I’m really really late to the party on this one. Maybe because the only versions of these songs that I’ve heard had so much gaudy, transexual camp on them that it glazed over the cold, hard, vile, scabrous truth to this complex and brutal music.
We did a party at Shanghai Mermaid this weekend and the theme was Weimar Germany. There was one outstanding song that began to point the way for me into this treacherous, macabre and generally thrilling music. The performers name was Lady Rizo and the song that stabbed me was “Pirate Jenny” from “Threepenny Opera.” Basically, the song is a revenge fantasy. A prostitute in a hotel concocts a vision of a pirate ship that will not only save her from her wretched condition and the brutality of how she is treated, but will also ask for her judgement on when to kill each of her persecutors. By the end of the song, no one is spared and she leaves the town on the pirate ship herself. To take the whole thing to the next dramatic level, in most performances the song is sung by a different character to make fun of Jenny for being such a pathetic, powerless looser!!
Today, I began to study Weill and Brecht a bit and found many different versions of this song. The one I am posting here is probably the closest to the song’s original intent as it is performed by Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya. It is brisk and cold and mean and ultimately horrible. I love it.
Rizo’s version was much more drawn out and in English. A side note and a tip of the hat to a great performer: Lady Rizo had a recalcitrant crowd whipped into submission from the first seconds of her set and continued to spellbind and amaze. To perform a song as unpleasant and murderous as this, with so much text as well (!!) and hold everyone’s attention is a feat of entertainment that I yearn to achieve. I was impressed.
Last week the mighty Tin Pan was asked to perform a set at a wake. I spoke at length to the person who was helping put together the ceremony. It’s a tough, emotionally charged time for certain. I asked him what it was that the family would want exactly as I was having a hard time discerning the proper tone for what we’d be doing. I explained the traditional use of music in New Orleans funerals: on the way to cemetery the band plays mournful dirges and on the way back the music turns towards joyous spirituals. I learned that the departed loves jazz music and was a saxophone player. He said he wasn’t sure what he wanted but he trusted us to find the right music that would suit the event. On top of this, half of the family was Jewish and the idea of us being part of sitting Shiva was strange. Traditionally no music is allowed. I didn’t want to offend.
We arrived at the appointed hour and there were about 100 people gathered around their dear departed who was laying in state at the front of the room. Speeches continued for nearly an hour – everyone taking their turn describing and reminiscing with much love in their voices. This seemed like an honorable, fun-loving, kind, crafty guy. We set ourselves up in a connecting but adjacent room with about 40 chairs in it. It was like the spill-over room for the main event.
Our first number was “The Old Rugged Cross,” but as an instrumental. Serene, sad, uplifting, and played beautifully by Stefan and I on the horns. We had opened the door for music without reproach and with a good feeling in the room. We proceeded to play, “Bie Mir Bist Du Schoën,” again without lyrics. An old timer from the Jewish side of the family recognized the melody and commented about to his friend. “I know that tune. That’s Bie Mir Bist Du Schoen. L. loved that song.” An educated guess. We proceeded like this for a while playing spirituals in major keys in a slow and stately way and playing the minor songs with a perky lift so they wouldn’t feel to heavy.
The room was getting looser and I called, “Down By The Riverside” and introduced the voice into the mix. From the moment I started singing the majority of people in the room started to clap along on the back beat. Gospel feeling of rejoicing and reverence and smiling ensued. About 30 minutes later we closed with a song I wrote about my own dear departed great-aunt Alice.
It’s not that the vibe in the room was joyous per se. Or even happy. It was mournful but there was definitely the feeling of comfort and solace that we were allowing everyone to experience. It was a beautiful thing.
I am so proud of my band for helping me to create this tone at this event. We didn’t know what to expect going into it. We had no idea what was really required of us as it was impossible for us to articulate it beforehand. That we all discovered it together and were able to be comforting, provide solace, and to manifest reverence for the departed is definitely playing against type for Tin Pan. We are usually the irreverent, bombastic and rough ones. I am really thrilled that we could be open enough to take the right shape for what was required.
