Set Lists and Self Censorship; or, reasons why I need to chill out in general.

I’ve started planning out what I’m doing for my show on October 2nd. It’s strange because I’m purposefully trying to do songs that Gin Circus didn’t touch. I don’t think anyone would care if I crossed some of them over, but it helps me mentally to separate them. I’m trying to give myself about 30 minutes worth of songs which means I need to find two more songs to plug into the set list.

I’m opening the show with a cover of “Don’t Tell Mama” from Cabaret. I found an awesome karaoke backing track, which is a blessing since I’m sure any backing track I could’ve made from scratch wouldn’t do it justice. I’m doing choreography with two of the Dooryard girls, as I’ve mentioned, so I think if there’s a dance routine and it’s a real show it’s not cheating to use karaoke. Performance art, damnit!

I made a decision to include “Color Scientist Strikes Again” in my set list even though it could be argued that it’s a Gin Circus song. It has a larger label on it, though: it’s the only song I’ve ever messed up on live. I’m very meticulous about how I sing songs and anyway it’s pretty elementary that I should know the lyrics to my own songs. But at the first show, due to nerves, gesturing, getting locked into Alex’s look of concentration, and a few other things, I messed up part of that song. I don’t know if anyone noticed but I did and it’s haunted me since. Since I messed it up on the stage at Geno’s I feel it’s fair to give myself a chance to finally sing it correctly on the same stage. Alex will apparently be at the show so maybe if I’m a brave and iron-nerved little girl I can jump down into the audience and pretend to splash paint at him again like I did originally when I messed my lyrics up. It’s never a bad thing to get involved with an audience anyway, so why not pretend to paint everyone? It’s fun to pretend—I’m normally only a color photo scientist (as evidenced below by the picture I took of Marie Stella at Picnic with a fisheye camera and film that got messed up during processing):



I’ve found that I have a lot of songs that I’m too afraid to perform live or release to the general public because of the lyrics. I had a discussion with someone today who knows me and appreciates my music and he told me that he feels I censor myself too much and that it hurts what I’m doing musically. I completely agree with that and I’ve heard it from a few other people. Case in point is a song called “You Can’t Touch My Brother.” This song makes me nervous to perform it live for a few reason: 1)People might think I have a brother and infer things. I only have a half sister and although she’s married, having a brother-in-law is not a brother although he does feel like family ten years into their marriage; 2)The chorus is “and I bet they wouldn’t understand why I want to stay in your bed/she is not as loving as I am/no, she cant touch my brother/but I can.” That by itself sounds creepy to me because of the incest connotation. It is not, however, about incest and the idea of people thinking I’m writing about incest irks me. It’s about having an intimate experience with someone you’re close friends with and once you get into the experience you realize that they feel like family to you and you feel it’s wrong but you’re confused by the closeness of the friendship so there ends up being conflicted feelings about how to reconcile the experience with the friendship; 3)It’s based on a real experience and since I’m still friends with the guy and he knows the song is about him I’d rather not make him uncomfortable by performing it live if I don’t have to.

But, at the same time, it’s a strong song musically and it’s a shame I censor myself with it. Maybe one day I’ll get over my (largely groundless) fears about people judging my lyrics and perform the song. I mean, there are stranger things they can judge me for…my hobby of taking photographs of myself looking dead, for example. Yep, that’s still going strong:



I made apple crisp today with some apples Alex had given me from an apple picking trip he took (I haven’t been apple picking in ages….I should do that this fall). It turned out well. I think that, in general, things feel pretty good. I’m building friendships (in some cases building old ones up again) and I made people’s days by giving them apple crisp and, in one case, surprising my friend by telling her that I’d bought two tickets for the two of us to go to a concert in November. I feel happy, but I’m still worried. I guess if I don’t have something to worry about my mind explodes or something. I’ll address that problem later, though. For now, I must study German and read about newswriting.

-Aubin

Wood Burning Cat and the Decemberists; or, My Friday Night in Bangor.

