Gene, Andy Einhorn (piano, musical director), and Mark Vanderpoel (bass) backstage at Carnegie Hall

Gene writes: “I am loving touring with Audra … the music is wonderful and the hang is great.  This photo is the trio backstage at Carnegie Hall on 10/22: l-r it’s me, Andy Einhorn (piano, musical director), and Mark Vanderpoel (bass).  It was such a thrill to play a full concert there with Audra, Ted Sperling conducting, and a wonderful orchestra of 30+ of NY’s finest musicians.  Most of the shows are just Audra and the trio, which we’re all loving … audiences and venues have all been first rate.  Come out and see one of the remaining shows!”

• Friday, November 4: University Musical Society, Ann Arbor, MI
• Saturday, November 5: Philharmonic Center for the Arts, Naples, FL
• Sunday, November 6: Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, Sarasota, FL
• Tuesday, November 8: Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, Gainesville, FL
• Wednesday, November 9: Lucas Theatre for the Performing Arts, Savannah, GA
• Thursday, November 10: Gaillard Municipal Auditorium, Charleston, SC
• Friday, November 11: Peace Center for the Performing Arts, Greenville, SC
• Saturday, November 12: Spivey Hall, Morrow, GA
• Sunday, November 13: Alabama Symphony, Wright Center at Samford University, Birmingham, AL
• Tuesday, November 29: Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State, College Park, PA
• Wednesday, November 30: The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA (rescheduled from 10/1) 

photo by Mark Kitaoka, Theatreworks

Two more photos below.

photo by Tracy Martin, Theatreworks

photo by Tracy Martin, Theatreworks

photo by Kris Umezawa. I love the fact that my head is a blur--I was racing to get through the 15-minute sound check...

First things first: a BIG thank-you to all you righteous people who came to see us on our East Coast jaunt last weekend. It was such a pleasure to see you and share the new Wheelhouse stuff with you.

Back in the day, when we drove from gig to gig all the time and brought two (!!!) P.A. systems with us, ran our own sound, and had our own monitor mixer set up next to Gene on stage…

Let me rephrase that. Back when we were kinda control freaks about our live sound but playing small enough gigs that we couldn’t afford to bring a sound guy on the road all the time, we spent a LOT of time hooking things up before a show. We would actually put the following language into our contracts: “WE NEED TO ARRIVE THREE HOURS BEFORE SHOWTIME TO SET UP ALL OF OUR STUFF.”

And Gene made up a song which he sang during the ever-lovin’, extremely long set-up time, reliably cracking me up and getting me out of my pre-show nervousness with his trademark wit:

I
Like
Microphones and wires.
And, Instruments and Songs.

Okay, maybe you had to be there. But there was something delightfully funny about it. Nowadays we fly to the gigs, arrive to set up a rented drum set, and leave most of the microphones and wires to Kris Umezawa, our redoubtable sound ninja, and the local crew. But there are times when we do have to roll our sleeves up and get into the electric spaghetti, and a few weeks ago we did so with alarming speed and not a small amount of stress. We did a GrooveLily showcase at the Midwest Arts Conference, which was our usual 15-minute speed-through of Striking 12, Sleeping Beauty Wakes, and a new song from Wheelhouse. And then, we did something new: 15 minutes of Valerie doing three songs solo, with violin, vocals, harmony box, and looping with a computer program called Ableton Live.

Getting these three songs together took about a month. The hard part for me wasn’t so much the arranging of violin parts and singing; it was deciding how many crayons to use out of the limitless crayon box that is Ableton. Someday when we’ve got things down a bit more smoothly, I’ll share what I’ve learned here on the site. In the meantime, here’s a little photo which should explain things a little bit:

Val doing her sound check. Click the image to see precisely what's what amidst the spagetti.

“Because of slow ticket sales, they’re switching venues for our show.  The new place we’re playing is up here (indicating steps leading up to the building across the street).”

uh oh, I thought.  Brendan continued:

“They’re showing a double feature of Lethal Weapon 1 & 2 in the theater and we’re playing up there.”

As we ascended the stairs, I could tell that this was *not* good news.  My fears were realized as we entered what was obviously a medium-size student center.  The first thing I noticed was a *tiny* stage … barely big enough to hold a drum set let alone all three of us.  It was square with a rounded front corner, and completely surrounded by glass (a nightmare for any sound guy … or drummer).  This room was frighteningly reminiscent of several hundred college gigs we did ten years ago … frequently in rooms just like this, with our own sound system, with one or two students sitting there eating their fruit loops or pork rinds with no notice of a band playing.  These shows paid well, and kept us very busy, but also left us totally demoralized.

Brendan continued, doing his best to sound reassuring:

“I’m a little concerned that the drums aren’t here yet … the said they were using them in a battle of the bands somewhere else on campus and that they would be here any minute.  They’re also going to try and get something to cover the windows.”

“Wow” is all I’m able to mutter, trying not to have a hissy fit in front of Kirk, who is looking a little frightened about what my reaction will be. Of course, in my mind I was thinking that this is totally unacceptable.  Poor Eddie was wondering “where’s the PA?”  I looked at Val and she gave me what appeared to be the “can you believe it?  here we go again” look … she seemed to have already resigned to the situation, no doubt, I thought, due to the fact that she and Brendan got here earlier and have already had a chance to adjust.

