Jonah Smith: Dispatches

Spain Tour II

I remembered parts of my dream from last night which is rare. I dreamed I was talking to  Luke Temple  who is a singer from Brooklyn that I like (but don’t know)and he was telling me that he was actually a scientist and that all of his lyrics related to some different anthropological discovery – like his lyric “looking glass people” referred to an ancient cave dweller called feranis humana that could see their own reflection everywhere they walked and then later on in that dream or maybe in another dream I remember trying to buy the movie rights to a painting for two million dollars and I’m pretty sure there was waterskiing involved in there somewhere. Well that’s all I remember. Someone told me that if I start writing down my dreams it will help me remember them better….

Right now I’m in a lobby of the hotel where we stayed last night in Oviedo. We played in a town nearby called Mieres. It was a strange gig for us. It was our first time in this area and it was our best paying show (it was sponsored by city hall) and it was also a free show to the public.

It was in a beautiful new theater that holds 600 people. We were all thinking that it was going to be great since it was free, but it turned out that only about 75 or so people came so the place looked pretty empty. Luckily, they kept the theater pretty dark while we played so we didn’t really notice that much.

The other weird thing about the show was that because it was sponsored by city hall, they told us that we couldn’t sell CD’s anywhere in the building. That’s never happened to me before. They were very strict about it. So after the show, I had to drag the suitcase of CD’s outside to sell them on the street! – “Hey, hey, piratos discos aqui! Muy barrato!” I think the people from the show got a kick out of that.

Later we found out that on Fridays people in that town down really go out until ten because they are just getting off of work at 8, which makes sense since most places close for siesta in the middle of the day, which explained the light turn out. Still, it was a good show for us. The sound was great as it was a new theater and we had our expert sound guy with us, Kato , who has been doing our sound here for years.

After the show we went to get dinner (which for us usually begins around midnight).  We were all famished since we hadn’t eaten anything since that morning so we went to a nice restaurant in Oviedo. Oviedo is known for a couple of things: First, this town is in the northwestern party of the country and for some reason is influenced heavily by Celtic tradition. They actually have bagpipers all over the place here.

Secondly, they are know for their “Cidra” or cider which is made from apples and is really damn tasty. It’s slightly carbonated and the carbonation is activated when the bartenders and waiters pour the cider in the cup from about three feet up. They make a show of it of course and never actually look while they are pouring. The cider is really cheap though so I guess it doesn’t matter that some of it ends up on the floor….

Okay and here is just an aside: David has been telling me that some people eat horse in Spain but I refused to believe it...but then I came across this --- highly suspect.

back in spain

Today is a day off. We left New York a few days ago, I guess? It's a little confusing since we left on a Wednesday and arrived on a Thursday. Trying to get on Spanish time, but the gigs here are always super late; we started the show last night at midnight and didn't get back to Barcelona until 5:30 in the AM.

Last night we played in Olot. The place was a cultural center with a bar attached - nice room. It was the same place we played last time we came through town, but there were more people this time (always a good sign).

The five of us hadn't played together since late September last year so we were a little rusty, but luckily we had a long soundcheck to work out the kinks. Andy and I did World Without Love as a duo and I got the crowd singing with us at the end. We also tried the Gillian Welsh tune "Miss Ohio" with the band for the first time.

All in all a good show. I posted a couple of photos on Flickr that our friend Pressa sent to me this morning.

Okay. Hasta Luego. De Conya!

Spain!

Our friends in Vittoria sent me this flyer via Myspace. I'm getting excited to go back over there!

brighten up your day with a little idol...

The EP

Last night I went to see my friend Dan Ryan's band at Union Hall. They're called
Le Loup. Dan used to book me at the Terrace Club in Princeton and a lot of his friends from those days were there. One of them was his successor at the Terrace Club, Ben Markowitz -- who also booked me their. Ben and I were talking about the EP which is a format that is more and more enticing to me. Initially, as I was looking over all of my material that I hope to record, The EP seemed like just a way to make something that is stylistically coherent, but without much advantage other than that.  Ben pointed out that with EPs you can make records faster and put them out more often. In this world where if you're out of the public eye for too long, you're forgotten is this a way to stay in the picutre? Hmmm, now it's starting to look appealing from an artistic and business standpoint. I'm thinking that it's a good possibility that you all will be getting more (smaller) doses of Jonah in the future. We'll see.

Vids

Someone posted some videos of us playing a Langerado last week. Thanks to whoever that was.
You can watch me go all Al Jarreau on Keller William's ass.

enjoy.
jonah

Langerado

This past Sunday, the band and I traveled to Sunrise, FLA to play at the Langerado festival. We were all pretty excited to get down there and experience the sunshine. Plus just as a fan of music, it's nice to be able to check out so many bands in one place. Unfortunately, because some of the guys had stuff to do here in the city we couldn't leave until Saturday afternoon.

