit shy. Oh, sure, put me on a stage and I lose all inhibitions. A stage is a place of ultimate freedom for me, where my shyness does not interfere. But without a stage I don't know what to do with myself.

Also, I don't remember songs very well, so when someone asks me to sing a song, I truly don't remember them, even the ones I wrote. I have to practice them to have them at hand.

At a concert I gave at the Cafe du Nord in San Francisco some years back, someone in the audience requested a song of mine. I replied that I didn't remember it. They said "But you wrote it!" I replied, "Yeah, well Steinbeck wrote Grapes of Wrath, but it's not like he could just recite it from memory."

The line got a laugh, but I don't think the person believed the truth of it, that I really don't remember songs I've written. Perhaps it's why I don't get tired of my own music! Really, I love so many of my songs, and maybe it's cause they're always a little new to me.

As for just getting up and singing at the drop of a hat, I need some encouragement to perform. Not a lot, but a little nudge from outside of myself. I heard Glen Hansard ,from the movie "Once", interviewed on the radio. He just picked up his guitar one day and started busking on the streets of Dublin. His faith in himself allowed him to just go for it. I've got a lot of faith in myself, and I'm grateful for every ounce of it, but I can't do what Glen did. I admire that. Perhaps I'll have that ability in my next life. If I come back as a snail, be on the lookout for a singing snail on a street corner near you.