WEDDING POST-MORTEM?

Well, yeah. Wedding was nice: TJ is a great minister, and family and friends put a tremendous amount of work into making everything perfect. I even got to be in costume for Hallowe’en (I was dressed up as Father of the Bride). Everything was neat, and the Happy Couple are, I believe, happy.

I wanted to do a post-mortem on the musical performance—because this was a gig for the band, too: the first wedding we’ve ever played. A lot of folks in the bridal party and attendees were excited that “Deathgrass” was playing; some of those had even heard us before (and some were real curious how we’d deal with a performance where we couldn’t do any dead-animal songs).

The answer, I think, is we did pretty well. The limitations—no dead animals, no stalkers, no rotten candy, no jumping off cliffs, no dumping dead sweethearts in the river—did force the learning of some new material; only about a third of the setlist were songs we’d played before. Quite a few of the songs I’d co-written (musicating other people’s lyrics—they address serious subjects like love better’n I do), plus some covers—three I’d been specifically asked to do, and two we thought up on our own.

And we didn’t get to play the whole thing. Our performance was more like an hour than an hour and a half, so we jettisoned about a third of the songs (including three of the covers). Did do Nickelback’s “Far Away”—it was supposed to be the Dance of the Happy Couple—but I know it didn’t sound like Nickelback when we were done: I finally figured out a consistent beat (something Nickelback didn’t have), so I could make what the guitar was doing automatic, and concentrate on remembering the words. We ended up just using my electrified guitar and drummer Chris on shakers—it seemed to sound best that way.

Of the rest, it’s really hard to cite “bests”; there were a lot of “bests,” based on how many people were dancing. They liked Diane Ewing’s “Distraction” (which is a great song, and we do it well), Marge McKinnis’ “About Love,” Woody Guthrie’s “Dance a Little Longer,” “The Dog’s Song,” Southern Pigfish’s “For Their Own Ends,” and (surprise!) “Duct Tape.” I’d forgotten daughter Kimberly’s high school friends (who were mostly there, I think) were some of my earliest fans, and “Duct Tape” was one of their favorite songs. Restores one’s faith in the future, it does, to see teenagers dancing to country music. And our closing song—a pretty faithful rendition of the Monkees’ version of Neil Diamond’s “I’m a Believer”—surprised everyone, I think.

Might we get more wedding (&c.) gigs out of this? I have no idea. Did prove, I think, that we’re more versatile than maybe folks suspected, and what we do is danceable. I hope people remember.

We had a young girl singer hight Indica (a friend of groom Tony’s, I think) sit in with us doing backup vocals, and she does have a good voice (and a pretty good ear); it would be fun to work more with her. (I don’t know how the logistics of that would work.) She was surprised we didn’t have lyrics with us for most of the songs (I only had them for the couple of songs where I was afraid I’d flub the words, and I told her we mostly don’t need lyric sheets because we know the material). Still, it’d be helpful for situations like this if I did have a printout handy of the lyrics and chords of the songs we’re going to do, just so somebody like her could take advantage of it. It’d be easy to do—I have all the stuff on the computer, anyway.

I raised with everybody the idea of doing another benefit concert for the Food Pantry—ideally, a week before Christmas, just like last year (I’m pretty sure the Dance Floor at City Hall will be available that Saturday night). Compared to what we just did, the setlist ought to be easy. We have a lot of Failed Economy songs.

Joe