Serenity Gardens (07.17.17)

Every other Monday, you'll find me on this lovely stage at Serenity Gardens.

It's been awhile since I had a "regular" gig in Second Life like I do now at Serenity Gardens. In the world of music and other forms of entertainment, a regular gig simply means that there's a venue where one does repeating performances on a schedule. For Serenity Gardens, it's every other Monday evening that I make my appearance and do the things I do. Here's a coincidental point: looking back over ten years of playing live music in SL, my other regular gigs have also been on Monday evenings. I guess I'm Mr. Monday, and I like it.

Here's why: for a lot of people, Monday is a challenging day. It's the first day of a typical business work week (or school week). You've just spent a weekend doing things you presumably want to do, and now are back in a mode of doing things that you have to do. I have to give credit to the various venues who, purposefully or otherwise, brought me in to handle live music on Monday nights. I'm a pretty good guy for that slot. If you're like most people, your Mondays leave you in a mode where it's good to have something to take your mind off the stress of the day, and my form of entertainment is, if nothing else, light. Even when I'm performing "serious" songs, the overall vibe of my show is pretty breezy and fun. I like to imagine someone getting home after a rough day, filled with meetings and deadlines, dealing with traffic and so on, and then sitting down in front of their computer, maybe pouring a beverage of some sort, and turning up the volume. What do they want to hear at that point? Personally, I'd like some entertainment that took me out of that mode of serious responsibility, and let's face it: my shows are never billed as a serious evening of music. I try and make things fun and relaxing, which I think is what most people like on Monday nights.

Everything Old Is New Again
As per my mission of the past few shows, I filled last night's performance with songs that were deeper in my musical repertoire that what I'd been doing for awhile. A couple of examples: the last time I did "Sister Golden Hair" was in September 2012, while my last attempt at Neil Young's "Alabama" was in February 2014. It's not been a conscious decision to not play those songs, I promise. Like anything else, music is something that becomes a routine, and once something falls out of the regular rotation, you find that out of sight does equal out of mind. Unless I make the conscious effort to go deeper into my list of 400-plus songs, they remain buried in there. I'm happy that people seem to enjoy these songs; my fan base fluctuates enough that some people who come to see me often now probably have never heard me do some of those tunes at all.

One song that absolutely no one had heard me do previously -- since I'd never done it before -- was the live debut of "Box by the Cliff", a little ditty written by my pal and bandmate Bunny Knutson for the next They Stole My Crayon album. We actually originally intended "BBTC" to be on the first Crayon album, but it wasn't quite ready to take into the studio at that point, and it's only been recently that we resumed the process of refining it. As a result, it was on my mind, and I worked out an acoustic guitar arrangement that was good enough to get the vibe of the song across to an audience. So I did, and it went well.

I thought this was super cool. The official Second Life Twitter feed re-Tweeted my promo notice for this show to their 50,000+ followers. I have to say, especially in recent years, I've found the folks at Linden Lab (the makers of Second Life and other virtual worlds) to be tremendously supportive of my musical activities in world. Many thanks to them.

Serenity Gardens set list...
Waterloo Sunset (The Kinks)
Sister Golden Hair (America)
*Box by the Cliff (They Stole My Crayon)
Alabama (Neil Young)
Fade Away (Zak Claxton)
Save Me (Aimee Mann)
Swing Low Magellan (Dirty Projectors)
Sour Girl (Stone Temple Pilots)
On a Plain (Nirvana)
Pulling Mussels from a Shell (Squeeze)
Things Behind the Sun (Nick Drake)
It’s Good to be King (Tom Petty)

*Indicates the first time I've performed this song in SL.

Huge thanks to all who came out to my Monday night show at lovely Serenity Gardens, with a special tip o' the Zak Hat to the following who helped support it!
ScarlettSabina Resident, Turn Pike, RoxxyyRoller Resident, Kenzliie Resident, Richy Nervous, RansomTalmidge Resident, Tyche Szondi, Christine Haiku, my terrific manager Maali Beck, and Serenity's fantastic management team of Tilly Rose and Ilsa Wilde.