June 22nd, 2010 by Andrew

Play­ing music has been part of my life since I was ten years old, nearly 17 years ago. For the first eight years I received piano lessons, as so many peo­ple do around that age. My first teacher (Carol Fern of Fen­ton, NC) gave me a good strict foun­da­tion and instilled good basics of the­ory and hand posi­tion. My sec­ond teacher was awful, I was only with her a cou­ple months. My third teacher was Pam McNeil, who gave me what I really needed — not just knowl­edge of how to play music, but the pas­sion to use that knowl­edge and seek more. Pam knew she wasn’t work­ing with the next Horowitz or Ashke­nazy, so she didn’t treat me like one. She allowed my inter­ests to come out and always had my tastes in mind when she chose a new piece for me to learn, or asked what I wanted to learn. I give her a lot of credit for show­ing me how to love music, not just mechan­i­cally crank it out. I cer­tainly wasn’t always a great stu­dent, but find­ing pas­sion in music is invalu­able. Thanks again, Pam, for everything.

But Pam stopped teach­ing and I entered the world of work and school and hav­ing a social life and music became less impor­tant for a while. My grand­par­ents bought me a piano so I always had some­thing to play, but I’m sorry to say there was a cou­ple of years where I didn’t reg­u­larly knock the dust off of it. Around this time, a new guy moved to town. Now, you have to real­ize some­thing here. I was 19 years old, liv­ing in a small town (pop. 1,800) and I didn’t know any one else like me. I was the weird kid who wore a fedora and an old top­coat and played the piano at the cof­fee­house for peo­ple dou­ble and triple my age. Sure, my skills really didn’t sur­pass the level of a few par­lor tricks and man­gled Beethoven sonatas inter­spersed with Star Wars themes, but that was my shtick, and it was my shtick. One day I hear about this guy who moved into town, a few years older than me. I hear he wears a fedora and plays the mean­est piano any­one had seen in this town. I’m think­ing, “Who is this guy? This is my town and this is my shtick! How dare he!” After a cou­ple weeks of rep­u­ta­tion pre­ced­ing him, I finally met him and saw him bust out a cou­ple of tunes and whoa, I was blown away. I’d never seen any­body play piano like that. I think he played the Tiger Rag. His left hand was a blur and his right hand always knew where the melody should go. I imme­di­ately decided that we were going to be friends. That’s how I met Reese Gray.

He opened up the world of early jazz to me, got me lis­ten­ing to greats like Jelly Roll Mor­ton and Louis Arm­strong, Bix Bei­der­becke, J. P. John­son, King Oliver, Wingy Manone, Spike Jones, the Hoosier Hot-shots, so much more. And man, I really dug that music. Some peo­ple call it Dix­ieland, Hot Jazz, Tra­di­tional Jazz, or just Trad Jazz. It wasn’t like the ele­va­tor, Barnes & Noble jazz, the Kroger jazz or John Tesh that you hear so often but can’t whis­tle a sin­gle bar of after hear­ing it your whole life. It had power and youth, spon­tane­ity and vigor, melan­choly and pas­sion, played by humans using all their human­ity. But mostly, it was just fun. That’s how I got into 1920s jazz.

Reese got me off the sheet music, but first he found some writ­ten copies of tunes that he thought I should learn. W. C. Handy’s Mem­phis Blues was the first one he showed me. After I’d got­ten the hang of the first cou­ple sec­tions I played it for him and he picked up his banjo-uke and tried to play along. Now, I’d never played ensem­ble in any fash­ion and had no clue how. I played a few bars and he stopped me. My rhythm was so bad he couldn’t play along with me at all. So he made me tap my feet when I played. Taught me the impor­tance of rhythm. Pretty sim­ple, but it was the miss­ing ele­ment I needed. After a few years, my sense of rhythm increased, while I’m still work­ing at it, I’m steady enough to play with folks. Mean­while, instead of impro­vis­ing being a side act, impro­vi­sa­tion became the main attrac­tion. That’s how I started to become an ear musician.

