San Francisco Bay Area Gospel Singer, Fiver Brown

Please check out this quick video featuring Bay Area gospel singer, Fiver Brown, live at the No Name Bar in Sausalito, CA.

Happy New Year!

Singer/Songwriter Showcase

Please tune in next week for an exclusive video interview with Fiver Brown. Born in Atlanta, GA, the local Bay Area singer, songwriter and guitarist delivers his gritty Southern-soulful vocals to the Bay Area with passion, sincerity and humor. Brown is the front man for the bands, Dredgetown and The Good Sinners.

Stay tuned…

Go to Concerts!

Aside from getting out there and “making the hang,” you need to attend concerts. Not only is going to concerts a large part of making the hang, it also makes you a better musician. Think of a live music experience as visual and mental practice. When appropriate attend concerts of the musician’s you enjoy listening to. If they don’t happen to be in town, then go check out a local-band gig. Local band gigs are a great way to compare yourself to the band’s who are out there doing it. You may come to realize that you’re better than you think, and sometimes you’ll see someone play who completely blows your mind and sends you running to the tool shed.

I recently attended a local gig here in San Francisco and I was totally turned on to an incredible bass player who I’d never heard of. I made a point to make friends with him on their break, exchange numbers and wham!… I made a great new contact. Turns out the guy does a lot of touring with a national act and has some great leads on future gigs. Priceless!

For my money the best list of concerts in San Francisco is the SF Weekly. Who’s got the best local music calendar in your town?

Plus, there are tons of apps out there like Bandsintown that will alert you when your favorite bands are nearby.

Support live music!

The Bridge’s Auditorium

Make the Hang!

Some people go to music school and/or spend hours upon hours honing their craft and practicing or both getting themselves “up to speed” to play music professionally. Once they are ready though, how do they get the gig?

They make the “hang.” You have to get out there and meet people. Go to open mike/jam sessions. All you have to do is google “blues-jam” or “open-mic” for your particular city and go. Get to know the guy who runs it and get on the sign-in sheet. You will probably start out with a bunch of guys who can’t really play, but once you prove yourself, you’ll move up the ladder in a hurry. Before you know it, your phone will be ringing off the hook.

Check out this great article on making contacts in the music-business from Tom Hess.

Cheers!

Playing for Tips

We all do it. Not every gig can be the 2,500 seater auditorium/theater gig. Sometimes we do something just because we like the music. Sometimes we do something just to keep our instrument in our hands and get some good “stage-time-dress-rehearsal” in. Sometimes it’s just a chill vibe with some really great people who just happen to be fantastic musicians at the same time. It’s like poker-night for guys who like to jam.

Please check out this video of Los Bandidos sin Nombre at the No Name Bar in Sausalito, CA doing exactly that.

The stage is set at No Name Bar

Top 5 Drummers

Everybody has their own personal “Top 5” list of their favorite whatever. Here are my top five favorite drummers who have influenced me in one way or another:

5 – Adam Dietch – Dietch is the drummer for Break Science and the fairly popular jam-band, Lettuce. However, it was really Dietch’s work with guitar great, John Scofield that got me listening.

4 – Jeff “Apartment Q258” Sipe – I first saw Q258 in the early 90’s with the original lineup of Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit. The music those guys cranked out was absolutely masterful. If you’re fortunate enough to find a copy of the live album Col. Bruce put out somewhere around 1992, check out the tune “Time is Free.” It will blow your mind. It’s one of my all time favorite recording to date.

3 – Russell Batiste – I’ve been fortunate enough to have had lessons from Russell back when I lived in New Orleans in the early 2000’s. He’s an absolute animal-beast! Personally, I love the way he makes what most drummers might consider “overplaying” really work. Russell crushes it like no other.

2 – Johnny Vidacovich – A true. old-school New Orleanian. Johnny V. is a master of the New Orleans second line and “streat beat” rhythms. Drummers who don’t know about Johnny, shame on you.

1 – Steve Gadd – For me there is no better combination of musical sensibility and chops than Steve Gadd. Check out the feel he puts on James Taylor’s, “Country Road” in the clip. It’s perfect!

So there’s my top five drummers for today. It might be different tomorrow but that’s OK. Back in 2011, Rolling Stone Magazine listed there top ten drummers of all time. I think my list is better.

