Hope Diamond

UniTunes in Houston

Ok, so I've been in a cave prepping for the big gig on Saturday night, whereupon it was Susan's return to the stage, cast in tow, and I was playing guitar for her. Which is a big deal because she is one of my favorite musicians on the planet. We shared the show with Terri Hendrix and Lloyd Maines. Who, as most of you know, are two of my other favorite musicians on the planet. Eek. Except by the time we were driving to the gig we had prepared up the wazoo and I wasn't nervous because when you do your homework you don't have to be. So there was that. We started off with our musical theater number, a 3 handed, 2 personed, 1 guitarred version of "Perfect World." After that we sailed through the set. Susan is a champ and picked up some harmonica prowess and also got good with a shaker. I imagine by the time she gets her cast off she'll be proficient at about 14 new instruments because she's good like that. Terri joined us for "Lovely When You Cry" and my own "For and Against" which was NIFTY... and then Lloyd came onstage too and we had a grand time finishing out the set. And then we got up to sing with Terri on her set for "Hole In My Pocket" and "Wind Me Up." And then it was over. And I was glad I did my homework. Thanks to Susan for the shot as her guitar player. Dang. Dan the Producer once told me about a basketball coach who would make his team run laps after they won games, because the best reward for a job done well is to keep working on what you do. So it's back to the geetar and charts today. More shows this weekend! Tomball, Marble Falls, and Luckenbach oh my!

Good from the Other

Um, ok. So to lighten up the mood from that last post, I gotta say...whoa. When I was a spunky bright-eyed and bushy-tailed 23-year-old...a whole 4 years ago, I packed up and moved to Austin to see about the music business based on a few things, but one of the main ones being that both Susan Gibson and Terri Hendrix hung around the Central Texas area and used it as their home base. I figured there was good stuff in the water if those two chose to be here. And here we are, 2010 and the next show on the books for me is playing guitar for Susan while she gives her broken arm a rest, and she happens to be sharing the bill with Terri Hendrix and Lloyd Maines. So I'm going to stop blogging now and go practice guitar. Lucky for me, I've been playing a bunch of these Susan tunes for a while, and I picked up a big chunk of my strumming style from her. Luck = Preparation + Opportunity. Life is weird and wonderful.

Hello February

I am coming up with the lamest blog titles lately. I've been here in Austin/Wimberley a lot, so life is going as usual I suppose. This weekend was fun, with Susan playing 2 sold-out shows in the speakeasy-like atmosphere of Oma's Secret Garden, a cool venue in New Braunfels owned by my friends Tracy and Paul. They were CD Preview shows, and the first night had Gabe Rhodes playing with Suz - he's producing her new record. Very excited about all of it. Also Oma's had Terri Hendrix's overalls on display. Just sitting there. I laughed. They are cool like Terri. On Sunday we drove up to Fort Worth for the Clubhouse Concerts Benefit show...it's a neat listening room above the White Elephant Saloon, and every year this benefit show funds the series. I songswapped with Susan and Ali Holder, which was very fun. I didn't even fall off my stool, which I was nervous about, because I'm a klutz. Anyway, we hung out for a bit and then drove all the way back. I could sleep for about 3 days straight I think. I'm bracing myself because in 2 weeks it's off to Folk Alliance in Memphis and Nashville. Bring it, Tennessee.

End O' The Year

I'm behind! I am in New Mexico for the holidays. I have been napping a lot. Thus is vacation. The gig year ended nicely in Ben Wheeler, Texas...which I had never heard of until they booked Susan. Cute little town near Tyler...go check it out. Moore's Store is the venue there, and the SG Trio took the stage in fine form. I set up THE LAST MERCH TABLE OF THE YEAR, too. Michael O'Connor, Susan Gibson, David Carroll Christmas in Ben Wheeler! Then we drove all night to get home, and I helped by waking up every so often and saying, "ARE YOU AWAKE?" and then Susan would say "Yes," and then I'd sleep again. I'm useful like that. She's prepping to record a new album, I'm prepping to finish mine, and I think she'll probably beat me at getting a product done. She's quick like that. We'll both have records out in the spring, which is fun. Maybe everyone who buys a Susan Gibson record will magically get a free Jana record because that's how I will market myself with stealth infiltration of folk fans' minds. Hehheh. Just kidding. BUY MY RECORD. Anyway...green chile in some format awaits me. More later.

