DAVID GUILBAULT

MUSIC EMBODIED

I just saw "This Is It", the movie culled from rehearsal footage from Michael Jackson's planned final live tour.  Even in checked practice performance, minimizing his dance moves and saving his singing voice, you can not take your eyes off  MJ for a second.  Even modulated, he is the embodiement of his music, his precise movement and vocal phrasing becoming the emotions of his signature songs.  Even with all the visual spectacle going on around him, his charisma commands your attention.  Let there be no doubt, Madonna and Britney and Justin and Miley and all you other pretenders to the throne with your manufactured spectacles, Michael, even dead, is still the King of Pop. His tour would have been truly spectacular.

GIG TONIGHT

AN AQUARIAN EXPOSITION

It was late summer, 1969.  I had been to lots of outdoor music festivals.  I had already seen Jimi and Janis and Jim, the Who and The Band.  I lived in upstate New York and heard there was going to be "an aquarian exposition" down the road in White Lake, N.Y.  "Naw," I thought, "I'm festivaled out."   So, I decided not to go.  Thus I missed the epochal event of my generation.

And, while we're at it, RIP hot-lickin', guitar-inventin', multi-trackin', music-changin' Les Paul.

PHOTO CREDIT:  Jennifer Taylor, The New York Times

BUSKING IN SEATTLE

I have to believe from my experience that Seattle's announced commitment to support music is a bit disingenuous.

I notified the Parks & Recreation Department a few months ago to get a permit to perform in the city parks.  They informed me that there were no more available this year.  My understanding was that "sanctioned buskers" could perform in the parks from noon until 2p, and that anyone could perform other times.

So, I have performed twice by the pergola in Pioneer Square near where I live.  One of the security guards for a tourist tour that starts there told me I was the best performer they've had there.  The audience has been supportive and mildly generous.

But, today the Park Rangers told me I couldn't play without a permit, couldn't sell my CD's and couldn't use amplification.  Yet, the so-called "official buskers" can plug in their instruments and plug their recordings. You'd think I'd be able to scratch out a few dollars singing for my supper.  But not in this "arts" town.

Firstly, I don't understand why a busking permit is needed in any event.  And I certainly don't understand why the number issued is limited.  In this town, you have to know who to know and when to know them in order to be "official."

I'm just trying to live and eat and spread my original music.

I also tried playing a few blocks away in Occidental Square.  But one of the managers from the art galleries that line that pedestrian park asked me not to set up and play.  Another so-called art patron preventing an artist from performing.

It's all very frustrating.  I live in Pioneer Square and you'd think I could share my music with my neighbors and accept their gratuities.  For all its progressive posturing, this is a town of draconian restrictions.  Next the panhandlers in this town will have to be licensed.

Oh, well, such is life in Seattle.
Cheers for now.  David.

NEXT GIGS

KEEP ON GIGGING

 

SHOW TONIGHT

GIG TODAY

STILL THE TRUTH

A TRIO OF TRUTHS

Hi folks, friends and fans. I invite you to come see me perform at Egan's Ballard Jam House this Tuesday, April 7th at 7p, along with fellow singer-songwriters Kate Graves and Sean Bendickson.  Cheers for now. David.

THE A GALLERY

Hi folks, fans and friends.  I invite you to stroll into the A Gallery this Thursday night during the Pioneer Square Art Walk.  I'll be playing another set of originals, beginning at 5:15p.  Cheers for now.  David.

Photo: Colin Nelson

SONGS INTO THE WORLD

GUITAR RIFFS

Nashville super group Sixwire riffs through the years at the Taylor Guitar booth for NAMM 09.

LOUNGE GIG TONIGHT

I have a gig tonight at the Columbia City Theater Lounge in Seattle.  I'm sharing the bill with Curtis Seals, Kelly Vance, Dustin Darnold and Issac Barham.  Show starts at 8p.  My first set of two is scheduled for 8:40p.  The address is 4916 Rainier Ave. South in Columbia City.  Those of you in Seattle, please come on by.

BROTHER BRENT

R.I.P. DEWEY MARTIN

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members Stephen Stills, Neil Young and Richie Furay have issued a statement on their former Buffalo Springfield band mate Dewey Martin, the group's drummer, who died last week at age 68 at his home in Van Nuys.

"Dewey wasn't intimidated by any of us; he was the older guy in the group and helped glue the band together," said the statement issued Sunday and signed by all three musicians. "He had that strength. The rest of us were all still babies, and just starting out in a band. We had a lot to figure out. But Dewey had been around, playing on sessions and working with a lot of great singers. Plus he was one hell of a drummer."

- From Randy Lewis, L.A. Times Music Blog

YA GOTTA LOVE INGRID

Can anyone listen to and watch Ingrid Michaelson without smiling?

TRUE AS BLUE

COFFEE HOUSES

Back in the Sixties, the folk music artists of the time played in coffee houses in Greenwich Village and across America.  There they found attentive audiences for their social protests.

Nowadays, a singer/songwriter can expect the spare caffeinated crowd in the local java joint to be deeply distracted, lost in their laptops.