Another dear friend, Ann, who has also passed on, once commented about me that she loved the way, like water, I could pour myself into any situation and take on its shape. I am so happy to find myself able to do that with Tin Pan as well when the situation requires it. I suppose this story is as banal as saying that it was a rough room but we figured out how to make it work. It seems more than that to me though, for the those vibes of solace and comfort that we rarely get called on to provide.
It’s been a pretty rough couple of months for me personally and I want to talk about here on these pages. Hopefully this story will inspire you to focus on living out your dreams starting right now.
This story has three strands that run with each other like a braid. The first seems innocuous: there’s a pose in my Bikram Yoga practice called the Camel that always makes me want to pass out. Up till two days ago, I could only do it for a second before I’d have to turn around and lie down. It is supposed to really work the heart. For reasons to be discussed below, as soon as I’d even prepare to do it my breathing would become very labored, I would feel dizzy or nauseous and every fiber of my body would scream, “Stop this at once.”
The second strand begins by me admitting that I lied, or at least partly lied to an ABC news reporter who was doing a story on us. It was a big lie to a big question. She had asked me,
What is your goal with all this music that you are doing.
I responded as follows: “I think I have achieved my goal. Every day we are in a position where we are taking our carear one step further. I feel like I am a pioneer on the forefront of my life. Every day reveals more unexplored territory, opportunity and possibility. As long as this continues I feel I will be satisfied.” Yeah, it’s all true but it’s also a big lie. I want a lot more than just that.
The third strand goes back to my genetics. I was born with a strange heart. As an infant, I had an experimental surgery which basically set things straight. Had I been born only a few years earlier I would have died after a few short weeks. During the procedure, I coded. I was dead on the table. I really shouldn’t even be here. But, thanks to modern medicine, since the age of three I have been perfectly healthy. Last November, I had a kind of medical crisis related to my heart condition. Atrial Flutter: the top part of the heart beats way too fast while the bottom part attempts to hold steady. After a few days in the hospital they actually put some paddles on either side of my chest and shocked my heart back into a regular rhythm! Turns out, and doctors are only figuring this out in the last few years, about 80% of people who have had the surgery I had get atrial fluter when the get to my age. I felt cursed. I felt resigned. Oh well, at least I had a good run at it…
Now back to life and the winter as a musician. It was a pretty stressful time for me especially as I didn’t have health insurance. Writing letters to doctors and hospital administrators became a part time job for many months. Eventually I was able to talk them down to something affordable. Meanwhile, there were a few episodes where I thought I was having a recurrence. I’ll tell you quite frankly that I was freaking out a little bit. I even went to my local doctor and got an EKG only to find that the results were normal. In a way, this was worse. Now I felt that I didn’t even have an accurate gauge of my own state of health. Perhaps I had started experiencing anxiety attacks that stemmed purely from my own fears.
I am writing this story today because all of this has come to a head in the last week. On sunday I started experiencing another bout of this fake atrial flutter. And even though it isn’t “real” it is still a terrible, terrible feeling. It lasted for days at a time. It was making me consider drinking myself to death. It was making me count my moments of life. It was making me feel like I needed to start saying good bye to the world. At the same time, I would take my pulse, recognize that what I was feeling was illusionary, and recognize that I was in the middle of some psychological storm that would hopefully show me something.
During the ABC interview, I was reflecting on all these things and it is this kind of gallows wisdom that lead me to such a Buddhist statement of my life’s purpose. Again, in a way, it is true and quite wise I feel. Needing nothing more than the present and feeling of some kind of purposeful growth is a guarantee of feeling satisfied. It is adjustable. No matter what the external condition of life, the internal feeling of growth and improvement can continue. It seems completely sensible. And even more sensible when one is face to face with one’s own mortality. It is also only half of my reality. The other half was being ignored or hidden.