Right now I'm listening to Wood Burning Cat practice for an upcoming gig (a wedding reception, actually. I hope they get free food). I'm up in Orono with Jason, staying at Tony's apartment. Together, they are Wood Burning Cat (well, together with their drum machine) so the fact that they're practicing at the moment isn't actually that incredible. The whole band is present so why not? I'm sitting here at the table, bleary-eyed despite two cups of makeshift coffee that I brewed from a coffee maker in Tony's kitchen. He said "we have a coffee maker and coffee in a can but I don't know what to do with it," so I cobbled together coffee maker parts and made two cups worth of brown grit. For a former barrista I do think it's odd that new coffee makers throw me for a loop in terms of the correct proportion of water to coffee grounds.
I have just witnessed the birth of the Wood Burning Cat theme song, whose lyrics are simply: "we are wood burning cat, we like invisible maps." At least they're up front about it. Behold their practice set-up:



Last night Jason and I saw The Decemberists at the University of Orono Collins Center or whatever that building is called. Laura Veirs opened for them and was quite good. I was surprised because I didn't know she was opening for them and also because I'd heard her name several times but didn't know that she played the type of music I like. I told her afterwards that she was awesome and she shyly said thank you. I like girls with glasses who are otherwise shy but get themselves up on stage and knock everyone over with their talent. I hope to be one of those types someday. I'm partway there since I already have glasses.

During the intermission I spotted my ex-boyfriend. I wasn't terribly surprised because he is from the Orono area and he was the one who got me into the Decemberists in the first place. I was sitting under the balcony at the back of the orchaestra section and he was in the aisle chatting with someone or other so I had a strange disconnected experience with it. It was like observing him from behind one-sided glass. He still had the same awkward mannerisms that I had picked up from him during our relationship, the autistic facial expressions and posture. Jason had gone off to buy a soda so I sat by myself fascinated by the fact that, for once, seeing an ex-boyfriend wasn't giving me a panic attack. When Jason returned I pointed the ex out and it turns out Jason had actually talked to him a few times through mutual friends before the move down to Portland this past summer. Maine is a giant small town. I think I wasn't bothered by the ex's presence because, well, it's my only relationship that ended because of my behavior not his. Normally my relationships end because I'm fire-y and I date fire-y people and we burn each other out. This guy was a sweet, if awkward individual who just had no earthly clue what to do with me. Aside from feeling bad that I confused him so utterly and caused him deep frustration on more than a few occasions I'm okay with it. I don't feel anything about or for him. After the show there was a weird moment where the girl I'm guessing was his girlfriend dragged him over to where Jason and I were standing with a few other people to say hi to someone she knew and I said hello to him and he, deer in the headlights, squeeked a quick hi, grabbed her hand and said "umm, well, we have to be going" and they walked off. The end. I suppose that's closure.
Enough text. Pictures! The Decemberists's stage set-up was simple but pretty. They had awesome lighting effects. It looked like they were inside a microscope view of muscle tissue. Case in point:



I try not to pick favorites in bands because in most bands every single member is vital to the sound. I do, however, have a soft spot for Jenny Conlee. She did not disappoint last night, either-- she danced around, played the accordian and keyboards and basically confirmed all the reasons I find her endearing.



Also, having not seen the Decemberists before, I was pleased to see how active Colin was on stage. He could have, in theory, been the type to just stand in front of the microphone and strum his guitar and be folk-y. Instead he has a more refined version of why I love watching Alex perform-- hopping, jump kicking, contorting himself around the notes he's playing on his guitar. It's breathtaking when that's done right and he does it right. I was and am impressed by people like that who aren't self conscious on stage. This is because if I even begin to rock out on stage I immedietly worry that I look stupid. It's silly. I hope to change that in the future. The show had several highlights to it including a discussion of the mispronounciation of "Orono," a shout out to MACOF (Musicians Against the Calling Out of Freebird), a jam to The Chimbley Sweep that included members of the audience being brought up to play Chris and Colin's guitars while Chris and Colin ran around like mad. It ended up with Colin helping to rip Chris's shirt off in a moment that looked like a modified scene from Flash Dance. It was, of course, awesome. I danced so feverishly that I got a dehydration headache. It was worth it.