We all get fortunate sometimes.

I had a good weekend. It was busy, with non-stop events and gigs, including the 13th Annual Austin Empty Bowl Project. This is a neat charity because all year long, people make bowls and decorate them...close to 4,000 of them, actually. Then local restaurants and chefs donate their time to make soup, and then thousands of people come buy a bowl and get to try good soup, and all the proceeds go to charity. Brilliant! Susan played at the swanky preview party this weekend, whereupon I wormed my way in and partook in the hors d'oeuvres that included ingredients like dates, endives, and eggplant. Thems fancy food words. The next morning Jim and I woke up the soup eaters with our folk and roll act on the plaza at the Mexican American Cultural Center. I had a sweet potato dumpling soup. Awesome. Then, during my errands for the day, I FOUND A HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL ON THE SIDEWALK. I am pretty sure the best thing I have ever found previous to this day was maybe 2 bucks floating in a gas station parking lot, and it was my friend's who had just gotten out of the car. A consultation with Jim reassured me...it's cash, and I was in a big parking lot, and there's no way to track down anyone who might have been its owner. Crazy. I feel safe telling you all this because I already spent my half at Hastings. (Jim gets the other half because I can never pay him for gigs, but I found it on a gig day, so he gets paid). So anyway, look up most of the time but sometimes, LOOK DOWN. Later that day was benefit number 2 for Susan that weekend, at the Brauntex Theater in New Braunfels. It's a great old movie theater that is being repurposed for live shows (as well as film). Good times. There are neat little jewels all over the place...stop in a small town and find one.

Spooks in Little Rock

So I've been quiet, I guess! Since Nashville it's been kind of non-stop and such. No excuse for not blogging, though. Maybe I just needed a little mini-vacation. I'm almost 27, for crying out loud...I'm old and slow, haha. So yes, Nashville was cool and I will write more about my thoughts on that town later. We're going back in February and I'm excited. We spent Halloween in Little Rock, playing a show and scaring people. Actually, our costumes, put together an hour before the show at a Wal-Mart near you...were awesome. Although things you snark on backfire sometimes. At Wal-Mart: J: "Hey Susan, wouldn't it be hysterically lame to have a fitted sheet for my Super Merch Girl costume? Hahahaha." Later at the show: S: "Um this sheet is fitted. Who picked out this sheet?" J: "Oops." Which just adds to the character of the Super Merch Girl ensemble, I say. Susan fashioned a grand logo in red and yellow and silver duct tape. Then I spray painted her glittery gold because her costume was that she went platinum in Nashville. WIN!

Music Everywhere

I am so behind. I feel good about it, though, because there's lots of things stirring in my pot of projects. I just spent the morning at Whole Foods and saw Terri Hendrix and Lloyd Maines play for HAAM Benefit Day - the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians. That program does great things for a large part of the community in this town. They cover my teeth, yo, because my normal insurance does not...they help out a lot. This weekend's set of Susan gigs was awesome...I had my 2 weeks off from the tour life so it was good to hop in and go for some neat shows. Suz songswapped with Beth Wood, who is someone you all should see live as soon as possible. She's the real deal. That was in Possum Kingdom Lake, where I saw no possums, but I did see a lake. This house concert was in a COOL house. Beth Wood and Susan Gibson! Friday night Susan joined forces with Michael O'Connor who is one of my favorite people as well as guitarists. They played a great show at Dosey Doe in Houston, whereupon we wandered in a pawn shop before the show and I could have dropped a good chunk of change on DVDs, guitars, and gold watches. I never even knew I needed a gold watch. Or an accordian. Michael O!! Susan sang with Kyle Hutton for his CD release gig. Saturday was one of my favorite venues for a Susan show - the White Elephant Saloon in Fort Worth. This means...FULL BAND. The energy in the room was potent. I spent all night filming things for one of those aforementioned projects Susan and I are working on. I had four cameras going at once...we'll see how it all turned out. Also, the lighting all weekend was GOOD. I am only a good photographer when other people light things well. Don't ask me to do it. Tomorrow I fly to Albuquerque, where I have to ready the first real toast I have ever given at a wedding, for my best friend Jamie. I hope I can be witty and touching and all that while making everyone cry, but not crying myself. Hm. I'll be back in Austin on Monday, have Tuesday to get ready, and then on Wednesday we FLY TO NEW YORK CITY! So excited for this string of gigs. It seems like only this summer when I was on the phone constantly booking these shows. Wait, it was only this summer. Things come up fast.