If I look at my goals and dreams from when I was a kid onwards through my twenties, I see that my real life’s purpose is to be HUGE. HUGE in the sense of RADIATING ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF ENERGY. If I had a picture of it, it would be a picture of me standing in front of a band of musicians at some venue like Giant’s Stadium with light reflecting off of me into a truly endless sea of a crowd. And, honestly, and without holding back, this energy did not stop at just the people at the show. It continued to radiate OUTWARDS to spread this energy to all of human kind. And not just human kind, animals and plants and all other being as well. And it didn’t just stop with the earth. It was like a beacon of energy radiating outwards to other planets, star systems, galaxies to the very boundaries of the universe and beyond if that were possible. There is a very deep part of me that is accessing this dream every time I perform. With every breath I take. Frankly, I think it is a natural state to assume one is the center of one’s universe as a beacon of one’s essence. Wow. Still with me? And what is this energy? It is all the joy, pain, suffering, love, passion of life.
The other day I was back at the Bikram studio and it was time again for the Camel. I got up on my knees and started to bend backwards. I began to feel the familiar need to abort the pose but for whatever reason, desperation?, annoyance with being afraid?, curiosity? I decided to stick it out and push past. I tried a few different ways of breathing and eventually made it through the allotted time and returned to lying flat on my back with all the others in the class. My heart was ON FIRE!! It was beating so fast and so hard and so rapidly. I could actually hear the valves of the heart clicking open and closed. Believe me, after all the research I’ve done on my own heart, I was pulling up all kinds of detailed anatomical diagrams into my mind’s eye. The thoughts that were coming through my brain were like a revelation, questioning my fear. “Why have you been short selling your ambition? What have you done with your dreams? Are you really satisfied with the moment you are in? What if you died right now? Would you have accomplished what you feel you are here to do?” The answers were charged with passion. “No! I would not be satisfied. I have achieved a good base but that is all. Now is the time remember who I am. Now is the time to move forward towards my real goal: performing for huge audiences all over the world and sharing my radiant vibration with the entirety of the universe – all at once – right now.” No need to run from what I’ve been hoping for my whole life.
The second set of camel was a piece of cake. My heart was still on fire afterwards but there was no resistance, no shortness of breath, no dizziness and no fear.
I work really hard. I push really hard. When I sing, I dive off the boundary of what I know I can do and fly into maximum effort with out any reservation. Even when I’m not performing I am working very hard at making the business side of what we are doing a fruitful, lucrative endeavor. I will not stop till I am where I need to be. It is a good thing to be reminded what I am working so hard for. It is a wonderful mirror to see my passion in. So, ABC, sorry to mislead you. I was tripping. I was circling around fear and stress. I was only giving you half of the story. Yes, I am wise enough to accept and appreciate every moment as a sign of growth. But growth towards what? Growth towards a radiant, joyous energy that is felt to the ends of the universe.
Yours,
Jesse
One of my favorite parts of working on the Wonderneath show was hearing different cast members singing melodies that I’d written. Even more special was hearing them singing the melodies to themselves while they were doing their make-up or getting into costume. The ear worm thing. And not just the singers of those songs but performers who didn’t sing at all were humming melodies that I had written. It was a very good feeling. The closest thing I have come to being proud of one’s children, I suppose.
Without further ado, here is a song I wrote in 2005 called Blue Nature. This one took many months to write. I would keep hearing the melody in my head when I was on the subway and it just seemed so natural that I didn’t even recognize that it was original and only existed in my head. Finally I wrote it down and wrote some lyrics to it etc… Here is a version with Kai Altair singing a wonderful lead. She basically took my lyrics and adjusted them to fit the story of the show. Great job, Kai. Great to hear you sing!
