The past month has been completely crazy. March was literally a tornado of crazy. I feel like the calendar rolled to March and then I blinked and it was April.
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I was afforded the opportunity to be a musical guest on The Mystery Hour, which is a 3-time Emmy Award winning regional late-night television program filmed at The Gillioz Theatre, which is a super cool venue with a ton of history and great bands who have played there before.
I decided to play my new tune, "16 Bucks," which is a piece I wrote a few weeks ago about the period of time during which I lost my virginity, and some of the perspective I've gained in life since them.
I chose to have an accompanist with me for this performance, and I could think of no one better to do it than Ryan Dunn, who is a super talented tenor saxophonist. I have to admit, I was a little intimidated to ask him if he'd be willing to throw down on the performance with me. Even though he is a friend, he's also really good, and that always makes me intimidated. It's my own self-deprecating self and tendency to knock myself that stands in my way here. I realize this, but good grief it is still hard.
However, my intimidation was met with warm excitement from Ryan, who was happy to play with me on the track...and from the second we ran through it once, I knew we were on to something special.
Ryan brought out pain within the song that could only be done with a saxophone, and he greatly exceeded any expectation I may have had going into the process.
I intentionally work with artists whose instincts I trust...ones who I feel like we can sit down and let something happen naturally over a tune. That's exactly how I felt preparing for this performance.
The day of the show was crazy! The show films 3 episodes at a time, over the course of a few hours, in front of a live studio audience at The Gillioz.
The celebrity interview guests for the episodes included Randle Chowning, founder of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils (who also happens to be from my hometown), and Paul Scheer of The League and NTSF:SD:SUV. Paul was cool enough to even take a pic with us backstage!
Taping started at 7, but we needed to be there at 3:30 for soundcheck and preshow preparations.
I had a real green room for the first time...and I even got to vape in there! SCORE.
There were over 600 people there!
I've never played in front of so many people before, and I can say that it only confirmed for me that this is what I was made to do.
Image Credit: Moments Captured Photography
I went off book a bit at the end, but I think it was okay. The episode aired on Saturday; I wasn't able to see it because I had a show and do not have DVR, so I hope it turned out alright. I always want things to be perfect and could find things to criticize about my own performances all day, but I can tell you...that crowd went wild on Ryan's solo, and I felt such amazing vibes the entire time.
I'll share the video of our performance here when they release it to YouTube in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I had to share the story of the amazing experience, and here's the raw demo of the song I wrote. This is just guitar and vocals, to give you a rough idea of what we were up to.
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I even blogged about it.
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