Tag Archives: folk

In Honor Of… Gospel!

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So, Gospel Music!  Yes, I know it’s kind of a cheat, as I said I’d be honoring the work of singer/songwriters, but I can bend the rules, because it’s my project :)

Before we continue, go listen to and maybe download this month’s “In Honor Of…” EP right here! – music.lorenradis.com/album/gospel

So hymns/gospel/worship music has been a part of my life as long as I can remember and it’s always been important to me because a) I’m a Christian, b) a lot of them are gorgeous songs and c) for the first dozen years that I played guitar, the only time I played in front of other humans was for worship at youth group.  Without playing at church I might (see: most likely) never would have had the confidence to start playing my own concerts in front of people, I met almost all of my good friends through playing music at church.

Religious music is also cool to me because, like a lot of other art forms, the majority of examples we have of very old music are religiously based simply because the only demand for music and art was in relation to the church.  Some of the most enduring pieces of visual art we have are things like the Last Supper, the various artist’s statues of David, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, all of them religious, and all of them windows into what the art and attitude of the day was like.  So while I identify with the songs I’ve chosen on a personal religious level, there’s also a whole nother level of the simple value of a piece of history preserved in musical form.  Anyway, I hope you like the songs, talk to you later,

-loren

In Honor Of… Paul Simon!

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This Month’s Release is In Honor Of Paul Simon! Yay!

Get it here, quick! – music.lorenradis.com/album/paul-simon

Paul Simon is … well, first off, he’s super awesome. We can all agree on that right? He amazes me because he’s been writing music for, nearly 50 years! And he’s been popular and relevant that whole time and has never really lost his artistic integrity in the eyes of his fans (like me).

Graceland is one of my favorite albums and still kind of held up as the perfect pop record. 2 of this month’s songs are from that album, so that says something. The music Paul is writing today is just as honest and beautiful as it ever was, and he’s never felt stagnant, he’s always changing, growing, evolving, and it’s fascinating to be along for the ride.

Other artists from his era are still writing music (I’m looking at you Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney) but they’re not – in my opinion – acheiving the same level of re-invention and relevance, they’re more cashing in on their previous success and kind of phoning it in. Paul Simon’s got his fair share of misses mixed in with the hits, but I feel like he’s never been one to phone it in, and I respect the hell out of that.

So, go grab your free copy of my tribute to one of the true greats, Paul Simon, over on the music page right now, enjoy, and thanks! – music.lorenradis.com/album/paul-simon

-loren

Why I Chose The Paul Simon Songs I Did!

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Have you grabbed your free copy of my album honoring the music of Paul Simon? It’s available right here right now! – music.lorenradis.com/album/paul-simon

Got it? OK! Now, if you’re wondering why I chose the songs I did, read on, you’ll learn everything you want to know :)

Bookends – OK, so this one’s kind of a cheat, not really a song in its own right. It’s only got two verses and is about a minute long, but this song has always sort of haunted me. it’s got a beautiful guitar part – I’ve always been a sucker for inverted thirds – and the lyrics are simple but poignant; a young man’s attempt to imagine what will be important to him in old age.

Bleecker Street – A great old Simon & Garfunkel song, it doesn’t seem to get the same amount of love as songs like Bridge Over Troubled Water and Sound of Silence, but I think it’s just as, if not more, effective of a song. It excels invoking the atmostphere of the time and place about which it is written. I’ve never been to New York at all, but I feel like I’m in young Paul’s shoes walking down the streets through the foggy twilight, listening to the sounds of life emanating from the many shops and cafes all around. I couldn’t change much about this song, but I tried to at least completely revamp the guitar part, make it my own.

You Can Call Me Al – I read once that Paul Simon wrote this song about a party he attended where another guest mis-heard Paul’s and Paul’s wife’s (Peggy) names as Al and Betty, and that’s where the idea came from. That synopsis does such a disservice to this song, in my opinion. If it was just a humorous anecdote about names mispoken at a party, I think it’d have been lost to the fog of memory years ago. It’s so much more than that though, and thus has endured and will continue to endure for decades as a pillar of what pop music can be, commercially viable while maintaining a high level of artistic integrity. The lyrics are so gorgeous, ruminations on growing old, realizing that maybe the goals we’ve been striving for all our lives aren’t as worthy as we once imagined, and the hope of a new beginning, maybe on a “street in a strange world”… I’ve tried to make the lyrics the star in this version of the song, Paul’s arrangement is so dense and fun that it’s easy to miss the depth and sincerity of the lyrics. Enjoy.

Gumboots – Another track from Graceland, probably Mr. Simon’s best known album. This one I changed pretty drastically from the source material too, and for a lot of the same reasons as “You Can Call Me Al”. When I listen to this song, I can’t really tell what he’s saying except for the refrain – “You don’t feel you could love me, but I feel you could.” That line alone was enough to make me decide to cover this song, I love it so. But when I started learning it I realized the rest of the lyrics are exactly what I’ve come to expect from Paul Simon, deep yet simple and beautiful in their subtlety. That chorus though, I can’t get enough of it. “You don’t feel you could love me, but I feel you could.”

So there’s that, I hope you like the songs, and thanks a ton for listening, reading, all that jazz!

-loren

Let Me Tell You A Story…

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…about my show at Veris Cellars last week.

The Set Up

Veris Cellars is a beautiful winery up in Templeton off the 46 West and they kindly asked me out to play live music at their happy hour tasting.  I said I’d love to and the plan was in motion.

