alive music (tonight & wednesday!)
in which we continue in our quest to drive the cold winter away with song, and
Hey Hartlist,
I just want to say one thing:
I absolutely knew who was going to die in the White Lotus finale, and I didn’t trust my gut and if I had I could have won (a very small amount of) money.
JUST THE GIGS PLEASE, NO REGRETS
Tonight! 8PM- Songwriters at The Kraine Theatre w/Matt Gelfer (plus songs by Jordan Friend & Zach Spound)
Wednesday! 7PM - Annual Winter Solstice Gig @the Rockwood Music Hall
w/the Wrong Band (Matt Gelfer, Danny Ursetti, Chris Nattrass, Nick Stephens, special appearance by Santa’s Elf Jonny Porkpie
FROM THE CHRYSALIS
It is Rainy and Cold and I am Sleepy and Grumpy and probably all the rest of the Seven Dwarves. (Not Sneezy though! … somehow. Fingers crossed.) I don’t want to leave the house at all to go sing songs tonight but honestly… I never do. It’s part of how I ‘get nervous’ for music performances and has been for a very long time. I’m really looking forward to the show on Wednesday at 7, but I guarantee you that at 6:55 I will be sitting in the tiny but weirdly opulent green room at Rockwood Music Hall thinking why did I tell all those people to come here?????
Because it’s going to be awesome! It almost always is! It’s one of my favorite things to do in the world! I want you there!
This makes no difference, though, to my lizard brain, day-of.
(Sidebar: Yes, we are going on “right at” the time of the show. We are always going on at the time of the show.1)
Rehearsing the band is a similar challenge. Every one (mostly) these days ends with a feeling of wonder and exhilaration and awareness of how lucky I am to be part of this kind of particular human constellation … but I still always feel like I’m going to have to pay someone to drag me there by my heels, bloated with dread. It’s possible this is PTSD from my first band, in college, which was put together by someone else from a pool of hot-shot jazz and rock students. Every The Rebecca Hart Project rehearsal began with an excruciating 30 minutes of jamming while I sat in the corner pretending to be really interested in my purse and hoping no one figured out I didn’t know How To Do That. That was a long time ago though. So maybe it’s just nerves.
On Saturday, I took the subway to Times Square during SantaCon (!!!) and climbed three flights of stairs to play a 20-minute set in a yoga studio. I loaned my guitar to the guy performing after me because he had an electric guitar but there was no amp. I was roughly four hundred years older than everyone who worked there and was just thinking how nice it would have been to Not Do This when the room filled up, the lights dimmed to a little fairy ring of xmas lights on the floor for the performers, the mics we rigged up for vocals and guitar suddenly sounded… great? and the evening became totally magical. I had already had a chat with myself about just playing to play, not to try to convince anyone of anything, which if you’re wondering is definitely the way to go. The guy who borrowed my guitar played beautiful songs that I wanted to listen to. We were in a beautiful bubble of peace, twinkle lights, and BYOB picnics on blankets while the Drunken Santas outside seemed a world away. I floated home really grateful for the experience.
It’s probably the exact opposite of promotion to shout out something that already happened, but SoFar Sounds concerts happen all over the world all the time and I recommend going if you can hack the floor seating thing. The audience doesn’t know who’s performing, or even where the show is (til the night before), and it’s never at a music venue. They’re there to hear music, not see a particular performer with a particular draw, and so there’s a kind of rare open-heartedness of listening. It feels really either nostalgic or quaint or theatrical to me. The performers never have to promote, there’s always a crowd, we get paid a flat fee, I don’t know, small miracles.
Last night after I watched the White Lotus Finale (I’m almost over it) at my cousin’s house we were talking about how TV - weirdly, in this its Golden Age - seems to be doing a funny full-circle thing to the TV I remember from childhood. Little by little, we’ve gone from “stream the whole thing whenever you want” back to “you have to wait til Sunday at 9 for the next episode!" (Commercial breaks are also creeping back in.) I’m not sure what I’m trying to say except that maybe there are certain things we always find our way back to, like being entranced and surprised by art, and like not wanting to be alone when that happens.
Maybe we don’t need the commercials though.
I’ll leave it there because if I don’t, I’ll be promoting another event retroactively. Off to the East Village with an unwilling and open heart.
See you out there,
Rebecca
Musicians know that this question means “I’m not coming”. (On the East Coast, anyway. In LA, if memory serves, this is communicated with the phrase “I will DEFINITELY be there.”)