With my new skills, music became more and more impor­tant to me. I used it to purge emo­tions that I couldn’t talk about, or didn’t have any­one to talk to about. I used it when I needed a way to be angry but not destruc­tive. I used it to purge unre­quited pas­sion. I used it to stim­u­late my mind. I used it to feed my inner human.

Or did the music use me? Psh — semantics.

Back in Jan­u­ary, the Fire­cracker Jazz Band was in need of a piano player because Reese was leav­ing town for a cou­ple months. With trep­i­da­tion, I accepted. With about two weeks notice to learn 30 songs, I stepped up to the plate and prac­ticed hard. After two rehearsals with the band I had my first real, pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence play­ing music with them on Valentine’s Day, 2010. Took me almost 17 years to get there, but man was it worth it. I was ner­vous all that day, but as soon as I stepped up to the piano I knew I was where I was sup­posed to be. Since Valentine’s Day, I’ve played around 25 gigs total, and every one I play is a hell of a lot of fun, but play­ing May 14 at The Orange Peel was the high­light so far. The Peel was nearly packed as we opened for the very tal­ented Car­olina Choco­late Drops. The sound booth recorded our show. You can lis­ten to it below. (Turn up your speak­ers — the gain is low.)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Play­ing music has been the best, most fun, most ful­fill­ing thing I’ve done with the ener­gies of my life. Thanks to all who helped me along the way, who made me love the music, who vouched for an ama­teur, who believed that I had music in me that had to come out. And to those that didn’t believe in me, you too pushed me for­ward to prove you wrong.

June 10th, 2010 by Andrew

Gran­ite soul sar­coph­a­gus
my heart wor­ries like
a Pekingese but­ter­fly.

May 21st, 2009 by Andrew

af_grad

Grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies seem to be to glo­rify the insti­tu­tion and not the indi­vid­ual, but as I never grad­u­ated high school, I thought I’d par­tic­i­pate at least once. It also helped me draw clo­sure to my time at AB-Tech, which I needed. I’m so glad to be out of there.

I even got rec­og­nized a lit­tle: Citizen-TimesSen­si­ble City

A lot has changed since I last signed off here — I’ve been accepted to UNC-A, some­thing I’ve been try­ing to accom­plish for six years. It feels good to have a plan, accom­plish a major part of it and move for­ward with the next step falling into line. Maybe I’m just not used to the feel­ing of accom­plish­ment, but it feels like an addic­tion which I will gladly sur­ren­der to.

At least I’m a bet­ter stu­dent then blogger.

December 14th, 2008 by Andrew

One more time. Ahh­h­hhh… Sunday.

I always try and keep Sun­days free from too much eco­nomic activ­ity or social oblig­a­tion. It is a big help to my men­tal health to be able to sit at home and accom­plish per­sonal tasks, catch up on domes­tic work, prac­tice music, or just relax with a book. And now that the semes­ter has ended for me, I feel par­tic­u­larly light in spirit on this Decem­ber Sunday.

I should start with yes­ter­day. Yes­ter­day morn­ing I drove to Tryon, worked for my favorite clients and made good money before going to my grandparent’s to social­ize and work on my grandfather’s new iMac. Awe­some com­puter, really fun and easy to use and work on. Then I drove home, changed into a fes­tive red and black get-up and went to MoDaddy’s to hear a band that I met last March. The Two Man Gen­tle­man Band, from New York City played two killer sets while I drank whiskey and sang all the words I knew. I love their CDs, and the guys (Andy and Fuller) are great peo­ple and very tal­ented musi­cians as well as snappy dressers (knick­ers!). I had promised them enter­tain­ment of the musi­cal vari­ety and after­wards we went to my friend Woody Pines’ house for a party pop­u­lated almost entirely by musi­cians. Woody has an awe­some old upright that has a great action for honky tonk and blues, and I sat down at it and kept it hot for nearly 3 straight hours. Some­times I ques­tions my musi­cal abil­ity, but not last night. I killed it for three straight hours, with only the brief of whiskey breaks. It felt awe­some. Like most peo­ple, I have a lotof  musi­cal poten­tial; it’s nice when it breaks through the clouds once in a while. And the clouds have been break­ing more and more often lately.