Notes and Asides

I have a sunburn on my nose, well earned and cherished since I got it at the ocean in Port Aransas. I had been to Port A twice before but never had time to actually hang out in the ocean, only look at it. Sometimes I stress about things like money, scheduling, people, and life...but sometimes I get to hang out on the beach because I'm there for my job and that's pretty awesome. I had a meeting with Katie, Melissa, and Emily last night to discuss some musicalness...Katie's blog tells you the topics we covered in detail. The thing that made the biggest impression on me was when Katie picked up her purse from the floor of the coffeehouse and a clipped toenail fell on her lap. I almost gagged. Then we wondered who would clip their toenails in a coffeehouse. Today Dan and I re-listened to what we had tracked on the new EP last week and we liiiiiiked it. Some vocals are a little edgier than what you are used to hearing from me, or what I am used to hearing from me...but I think it works. It's all in the name of the story of the song in my mind. I'm having issues identifying the type of singer I am "supposed" to be...it's not a matter of picking my favorite singers and copying them, and it's not a matter of angling toward some fantasy of what I think I should be. I believe overall most of us could sing however we wanted to, with training and practice. I think in my case my voice is there to serve the song and the words I write. Not much should get in the way of that. What that means in terms of inflection and breath and thought behind it is what I am working on, but I guess it's good I decided my voice is that of a storyteller. I like that idea. This weekend I leave on a two week tour again to Colorado and New Mexico...I'm about to freak at the 50+ days of over-100 degrees we've had so not a moment too soon in my book. Hallelujah.

House Concerts = Joy

Thanks to Raymond for this photo! All right, back in town after a weekend of house concerts. Very different settings, both very cool. The first was outside under a covered patio outside of Tyler, and there was a veritable farm on donkeys around us. Dub tried to take on a donkey and then it made a donkey noise and he ran back to hide behind us. Wimp. Dog vs. Donkey Then in my usual fit of loading everything up, I left my backpack full of clothes in Tyler. Sigh. Better my stuff than someone else's, I suppose. They're nice enough to ship it to me. Yay. :) Lesson: HAVE A SYSTEM AND KEEP IT. The next night was a house concert in Denton. It was a packed living room and Susan was her usual brilliant funny self, I played some, we played together at the end of the night, and it dissolved into us singing Flight of the Conchords songs. That's probably a sign the house concert is over, haha. The neat thing about those shows is that no two are ever alike because the audience can participate and the whole room gets a personality of its own. Yesterday we drove back from Denton and had, as Susan called them, "yawn-versations" all the way. Not even a rousing game of that peg-jumping triangle thing they have on the table at Cracker Barrel could energize us. We aren't very good at that game anyway. Dub after donkey wrangling. (I stole these photos from Amy. Thanks, Amy and Amy's iPhone!)

