This is me

It’s 3am. I just left World Cafe from one of the most humorously stressful nights of music.

Let’s back track to my birthday (January 5). I get an email from the talent buyer at World Cafe telling me Femi Kuti canceled his gig on January 10th. He was inquiring as to whether I could put something together last minute for him. I had just gotten out of bikram and I wasn’t really in the head space to talk business, so I say, “I doubt it, but I’ll email a few people and see what I can do.”

10PM rolls around and I email Nick Bockrath because I remembered it was his birthday on January 10th. Side note: I’m not the type of guy to remember birthdays, but my Bar-Mitzvah was the same day.

By the end of Monday night (still January 5) we figured we’d have a birthday celebration for him.

Tuesday morning (January 6), I confirm the basics with the buyer and I chat up with the marketing and PR person at the venue to figure out how we’re gonna get people out in such short notice.

FACEBOOK! No matter how much I hate that shit to death, it serves a purpose in these dire, last minute situations. We have a free ticket deal for 20 people, we offer $3 tickets to anyone who already had tickets for Femi Kuti, and invite the shit out of everyone we know. This morning the confirmed guests were 122 people!

So I’m chatting with Nick yesterday at 1pm (4 hours before load in). He’s hungover as fuck from the unofficial celebration from the night before. He finally gets around to tell me that his rock band, Cortez! Cortez!! has decided not to play, but Kuf Knotz is gonna play an improv funk hip-hop set with some of his friends. Turns out one of his “friends” was my old college housemate Evan Hilzer from Mixxtape. It’s always a pleasure to rock out with E Hilz. Evan texted me at 730pm to ask if I was going to the event at World Cafe tonight to which I replied that I was running it. Turns out, he found out about the gig at 6pm the same night of the show, hitched a ride with Tom Copson Jr. from The Hustle, and arrived at the venue at 845pm (3hr45min late for load in) for a 930pm set time.

Back up a few hours. The manager for World Cafe cards people backstage and there’s two underagers, so she takes away all the beer. I can understand that because a law is a law and I don’t want her to get in trouble. However, I felt it could have been handled differently, but that’s a whole other post in itself. THEEEEEN, every 21+ musician comes up to me at least 5x each saying, “when we gettin drink tickets?”. It’s wasn’t my call, but people were venting how furious they were. What can I do? Get the venue pissed at me. I’m not in the position where I can burn bridges.

Anyways, after Kuf’s jam was Nick’s big band jazz octet Highbrid who played some real out there jazz tunes highlighted by Charlie Patierno on drums and Michael Cain on vibraphone (who also composes the music).

Followed after was the Nick and Friends set that was supposed to start at midnight, but was pushed forward to 1115pm. The friends were Ian McGuire from MJ Project, Steve Lyons from Bodega, Eric Slick from Adrian Belew, and Barney McKenna (from Cortez), which was just incredible! Granted they had never played together as a whole before and there was no time for soundtrack jamming, I think the crowd was totally into it. They had some trance vibes going on then they switched it up to this Latin/electric Miles hybrid shit and it cliqued reaaaaaal well.

And when they were winding down, we presented Nick with a birthday cake and it wouldn’t have been complete if we did smudge icing in his face!

Last, but not least was Bodega. It was supposed to be a surprise set because I didn’t want them publicize it to prevent them from overplaying Philly with two important gigs coming up.

That being said, they tore the roof off. They invited Eric, Michael, Kuf, trumpeter from Highbrid, and Ian on stage and had a free-for-all for 45 minutes of raw musical awesomeness. The show ended at 115am, I settled for the night (149 people!!!! foe three days of planning/promoting), divvied the loot, and headed home. However, before which, Eric and I had a bikram demo for the 10 or so people that were still at the venue, which went well until we got the boot at 2am.

I hitched a ride home with Ian. We got chatting about music, touring, and just shooting the shit. Real nice guy. Real down to earth. He knows what’s up and I’m glad I finally go to meet him. Definitely check out any number of his projects if you have the chance because some of the sounds his keyboards make are aesthetically unique and set him aside from any number of electro jam guys on the scene.

I’m tired and going to sleep.

Check out some pics from the night and don’t forget to support live music!