For those of you that may or may not know (doesn’t matter), THE MIGHTY TIN PAN recently rocked the Wonderneath Show at the House of Yes…
A swirling good time of flying women, giant human eating plants, silk tentacles spewing scantly clad girls overhead, and Baby Hands smiling profoundly at learning of the mystical dance move known simply as the “Box Step”.
Jesse & I met with the cast early in the run and started working with the girls to pick the correct tunes and reshape them to fit the show. It was really fantastic that the Lady Circus gravitated to mostly original Tin Pan songs and it was great to write new lyrics to Jesse’s melodies to allow them to tell the narrative of our heroine.
For my part, I was busy catching transitions, mood, story arc, & choreography to begin working on underscoring ideas and musical direction for the dance numbers. I always love working in the theater and get a kick out of the split second musical choices that drive the action on stage home and really pride myself on creating the right sounds to convey the scene’s intent without drawing attention to the musicians*.
It was great to use much of our current repertory but I hope that the next time we score a show it allows for more original parts & arrangements. I feel that between Jesse’s songwriting chops & my theatrical scoring we could really give Andrew Lloyd Webber a run for his money!
I was super tickled with a particular section of the show I call “Tin Pan in Turkey”:
While 3 lovely ladies danced with fist-fulls of fire, Jesse was holding down the proverbial fort with a serious djembe & tambourine-snare-esque groove while I joined in with some Whirling Dervish strumming upon my trusty ol’ National guitar. I told
Stefan to get busy serenading the spitting cobras that dance in his mind by playing some SERIOUS Cor Anglais (The English Horn or “Oboe Gordo”).
But the most miraculous and unexpected part of this new little step into the soundworld of the Tin Pan was the UNABASHED, UNWARRANTED, & TOTALLY KILLING Double Bass soloing of one Peter “Baby Hands” Maness…
Yes, you heard right: The Benevolent Dictator actually requested, approved, & outright enjoyed a Five minute arco bass extravaganza!!!
With both a bass solo & Saints Super Bowl victory happening so close to each other I can hear legions of “Left Behind” readers running to get on the mythical “Escalator to Heaven”…
All in all a great experience & one I hope Tin Pan gets to repeat soon & with much regularity!
Here are some fun pics & a short review from Atlantic Records Art Director, Alex Kirzhner:
Last weekend opened up a whole new category of gigs for us. We were introduced formally to the world of Blues Dance festivals at the Sweet Molasses Blues Workshop 2. It seems as though we might have found our niche in the dance world. The swing dance scene is very good for us but it’s not necessarily our wheel house. I feel this is mainly an issue of tempo. At most big events (snowball excluded as far as I can tell) there are quite a few beginner and intermediate dancers and they really need medium tempos. Too fast or too slow and they can’t really have a good time with it. Tin Pan, you see, we thrive on the extremes. At least with the Blues Dance thing we can take it real swampy and southern and get them hips down to the floor with the music. We can’t do the fast stuff but at least we can stretch the dynamic to the molasses.
Hey, as I was writing this, it just got confirmed that we’ll be playing at Jook Joint Shimmy Blues as part of the annual Babble festival. You see how this stuff works. Embrace what you do well and world will line up to support you in it. That’s how it feels right now anyway.
Before I leave off, a quick and inadequate thank you to John Brooks for believing in Tin Pan enough to let us break in at his wonderful event. Thanks to all the staff and volunteers there too. Everyone treated us with care and charm and that always goes a long way! Thanks to our sound man for being so diligent and knowing his own gear so well. Super helpful guy! And finally, big thanks to my family in Sharon, MA that helped us by letting the band crash after the show for a few hours before we had to hurry back to the big apple/
It wasn’t till I had successfully created the Flame-O-Phone (thanks to the brilliant expertise of Ben Bartelle) that I started digging into the real history of pyro-instruments. It was in this mysterious and sordid history, buried deep in the annals of the internet, that I discovered Boots Hughston.
