Greenfoot

Reflections on Hermans

Jeromey Balderrama

In my previous post I alluded to Greenfoot’s show at Herman’s Hideaway on Wednesday.  For those who don’t live in Denver (or simply may not know) Herman’s has the reputation for being one of the area’s premier venues for live, local music in the state.  We were definitely excited about playing there, even if it was on the “New Music Night”.

Herman’s is definitely a nice venue for live music. It has a nice big stage, and has a pretty nice size and layout.  However, I personally like venues like Buffalo Rose and The D-Note better.

Musically we ended up playing pretty well.  We played a show at 2 Doors Down the weekend before, which turned out to be an awesome show.  We couldn’t help but come off a bit of a musical hangover from the previous show, Wednesday night couldn’t complete.  Part of it is that I had a hard time adjusting to the house drumset. 

Also during our set we were interrupted with the sound guy removing an amp stand that we were using, right in the middle of our show.  It was pretty damn unprofessional: first off to use another band’s gear as “house” equipment is pretty crappy (either it’s “house” equipment or it’s not), and to do it in the middle of our set doesn’t show much respect for us on stage.

One other things about Herman’s frustrated us.  One of the ways they gage a band’s success is by giving tickets to the bands, then counting the tickets that bands bring in.  They distribute these tickets to bands – some discount, some comp tickets – and encourage the bands to distribute them.  The tickets we got were comp tickets, which we assumed were “complimentary”. Apparently “comp” means something else at Herman’s, because fans that showed up with these tickets were charged $2 to come in.  Making matters worse, our band didn’t get any of that money, meaning Herman’s pocketed it.  Call it a miscommunication or getting ripped off, but the people who came to see us got screwed.

I don’t write this post to rip on the venue, and Greenfoot definitely wouldn’t turn down a venue, especially as popular as Herman’s, but the benefit of “New Music Night” is pretty questionable in our minds right now.

Bethany took some really cool pictures from the show. Check them out below:

House Drumsets [why they suck]

Jeromey Balderrama

Last night Greenfoot played a show over at Herman’s Hideaway (for which I’ll offer some additional thoughts in a later post).  As part of the “New Talent Showcase”, one of the important stipulations were the two dreaded words drummers hate to hear “House Drumset”.

I cringed when I heard the news, and after playing the set last evening, my dread was justified.

I understand the reasons why venue owners and concert promoters want to use House Drumsets.  When you have multiple bands in one evening, you want to do everything to ensure bands get on and off the stage quickly.  Having a large piece of equipment remain stationary makes sense, especially when the drums have mics attached to them.  However, I can guaranteed that the person who made/promoted that decision is not a drummer.

When I’m asked what it’s like playing on a house drum set, I give the analogy of driving someone else’s car in a race: Yes, you’ll be able to drive the car and you know where the gas, brake & steering wheel are, but you don’t know the intricacies of this car. You don’t know how it accelerates, how it breaks, how it handles around curves.  The same things goes with drum sets.  It bothers me that people wouldn’t fathom telling guitar players to play on someone else’s guitar, yet have no problem telling drummers they have to play a drum set that gets pounded night in & night out.

This particular drum set appeared to have a 10″, 13″ & 16″ with Pinstripe heads torque’d pretty high.  What this means is that they were “ping-y” and “ring-“, a stark contrast from my darker ebony heads that produce a warmer tone that works with our music.  In addition, I had to grow used to 3 toms pretty quick, a departure from my 4 toms.  It doesn’t help that I flip the order of my two rack toms – the non-standard configuration probably a bad habit, but it’s what I’ve grown accustomed to.  In my bass drum I have a pillow, which produces a more muffled sound, while allowing a good bounce response.  The House Drumset had no such pillow, and it took an adjustment.

The policy allowed us to bring in our snare drum, pedals & cymbals. At this point, the only thing that was left of the drum set was the bass drum and three toms – which makes me wonder how much time was really saved. 

What owners/promoters don’t understand is that if you give them a staging area to set up their gear off-stage, a good drummer can get their drum on stage and ready to go in roughly the same time it takes a guitar player to set up their amp, pedals, and tune their guitars.

When I was in high school, I played on a foreign drum set each and every day – but school drum sets are different than House Drumsets.  With school drum sets you typically get a period of time to be acclimated to the kit before you play it at anything meaningful.  With the House Kit the sound check is the first chance you get to sit behind the kit.  To borrow a line from A.I., “We’re talking about practice, not the game”.  I’m all about rehearsing on another drum set to help save time – but when you’re essentially putting on an audition it’s pretty lofty to expect drummers to be in their elements in a kit they just started playing.

Like I said, I understand House Drum set may make sense to some, but it doesn’t make sense to drummers.

