Gigging: Thater Races and Communiversity Fest

I wanted to write about the gig we just did, a big block party downtown jointly sponsored by the community and the university (hence "Communiversity Fest"), but first I'm going to paste in a post I wrote almost a month ago and forgot to put up, about the Thater races, a big gig in the park that we also did last year and were very happy about doing again this year....

AUGUST 28: This was a great gig! Better turnout than last year; in fact, better turnout than we saw for any other band down there (ok, we only saw a few other bands—but still!). It was a very high-energy gig—lots of energy from the crowd, and plenty on stage as well. There was a problem with the guitar amp they provided, so Bob loaned the band before us his amp. This somehow got the set-up all a little off, so we were a little behind schedule when we were setting up, which was a tiny bit stressful. (With these types of gigs, when a whole bunch of bands are playing short sets one right after the other, a quick tear-down and set-up is key, and is insisted upon.) I’m glad it didn’t happen last year because it might have thrown me. But I was able to just let it go when it was time to play.

We opened with All Right Now, which started us off on a high note, and it just got better from there. Right off the bat there was a “tween” girl with a Nintendo DS up front taking pictures of us. Maybe she had just gotten the DS and was experimenting with taking pictures of anything, but still, I felt flattered! The crowd seemed to love Hidin’ Out with the Blues (one of our newest originals), which we played next, and Josie (after that) always goes over big. Next was Ramblin’ Man, and when the opening riff started, you could feel the mood lift in the crowd. They were totally into it, and boy was that fun! Why (one of my songs, that I've blogged about in the past) also went over huge. It was my favorite time playing it, ever. There were these young teen-aged girls off to my left who I noticed were completely digging the song, and digging me, so I gave them a little encouragement by singing some of the lines to them. Well, that’s all it took, and they were off and running. Singing along with each chorus, copping the appropriate attitude… (“when I’m the best that you ever had…”) I can’t tell you how much fun it was, getting that kind of reaction on a song I’d written. After that we hit ‘em with Black Magic Woman, and the crowd's energy seemed to increase again! What a rush. The group of girls started line dancing, and all across the park we could see people really loving it. At the end of that, I said, “All right! Let’s Rock and Roll!” And Donnie, the stage manager, who had come up to the top of the steps, said “Let’s Rock and Roll? How ‘bout let’s go home!!” and then he laughed and said “Ok, one more…” At that point we had planned to play Can’t You See, but I was thinking it was too long (plus I would’ve had to strap on my guitar)... and also I really wanted to keep the energy up. So I called out Mojo, and we ended with that. Of course it went over like hot cakes!

It was one of my favorite gigs. I was so excited and happy and having a ball the whole time. I was nervous beforehand, for much of the day, really. But once I got on stage I was in the comfort zone. It was a blast.

And I’m really glad that of our 3 big outdoor gigs that we have lined up for late summer, this one was first. I’m feeling ready to rock downtown!

Some pictures:

You can see the girl with the Nintendo DS in the foreground:

Love my blue congas!
Here are the line-dancing, chorus-singing, girl-power girls (Donnie dubbed them the "Sparkle Sisters"):
And here's our littlest fan, the precious Baby Ben:

And here are a few pictures from Blues on the Bridge, which I didn't write a separate blog post about. Here's Lindsey with Baby Ben--she watched him for the whole time (Laurie was out of town), and did a truly awesome job!:

I loved this stage. I especially loved that it was right over the foot bridge where Bob and I had a whole slew of wedding pictures taken, as it's not too far from the church where we married. But also it's just one of my favorite spots in Binghamton, right by the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango rivers.

The booths set up on the bridge over the Chenango, directly in front of the stage:

Linds and Baby Ben, after the gig. It might look like Ben's in the same onesie as he had on at the Thater, but that one has a big peace sign on it and this one says "Johnny Cash Folsom Prison" on it. Classic!

Ok, now onto talking about Communiversity Fest:

SEPTEMBER 24: This was the third in our series of 3 big outdoor gigs. Another short gig, which is perfect (so that I can stay for the whole thing but still not be gone from the baby for too long). The Thater Races and Blues on the Bridge were the first two. I loved how the Thater gig went, but I honestly felt just a little deflated after Blues on the Bridge—it went by so fast! I felt like I barely got going and then it was over. This was partly due to the way we had constructed the set list: for one thing, I didn’t sing until 4 songs in, and I didn’t realize how that would affect my feeling connected to the crowd and vice versa. Plus, we were also really bummed to discover that they put the wrong web address for us in the program—a MySpace page for another Voodoo Highway! Anyway, this gig wasn’t going to be much longer, but I liked the pacing of the set list that we’d come up with a lot better, and I was really looking forward to rocking downtown. And I was going to make sure I announced our website, so people could find us if they liked us and wanted to hear us again.