A legendary character of the west-coast rock scene, he began his career playing in The Hoodoo Devils. Lo and behold, I found him on Facebook, and sent him a message. I heard back :
“I used to shoot out 2 or 3 feet of flame, set off sprinklers a couple of time, singed the hair on my arms a couple of times. I hope I do not need to tell you this is dangerous – one of my friends stepped on my tube connecting to the propane tanks when I lifted my horn the connector separated while I was pushing the switch – Propane accumulated around my feet, when it ignited I went up in flames. luckily I had enough sense to stop pushing the switch and stepped out off the fire ball. No one got hurt, the hair on my arms was singed and the hair on my head was a little shorter – It made for great PR – Sax player explodes on stage, you should have seen the press.
Good Luck and Be Safe,
Much Respect
Boots”
Boots : We youngsters revere you as a true trail-blazer, and only wish that one day, 30 years from now, someone will ask me, “Hey, I heard you made a flame-o-phone years ago”, and I can refer them back to the legend of Boots.
In 1887, Jerry Thomas wrote one of the 1st published collections of cocktail recipes in the United States.
In 2009, the fantastic friend & cellist, Joel Noyes, asked the all-knowing Lucinda (of Little Branch fame) for a “refreshing whiskey based drink”…and our little posse of friends was introduced to the sublime “Vieux Carre” cocktail.
In 2010, I found a copy of Jerry Thomas’s cocktail book on eBay and won it. While looking through recipes I noticed a drink that could only be considered the precursor to the Vieux Carre.
That drink is the Saratoga:
-1 Part Brandy
-1 Part Rye
-1 Part Sweet Vermouth
-2 Dashes Angostura Bitters
Stir on ice, No garnish…
Simple as pie and damn good…the Mighty Vieux Carre only adds a little Benedictine and Peychoud’s Bitters with some citrus and brandied cherries on the garnish side…
This drink is really good and a great way to get in the world of the Vieux Carre but sit on the “Spicier” side of the drink.
Salud!!!
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for March, 2010.
Last week the mighty Tin Pan was asked to perform a set at a wake. I spoke at length to the person who was helping put together the ceremony. It’s a tough, emotionally charged time for certain. I asked him what it was that the family would want exactly as I was having a hard time discerning the proper tone for what we’d be doing. I explained the traditional use of music in New Orleans funerals: on the way to cemetery the band plays mournful dirges and on the way back the music turns towards joyous spirituals. I learned that the departed loves jazz music and was a saxophone player. He said he wasn’t sure what he wanted but he trusted us to find the right music that would suit the event. On top of this, half of the family was Jewish and the idea of us being part of sitting Shiva was strange. Traditionally no music is allowed. I didn’t want to offend. 
It’s been a pretty rough couple of months for me personally and I want to talk about here on these pages. Hopefully this story will inspire you to focus on living out your dreams starting right now. 
The other day I was back at the Bikram studio and it was time again for the Camel. I got up on my knees and started to bend backwards. I began to feel the familiar need to abort the pose but for whatever reason, desperation?, annoyance with being afraid?, curiosity? I decided to stick it out and push past. I tried a few different ways of breathing and eventually made it through the allotted time and returned to lying flat on my back with all the others in the class. My heart was ON FIRE!! It was beating so fast and so hard and so rapidly. I could actually hear the valves of the heart clicking open and closed. Believe me, after all the research I’ve done on my own heart, I was pulling up all kinds of detailed anatomical diagrams into my mind’s eye. The thoughts that were coming through my brain were like a revelation, questioning my fear. “Why have you been short selling your ambition? What have you done with your dreams? Are you really satisfied with the moment you are in? What if you died right now? Would you have accomplished what you feel you are here to do?” The answers were charged with passion. “No! I would not be satisfied. I have achieved a good base but that is all. Now is the time remember who I am. Now is the time to move forward towards my real goal: performing for huge audiences all over the world and sharing my radiant vibration with the entirety of the universe – all at once – right now.” No need to run from what I’ve been hoping for my whole life.
