Things happening all around

I'm tired. I've been writing a show for the last three weeks for Valerie Lee Mayes, a singer who's making a comeback to her musical career in and around El Campo, Texas. This is not to diminish her skills, which are considerable. She spent years working as a duo with the man who became her husband Jef (sic) Mayes in and around a much larger Houston. Then one thing led to another, her husband became her ex-husband and she left Texas to pursue a career with Southwest Airlines based in Nashville. Now you'd think that Nashville would have welcomed this soulful singer, yet you'd be wrong. In the last 12 years she's only done a handful of gigs.

Laigh Langley put us together to see what we could do for each other. I ended up writing some new charts and adapting some existing ones for Valerie. We approached the Greek Bros. about possibly doing a gig, and the Greek was enthusiastic enough to put us on the calendar right away, sooner than Valerie or I imagined. I was thinking late summer, Valerie though Fall would work, but the Greek wants us on April 9.

So we now have, in the book and ready to go, Can't Buy Me Love, Come In from the Rain, Giving It Up for Your Love, I Can't Stop Lovin' You, I'd Like to Make It with You, 1-2-3 (Gloria Estefan), and quite a few others. Valerie is a great proponent of blue-eyed soul, if I could use a dated term. She's got a real Texas thing going, a kind of soulfulness that is unique to the Lone Star State. Think of the Ray Charles records of country music (still the most dangerous recordings ever made, IMHO, due to their genre busting), but approaching it from the other direction and you'll have Delbert McLinton, Laigh Langley and Valerie Lee.

So I can pick up some extra sleep next week. Today is Easter Sunday and we're going to rehearse later this afternoon when Valerie flies in. We'll be performing in less than two weeks, and the sheer volume of three to four hours of music is staggering.

But in the long run we'll be rewarded with gigs in El Campo (where the gumbo is hot) and elsewhere, and we're positioning ourselves for the multiple girl singer zone for more high-profile corporate gigs.

By the way, Janice is fine with this encroachment, and reminds me that her background is choir. This is a lovely attitude which finds her adding a background voice, a tambourine, and so on . . .

I might go out with Princess Cruises for a few months to build up cash. Jan's suffered enough--when they contacted me I heard them out and what I heard sounded great. Three months on, one off, jump off the merry-go-round whenever. Jimmy can run things while I'm gone. If I go. We'll see if I get the opportunity.

All-Purpose Excuse

These are confusing and exciting times for ORB. That's shorthand for The Original Recipe Band, btw. After the birthday party in Dallas, where we made more money than we ever had made in the past, I was strangely unsettled in my thinking about what constutes a fair pile of money for the evening.

I believe that we should be making lots more money. and I believe the way we might do that would be to go with a corporate show band. That would mean the specifications I got from DeWayne, the booker of the Temptations gig in Dallas last month. Parodoxically it means adding personnel and subtracting material.

First, you have to have multiple female singers. Second, a front man who is truly in front, instead of behind the drums all the time. You need to have multiple guitarists and/or keyboardists. And you might need a trumpet player added to our lineup so there is an opportunity to spread the load of the horn parts.

Now this is all well and good. We have potential, as they say in the Great American Pasttime, at every position. (Nothing more burdensome than potential.) But there are other matters too, like getting the band together for a photo shoot and video, which DeWayne said was crucial. I see the need for choreography (Rudy from HotWax perhaps?).

On the upside there is no need for more than 40 charts in separate books.

The bottom line is that, while a party gig in Dallas can land $3000-$5000, which is more than we made that night, a corporate gig with a semi-eleaborate dance show can land $10,000-$25,000. Big difference.

And there's no reason to jettison what we've done thus far. We can still play a wedding with 9 pieces, a club with 6—using the same charts.

Meanwhile Bobby Bellemans has offered to GIVE me his booking agency. I wasn't a firstborn for nothing and my initial reaction was that he was overvaluing the product, which may be the case. I've set up a database and I'm going to take it a gig at a time and see where it leads. So far I'm doing a solo piano gig for St. Patrick's day. Ten percent of not very much is even less.

We rehearse this evening at 6, with the singers and the rhythm section. We need to decide what to do down at the Greek Bros. in El Campo on the 9th of April. That's the other direction the gods of the gigs are leading us. I'd work there for a bowl of gumbo, but don't tell the Greek that. It's going to be quite an evening: bringing Valerie back before her home town crowd and all. I want to pick our numbers based on the widest range possible. They get enough cowboy music down there, and I know there's a Sinatra element in that house. And a rock crowd too.

Onward and upward with the musical arts.