Center on Halsted Benefit on Sunday

Right, so the whole "blogging" thing was on hold for a while there. A little down the page, I'll catch you all up, but first an obligatory plug: I'll be playing a benefit show at Center on Halsted on Sunday at 7pm. The show's $25 for general admission, $35 if you want some champagne and dessert afterward.

The Center (Chicago's LGBT community center) has been the literal center of much of my goings-on since my last blog post. The Bailiwick Theater company was in residence at the Center's theater over the summer, and I wound up accompanying a number of shows for them in early August. The Center is also sponsoring a new LGBT Youth Choir that a number of my comrades in the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus are helping to organize and direct -- the aforementioned benefit on Sunday is raising funds to kick-start the choir. EDGE Chicago posted a piece about the youth choir today, which you should read, as it will more eloquently describe how awesome it is that the kids at the Center will have a queer-specific performing group to perform with. And believe it or not, it was relatively unrelated that I started a database/fundraising job at the Center this month, which brings me down there on what feels like a daily basis now.

I think this is proof that I am actually super-gay, as opposed to your garden-variety, I like to dance and sing and not play sports and listen to Tori Amos gay.

What else has been happening?

I noticed that I left off a good two weeks of Rock Camp blogging. (Was I rocking too hard? Yes. Yes I was.) It seems like months ago now because I'm not spending all day with the SoR kids anymore, but there are still some interesting things happening at the School. Our oldest keyboard student just left for college, and there's another one not too far behind him, and the staff is realizing that as a school overall, we need to start training the younger keyboardists now to maintain our current, incredibly high level of musicianship in our performing groups. So I'm in the process of designing a keyboard workshop for the non-keyboardist, to lure them into the world of resonance cut-offs and pitch bend wheels. This will be some of the more unique teaching I get to do at School of Rock because it overlaps a lot with the loop pedal/synth work I've been incorporating into my live set lately.

Lastly, Canasta's final show with our drummer and fellow Obie, Josh Lava, was on Sunday, and we couldn't have had a better month full of shows to send him off to Portland with. We played at the venerable Old Town School of Folk Music, took a field trip to an awesome micro-brewery venue in Michigan, and played the shit out of Simon's in Andersonville. A full news blurb sums it all up for you on Canasta's website.

In the meantime, we're in the midst of auditioning new drummers, several of whom we're very excited about, but we are certainly open to ideas and suggestions. If you know anyone in Chicago who (a) plays drums, (b) likes orchestral-pop, and (c) will put up with me demanding Arby's and Elizabeth playing crossword puzzles in the car, send them to me, please.

What I Did at Summer Camp, Week 1

I'm teaching a few days a week at School of Rock's summer program, or Rock Camp. It's also been called Boot Camp, which is an apt analogy since we throw the kids into bands and tell them they have two weeks to write and record a demo track and play a whole show (mostly covers). They're coming in with a huge range of age and experience levels, so a lot of what the kids learn is how to write and perform with whatever strengths or limitations they're handed with their bandmates. Because of this, there are moments in camp that are eerily premonitory of what happens in a real band. I take some wicked pleasure in seeing these kids get the glamour of being in a band knocked out of their heads at such an early age. (It actually makes them better musicians and bandmates.)

I've been mostly teaching and workshopping the bands' songwriting. Two bands were both veering towards 12 bar blues territory, but I was able to gently nudge one of them towards alternative rock, and over the course of the week they've magically turned into a Pavement-esque band. I don't know how that happened but it makes me happy. We have a metal band that does a fine job writing metal but an even better job covering Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls." The veteran campers started working on an epic, Grateful Dead-inspired, three-section jam that the staff has been chipping away so that it comes in under (at least) the 10 minute mark.

I've spent most of my time this week darting in and out of practice rooms that smell like college dorms by day's end, telling the drummers to shut up, and pleading with boys going through puberty to try singing. That's a losing battle since none of them have a real male vocal range yet. Of all the things bombarding the adolescent male ego, I would imagine that showing off your soprano vocal range is around threat level Orange.

The antidote to this entire ego-bruising process was a field trip to Reggie's Rock Club to buy some vinyl and drive down Lake Shore Drive in this school bus. Even I felt bad-ass. I think I need to borrow this bus whenever I feel meek or insecure.

Week 2 is up next, then it's time for the Pitchfork Festival. Rock.