Such was the case this past Sunday afternoon as I played a charming old coffee house in West Seattle.  Two of the audience members actually put in their ear buds when I started playing, never averting their eyes from their computers.

Of course, they didn't come to have me interrupt their quiet online solitude.  So, we managed to coexist - they in their digital screens and newspapers, and I on the stage, playing over the sounds of the espresso machines.

Luckily there was a window to my left through which I could amuse myself as I played my original songs.

Here's one of them, 'Careful of You'.  (Friends came in the door just as I was finishing my first set.)

I won't mind if you get lost in your Internet browser as you listen.  Just happy to have the songs heard.  Enjoy.

(NOTE:  Slow video load and low audio level.)

LENNON REMEMBERED

On this day in 1980, John Lennon was murdered.

At the time, I was producing a live, two-hour talk show at CNN, called "Take Two."  We devoted the entire show that afternoon to Lennon.

A year later, I produced and directed a documentary, "Lennon Remembered", a half-hour television tribute produced at CNN and broadcast on Superstation TBS, strung together, on the cheap, with bits and pieces from 'here, there and ev'rywhere.'  It featured the musician and man, in his own words.

Below is that program (digitized from an old VHS copy), in remembrance of the singular artist lost on that tragic day.

PURE AND SIMPLE

Neil Young performs his song, 'Cowgirl in the Sand' at Massey Hall in 1971.

THE WAY YOU MOVE

Not a day goes by, I don't think about you.

FINE AND MELLOW

Billie Holiday had one of the saddest voices I've ever heard. Here she performs her composition 'Fine and Mellow' in 1957 with Lester Young (tenor sax), Coleman Hawkins (tenor sax), Ben Webster (tenor sax), Gerry Mulligan (baritone sax), Roy Eldridge (trumpet), Doc Cheatham (trumpet), Vic Dickenson (trombone), Danny Barker (guitar), Milt Hinton (bass), Mal Waldron (piano) and O.C. Johnson (drums). 

This jazz greats' track is intoxicating. Play it more than once if only for Roy Eldridge's searing trumpet highs. According to a comment on YouTube, the solo order is: Holiday, Webster, Young, Holiday, Dickenson, Mulligan, Holiday, Hawkins, Eldridge, Holiday.

"Love will make you drink and gamble, make you stay out all night long.
Love will make you do things that you know is wrong."

- Billie Holiday

ARCHIVAL REVIVAL

Before there was digital, for years I kept a VHS tape in the VCR to record any music that aired on broadcast TV.  I've been going through those tapes and have converted a few of my favorite performances into digital files.  For your watching and listening pleasure, I will be presenting clips from my collection, 'Archival Revival.'  First up, one of my all-time favorites, Tom Rush performs his songs 'No Regrets' and 'Rockport Sunday.'  Enjoy.

You can buy Tom's music directly from Tom on his website. Please do.

CHANGING MY TUNE

I am just so happy and relieved that Barack Obama is going to be our next president.  I can stop worrying so much about my children's future and the terrible, terrible course this country has been on under the dangerous, arrogant, belligerent buffoonery of Bush/Cheney/Rove/Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld/Kristal.

So, in this blog, I'm going to 'change my tune' a bit and spend some time on my first and true love - songwriting.  Here are a tip of the hat to Johnny Cash:

FROM THE BOSS

Bruce Springsteen at a Vote for Change rally in Philadelphia:

"I've spent most of my creative life measuring the distance between that American promise and American reality. For many Americans, who are today losing their jobs, their homes, seeing their retirement funds disappear, who have no health care, or who have been abandoned in our inner cities, the distance between that promise and that reality has never been greater or more painful. I believe Senator Obama has taken the measure of that distance in his own life and in his work. I believe he understands, in his heart, the cost of that distance, in blood and suffering, in the lives of everyday Americans. I believe as president, he would work to restore that promise to so many of our fellow citizens who have justifiably lost faith in its meaning. ...

Our sacred house of dreams has been abused, looted, and left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs care; it needs saving, it needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power or a quick buck. It needs strong arms, hearts, and minds. It needs someone with Senator Obama's understanding, temperateness, deliberativeness, maturity, compassion, toughness, and faith, to help us rebuild our house once again. But most importantly, it needs us. You and me. To build that house with the generosity that is at the heart of the American spirit. A house that is truer and big enough to contain the hopes and dreams of all of our fellow citizens. That is where our future lies. We will rise or fall as a people by our ability to accomplish this task. Now I don't know about you, but I want that dream back, I want my America back, I want my country back."

 - Bruce Springsteen

THE SHAPE I'M IN

I just came from a free concert by The Levon Helm Band in a small park in Stamford, Connecticut.  The twelve piece band played an Americana blend of rock, blues, country, bluegrass, hillbilly, swing and jazz.

I've been smiling and dancing and choking back happy tears.  To hell with the politicians.  We should just turn the whole damn deal over to the musicians of the world.  We'd all be smiling and dancing and choking back happy tears.

Photo Credit:  Rahav Segev, The New York Times