Played a "gig". In "public". It was fun.

After playing the Midway (what is it with dive bars in Boston putting "cafe" after their names?) with my brother's band a couple of years ago, I knew I'd found my calling. The listening-room nature of folk venues is nervewracking - it's like you're supposed to have fun, in front of cross-legged people watching you do so. Rather than the group-fun being had by all at the Can Tab on Tuesday nights where I'd go home hoarse from all my hollering from the back of the crowd. So my annual see-how-this-goes foray back into performing has been at Passim, my first "home" in Boston, where the people who supported me since hearing me play the open mics there still come out to clap and say my voice sounds fine. Even though my mind has less and less a hold on me with every passing year, my body doesn't seem to get the memo, and in those silent moments, my hands begin to shake, throat closes up, and I wish everyone were high or drunk, cause for some reason I'd be able to relax more in that case. But back at the Midway, people who didn't give a shit were talking, people who did give a shit were half listening half talking or singing along or yelling at me. It was great. Plus, I really love being on stage with other people. Matt at Passim has graciously seen to it that I not be on stage without a close buddy within reaching distance (see pics from last campfire).
So, even though no major changes, that I know of, have gone down with my voice, and whispering sleepytime songs at my computer nightly is still the most I assume I can muster vocally, I found it undeniably synchronistic when a coworker asked out of the blue if i'd like to open for his band at some bar downtown - in 6 days. "Sure."
It just seemed like it was time. I built an image in my head of what this would be like (based on Yelp, in part) and dug for non-folk songs that would be upbeat and rowdy enough as an opener for the 3:27's, who play infectiously jumping Police-type music that I imagined would attract a crowd that would truly hate some girl-with-guitar-folk-singer-songwriter bullshit.
Of course, it was 8 degrees outside, most stayed home, and so it just ended up being my cluster of highly-committed friends sitting there, for whom I could've played anything. Not the point. I needed to spend this week remembering how much I love to Sing Out, if you will.
 In the car, for like the last 4 months or more, I've become obsessed with drums. After some time spent with Cape Verdian drummer Tony Fonseca last summer, I thought hand drumming would cover it. Because I don't know anyone with a drumset. (I dated a drummer for a short time years ago and took about 3 lessons, before his 8 year old son moved in on the action and surpassed my skills immediately while I childishly stomped away in a constant fight for said boyfriend's attention. There's a losing battle I learned nothing from - next partner had 3 genius sons. Glutton for punishment). Anyhow, I am now the Air-Drummer In The Orange Car, with the Polar Bear. I even taught the preschoolers my limited air drumming skills - they slam the imaginary symbol to the right "when they feel it". It's awesome.

So I pretty much need to rock, and this was my baby step towards that end. Sweetwater "cafe", in THE ALLEY. With frozen fingers I half-assedly played some songs I don't quite know for my buddies, got a bit reacquainted with the whole monitor/pickup/PA system crap, failed to stay focused while a basketball game played in front of me, etc. The 3:27 boys joined me on kazoo solos for Careless Whisper, which was pretty much the highlight of my winter. Check it: TWIN, DANCING BACKUP BOYS!
I joined them for So Lonely, delightfully out of my range, couldn't be happier, jumping around and yelling into a mic with a great band and beer drinkers, girls dressed like Jersey hookers stumbling down from the club upstairs and past us for the bathroom. It was great!! Let's hope for a replay, same venue, lots and lots of peeps come out, and I play more with the band! I'll do this till I completely lose my voice again, then - DRUMS!

PS - the Popcornballs at Midnight piece was accepted for The Yellow Show at BCM! woo!

Back to Work! This is a weird one....

Originally had it in mind to get this done to enter into the running for a show at the BCM Gallery, for a show Jenn and I are pulling together called The Yellow Show. But it's just pretty weird, I kind of messed it up in the pictures i chose... but I made one of these once, it was really cool, and sold. So I decided to go ahead and this time take notes on how I did it so I'm not reinventing the wheel every time.

I don't know what these are called.

This one is called Popcornballs at Night.

How to:

First, choose hi res. pics that compliment each other somehow. For this, I used one image and used my minimal "skills"/luck on Paint Shop to mess with it. I only realized AFTER picking up the prints - I should've made the ONLY change between the 2 images be the appearance of the blue ball. duh. To lazy to correct, I press on.

Matte prints are ideal, I went for 8x10.

I decided to use my rotary chopper to slice them both into 1" strips.

I suck at measuring and marking. I'm learning every time. Mostly I'm learning that I'm my own boss so I can do my eyeball-magic/whatever works. But the guide on the chopper helped make this part a lot less painful than the rest. I'd swear my rulers are all inconsistent. My dreams are about stuff like that. I digress.

I found a 20 inch long piece of matt board (way to hoard) and marked it up for 1" stripes, to make a big ol' accordian.

I scored every other line on one side. I remembered from my first one of these that poor scoring made for really gross fuzzy seams on the open folds, so i tried to do better, without cutting all the way through.

Yeah, I know there's a easier way to do this. But I now had to mark and score the OTHER side, and i just couldn't measure 1" strips across the whole thing like i did on the first side. I knew they'd never line up, and that would be a BIG problem. So I kind of extended the lines over the edge AND remeasured, before drawing and scoring the alternate lines on the backside.

Lots of re-scoring later (with my Fiskars finger blade. That thing rocks) my accordian had nice, consistent 1" panels. YESSSSSSSS....

I dropped in all the picture-strips to make sure they fit. Yep.

After messing up the first strips with a FUBAR with sheets of adhesive dots (my handy little scrapbooking roller-adhesives were spent) i went back to my trusty favorite adhesive of all time, DOUBLE SIDED SCOTCH. Taped in left-side panels, then right side, pressing  them into place with my chamois-cloth-like spaceage no-scratch sweater sleeves.

Totally weird but f-ing rad. Now, the really hard part.

The illusion fails if you dont get the folds just-so. The panels have to be at a consistent angle. So I played around with it a bit and decided 1.5" were good intervals for planting the bottom creases to a base. I stuck a super sticky dot at the top and bottom of each line and pressed the folds, one at a time, onto them. Only to find that's too wide and the effect was kind of wonky. So I pulled them all up one at a time and just moved them over a smidge (luckily the dots are big) and eyeballed the angle of the folds.

I hot glued strips of mat board to hold up the last slats. Trust me, all this will make life a million times easier when i figure out some kinf of frame to drop this into.

GET IT??? POPCORN BALLS? THAT TURN BLUE? EXCEPT FOR THE EVIL-SHEEP ONE???