Who are you?

Who are you?

Their relationship really began (again, for the umpteenth time), the morning after.

"What did you mean, you wanted to have sex with the Real Mr. Me?"

She looked over at him through her freshly showered curls, at his early morning wrinkles and sunken eyes.  She was looking for a clue, for his smile, wondering how honest she should be in her answer.

She decided to stop looking at him.  Her fingers traced, picked and caressed the patterns on the silk hotel sheets.  Her mouth stumbled, trying to remember all the eloquent speeches she had told his posters, the silver framed picture of his beside her bed.

"I want you to know how much I appreciate that little boy on TV.  And your act, and that guy onstage who plays guitar.  But this... this you, whoever it is you are now-HERE, this is the guy I wanted to talk to.  The only one I ever cared about, seriously.  The rest are beautiful, but distant, like pieces of art.  Somehow, I met you- sometime, ages ago, when you had let your guard down.  You were smoking in the parking lot.  We talked, it was nice.  I kept hoping to see that man again.  I kept wanting to kiss him"

What had begun as a smile on his lips, turned into a blank expression.  His features fell from their usual twinkling arrangement, into the face of a man. He remembered that night, how terribly sad he had been. Still mourning the loss of yet another woman who wouldn't understand him.  (He had always found himself having sex with Girls, yet waking up with Women).  The years he had spent in torment over never being good enough would haunt him.  With deja vu happening every morning, he had long since stopped wishing he could get those moments back.  And pushed forward with this Woman, deciding that THIS time he would get it right.

Who

Nobody in Particular

It seems like most our relationship happens onstage. Except when we happen to be traveling, or waiting to get on a car, bus, train or boat.  Then it seems like most of our relationship is happening there; and most of our lives are happening while waiting for the "real" stuff to happen. Onstage we have a certain kind of electric chemistry.  I seem to make him laugh a lot.  (I live his smile; sometimes the only thing I want to do in life is to make him smile).  And don't get me wrong, when I say "relationship", I mean "FRIENDSHIP".  He is engaged and 30 years older than me!  And besides, I have enough of my own problems.  I honestly LIKE him too much to have him get involved with someone as crazy as me.  As soon as we sleep together, the whole thing would be over.  Because I'd have to leave.  (Because that's what I do..... But, sorry,  I really don't want to talk about it now)

I want to talk about how we sing together.  Onstage and off, we are looking at each other all the time.  Looking for cues and signals, reactions and direction.  He trusts my instincts and I trust his judgment.  He lets me get pretty playful when we rehearse and we sing all sorts of songs we'd never imagine doing in front of real people.  He wants this whole thing to be fun.  He's not driven to be "perfect" or successful (thank goodness, because neither of us are either or those things).  He's been there before and the residual fame still clings to him like a bad smell (his words, not mine).

There are other members of the band, too.  We have a drummer and a base player.  Well, a few of each, in case someone can't make a gig.   A few times, it's just been the two of us (but his fiancee doesn't like the idea of that.  I don't blame her, but there's only so much I can do to reassure her about how innocent our relationship is)

I try to show up everytime, and if HE gets sick, there is NO show.  I try to make myself invaluable, I don't actually play anything, but I sing and try to look cute.  HE's the focus, it's his name on the marquee, although he wants to change it permanently to include both of us.

He'd introduce himself as HIMSELF "formerly of that band known as THAT BAND".  My heart still flutters everytime I hear the actual name.  And then he turned to me one night, and it just popped out.  "And I am MY NAME, of  . . . Nobody in Particular".

And the name kinda stuck.

So that's us, or at least-who he is when he's with me.  Nobody in Particular.

we always laugh when we see it written in chalk on the board outside the venue.  Especially when we hear someone else making a joke about it.

"Who'd come to see 'Nobody in Particular'?"

Waitin' for the Train To Come In

We have a whole set of travelin' songs.  We're sittin' in the Grand Waiting Room of the Grand Central Station of some city which I will not be able to remember in a few months.

If you want to know what the song sounds like, I stole it from Jessica Molaskey.  (Here's the song on YouTube)  I think she's gorgeous and has a gorgeous sound.

HE thinks I like her because I sound good in the low register, and that's the voice he prefers me to use when we actually perform. I do, for the most part, yet sadly, I love being a comic and singing in a lot of really goofy voices, especially way up high.  (Plenty of examples like THAT will show up soon, no doubt).