A drumming week

Jeromey Balderrama

I’ve been a bit scarce this week because I’ve been drumming pretty much every night.  On Monday night I had rehearsal for an one-time “Barnyard Band”, where we’re doing old-school country songs.  On Tuesday I had Greenfoot practice, as we have our “we’re back” show on Thursday and ended up drumming for almost 4 hours that night.  I came home absolutely exhausted.  I got a bit of a break from drumming on Wednesday, but tonight I’m preparing for a full night of drumming.  First I have the “Barnyard” gig, then I’m off to Denver for the Greenfoot gig  If you happen to be in the Broomfield/Arvada area and would be intersted, we’ll be at the Sweetwater Station around 10pm.

More to come on drumming…

Having a really good gig

Jeromey Balderrama

It’s definitely been a long, but productive summer for my band, Greenfoot.  Since the beginning of June we have played 10 shows throughout Denver and the Front Range.  We seemed to be playing 1 show at least every 10 days, with a few shows being only 2 days apart from each other.  This tends to ware on a  band where all members have day-jobs, families, business & family trips, and numerous other summer activities.  We’ve seen a lot of success as a band this summer and have accomplished a lot.  Nonetheless, this summer has definitely been a trying one in our struggle to balance our time.

Throughout the winter and spring our practices were loosely organized, but productive.  We spent rehearsals balancing practicing established songs, writing new material  and working on covers.  When our aggressive summer schedule came about, our practices became very focused, centered around preparing for the next show.  While these practices were productive, it was definitely a radical departure from our previous rehearsal format.

After a while, it’s easy for the shows to start blurring together.  We had some pretty rocking gigs, but we also had shows where our sound just wasn’t there, or we struggled to get things together.  In my 15 years of drumming I’ve performed countless times, but it still seems hard to shake off a tough show and not let if affect you.  Due to my travels, I had a tough time logging practice on the drums or with the band and ended up knocking off rust while playing at shows.

As easy as it is to get disparaged by tough shows, having a good gig can be just as powerful – and that’s what happened last weekend.

A friend of the band asked us to provide music at their company picnic, and we graciously accepted.  Original music artists don’t get too many opportunities with these kind of gigs, especially one that delivered a decent paycheck.  As the show was approaching, I was beginning to experience doubt about how we’d be received.  Would this group like our music, would they feel alienated about  not hearing our songs before?  Would we have enough material to last the picnic?  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t hesitant and cautious about this show.

We arrived at Maple Park in Golden to a beautiful summer morning, and there was just an aura of relaxation that filled this place.  We got in early enough to take our time setting up and making sure everything was just right sound-wise.  This was a stark contrast to 2 nights before when we rushed on without even a sound check. 

With our relaxed setup experience, we also took a relaxed approach to the show – almost a healthy form of apathy.  We realized that people here don’t really know our music and don’t really have high expectations as compared to a night-club experience.  When you’re playing a bar, you’re often the focus of the venue – many are critically judging you. However, here at the picnic, people were just looking for some good background music to help them have a good time.  This freed our minds and our music, opening up an awesome musical experience.  We jammed out, enjoying ourselves and having a good time.  We conveyed our relaxed state of emotions through our instruments, and this resulted in the tightest show that we’ve ever played.  We were on fire – everyone was locked in, our solos were pretty raw and you could hear the joy coming through our music.  Incidentally, we got some of the best fan interaction from this show.  People sought us out to get more info on us and get a CD, instead of us placing them on a table and hoping they get handed out.  A lot of people asked about our next shows and said they look forward to hearing us again.

This may sound cheesy, but on Saturday in the park, under a gazebo – we fell in love with our music all over again.  We also learned a lot about us as a band, and with this great show we were able to constructively apply the tough lessons we’ve learned with our bad shows.

Although we do have one more show left, I consider last Saturday a great way to wrap up our summer.  We’re going to be taking some time off “in the basement” and regroup ourselves for the upcoming months, but now we’re fueled with energy to plot our next goals and develop a plan to attain them. This is why I love playing music. 

Technorati tags: greenfoot, great gigs, bands, musicians

Publicity on the ASCAP Issue

Jeromey Balderrama

Check out this story in the Florida Today

I came across this story and it just reminds me how infuriating this royalties issue is to me.  It’s great to see that an organization set up to protect the songwriters is really screwing up other song-writers and artists.  This goes back to what I blogged about last month, and how important covers are to establishing bands.  Greenfoot is lucky that we have enough original music to be able to keep us afloat, but I know there are going to be times where we’re going to be burned by not being able to play covers.

This article does a really good job highlighting the issues with trying to keep in compliance with these policies, and how companies like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC seem to go out of their way to make it difficult for smaller venues looking to support live music.  They don’t really make any apologies about it either.

I agree with one of the bar owners when he says, “It’s extortion, it’s intimidating. It’s such a scam.”

Technorati tags: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, musicians, cover songs