I Can't Forget the Alamo

I got to accompany my buddy D.C. Bloom the other night at Ruta Maya as part of Webb House Concerts Songwriter night. Great fun! And as you can see, D.C.'s tunes are always guaranteed great fun. Check him out at http://www.dcbloom.com

Land Legs

All right. Back in Austin, jumping back into my other life as manager at Red Leaf School of Music. Our summer camp for kids starts next week, and I'm excited to be a part of making them into little rock stars. Take that, Jack Black. Dub is my co-pilot. The last leg of our tour was fun and the last bit of road home was slightly eventful...we had a 10 hour drive from Amarillo back home on Friday, and the van had gotten an oil change the day before we left. Outside of Plainview Susan got a dashboard light that told her the oil was too high...so we stopped at a Jiffy Lube and they had to let a quart and a half out. Ouch. Come on, people. So there we are, happily back on the road, I'm trying to do some writing, and there's a big "BRRRRRAAAAAAPPPPPFFFFFTFFFFFTTTTFFFFFFT" noise under our feet...the power steering goes out...the battery not charging light comes on. Egads. Luckily we are on the outskirts of Lubbock and Susan pilots the van to Joe Jackson's Transmission. All five of their mechanics were on the case immediately and we were on the road in no time. It could have been bad, but ended up being an interesting little sidestep. We left them with a stack of CDs in thanks. Video forthcoming. Ironic how we went about 5000 miles and that happens in the last 400. Chase and Jamie, the fan belt heroes. I sold one koozie in Amarillo. Susan made sure I got my 10% cut. I'll admit the first couple of days back I missed going somewhere all the time and I still do miss the constant 70 degree temperature average of the Rocky Mountain chain. But there are songs to be worked on and an EP to be made this summer. I'll probably head back out to NM and CO in August for a bit and I'll be merch girling around Texas in July. There's a lot to do...I just don't have to be on wheels when I do it. I learned some things. I learned you can still accomplish a lot on the road if you have a bunch of discipline and take advantage of technology. I discovered I enjoy the travel and the people and I really enjoy tour managing. I like making the bottom line work out to everyone's benefit...which is the job. If the bottom line is negative there's no tour and no tour manager. I'm fortunate to be able to work with an artist like Susan who has character and is a character. Witty repartee is our forte. I feel French. Now, about booking gigs in Paris...

Salt Creek by a Lake

Ok. So I haven't blogged in a week. We arrived here in Montana on Monday night after hours and hours of driving and I have been enjoying the lakeshore ever since. I've learned you can't blog and HELP WIRE POWER TO A BOATHOUSE at the same time. I never thought I'd type that sentence. We rolled big driftwood logs up the beach and burned tree debris and Marian and I held some wires while Susan and her dad did the electrician stuff. And that proves...you probably can't Google everything. Except the name of the power company which is what I'd have to do if I had to wire anything. Susan's dad sat down next to me yesterday and said, "Can I ask you a personal question?" "Yes?" "Do you have a sunburn on your nose or have you been drinking?" Haha. It's sunburn. All this outside time and my pasty eastern European complexion have caught up. Better crack a beer. We did take several hours to sit on the beach and practice, though. I learned the traditional bluegrass tune "Salt Creek" in high school, and since we have a guitar, banjo, and fiddle, I thought that would be a good one. We got pretty far for one day of practice. So it is. The gigging starts tomorrow. Maybe I'll find a good Internet connection in Missoula this weekend. And some suntan lotion.

So far so good. We've logged some miles, from Lubbock to Red River to Winter Park. We wound our way through a mountain pass and I shivered the whole way, but when we loaded in to the venue tonight it was lovely out. My flip flops remain on. We're chilling before the show tonight in a rare bit of hang time. I've been filming a bit and wanted a driving backwards shot. Of course that requires duct tape. Murphy's in Lubbock was fun -- the West Texas winds picked up a little but just enough to make it comfortable. It was great to be back in New Mexico even if I was nowhere near Albuquerque. The air smells fresh in that state. Susan played at The Lodge bar, and she and Marian were joined on a tiny stage by some great musicians...but it made the stage even tinier. Kinda crazy how in one day you can go from this view... To this view! I'm having a good time. I've had allergies or something, so I haven't been singing much. Luckily I can still play guitar for the big banjo finales. Tonight I'm going to give it a go and play a set. Mucinex is a wonderful thing. Tomorrow we have the shortest drive so far...4ish hours to Centennial, Wyoming. More scenery! Gotta keep sticking my camera out the window...