There was some pre-show drama. We all met at the Geers’ (our neighbors' house, where we practice), and were on our way downtown in two cars when Mike, our drummer, realized he’d left his drumsticks back in his car. So we dropped everyone off downtown to get started with the set up (the equipment was all in the Geers’ car), and Mike and I headed back to the Geers’ to get his sticks. When we were on our way back downtown, Bob called to say that although we’d been told there would be a drum kit provided, in fact, there was none, and we’d have to get Mike’s drums. WHAT?! So Mike and I turned around and headed back to the Geers’, and madly started dismantling his kit which was set up in their basement. It’s quite the production. But just when we had it just about all dismantled (but not all packed up), Bob called back and said the drummer in the band that had just finished said we could use his. Ok! So, back downtown….

It took us and the sound people a while to get us all set up. They had some a capella groups on in between bands, and they were quite good, but people weren’t really sticking around. When we had first arrived at this thing, at slightly before 8, there were a lot of people there, but by the time we were ready to go on, hardly anyone was left! All the vendors had packed up and gone home, and most of the crowd had as well.

Anyway, we were finishing up the sound check at about 8:35, so running late by about 5 minutes or so, and then Bob broke a string! So then we had to wait while he changed it, which took almost another 10 minutes.

I took the opportunity to talk up the band to the few people who were sticking around. Telling them our name, website, upcoming gigs… I was actually kind of having fun with it. I felt loose and “on”. And it was good practice for me. I still sometimes am so focused on the music that I forget to talk to the crowd. With no music to focus on just yet, it was easy to remember to talk!

Finally, at 8:45—15 minutes late—we were ready to go on. We busted out with Black Magic Woman. I was a little nervous that there weren’t any on-stage monitors; I was wondering how the heck we were going to be able to hear ourselves. But on both of the speaker stacks that were off to each side they had one speaker that was turned back around toward us and I could actually hear us just fine (though Mike, who was sitting 3 feet or so behind me, said he couldn’t hear at all). I did hear a bit of an echo sometimes, which can be really disconcerting, but it wasn’t too often. All in all, I could hear us just fine.

The crowd, such as it was, seemed to be loving it. And honestly, I will take a small crowd who’s totally into it over a larger crowd that just sits there any day! They were dancing and singing along and playing air guitar, etc., and were clearly enjoying it. It was a great vibe. I was having a blast.

Next came Gimme 3 Steps, which I sing, and I felt really good about it. I felt like we were hitting it just right and again, it was going over very well. I think Bob was a little thrown from the broken string thing, and he skipped ahead a bit in the middle part of the 3-part solo, but I don’t think anyone really noticed. We all just followed him ahead.

Next up was Ramblin’ Man, which I felt like we also nailed, and the crowd also seemed to love. Several groups of people walked by during the song, and everyone was looking like they were really into it.

I was excited to sing Why next, and was trying to decide if I was going to announce ahead of time that it’s one of our songs or wait until it was over to say that… however, when we ended Ramblin’ Man one of the organizers headed over to the stage and told us that was it! Time was up—the sound people were only on until 9, and it was 9.

So, all that work to play 3 songs in front of probably 30 people! But you know what? I loved it. Standing there on Court Street, under the street lights and the traffic signal that kept changing from green-to-yellow-to-red and back again, playing songs I love for people who were digging it… I was really happy.

I do still feel like any experience is good experience at this point. And who knows? Maybe we made a few new fans who will come out and hear us again next time.

Sorry the formatting is a bit messed up on this post. I really should learn HTML. I'll put that on my to-do list. Ha.

Proud Mama

My boys are having a great day today!

First, George got elected president of his Campfire Kids troop (a co-ed, hippy version of scouts. I should add that I don't really know if the national organization of Campfire is so much more hippy than scouts, but our local homeschool troop definitely is!). Here was the speech he gave:

Please don't feel like you have to vote for me because you're my friend. If you do vote for me, I want it to be because you think I'd do the best job. I have a lot of experience with public speaking, so I think I'd do a pretty good job as president.