I was watching the weather all week and I knew that there was a storm coming it was supposed to hold off until about 3 in the afternoon. We were set to fly out at 1pm, so i had my fingers crossed.

Well, it was raining when we got there and I had a bad feeling that turned out to be true. We ended up sitting at Laguardia for 6 1/2 hours waiting to board our plane. It was official. We were missing REM and all other bands on Saturday.

When we finally did get up in the air, we experienced the worst turbulence any of us have ever experienced - except for Marko who had some horror story about flying out of Belgrade, once - but it was bad. Ben said he was scarred for life. I'm usually pretty calm on flights but i was definitely a little shaken and the guy sitting next to me with his wife and their yappy little dog in a bag kept asking me if I was alright.

("Calmer than you are dude" sorry, Big Lebowski reference)

The plane was shaking really bad when the pilot pulled back the throttle and we began a rapid assent to try to rise above the turbulence. I started to relax a little bit when the plane started dropping in free fall (for what felt like a minute but was more like 3 seconds). The whole plane screamed. Pretty freaky. Certain members of the band expressed remorse for sleeping with other members' girlfriends and one band member might have blurted out something about being gay. We're not sure.

Obviously, we landed in one piece but we were all pretty destroyed and decided to just go to the hotel and crash.

The next day we woke up to play and even though I'd been reminded about a dozen times by our tour manager, Emily White that it was Daylight Savings, I still pretty much forgot. Luckily Ben and Marko didn't and they called my room to wake me up. We headed over to the festival sight. It was turning out to be a beautiful day. We were supposed to play after the Lee Boys on the main stage but it turns out that they got moved to the night before to cover for Robert Randolph who had canceled, so we were the first band on that stage for the day. Our set was at 12:45, but because of Daylight Savings, it was really 11:45 in the minds of most of the festival goers and not many people had wandered out of the campgrounds.

We played to a pretty sparse crowd but it ended up being fun anyway. Anytime I get to play music outside on a nice stage and I don't have to move any gear (they rented a Rhodes for me) it's a good day. The highlight of the set for me was having Keller Williams join us on our set.

I met Keller last year at a show we did in Buffalo, NY.  Music just pours out of him and he's one of the nicest guys  around.  I sent him a text right before I went on stage and at a certain point I looked over and saw him standing on the side of the stage. We didn't really talk about what we were going to do, but I knew that he knew Man Smart, Woman Smarter because I'd seem him do it in Buffalo we we rolled into that out of another  song and he came out and sang it with me (I have some vid footage that I'll post soon)

After our set which was attended by a very large portion of my family - mom, dad, aunts, uncles and my adorable little cuz, Olivia - almost all in JS tees and a smattering of other folks we headed over to check out Martin Sexton's set which was great. No one can really put on a solo show like Martin. I dug touring with him and his band last year but the solo thing is really his wheelhouse.

After that, it was pretty much time to head out. Short and sweet. We were only on site for about four hours but in that time it was great to catch up with some fellow musicians that I hadn't seen in awhile (and my fam) before heading back home to Brooklyn.

(pics on my flickr site and a vid to come soon)

Video Blog 2

Some clips of me and Teddy K mixing a demo called "Watching The Water Rise". Not entirely sure how I feel about the song. Still kind of a work in progress, but I had fun working on it. In this clip I do some virtual organ overdubbing and my vocal (with Teddy's killer Neuman microphone) and some mixing.

Video Blog 1

okay, it's probably not the most fascinating video ever, but you gotta start somewhere. as i'm still learning how to do things like post vids, i'm hoping that this will be good practice for when i'm on the road and want to do this quickly.

so, here is a vid with bits and pieces of a demo session i did over at aaron's house the other day. i had at one point set up the camera and tried to record us doing a pass on a song but it didn't record so all i ended up with is overdubs. but you can see how a demos session might go...chart writing and reviewing, overdubs and some laughs. also unfortunate is that i didn't get on tape teddy kumpel's music biz stories.

teddy has been a friend for a few years now and has done some gigs with me and has been mixing all my demos for awhile. he's kind of like a where's waldo in the music biz showing up as a background singer for nine inch nails on MTV or playing banjo with feist on good morning america. plus he plays guitar on many of the will ferrell movie soundtracks like talledega nights.

anyway, hope you enjoy it....

In need of assistance...

A named Justin on myspace sent me this message but unfortunately due to his privacy settings I have no way to respond. So, justin, if you read this please send me your contact info. thanks....js

 

Hey Jonah,

I wrote you an email about a month back asking if I would be able to use your song "Everything Is New" for a film that my college professor is putting together called "Day Lily". I never got a response for you about it, and I just want you to know that I honestly can't find a better song for the part and would really love to use the song... I do have all the paperwork to send over to you if you agree to do it. Please feel free to ask ANY questions.

Thanks!
Justin~