Before I had much of a chance to formulate any more than my initial 3-letter reaction, Brendan said:

“The good news is that … I’M TOTALLY KIDDING!!”

Val and Brendan break into hysterics, amazed that they were able to keep a straight face for this long.  Eddie is next, clearly relieved and seeing how great the prank is.  Although it takes me one extra beat to realize their awesome gag … I cracked up and told them how much they *totally* nailed it.  They had me hook, line, and sinker.  I never considered that they might be joking.  It was a tremendous relief, and an *amazingly* executed prank.  While both Brendan and Val (and even Kirk, for that matter!) carried it off flawlessly, Brendan deserves the final bow, since he did most of the setup … Val later told me that she couldn’t look at me until that last moment, after we had come up the stairs and I first saw the room, for fear she would lose it.

Brendan then said “can I show you the beautiful theater we’re playing in now?” and we walked down the stairs, across the street, through the gigantic set shop and onto the stage of one of the nicest venues we’ve ever played.  Pepperdine is an unbelievably beautiful campus up on a hill overlooking the pacific … and the Smothers Theater is an equally gorgeous venue.  We had a great time playing there … made even sweeter by what I almost thought it was *going* to be.

It was a nice reminder of how far we’ve come; we just finished three consecutive weekends of gigs in Tulsa OK, Van Buren AR, St. Louis MO, L.A. and Castro Valley CA … all at lovely venues.

Well done V & B … you got me!

Val, Brendan and Max in Weesp, The Netherlands, in July of 1995

The song was written in the summer of 1995, when Val, Max Langert and I were in Amsterdam for 13 weeks. We had a meeting with a representative of EMI Music Publishing in Weesp, a town a few train stations away. The guy from EMI was looking for songs for Dutch artists to record, and was hoping for a hit.

On our way out of the office, I started to hear this simple song in my head, and started jotting down some ideas at a cafe on a canal around the corner. By the time we got back to the upstairs room at Boom Chicago where a grand piano was just sitting there in an empty room, all it took was twenty minutes at the keyboard and I had it.

Somewhere around here, there’s a DAT tape of me, Val, Max Langert on drums and Ken Schaefle on bass, recording the song live and direct to 2-track from the stage of Boom Chicago. If I recall correctly, it sounds wildly different from any of the versions that are on record — more obvious, blatant and hamfisted rock, but still the same sweet song underneath the arrangement. (Anybody in the LA area got a DAT machine they can lend me? Mine seems to have gotten lost in one of the last two moves we’ve done…)

The guy from EMI didn’t dig it — or the song Val had written in the same time frame, “Tell It Like It Is.” He chose to, as they say in the industry, “pass” on our mediocre-sounding DAT tape of songs.

In the years to come, “Tell Me What’s On Your Mind,” specifically the Little Light album version, was used regularly as background music on soap operas (thanks to a licensing deal we struck with Heavy Hitters). I don’t have the exact data handy, but I think it’s second only to “Home,” which has been successful beyond Val’s wildest dreams of soap-opera-background-music-stardom.

In 2008, we were approached by our buddy Sean Flahaven about a new music publishing deal with Warner/Chappell. Sean represents WC’s Theatre and Standard Repertoire department, but he also pitches songs from musical theater shows to rock, pop and r&b artists.

One of the major stumbling blocks to us being able to actually sign with Warner/Chappell was that we had signed away publishing rights to six songs with Heavy Hitters, and “Tell Me What’s On Your Mind” was one of them. Warner/Chappell wants exclusive publishing rights to the songs of people it signs, and our deal with Heavy Hitters was the same. There was, dare I say it, a bit of a tug of war over these six songs, and specifically over this one tune.

Eventually both sides relented and agreed to share in the publishing of these six songs, and we were able to ink a deal with Warner/Chappell. Sean asked if we could do a remix of “Tell Me What’s On Your Mind” in an r&b style, so that he might be better able to pitch the song to a particular female r&b artist.

Val and I agreed that I would sing it–that I would whip out my white-boy mad hip-hop/r&b skillz and attempt to do it justice, while still placing the song in the context of something this unnamed-yet-very-specific female r&b singer might want to perform.

So I made a brand-new recording of the song. Let’s face it: I am not black, I have a thin voice, and I’m not an r&b producer. But this was very, very fun to do:

Listen to the song

Buy the song

The demo hasn’t led to any bites from major stars yet, but listening to it makes me happy. (If you like listening to it, do us a favor and buy it for a dollar–the money goes straight to pay for band expenses. Thanks)

It’s really nice that I finally get to sing this song for this reason: in the summer of 1995, Val and I had been dating for a little under a year, and we were just hitting our first bumpy spots in our relationship. We hadn’t yet learned how to really open up to each other about what we were feeling, and what the other person was doing that really pissed us off. Or, to be more specific, what *I* was doing that really pissed *her* off. And this little song was my way of gently prodding her to open up to me, to tell me what was on her mind. Letting her know that I wouldn’t break if she got angry at me.

Val and I have now been in one wild, long committed relationship for fifteen years now. The only other person I’ve spent anywhere near this much time with is Gene Lewin, and he doesn’t have ANY trouble telling me what’s on HIS mind.