Cheers!

Now go play!

The Metronome Placebo

Everyone is different. That is to say, some like it a little faster than others and some like it a little slower. It’s all subjective. There is and will never ever be a “right” (as in correct) or “wrong” tempo because it’s totally up to you.

Now, with that said, as a drummer I find it best to find a tempo that the singer is comfortable with. If the song is too fast he or she may not be able to keep up. (Remember, singers are human and they have to breathe.) Usually you can find where the singer wants it just before the song starts by watching how they tap their foot. (Try it. It works 90% of the time.) Also, when there’s a singer in the band, I usually let them count off the tune just to be safe. The tempo the singer in your band is comfortable with is about as close to a “correct” tempo as there will ever be.

I had an experience with this issue, recently, that I would like to share with you. A fine group of four attorneys in the city had formed a classic-rock cover band. (Keep in mind, these guys are lawyers and not professional musicians.) They just wanted to have some fun with their expensive, high-end instruments down in the basement on the weekends. However, they had been asked to play a few “functions” and needed a drummer. (This is where I come in.) They hire me to play the drums on their gigs. At the first rehearsal one of the guitar players (and pretty much the MD) just couldn’t get comfortable with my feel for some reason. Fast forward to the next rehearsal a week later; the “MD” had been listening to and studying the studio recordings of the songs we were playing all week and had written down the BPM (beats per minute) for each of them. Right off the bat he explains this to me, hands me the list of songs (each with their respective BPM), and a metronome. He even had the metronome set to the “correct” tempo for the first song we were to rehearse. (I think it was about 100BPM or so.) Anyway, I count the tune off with the metronome and everybody falls in just right. However, about two seconds into it we are nowhere near the metronome, BUT after the song the “MD” looks at me and says, “perfect!”

I always play “with” the band. Since no human is perfect, tempo is what us professional musicians refer to as “elastic.” When performed live a song will always naturally speed up and slow down to some degree. The only way to get everyone synced to “metronomic-time” is to have everyone in the band playing with exactly the same “click” in their headphones. Otherwise, somebody is inevitably going to speed up or slow down and if you’re the only one playing to the click, and everyone else is playing with the band; if you try and “fight” the band back to the click, it’s going to sound like a big mess.

The point I’m trying to make here is that this particular “MD” was of the mindset that the studio version of a recording is the “correct” tempo for a song. This is not at all the case. This guy just felt better having handed me a metronome and some notes…

Try this experiment if you disagree. Listen to the studio version of your favorite song. Now go see that artist in concert or youtube a live version of that song. I bet the live version is a lot faster or even completely different (like an acoustic version or something.) Once you’ve heard two different versions of the same tune, come back and tell me which one is “right.” How do you know? (I will disagree with you just to make the point that it’s subjective. You like one version, I like the other. There you go. We’re both wrong.)

To keep the elasticity of tempo at a minimum, I highly recommend practicing with a metronome. Start slowly and build up speed gradually. Here’s a great little article on practicing with a metronome. Please check it out.

1.2.3.4…

Top Three Drum Books (All you need)

One of the best things you can do to learn how to play the drums is play along with records that you like. What better way to incorporate musicality with (pretty much) a built in metronome. If you’re a beginner, I highly recommend getting yourself some Bad Company, some AC/DC and even some Tom Petty. You’ll find these drum parts to be fairly easy, yet extremely musical. Once you’ve got a little basic drumset coordination down, start at the beginning of the song (obviously) and once you get stuck, start over. (Kind of like a video-game.)

Once you get a few basic rock beats down you’re going to want to expand. There are plenty of youtube videos out there, but I find three books to be extremely valuable for tackling all styles of drumming; Stick Control by George Lawrence Stone, Progressive Steps to Syncopation for the Modern Drummer by Ted Reed and finally Bass Drum Control by Colin Bailey. Within these three books lies a virtual treasure-trove of patterns that you’d be hard pressed to learn in your lifetime. On top of that, you can use your imagination and invert, reverse and manipulate the patterns all you want, alternating which drums you play each limb on or switching your lead hand, or even leading with a foot etc etc.. It’s up to you.

That said, there are a ton of great books out there. Check out this recent blog on the top ten drum books available right now.