At the moment, I have to go and figure out what I'm doing with the rest of my time in the Bangor area. I think some on-location forest video scenes are in order. The video isn't going as well as I was hoping so far. I covered Wood Burning Cat's song "Literal Walls" with the acoustic help of Jason. The song is gorgeous, but it's about (in my mind at least) the feeling of being stuck in a small town with nothing outside your windows to even stimulate your mind. So you watch the history channel instead and escape through that. I hope it will work out. If all else fails I can ask for some help at this store that I found in downtown Bangor

Coffee for One; or, How I'm Avoiding Doing Schoolwork by Blogging.

I think that my coffee consumption now qualifies as an addiction. I've gone from one cup with milk and sugar in the morning and a liberal addition of irish cream and hot cocoa mix into it to drinking three or four cups of black coffee a day. I brought this up to my friend Elisha and her mother while I was visiting them in Boston and they both shared how they drink more coffee than me (well, Elisha's mother has since quit coffee as well as cigarettes, but when she did both still she drank more than me). I suppose it makes me feel better but it can't be good for me, can it? Or maybe I'm just being influenced by watching a few too many episodes of A&E's Intervention. This coffee can should just be glued to my hand:


While I'm here, I'll also mention my video that I made this past month. It's for the song "cupcakes" and it associated with my "solo album." Heavens I feel arrogant for typing "solo album." Anyhow, I got myself dressed up, climbed on a counter and made a video. Enjoy:


I also had an impromptu photo shoot while in Boston on the aforementioned visit. Elisha is a great photographer so I'm glad to have some photos taken by her. I love this one:

it's so city-looking and to me it's clear I'm being silly with what I'm holding and posing like but to everyone else I'll just look like a douche. That's funny to me, though.
This moment also happened, and it's probably why I'm fighting a cold or flu or something now. It was worth it:


In more important news, I have my first solo show coming up on October 2. It's funny how everything has once again come full circle. It's like a restart from this past July when I was asked by Meg to do a solo set at Geno's and messed that up by panicking and volunteering a band with Alex I hadn't even created yet. I refused to panick this time and now I'm on the bill as "Aubin Thomas," AKA- all by my damn self. I can't back out of that now. Which is awesome, actually. It will be about 25 minutes of actual music with about ten to fifteen minutes built in for talking and so forth. I'm excited because 1)This is for a benefit for The Dooryard, which you all know I love, 2)I really love the idea of getting my name out there as a solo artist, and 3)I've enlisted Irina and Ahna from the Dooryard (two wonderful, creative, sexy-tastic women) to be my back-up dancers and (if I'm persuasive enough) back-up singers in a cover of "Don't Tell Mama" from the stage version of Cabaret. It will be awesome. Jason is helping me figure out how to set everything up. I will, of course, post pictures as things progress.

But, for now, I have to go back to being an academic...and an art director...and a volunteer copy editor-cum-anything-else-needed-for-that-week type of person. Here I am dreaming about copy editing. The end:

-Aubin.

PICNIC and other fun activities.

After about 10 days I'm back to blogging. I closed up the Gin Circus blog because, well, it was for Gin Circus news and that obviously doesn't exist anymore. I can't hold onto it and wouldn't want to anyway. I lost about three fans on my facebook fan page after that blog, but then I gained four fans. Coincidences like that make me feel good even if they don't mean much in the long run.

I saw Alex for the first time in two weeks the day after I posted that blog (another coincidence). He didn't want to talk to me until we were both trapped at the same table at the Welcome-Back-To-School festival. Why should he want to otherwise? For that matter, why should I? we have nothing to relate about anymore and therefore nothing to talk about. He did say that perhaps he hadn't made it clear on the night of the last Gin Circus show but he has been slowly developing pretty bad tendonitis in his left hand. As a result he's going to cut back on live performance for a while. I don't really have a comment about it since by that time I'd already decided even if we got offered thousands of dollars to perform as Gin Circus I'd decline. Seeing him that day and seeing his friends who used to be my friends around and not talking to them reminds me of my least favorite fact of existence: relationships are fluid and people do not always stay. I suppose I'm still coming out of my childish notion that friends are friends forever. All I have to do is think of the hundreds of people I've met through classes and summer camps and long bus rides to remember that some people only come into your life for a brief minute and then don't come through ever again. It's just harder when I see those people in my daily life still and don't want them to think I'm an utter bitch if I don't say hi, it's just that I reluctantly accept that we are people who have nothing in common now, not even friendship.

