Releasing Albums and Playing with the Big Kids
My first few days back at the television station were very interesting. It had changed a lot over the few years I was not working there. The business was acquired by a large media conglomerate out of the Midwest. It still was a dusty, worn down, old building, but it had much more equipment and almost twice the staff than before. There was also an extension to the building for offices that hosted an army of salespeople. The TV station was in a full-on business competition mode against a new rival network broadcasted by a local TV station.
It was good to be back. The weekly newspaper was the only other place where I had worked before where there was an appreciation and understanding of being a creative professional along with doing creative things for fun, like performing music or writing. The pay wasn’t fantastic, but it was better than when I worked there before. The job was to create TV promotions for the newscasts, along with promoting events and special series.
Socially, I wasn’t that close with either the news or production staff like I had been during the earlier years I had worked there. Now living life as a married father who was also a musician, there wasn’t any time or desire to create new friendships with these co-workers. The focus for me was to do a good job and enjoy life with my family, while continuing to perform music and finish off the KouseFly album.
Shannon, luckily, didn’t have the job transition problems I was experiencing. She knew it wasn’t my fault that either of the higher-paying corporate jobs didn’t work out for me. Shannon has always been a very social person, and is well liked by many types of friends. I really enjoyed her friends who were also into going to live music shows and talking about indie rock. These people were just as much music fans as she was, and she’d end up going to concerts with this small group of people. Following the concerts, they’d talk about what they liked most and even tagged the twitter accounts of the band and band members of Wilco, surprisingly getting likes and reactions to their comments.
It was nice to break away from my own music pursuits and simply enjoy music as a fan with them and Shannon. I would make it a point to not talk about my own music around these people. I was nowhere close to the performance level of this group’s interests. I decided to be a silent student of the craft, while attending big shows with Shannon and these people and taking mental notes on what the professionals were doing.
Other than that, my social circle was pretty small and I started to get a bit more isolated among fellow musicians. There was only one practicing musician at the television station, Barry, who is a drummer, and worked down the hall from my office. He was very much like me, a dad rocker with a long history of working at the station as well. He also was out on the town performing music with bands.
As time moved on and KouseFly was put on hiatus, I was enjoying doing the project Brian in the Breakroom, which unfortunately started to get a bit stressful. The moment lunch came around I’d hurry over to the timeclock and punch out, then I’d drive to the location of my next performance at a business breakroom. HR gave me a warning earlier about being a couple minutes late back from a performance one day. The next time I was late I was written up. It was very awkward and a little disconcerting. I was doing a fantastic job at work, developing promotions on time, and the television ratings were doing great. It was just corporate America stepping in on a concept of owning the time of an individual.
Rather than getting too upset about it, I transitioned my efforts to perform traditional shows at night. I sent my former bandmate, James, a video of Jeff Tweedy playing a song during his tour for his promotional film for the album Sunken Treasure.
“Check this out James,” I said. “This performer, who my wife and I follow, is playing an acoustic guitar and brought in his drummer for a stripped-down set.”
I sent him the video link of Tweedy playing, which happened to be one of my wife’s favorite songs, “Laminated Cat”, with his drummer from Wilco, Glen Kotche. It was a side gig, and I think the song had epitomized exactly what I was interested in doing for my next project.
“We could totally do something like this and open up for touring acts coming into Bend,” I told James. He was interested.
“What’s going to be our project’s name?” He asked.
I looked to my amp which had my first car’s Oregon license plate screwed to it. “We’re calling it ERM 147.” He laughed, but went along with it. I landed an opening position for a touring act who was playing at Silvermoon Brewery. They were a very popular traveling act called Red Elvises, known for their Russian take on catching a wave, promoted as “Siberian Surf Music”.
James and I wore reflective street gear, like we were working at the department of transportation and decided to go play a show after patching up a few potholes. When James and I finished our set, Igor, the lead singer of the band, walked up and patted me on the back saying, “Good job Brian.” It’s not that we were the best project to open up for these bands, but I was the only one who’d asked. It also helped that I didn’t ask for any money. James was into the idea, but didn’t have time to commit to making the two-piece band a normal thing, especially since we weren’t pulling in cash.
I asked my co-worker, Barry, if he’d like to jump in on the fun, and if he’d help me out with a couple shows as a drummer for my opening sets. Then, I asked to open up for one of my favorite throwback bands who were visiting Bend, The Devil Makes Three. I floated over a video of me opening up for the Red Elvises to the band’s manager and it was a little misleading. There was a very big crowd wanting to watch the band, but the video looked like all of the people were there for me.
The manager of The Devil Makes Three said “Absolutely man, you seem to bring in a nice crowd”, after he watched the video, probably thinking I was going to add to the draw to the door. Instead of explaining, I rode with it.
Barry and I practiced a few nights before. I wanted to make the show memorable somehow, and came up with the idea to put up a projector screen on the stage. I played an old film while Barry and I played our set, then finished the show by launching confetti into the crowd from a confetti gun. It was fun, and again, I may have not been the best musician to be in that position, but I was the only one who asked.
I was considering the entire experience of opening for touring acts as an education. I learned a lot, and I was slowly graduating from small bar gigs to mid-sized indoor concert shows. I was slowly getting my feet underneath me as a soloist after many years of playing in a duo fronted band, and it felt great.