Now, I’ve had my share of unfortunate happenings - as I’m sure you all have as well – such as : Getting hailed on at a Farmer’s Market show, having a bug fly into my open eye in the middle of a song at another Farmer’s Market show, having drunks try to join me at the mic in the middle of a song at another Farmer’s Market show, et cetera.  My wife and I even experienced an unprecedented series of unfortunate events a few weeks ago that included – but was not limited to – 3 flat tires on a Sunday when no repair shops are open, an infestation of bees under our floorboards that necessitated us staying the night in a hotel, and our cat having a panic attack in the litter box that resulted in our house being covered in poo.

Poo.

So, we’ve been understandably paranoid the last few weeks that another batch of tragedies might at any moment befall us and we’ve been knocking vigorously on wood everytime something bad happens in the hopes to ward off any other bad happenings.

That’s a lot of setup, but there’s a payoff, I promise.

The Show

I got to Veris Cellars (which is incredibly gorgeous, incidentally) right on time and started setting up outside on the patio.  This was when I noticed the wind was picking up.  I didn’t think much of it until I had almost finished and I saw that the wind had blown my CD’s off of my merch table and scattered them across the grounds.  The staff kindly offered to have me move inside, so I started taking down everything I’d set up, the speakers, mixer, stool, et cetera, to begin moving inside. 

Veris Cellars Winery

Veris Cellars looks like this, if you were curious. Beautiful, right?

At this point, I was worried this might be the start of another series…

I got a phone call from my wife in the middle of tearing equipment down.  We’d forgotten to put a house key on her key ring and she had just gotten home from shopping and was locked out!  The nearest spare was in Nipomo and we weren’t sure if she’d be able to get there.  I hung up and prepared myself to break the news to the winery that I’d be canceling my show to drive down to AG to let her in.

At this point, I was convinced the Bad Things had begun happening and wouldn’t let up for days.  *SPOILER* I was wrong, this is where things turn around, just in case you were wondering.

My wife called back and said the person with our spare key was available and would be able to get her the key in no time flat, crisis number 1 averted!  I finished moving inside wtih the exceptional staff’s help and thereby saved myself and property from the increasingly turbulent winds.  Crisis number 2 averted!

I started to play and realized… no one was there.  The staff was there, I was there, and two (also exceptionally kind) caterers were there, but no patrons.  The event had officially begun 30 minutes earlier and so far no one had walked in to sample the fruit of the vine or be serenaded by my dulcet tones.  The staff mentioned that the previous weekend (this was a Wednesday night) had been the Paso Wine Fest and most of the wineries were seeing a substantial drop in business as everyone was all “Wined Out”, as they say.  I, of course, inevitably felt responsible for my apparent lack of ability to produce an audience…

Now, I played anyway and I played my heart out.  The staff was enjoying the music and being very courteous and attentive, and it’s not the first time I’ve played for a semi-empty room.  I’m a professional and I played well and we had a lot of fun regardless, I was OK with the fact that this might be “one of those nights”.  It’s still kind of a bummer though, to put all that work in and not have any audience to speak of.

Minor crisis, maybe?

Nope!  People started filtering in.  The room actually filled up pretty quickly, and there was even a familiar face or two in the crowd.  I was really happy for the winery and for myself to have the audience and the business, and the night proceeded quite well.  Towards the end of the evening (this was a 2.5 hour show) I started to get a little bummed out that no one had yet signed up for my mailing list or bought a CD (though in retrospect, they might have been more likely to do either of those things if I’d actually mentioned that they existed… which I frequently forget to do).  It was fun to play but I was worried I wasn’t turning in my best work and that’s why they weren’t signing up.  At the end I thanked everyone from coming and started packing up feeling like I’d done pretty well, but worried I hadn’t done that well.

The Payoff

Well, it turns out the reason no one bought a CD or signed up for the mailing list was because they all already owned it and were signed up.

One of the staff members came up and mentioned that she’d asked each and every customer at some point in the night how they’d heard of the event and/or what had made them come out tonight and each and every one said they’d come to see me.  Now, that doesn’t happen very often so please understand I’m not bragging, and it was a relatively small crowd, but still!  It was such a big self esteem boost to realize that every person there had heard I was playing and had set aside the time and taken the effort and paid to come out and listen to my music. 

Don’t get me wrong, my friends, family, and fans come out to hear me at just about every show and I appreciate it so very much and it always humbles me to see people putting in the effort to support me like that and sincerely enjoying the music enough to want to come.  It just so happens that tonight I had been feeling a little down about my performance because I mistakenly assumed that I had played poorly and that’s why no one signed up or bought a CD.  It was a really nice reversal to realize they all already had it and had come out just for me.  And as a side note, the night wouldn’t have been as fun and intimate if there had been a huge number of people in that space, so I’m glad some people were “Wined Out” from Wine Fest.

So the moral here, I suppose, is that all the things I thought were setbacks, problems, or even crises like :the wind forcing me inside, the crowd not purchasing cd’s, the slightly lower attendance than normal, were all actually blessings, huge blessings, that came together to give me one of my more memorable shows and I hope, provide a solid night of entertainment for the audience and staff.

So, thanks to everyone who made it out, and thanks to the staff at Veris Cellars for making it such a really enjoyable night, I’m looking forward to my next show there! 

Aside : June 27th, incidentally, is my next show at Veris Cellars ;)

Thanks for reading,

-loren

Verily I Say To You

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Verily, like Veris Cellars, get it?  Oh, I’m playing there Wednesday the 23rd from 5 to 7:30 for happy hour!  That joke kinda landed flat… let’s start again.

Hey friends!  I’ve got a show Wednesday the 23rd from 5 to 7:30 and it’s at Veris Cellars at 1266 North Bethel Road in Templeton.  I’ve never been yet but I’ve heard nothing but good about this place and their wines (like JanKris) and I’m really looking forward to this show.  Hope you can make it, tell your friends!

-loren