139 - Whip In
On my way to Whip In on Tuesday I pulled up my blog on my phone to remember what songs I had played there last, but I couldn’t find the entry. After looking a few times, I finally ended up Googling myself and did find it, way back in February! Had it really been that long? I guess it had, I’ve just been to the Whip In a couple times since to see shows, and at one of those shows I even ended up hanging out with DC, the Whip In host, so it really didn’t seem like it had been that long!
I had picked out a table by the front, but was asked to move because there was going to be dancing. Luckily a few open mic scene regulars had a spot where I could join them at their table a little further back. They had both done the Kerrville Folk Festival before and gave me some good tips.
It turned out the dancing was belly dancing! There was a group called Joined at the Hip, of 4 hand drum guys and two dancers in full costume, and apparently the dance was improvised, but these women were so in synch you never would have known it. Pretty awesome.
Somehow I remembered that my pickup battery was dead, which is a big pain because to change it I have to detune my strings slack enough that I can reach my hand inside to replace it. I cut my thumb on something inside but got it changed pretty much in time, and thank goodness for my Snark tuner that could tune pretty quietly even during the set before. I still ended up having to tune a little more from stage, because I hadn’t realized my spot was coming up so quick, but hopefully it wasn’t too long. Feels like an eternity when you’re up there!
I was the only girl musician on the list that night, which stuck out at me perhaps a little more because I had just listened to the podcast of a recent KUT special called “Unsung: The Stories of Women in Texas Music”. I do think it’s getting better for women in music, but there were some sad/bad stories in that podcast, that happened in my lifetime, and it’s frustrating.
Afterward one of the dancers, Andrea, told me that their improv belly dancing was kind of like jazz, improvised within a vocabulary of moves. She also told me that I reminded her a bit of Edie Brickell. I don’t know about all artists, but for me, finding out who people hear me sounding like feels like a gold nugget of information. I hate filling out those online profiles where they want to know who you sound like, because sure, I have my favorite people and influences, but I don’t know what I actually sound like, I can’t hear it from the outside! :) Plus DC said he liked the new one, Tom wanted to get the words so he could sing harmony on Keep Telling Me, Richard liked last one, so that means good feedback on all three songs, yay!
Songs: Keep Telling Me, All or Nothing, Shoreline of Alaska