Things are going fairly well for me musically and personally. I've been dating Jason for about three weeks now and could not ask for a better boyfriend or best friend. I look back at the night I met him and actually paid attention to him and I'm amazed that we talked at all. I look at the things that lined up so we'd start talking and it does hurt my mind a little bit. We'd actually been in the same place at least three times before (maybe more but we've only discovered three) and in some cases the literal distance between us was quite small but we had not talked before that night. Thanks to Jon Donnell's photographs I also see that Jason's band played on the same bill as me during the first Gin Circus show. It was the band I'd walked out on because my boss spilled beer all over my lap and I spent the rest of the night sulking in the lobby because Alex left without a word to go get drunk with Matt Erickson. In other words, a typical situation for me. I don't remember seeing his band, but here we are nontheless on the same stage on the same night:

He's the bass player on the far left in his photo. Also- hot damn Alex and I look different. Well, I look different. I know that much.
This blog is very text heavy at the moment. Let's fix that. I went to Boston to visit my friend Elisha and her mother, who were there tourist-ing it up. They fly back to Ireland today and once Elisha uploads her pictures I'll have some photo evidence of it, including my initiation into the Lie Down Game near a Smoot mark on Harvard Bridge.
I'm moved into the Dooryard now, for the most part. Which is exciting considering I've been there for about a month already. Proof:


PICNIC was yesterday and did not disappoint, although it rained in the latter half of the day. I stayed over at Jason's house so we could sleep in and walk down to the park just before his band went on. I felt like Penny Lane, mostly due to the very Almost Famous coat I was wearing but also due to the fact that I was a good little road wife and brought cupcakes that were eaten by most of the bands I knew who played and a few friends. It was a nice feeling. I also played photographer with my horrid little digital camera (I used to like it but after seeing how grainy some of these photos were I'm beginning to become dissatisfied with it). Here's Rotundo Sealeg, comprised of (from left to right) Mike, Nate, Tony, and, of course, Jason. I love this photo and especially Tony's expression. That band's music is just made of 100% Cyndi Lauper-esque joy:


Here's Mark Summers. You remember them from the Gin Circus blog, right?:


The rain made people for the most part run for the shelter of the trees, but there was still a fair sized crowd by the time Marie Stella played at 2pm. Here's the wet crowd:


and here's Marie Stella (if you don't know, they are, left to right: Matt, Sydney, Katherine, Jon, and Bryan):


There are better pictures I took of them but not all of them include Jon Donnell there in the back. I feel I have a weird relationship with Marie Stella. I was there at their first show (I think I was still dating Matt then and since he was in the band I was excited about being there), remember the filming of a video they did for a song they no longer play, and designed a pin for them that they're still using as part of their merch. They played at the release party for the literary journal I work for and I've grown to be both jealous and admiring of them. The members of Marie Stella straddle both my new and old friend groups so I've been a bit concerned about how I would interact with them now but yesterday showed me it's fine-- they're good folks and I'm very happy for their success. They're playing at the CMJ Marathon Showcase in NYC on October 24th. You should go see them if you're in the area then. If you see a pin that looks like this at their merch table, get it because it's my design and I'm proud of it:


Things look promising. That's the one thing I've gotten out of this week. It's going to be difficult, but ultimately the future looks bright. I'm seeing the Decemberists this Friday and exploring Orono while I'm there. I also have a roll of film to develop from my fisheye camera that includes pictures from PICNIC. Should be exciting and hopefully I held it at the right length from my subjects and the people in the photos won't have flash-face. In the meantime, here's Jason and me mimicking the expression of this sheep animal cracker:



-Aubin