I lived.
I played the Songwriter Deathmatch at Freddy’s Bar in Brooklyn on Friday, April 6th. It was touch and go for a while…would I make it out of there in one piece?
I decided to start my set with 30 seconds of abuse (an idea I borrowed from the late great Graham Chapman) in order to get a sense of the brutality that lay before me…after offering up a handful of halfhearted insults, the abuse petered out, long before 30 seconds. What was I to make of this? Was the audience nice, or were they simply laying in the weeds, waiting for the right moment to go for the kill? Or maybe it was my fellow songwriters who were going to try to kill me…satisfied that I had reached my comfortable level of confusion, I began the music portion of my program. Long story short - everyone had a good time, and nobody got killed.
The first song I played is a brand new one called ‘Underneath the Sun’ - I haven’t recorded it yet. Lyrics and video to come. I followed that with ‘Wait and See’ from ‘One Centre Street’ and then led the crowd in a singalong on the old Beatles’ tune ‘This Boy’ (I’m pretty sure I’m singing ‘cry-yi-yi’ in the picture below)
The next song was ‘One More Kiss Goodbye’ from my ‘Guilty Pleasure Cabaret’ album (and come to think of it, that picture above might have been from that song, too).
I finished out my set by inviting my old pal Dave Foster to the stage. He played and sang on “Falling On the Ground” from ‘One Centre Street.’ Dave played guitar and sang on all the tracks on that album. Great job, Dave!
My set was followed by terrific performances by Karen Dahlstrom, Dave Keener and Dave Foster.