Algebra? Really?

Here's a word problem for ya: A singer/songwriter is offered a gig with a choice of payment options. They are: - take a $450 guarantee versus 80% of the door less $150 for sound at an $8 ticket price - take 90% of the door less $150 for sound with no guarantee - take a flat $650 guarantee with no versus percentage If the singer/songwriter expects to pull in a crowd of 112 people, which deal is the best? We did an Excel spreadsheet with formulas today to figure out something like this. The numbers were completely different, but the formulas are the same. It made my head hurt. We think we picked the right deal.

Stuff I Hope to Accomplish On Tour

So...yay it's all fun and joy when you're "on the road" and "going places" and stuff...except there's a weird psychological time warp when you're traveling daily. Let me explain it. Logic: You have so much time to sit and do nothing between cities that you have plenty of time for making phone calls, reading, and attending to other things of self improvement. Actuality: Who knows. Where it all goes. Part of it is that Susan and I set up our mobile office in the front and spend hours booking, talking about booking, routing, dealing, wheeling, whining, dining, whatever you call it. We get a LOT done, even though spurts of Waffle House jokes arise inevitably. After spending so much time on the laptop, reading and writing words, the last thing I want to do is spend some more time reading and writing words. My favorite form of "Jana Van Time" is making short films in iMovie. It's creative, but completely different from anything else, and usually hysterical. Plus I have something to show for it at the end. I also have a weird distaste for holding phone conversations longer than 3 minutes in a small moving vehicle with other people in it. So phone chats are usually out. I like to think it's being polite to my fellow passengers. That being said, I'm not into self-limiting behavior, and a month is a long time to be driving around, so I'm setting some goals for myself. There's talk of starting to record EP 2 in July (BE STILL MY HEART) with Dan, so I have some song clean-up to do on the new tunes...and some rehearsal to do on the done ones, too. Making different types of films while continuing my usual output is on the list. One of my year's goals is a 20 minute piece on being a Merch Girl, and another is to mimic the shorts that were included with the new Tori Amos album. Except not mimic TOO much...but go for the vibe. Work on my cuts and editing. I've been playing guitar on some of Susan's set while she plays banjo, so we have plans for rehearsal when we have off days with no gig. That makes me excited. I have a lot of fun being the rhythm guitar player. There's a lot of back end business stuff to attend to on my front...when I get back in July I want to gig with my new and beloved Trio...I need a business plan drawn up for the next album because I need to SELL THEM. (Imagine that. Do you have The Early Year yet? Do your 10 closest friends?) All the stuff I get paid to do for other people gets backburnered for myself. This is not a complaint because I'm learning tons...but after a while you feel really behind. Oh yeah, and I want to read at least one book and write songs. It's manageable, with focus and discipline. It's all fun so there's no worry that way. The best thing to do with the van bubble is to make it work in my favor instead of against me. I get to see some really pretty scenery along the way, too.