Now, if you've been reading this blog from the beginning, you may recall that George ran for president of his homeschool government class a couple of years ago, and lost. So I was really proud of him for having the courage to run.

And I'm really happy for him that he's finding ample opportunities to explore his interests and talents. It was one of the things I was worried about when we made the decision to homeschool full-time, that he wouldn't have the chance to experience certain things that I knew he would really enjoy and that usually happen in a school setting, like running in an election. And here he is, only a couple of years later, having gotten to experience both losing and winning. I'm also proud of how humble he is about all of this:-) He took it totally in stride, and also felt bad for his friend who ran against him--who, by the way, did get elected VP.

As for my other boy, he sat up today for the first time! He's been working up to it, almost sitting up, for a long, long time. But today was the first day where he stayed up long enough that we felt it could really "count". Correcting himself when he was about to fall over and such. Both Bob and I were sitting right here with him when he did it. Proud, happy moment!

Let's hope the evening goes just as well as the afternoon did, as Bob and I have a gig with the band downtown in a few hours. It's a quick (half-hour) gig at a downtown block party jointly held by the University and the city, called Communiversity Fest. Ok, gotta go get ready to rock!

Back to School (ish)

Wow, it's been a long time since I've written! (Actually, I started many posts over the summer which I would then abandon when the baby needed me, and then I'd forget to get back to them. I did recently get around to posting one I had started on Father's Day about Ben and Bob. Maybe I'll be filling in some more as time goes by.) In any case, as you can imagine, I've been a little busy all summer, with the sweetest little baby around, but also with work, and with the older kids. George was home a lot (didn't go to as many camps as he has in past years), and Brad and Lindsey, my stepkids, were with us all summer. It was crazy and hectic in some respects, but it was also great to have that bonding time as a family.

Anyway, Brad and Lindsey are back at school and living with their mom most of the time, and our homeschooling is pretty much back in full swing. I'm on maternity leave this semester (hooray for my dean), but will continue to work on several things including the journal I edit.

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to accomplish with George this year, and talked to him about it extensively. There are those who think I should make George do at least some academic things that he doesn't particularly enjoy (just every so often, because that's life), but I'm perfectly satisfied merely to make him endure chores that he doesn't enjoy and leave it at that. I really don't see any reason to make school unpleasant for him. First of all, that's a big reason why we homeschool! So that I can tailor the work to his learning styles/abilities, so that he gets the most out of it. Second of all, if it's unpleasant for him, believe me, it's unpleasant for me. And who needs that?! So, anyway, I have had many discussions with George about what his expectations and desires and goals are, and together we came up with the following plans:

MATH: Math was so traumatic last year! I even considered skipping it altogether this year, to make up for the anguish I made him endure last year because I didn't want to let him quit a program I had spent a small fortune on, even when it became utterly clear it was a terrible fit for him. But rather than abandoning math altogether, I really wanted to find at least a few things he could do that he would actually enjoy, to try to see if he could maybe even have a little fun with math. What we came up with was the first two books in the Life of Fred series, which are roughly equivalent to 5th-grade math, I think. Also, he'll continue to play math-based computer games like Timez Attack (which has painlessly taught him his times tables). We may also work through the Descartes' Cove math CD series, though when we tried it last year it was still a little too hard for him. Will all of this be enough? I don't know. Enough for what, anyway? The Life of Fred author claims that there is enough math in the series, if you follow it to the end, to get you through college-level math classes. I think that's going to be good enough for me, at least for 5th grade. Seriously, if he falls behind he can always catch up later, and it's more important to me right now that he find a way not to hate math, and maybe even to love it.

SCIENCE: We bought the complete middle school/high school PLATO online curriculum (through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op), but with the idea that all George really needed to do to make it worth our while was the award-winning middle school science series (which CTY uses for their middle school science courses, at greatly increased cost--admittedly, with increased support as well). There are three separate courses: Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and Physical Science. He's well into the Earth and Space one (started it over the summer) and is loving it so far.

ENGLISH: Reading takes care of itself with George, and so do spelling and vocabulary-building and such. As for writing, I kind of wanted him to take another CTY reading/writing course--he's done two and they were fantastic--but he decided he's more interested in a course offered by Northwestern's CTD called Family Vignettes. Here's the course description:

It has been said that family stories are heirlooms held in the heart, not the hand. Every family has favorite memories, often with multiple versions, dependent on the person who is telling the tale. Learn to create short, written, impressionistic scenes that focus on a single moment or event in a family’s memory and discover a particular insight into a character, idea or setting. To tell these stories well, students must pay attention to details, refine their writing skills and in turn, become more thoughtful readers and writers in other contexts. The final products of this class are treasured.