HE stops reading his newspaper, turns to me and smiles.  I think it's because it's just the two of us able to hear it and for once, I'm perfectly on pitch.  I sing the song directly to HIM, to his face.  Usually, I only get a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, and sing directly to the audience.  Although, I'm always singing to him.  Or about him.

HE happens to be my first ever crush, even from childhood.  Our relationship is a little odd, a matter of a certain three decades that stand between us in age.  You see, I fell in love with him when I was 5 and he was 40.  Well, 20.  The show that I was watching was from 20 years earlier, so I fell for a 20 year old version of him.  But it didn't matter.  It has ALWAYS been HIM that I love.  Even if nothing romantic ever happens between us.  There are lots of ways Love happens.

This is OUR story.

Waitin For the Train-Jessica Molasky

Sometimes a Karaoke Band

Okay, so sometimes we are a Karaoke Band.

(And that's how we make our sustaining money)

MY FAVORITE BAND of all time has enough of a fanatic fan following, and plenty of people who know the songs well enough to fake it.  So we go around hosting, and although I like to perform plenty myself, that's not the goal.

My job during these nights is to act as host (and general rabble-rouser) to the crowd.  The set list is confined to what we have in the karaoke machine (and our iPods, etc.).   People sign up (online too) and do their song.  Some people come prepared and some do it on the spur of the moment.  We get all kinds.

My best friend is in control of getting the songs, coordinating the projection screen so we can see all the words and she has a program where she can adjust the key up or down to fit the singer's range.  (Sometimes they know ahead of time, sometimes we have a separate setup in another room where they can play with it themselves and try it out).  She also "mans" ("girls"?) the control board, and can bring up the volume on the music or the mic, depending on the singer's adherence to pitch.

The singer's particular talents don't matter so much.  We encourage everyone to sing along to every song.  (It helps that these songs have been ingrained in our brains from early childhood).  We make sure that lyric sheets are available and we bring extra music and sell songbooks so people can go home and practice.

We used to call ourselves a "tribute band", and had lots of weird gigs at the beginning.  Some were fun and we worked out some really great songs into an act.  They stand on their own and now we pull them out whenever the crowd needs some energy.

It took us a while to figure out what was so weird about the energy at the early shows.  We would always get a MUCH bigger response when we asked the audience to sing along.  And then we realized the key; the people who love MY FAVORITE BAND are not coming to see pretty girls singing music originally sung by THEIR FAVORITE BAND.  They want to participate.  If we can get up and make fools out of ourselves, then they can do it too.

And it turns out that we ALL have fun.

OUR FAVORITE BAND actually used to do a version of this.  They'd do their biggest hit and ask the audience to sing the chorus.  We'd all be singing along together, and then they'd take out the music and they would listen to us.  As if they were bootstrapping us, helping us to get to the point where we could perform too.  And we sounded amazing.

When one of the members died (the guy who SANG that song), things got bleak.  OUR FAVORITE BAND tried to pull one person up on stage at a time to sing the song all by herself.  It didn't work.  Sometimes, she'd be too scared, or would sing off key.  Worst of all, everyone else at the concert HATED her.  For being The One chosen by THEM.

And so, these Karaoke Nights developed.  We're trying to develop a following by playing in the towns where OUR FAVORITE BAND played.  And sometimes, we play in the same town where our Current Band is going to play.  To get the audience hyped up.

Because someone in our Current Band was a member of OUR FAVORITE BAND.

More on that later.  (He doesn't always like to talk about it)

With Plenty of Money

So, this is kind of our theme song.  "Baby, what I wouldn't do (ooh-ooh), with plenty of money and you (ooh-ooh)."

Not that we have "Plenty" of it, although as long as you have just enough (and maybe some pocket change too), then it totally counts as PLENTY.

Right now, my life savings includes slightly less than $1600. And since right now rent ($850 in NYC) is more than gas ($3.99 per gallon), I am going on tour.

Keep in mind that each stop will probably earn us $400 (guaranteed, otherwise we get a percentage of the door, whichever is higher).  But motels, food, gas (and more gas) will probably cost closer to twice that.

Because there are all those days in between, when there are no performances.  (Isn't it terrible that there are so many Non-Show days?)  Friday nights and Saturday nights are when we all come alive.  Sometimes Sunday nights or the odd Festival that books us outside during the day.

It's a tough life being the lead Girl Singer in an unknown folk music band.  But I LOVE it.

With Plenty of Money by Jessica Molaskey and John Pizzarelli