What’s your favorite drum book?

RLLRLRRL

Mali Blues

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of performing with JeConte and The Mali Allstars. Joe Conte’s (JeConte’s) vision of the perfect blend of West-African music, instruments and rhythms intertwined with the music and feel of New Orleans, is what The Mali Allstars are all about. JeConte “flies-out” fantastic musicians from Mali and then hand picks musician from the U.S. to complete his perfect band. The shows I was fortunate enough to be involved with took place over a couple of weekends in fabulous venues from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

All the way around, this was a great gig. Joe flew me down to L.A. from San Francisco. (He chose me as the drummer for this run because of my background in New Orleans rhythms, most notably, the clave.) Accommodations in Los Angeles were not in the usual form of hotel rooms. Instead, we were graciously put-up by the folks at Pamona College, (where we were to play on our second night, at the campus’ Bridges Auditorium), in their “band-house.” Arriving at the “band-house” around 7pm, I was greeted by the rest of the band. We were able to get a little rehearsal in before our fist gig, which was later that night. It was a four-bedroom house and I had my own room. I’m always cool with that. Our first gig was at an Afghan restaurant in town and was a nice warm up for the 2,000 seater gig the next evening. The Bridges Auditorium was beautiful and inspiring with impeccable sound and an enthusiastic audience. Joe Conte was a gracious host who made sure everyone in the band had the “rockstar” treatment. If only all my gigs were this cush. The next weekend we had twi gigs in San-Fran, one in Oaktown and one day-gig in Bolinas. Below is a pic from the stage at Bolinas

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I was introduced to a couple of master musicians from Mali on these gigs. I leaned a lot about the ngoni, the calabash, salsa and adapting to unfamiliar musical situations on the fly. The one is the one, after all.

Below is a link to a story map of my trip down to Los Angeles with The Mali Allstars. Please check it out. (And, ah-hem… Please excuse the typos.) Here you go:

Cheers!

What are you worth as a musician?

Well, it’s a sliding scale. It really depends on what kind of a deal you make for yourself. As a bandleader you make a deal with the club, say some kind of door percentage or (for a bigger venue) the standard formula of club-size times ticket-price divided in half. If you’re a side-man like a musician for hire, (drummers included of course) then you and the bandleader will come to a “gentleman’s agreement” on your compensation.

Experience is something you gain just after you need it most. Prior experience has taught me to never give a figure as to what you’re willing to play for (see previous post for one example). Instead, simply get all of the details about the gig (how far you’ll be traveling, backline, compensation, etc etc) and just say yes or no. If you can negotiate up then great, but do not give a figure.

On the other hand, here’s a true-story that provides a great example of a situation where you might want to give a figure; I get a call asking if I’d be into playing drums for this band who wanted to open up for Lee Fields and the Expressions. Not huge but the Expressions’ audience was within their demographic and would have been some good exposure for this particular band. The gig was right in my backyard of San Francisco so I wasn’t sweatin’ the pay, which was $60 bucks. The catch was that Lee Fields and the boys needed backline and wanted me to let them “borrow” my drums for the evening. Now, I don’t have a problem doing this for an opening band when I’m on with the headliner and I can still split right after my set. However, being forced to hang around after my set so I could grab my drums once the headliner was finished did not seem like much fun. The $60 bucks I was getting paid was looking much less appealing. I told the guys I would play the set for $60 bucks and that I would rent them a set of drums and stick around and “drum-tech” for the headliner for $1500. As you can imagine, they did not go for it. I purposely put an astronomical price for my services on a job that I wanted nothing to do with, but if they went for it… Hey, easy-peezy and I’d have been $1500 richer. Oh well.

Below is a link to a fantastic read from SF Weekly on what a small-time rock-n-roll band can expect to make in San Francisco. Just like in the article, I’ve personally experienced playing on a three-band bill on a weeknight in the Brick and Mortar and coming home with a measly $20 bucks in my pocket. Good thing I have a day-job.

Which reminds me… Stay tuned for the Top Ten best day jobs for musicians coming up in future posts.

Here’s the link to the SF Weekly article. Check it out: http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/what-do-sf-gigs-pay-it-depends-but-not-much/Content?oid=2829213