He's going to wait until the winter session to do that class, though. For now he'll focus on various creative writing projects and also on learning to type, which he's finally excited about doing. For that we're using Type to Learn, which we also bought through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op at a significant discount. Honestly, if the main thing he accomplishes this year in writing is to learn how to type well, I'll be happy. It will be such an important skill for him--for everyone, really, but especially for someone who really loves to write. As for handwriting, I do think he could stand some work in that area as well, but I'm going to wait on that for now. I think one boring-but-essential mechanical skill at a time is enough.

SOCIAL STUDIES: I had thought he might like to do the American History course on PLATO, but he did a few units over the summer and quickly tired of it. I'm not going to sweat it. Learned that lesson with math last year. Besides, there are sooooo many ways to learn history. We're going to watch the History Channel video series "America: The Story of US", which we actually started watching last year but didn't make it all the way through. They're decent videos, and I'm grateful to the History Channel for sending them to educators for free. But they aren't terribly nuanced or critical, so to balance them out he'll read Howard Zinn's "A Young People's History of the United States." I think those two things would give him a really decent overview of American history, but on top of that we're going to build a curriculum around the Williamsburg virtual field trip series (again, something we bought through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op--at 90% off! Maybe it sounds like I'm doing a commercial for this Co-op. I'm not. It's free to join anyway. I'm just so happy that I found it, because it's saved me a ton of money and has also brought a lot of great materials to my attention). It's a program of seven live broadcasts on a variety of topics, and it looks like it could be great fun. I haven't fully explored all of the study materials that come along with it, but from what I have seen it looks like it would be pretty easy to spend a lot of time (if that's what we want) preparing for them and then wrapping them up. I'm looking forward to watching them myself. The first one (Oct. 14) is called "The Will of the People", and here's its description: "One of the most bitter presidential campaigns in U. S. history is part of a surprising lesson for a 21st-century student. Thomas Jefferson explains how negative campaigning, partisan politics, and contested elections have been part of our political system since the earliest days of the republic."

MUSIC & THE ARTS: Recorder lessons, with a fantastic teacher who is a great musician and teacher and also totally "gets" George. I've probably written about her before. She's really top-notch, teaching him the basics like reading music but also having him write his own pieces, and improvise as part of his daily practice, and play songs different ways expressing different things, etc. And church choir, with arguably the best choirmaster in town. (People who aren't even Episcopalian have been known to join the choir at our church to be able to work with him.) I was in a church choir briefly when I was a kid and I remember getting together every so often and learning some nice hymns and putting together a special program at Christmas and such, but this is something else. He really gives the kids a thorough musical education. I'm so glad George has taken to it. In addition to those things, we'll take him to concerts, plays, operas, art exhibits, etc., and of course expose him to plenty of rock and blues via Voodoo Highway :-)

PHYS ED: Tae Kwon Do... as close to 3 days a week as we can swing. Also, running around and playing outside both at the weekly homeschool playgroup and with the neighborhood kids after school, as long as the weather permits. I'm trying to talk George's dad into taking him to the park once a week for a bike ride. And I'm going to try to get George to come with me sometimes when I walk with Ben. Honestly, this will probably be the most challenging area to keep up with (I mean, once the pool is closed). I'm considering buying a trampoline... if I can find a cheap one that seems reasonably safe.

In addition to the subjects mentioned so far, he'll be participating in plenty of other group and individual activities, like "Cooking and Pop Culture" with my BFF Laurie, and Chess Club, and Campfire Kids (kind of like a more hippie version of Boy Scouts), and Shakespeare in the spring, and probably Odyssey of the Mind, etc. etc. Also, he'll have various daily/weekly chores. So, he'll be keeping busy!

I'm hoping to strike a good balance this year, giving him just enough structure so that he can really thrive, but also giving him freedom to run with his interests. I'm not so concerned that he cover everything that a 5th grader would cover in public school. My approach is more that I want him to be able to explore what he's passionate about, while continuing to develop his talents and skills that will serve him in whatever his future endeavors will be (most likely including--but not limited to--college). And I want him to have a great time doing it. And I want to be able to facilitate it all while still being able to devote ample time and energy to my job. And my new baby. And stepkids. And marriage. And the band. And.... Well, you get the idea. Wish me luck.