last-minute addition for this weekend

In addition to playing Hal’s Ballroom with Moon Violet tonight, I will be filling in for my friend Mike Barrington on Saturday night at JUKEBOX Live in Pickering, ON with his band Groove Matrix. Check the calendar at chriscawthray.com for links and info…

Starry Nights mp3

The Starry Nights Band demo disc is iminent! In the meantime, they’ve posted an mp3 at their MySpace page that features me on drums. The song is called “Save Your Love” and I think you can even download it for your own use, how nice is that?

If you want to check out my blog entry from that recording session, the link is here.

candid camera

After YEARS of avoiding professional photography when it comes to band promo, I’m about to give up my resistance. Two weeks ago in NYC my wife took many wonderful pictures, and she also suffered through trying to photograph CPZ in shorts, sandals, and other fashion crimes. This is the best of the lot, I think it’s time to call in a professional to make us look professional:

cc3 cancelled tonight @ Wildcraft

To our friends in the Waterloo area:

Due to some unseasonably nasty weather, cc3 will not be performing tonight @ Wildcraft. Join us next week (June12) for our next show there.

photo from 6/2

NY report – or “I’m melting!”

The CPZ Canadian contingent (with a very welcome secret third traveler, I might add) returned from NYC late last night (early this morning to be exact). The trip was eventful and musical, and, um, hot.

The weather in New York (and here in Toronto) has been unseasonably warm and humid, which made walking around in New York stifling and sweaty. The West Village, where we were staying, was lush and verdant. The East Village (where we were playing) was sticky and stinky.

We had the luxury of a cancelled Friday night gig (haha), so the opportunity to see Billy Hart at the Vanguard was thrust upon us. We accepted, and were not disappointed. The band (and it is a BAND) was great; here’s a New York Times review of a set this week, notable for it’s quality, in that the reviewer actually managed to write about the MUSIC, and not the band’s clothing, mannerisms, etc. Here’s a link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/arts/music/31hart.html?_r=1&ref=music&oref=slogin

This was my first time seeing Billy Hart live; I do find that the live experience of seeing any musician is essential (for me) to seal the deal on my listening relationship with them. Studios and recordings can often distort or even negate the true nature of what one has to offer. Anyway, Mr. Hart was already cake in my ears (I cop a brush groove he played with Charles Lloyd on a cover of “What’s Goin’ On” quite often), so seeing him was icing. However, the gig, with un-mic’d drums in the Vanguard revealed to me Billy’s natural drum sound, and I wasn’t a fan. His playing is effortless yet powerful, he moves like a boxer, and he carves and re-shapes the time in so many wonderful ways (Ben Street certainly gets it, their bass-drums connection is stellar), but I can’t stand his drum sound! Actually, his drumkit tone has a lot of similarities to Terry Bozzio’s, to my ears, albeit with 28 less drums and 45 less cymbals. BH’s Pearl Masterworks kit (10,12,14,20 power sizes with a copper free-floating snare) is high, tight, and crisp, and the bass drum has no “wobble”. It rings but it is tuned to deliver a single direct tone. My preference in bass drums is for them to move a lot of air and a wider range of frequency. My preference in tom sounds is a middy-low growl. Like Bozzio, BH tightens his cymbals down very tightly on the stands (with the exception of his rivet cymbal, to my delight), and tops the ride and crash with inverted splash and bell cymbals. The result is that when he strikes his cymbals, they don’t rock back and forth and unleash waves of sound over you; it is more akin to thin sheets being sliced off and frisbee’d towards you. Don’t construe this as a suggestion that Mr. Hart’s drum sound is unpleasant, it’s simply very angular and precise. Recordings of his drumming soften the edges of this, and so experiencing it “in the wild” was very revealing.

As for good ol’ CPZ. We dragged our gig 4 blocks west and three blocks south from Rob Price’s apartment to Jimmy’s No. 43 and arrived sweaty messes to a club that was experience A/C malfunctions and its staff (of one) appeared to have no idea we were booked. ((sigh) I wish this came as a shock to me) We proceeded to set up, the back room at Jimmy’s is great: a tiny elevated stage with a sparkly curtain and a real room for listening. About 10 folks showed up to listen (everyone known to the band members, so it was quickly determined that the tip jar should be abandoned and my CDs would be distributed for free), and we began to play. Did I mention the A/C was broken? Did I mention that I am an XL (or “husky” in the Boys Dept. at Sears)? So, I’m sweating, and melting, and my bass drum (a lovely Joe Cusatis kit supplied by Alice Bierhorst) is sliding and the pedal is slipping off, and midway through our set the staff-of-one comes to the backroom to tell us to play quieter (insert deflating sound here as my already sun-stroked and sweat-puddled enthusiasm is shrinking). The set was not without its challenges. In the end, it was an hour+ with some great moments, but a bit uneven. Our last gig at Pepperjacks (sadly, unrecorded) was much better, but the working conditions were also much more hospitable.

I’m ready to do a CPZ boot camp, I think. We’ve done 18 months of fly-in one nighters with no rehearsals and the results have been great. I think the next step is to book three days to play together. I envision setting up shop somewhere here in the city, working/rehearsing/exploring on our own in the afternoons, then opening up the doors each night and playing a set for whomever shows up. The drama of booking and promoting these shows is getting tiresome (the clubs are indifferent, and we play for our friends and colleagues whom we’d just as soon play for in our own homes…), and it’s a lot of effort to roll in and quickly set up and bang out an hour and then roll out. We owe it to the band to try another approach.

And, wherever we do it, they’ll have A/C, or at least a nice breeze.