The past two Sun­days I have taken myself out to the Dripo­la­tor Cof­fee­house, pur­chased the New York Times and ate a nice big brunch of huevos rancheros with my usual dou­ble Amer­i­cano and Emergen-C. I try and look my best (not always easy after a busy Sat­ur­day night) and be socia­ble with the other Sun­day brunch­ers, and I always leave feel­ing like a mil­lion bucks. It’s a really great way for me to begin the end of my week.

I’ve had lots of new begin­nings and mile­stones these past cou­ple months. Lost an old friend/lousy room­mate. New roo­mate Henry (of the Fire­cracker Jazz Band and Squir­rel Nut Zip­pers) is an incred­i­ble musi­cian and wants to play music all the time at the house. There is so much I have to learn from him. On Thurs­day, I fin­ished my penul­ti­mate semes­ter in my soon-to-be decade-long pur­suit of an Asso­ciates degree.  Prob­a­bly have 1 A (Music The­ory I) and two Bs (Lit­er­a­ture Based Research and Cul­tural Anthro­pol­ogy). Not bad, but prob­a­bly not enough to bump me up to a 3.0 GPA, which I des­per­ately need to keep my UNC-A hopes alive.

I’m also launch­ing a new busi­ness and slowly get­ting out of the in-home com­puter biz. Not going to be a lot of long-term money in that, but I’m glad to pick up some ran­dom ser­vice as it’s usu­ally easy-money. My new busi­ness will hope­fully launch Jan­u­ary 1. I’m really excited about it — I feel it’s the begin­ning of some­thing really big for me.

Oh and some­body threw their shoes at Pres­i­dent Bush today in Iraq.

September 6th, 2008 by Andrew

So, this is my 100th post. To com­mem­o­rate the occa­sion I’ve decided to try and break 200 by the end of the year. There’s about 100 days left, so this should keep my busy every day.

I find that I like blog­ging for a lot of rea­sons, and I don’t think van­ity is one of them. Blog­ging turns writ­ing and infor­ma­tion col­lect­ing into a per­for­mance art; much more inter­est­ing than stamp-collecting to me.

First, it’s fun dur­ing the day when I think of some­thing to know that it has a home. Instead of scrib­bling it down in some note­book that I file on the shelf I can feed it into a liv­ing doc­u­ment to be shared.

Sec­ond, it helps me hone my writ­ing skills. Writ­ing is a skill that would help me immensely at work and at school. I some­times can write effort­lessly, but more often it is a strug­gle to get a sin­gle para­graph out. Hav­ing a for­mat in which I can do any­thing helps me to get the write juices flow­ing (pun intended) and silence that lit­tle self-doubt demon that’s the bane of so many’s creativity.

Third, it keeps me hon­est. Because this forum is open to any eye­balls that surf by, I feel sort of account­able for the con­tent, and since the con­tent is derived from my life, I feel that I should keep a clean act.

Fourth, things can be tedious or they can be fun. And if you can trans­mute the tedious into the fun, you win at life. Blog­ging is fun now.

