ASCAP 2010

This past week Melody and I had the amazing opportunity to attend the ASCAP "I Create Music" Expo in Hollywood, Ca. For those of you who don't know what ASCAP is, it's American Society of Composers, Authors, & Publishers. We had the amazing chance to interact with some of the music industry's top people as well as listen to some amazing speakers talk about their careers and what got them to where they are at.
I'm going to take you with me on the journey and tell you how the weekend happened from my point of view . . . . here we go!

Wednesday morning comes and the anticipation has been killing us to head out on the road and start our first "long distance" road trip. The few days before Mel spent a lot of her time compiling the "perfect" iPod road trip mix, just to find out that Kole's car doesn't have an input jack. DOH! So it's CD's & old fashion radio for us on the drive.

After picking up Mike, getting some road snacks, and stopping to pee, we're finally on the road headed south towards warmer weather. The drive wasn't bad at all, except that it rained the whole time up until we rolled into Vegas, where the sky cleared just enough to see the sun setting over Sin City.

Now the plan was that we were to meet up with Kole at one of her friends house, after changing plans 3 or 4 times, we eventually ended up doing what we had originally set out to do. Now the only problem was that her friend lived in a gated community that had a guard at the front gates. *Note to self: Make sure that you know the name of the person who's house your going to, make sure you know the correct gate to go to, and also, make sure that you understand that they may want to do a complete background check along with a rectal exam before letting you into their "gated club"

Finally we were in Vegas and headed over to The Freakin Frog for our show. The Freakin Frog is located just across the street from the UNLV campus so they get a lot of the college crowd in there. Another draw they have is their 777 different beers and over 200 different kinds of whiskey, SCORE! The sound guy, Howard, pulled us aside and explained to us the history of The Freakin Frog along with the 777 beers, and finished off with a tour of the beer cooler *drooling*. He basically said to us "If you come in here and fuck around on stage and make a spectacle of yourselves, don't expect to come back". So we start the show, Mel and I take the stage for our set and we're playing for a few sparse couples in the place and at the bar is a UNLV softball rec team, they seemed to enjoy the music and we had a great time. Next up was Kole, this deserves a whole new paragraph to tell her story . . .

Kole takes the stage, and if you don't know anything about her, let me help you understand her a little better. She's a ball of friggin energy ALWAYS! So she's up on stage playing her songs and interacting with the crowd. "If I leave here without at least some sort of tip, I can't get a pack of gum on the way to LA, so please tip me" she says in her quirky way. Sure enough, she get's a couple dollar bills and a stick of gum. Always be conscious of what your asking for, because you might just get it!

I was the DD for the night because we were headed to LA after our show. Here's what happens when you get a group of Utahns together in Vegas . . . Mike becomes Michael or Gapa, Mel becomes Leody, and Kole, well Kole is Kole. So on to LA . . .

The drive wasn't bad at all, Mike, Kole, and Mel slept for most of the way and finally we pulled into Hollywood at 4:30am ready to crash. After unloading the car, finding our rooms, brushing our teeth, and finally settling in, it was 5am.

*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* sounds my alarm at 7am and the only thing that I can think to myself is "Who on God's earth is stupid enough to wake up at 7am just for some music conference?" Us apparently. 2 hours of sleep is tough but nothing that a few cups of coffee can't fix! So we get into the car and make our way down to the Renaissance Hotel where ASCAP was being held.

I won't go too much into detail about the classes and speakers because that was something that I think you need to see for yourself to actually get the full effect.

The first day was tough because none of us had slept too much the night before, we had just spent a full day in & out of various classes, and we still had to drive down to Long Beach to play another show. So unfortunately for Mel we had to miss most of John Mayer talking, sorry Mel. On the brighter side, we were really excited about playing that night at a place called DiPiazza's. We had tried to book a gig there a few months before without any luck, but because we had helped another band from Long Beach score a gig in SLC, they helped us get booked. ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT GIG TRADING IS BRILLIANT!!!!!

The show went great, the crowd was responsive, Mel's long lost cousin showed up, and the Lakers lost! Great night!

Friday came and went without a hitch, nothing dramatic happened during the day, but once the night came so did SUSHI! We met up with a couple friends that we knew from down there at this little hol-in-the-wall place called Sushi Ike in Hollywood. Little did we know, but this place is one of the most coveted sushi stops in LA and they didn't disappoint! DE-FREAKIN-LICIOUS! The best part about eating sushi is that there's a little bit of a sushi coma that comes on after and it makes sleeping quite nice!

So on to Saturday, this was the big finishing day of ASCAP and we were trying to soak all of it in that we could. The classes went great as usual, and the whole event was capped off with an amazing Justin Timberlake & Bill Withers interview . . . some of my favorite words from Bill Withers were "It's time to stop worrying about what designer clothes your going to wear, or who your going to be seen with, it's time to get back to making music because you love to make music!". Cheers to this Bill!

Saturday night was FULL of great times, we walked over to the Grauman's Chinese Theater and saw all of the celebrity foot & hand prints, Mel got sliced up by an impressionistic Edward Scissor-Hands, we saw a Zombie march of about 100-150 people fully dressed as zombies, and then it was on to U-wink for cocktails. U-wink is a sports type bar that has little touchscreen tv's at every table. The touch screen is how you do everything at this place, it's how you place a drink order, food order, play games with people throughout the whole bar, and just an all around cool atmosphere. The best part for me was that as we played bingo with the whole bar, I kept putting my name as "Lakers Suck", this was especially great when we won and everyone's screen popped up "Lakers Suck is the WINNER!" HAHAHA, all of this during the actual Laker game where they were getting whopped on by OKC. This was my own personal victory, watching the Lakers lose twice and both while I was in LA!

So onto Sunday which was the day that really made this whole trip worth it for me. It started out a little better than the previous days because we didn't have to wake our asses up at 7am, we could actually sleep in a little bit. The weather was absolutely perfect and the coffee was extra delicious. We were getting set up for our backyard concert session that was to take place that afternoon. We hadn't really put much into planning this, other than we all knew that we were going to hang out in the back yard, and play some music.

As myself and John Zay were setting up the chars and getting all of the dog poo out of the way, John started talking to be about the "power of the tree". In this backyard there is a huge tree that overhangs the entire size of the yard. "It's full of great vibes" John told me. And let me tell you, this was ever so true. The concert started off with Marc "Coop" Cooper on guitar playing some ambient moody riffs, then Shelly Riff adding his acoustic take, John Zay on 12-string really filled up the mix, Kole & Melody singing lightly, and I was keeping some rhythmic beats going on the guitar body. This 1st jam lasted about 15 minutes and really set the feeling for the rest of the afternoon.

Each of us took turns playing our songs and every other musician would join in and create a version of the song that no one had ever heard before. This was pure magic and to me what making music is all about. None of us had EVER played music together, yet we all spoke the same language and communicated without a flaw.

Sunday April 25th, 2010 - Los Feliz, Ca - This is a date that I will always keep in my memory bank as one that helped reload my love and passion for music. The love and passion has never left me, but there are times that you need a little boost, and this did more than boost it, it redefined it. What an amazing weekend!


So what a great weekend I had and we look forward to including many many more people in trips like this in the future!