Kerrville Folk Festival

All right, this is my 3rd year in Tejas and my first time at the Kerrville Folk Festival and all I can say is HOLY CRAP everyone is right. People rave about the Kerrville experience and it was just as cool as they all said. Which is rare to happen, by the way. We rolled in and I played the Ballad Tree as one of the high falutin' Regional Selected Artists (finding my name in the program made me yelp with joy)...but it was very laid back and fun and I met about 8 New Mexicans at the Ballad Tree. Which is an actual tree, or used to be, with a kickbutt stage next to it. It's a mini-hike across the massive campgrounds to get there, and up on Chapel Hill, no less...I felt like I needed to hire my own monkey for the trip. Ballad Tree stage. Tuning and chatting. Would you be my monkey? I want that little triangular pop up trailer on the corner. Then it was back to the mainstage area where I looked tough and checked in Susan's merchandise so that people could buy buy buy. And I had the night off from sell sell selling. I count EVERYTHING. Katie and I wandered backstage to the staff kitchen, where they served us some (what I assume were) vegan tamales and black beans and rice. Tasty. The whole staff was so happy to be there, too. Made us feel good. Then it was time for suSANG to rock the festival's face off, which she did. It was neat to wander the backstage area and also through the crowd and hear everyone's comments about how great the show was. Yay! Yay again! Afterwards we wandered around the campgrounds, which is the other main attraction of a 3 week folk festival...the mini-compounds that get set up and often have traditions of gathering for 20+ years. My favorite happening was when one of us exclaimed in the middle of the road, "We need a guitar!" And then a passer-by said, "I have one." And it turned out to be my friend Grace who I had met at a songwriting competition...so we all sat in the middle of the road and passed Grace's guitar around in the dark. That's what they call a Kerrville Moment. We had a late night and an early morning so we drove home...but I've got plans for next year already. I had better practice my tent-setting-up abilities...

A Big Day!

Someone buy me a corsage or something. :)

Ballad of the Merch Girl

Thanks, Conrad!

At the Crossroads Again

We're driving back from Winnsboro, TX...Crossroads Music Company is a great venue about an hour and a half east of Dallas. It's run by my good friends Lynn Adler and Lindy Hearne, and the lovely and talented Kate Hearne. It's a wonderful listening room and one of my favorite venues ever. There was a full circle moment for me because last July I opened for Susan at Crossroads (re-live that thanks to the glorious blog archive) and it was my first weekend as being a merch girl. I was kind of along for the ride as far as being useful goes, and it was fun and a great weekend. But here we are almost a year later and I am now The Merch Girl, Tour Monkey, and whatever else you wanna call it. We went back to Winnsboro with much excitement, and I got to play with Marian and Kate (who is a killer guitar player). Susan then rocked the stage with Marian (she works all the time) with a great show that sucked the crowd in from the get go. At the end Susan had me and Kate up to play the song that Susan and I wrote together called "Still Lovely When You Cry." Then Lynn joined us for "Wide Open Spaces"...Kate called it an estrogen fest and then Susan deemed it "Festrogen." That might not sell well on t-shirts. Me, Kate, Marian, and Susan Festrogen? So there we go. So fun to return to the beginnings of merch girldom as well as hang out with such good people. There's more to this weekend story but that's another blog post... Photos by Lindy Hearne! Yay Lindy!

Forward Movement

Well all right. This weekend was productive...but first: HAPPY EASTER! I went to a sunrise service this morning but it was raining so they moved it indoors and it was more of a Cloud Service. But that's ok, too. On Thursday The Landlord and I got to work moving the merchandise out of the trailer I will be living in...or as she says, "We have to move the merch out so the merch girl can move in." She also suggested we just leave it in there because...merch IS my job after all. Somehow sleeping on pallets of CDs seems like it might give me back problems, though. This all involved putting the stuff into the back of a kickbutt old Ford truck. This also involved the Boss getting a kick out of making me drive this behemoth of automobilia. Collector's item. Awesome paint job. I did a good job. No one died. No trees were taken out. I did make the Boss do the reverse back up the driveway. Trees WOULD lose their lives if I had to go backwards. Respect trees: don't drive into them. We loaded up the merch, whereupon I found some retro stock, hand drawn by the artist herself. It's kind of a bright shirt. I got jokes about perhaps getting a construction helmet while I wore it. Thanks for that, friends. Friday was heading to La Grange to merch at the Bugle Boy (no, I did not wear that shirt) and see Susan and Beth Wood songswap. What a show. They complimented each other perfectly and I recommend you find yourself some Beth tunes. Good buddy Katie and I spent yesterday cleaning and sorting...we're not done and we need a trip to IKEA, but soon I shall have a homey little space. Photos will happen when I decorate, yo. And in the meantime...I NEED TO PACK. After I play a gig in New Braunfels. I need a nap.