August 30th, 2008 by Andrew

Chris Rid­dle — actor, film­maker, video­g­ra­pher, and stage direc­tor — is one of my old­est friends. We’ve worked on many projects together in the past. Every year he puts together a team for the 48 Hour Film Fes­ti­val here in Asheville. If you’ve never worked on a 48 Hour film, it’s a blast with the right peo­ple. High stress, high cre­ativ­ity, solv­ing com­plex prob­lems on the fly, and after two days of that you have a fim. It’s really fun. Chris and his wife Sam put together a great team last year — Direc­tor of Pho­tog­ra­phy was Mike Belleme, who’s an awe­some skate­boarder and gasp­ingly good pho­tog­ra­pher, (and also in my blogroll). They tapped me for an act­ing role — though I had no prior screen cred­its. Now, I think act­ing is really fun, and I’ve done it con­fi­dently — on stage. On film I was totally uncom­fort­able with myself. We pulled the Romance genre (which is a tough one) so nobody was really thrilled with the story, and my lines made me feel like I had mar­bles in my mouth. I hate myself on screen. I hope I don’t really sound and look like that. Enjoy.

I thought of this because I saw Mr. Rid­dle. I kid­napped him and brought him to Asheville to see the Fire­cracker Jazz Band play at the Rocket Club, and he asked me to be an extra in his next project which is film­ing tomor­row. He’s film­ing it at the cofee­house in Tryon, where we met. The first friends I ever made out­side of church or work was at that cof­fee­house, and it always feels good to come back there — espe­cially to work with Chris, who was the first guy to ever talk to me there. I was just weird guy in the cor­ner that nobody knew, and when Chris said “The time has come,” I fin­ished it with “the wal­rus said,” and I often think of that pre­cise moment, when the out­side world first rec­og­nized me.

Thanks, Chris.

August 16th, 2008 by Andrew

I have a lot of work ahead of me.

My friends and I have been bub­bling with talk of a move to New York City. Not imme­di­ately or any­thing, but the prospect excites me greatly. I’ve always had this self-defeating atti­tude that I was not good enough for New York City, but I’m try­ing to shed my self-imposed lim­i­ta­tions and level up, to bor­row an RPG term. As the song goes, if you can make it New York you can make it any­where, and I’d like to see if I’m made of that stuff. I think there could be a lot for me there.

But I still am feel­ing the old frus­tra­tions, the old strug­gles, the old weak­nesses that peck away at my poten­tial. There’s all these things I feel I could be truly great at, the things I feel I have inside me that I can’t get out — I could be a great piano player, I could be a great designer, I could be a great ________. What stops me?

Me.

And so, I’m on big self-improvement kick again.

ONE: I’m going back to school, and I’m really excited about it. I have a great sched­ule — just Tues­days and Thurs­days. I’m tak­ing Lit­er­a­ture Based Research (again, because I’m lazy and a ter­ri­bly non-prolific writer), Cul­tural Anthro­pol­ogy (awe­some), and Music The­ory I (4 credit hours, easy A.) I may yet be able to add a 1 credit Yoga.

TWO: Music has to be a big­ger part of my life. I’m play­ing semi-seriously with a friend of mine, Elias, and we’ve had some killer song­writ­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions. First time in a long time I’ve felt like I really had a great musi­cal part­ner­ship that wasn’t a student-teacher thing.

THREE: Read­ing. I’ve been read­ing a great deal more lately. I ran into Malaprop’s I bought an awe­some called Osman’s Dream, a start to fin­ish his­tory of the Ottoman Empire. But before I start that mon­ster (660 pages!) I have to fin­ish the Steven Pinker book that Laura bought me months ago, The Stuff of Thought by Sep­tem­ber 8 because the author will be at Malaprop’s that night. For as much of a nerd I am, I have never been to an author event at a book­store, and I’m look­ing for­ward to it. I should develop a good ques­tion for him.

FOUR: I must write. I’m feel­ing flush with words and prose and have been re-reading some of my old mate­r­ial and I have to say I don’t know why I gave it up.

SUMMARY: Apol­lon­ian inter­ests must tri­umph for this next phase in my life. The end­less Bac­cha­nals that have gripped my life and lifestyle must be brought into line with my larger goals. I’m on the verge of some­thing, and I aim to vault myself over the edge.