Friends and fun, every Sunday night at Triana's Music Trivia. Photo by Kat Claxton.
I've told this story before; I'll almost certainly tell it again.
Back in 2006, my lady Kat (aka Christina) was living in Seattle and I was down here in the LA area. On October 12 of that year, my pal Mike Burns called and mentioned a virtual world called Second Life, which I told Kat about, and we joined that very evening while on the phone together. We checked it out and thought it was pretty cool, especially by 2006 standards. But frankly, there didn't seem to be a lot do actually do there. We explored a bit, learned about building our own content, and so on. It was fun being able to "hang out", which we couldn't do in a long distance relationship except for the times we could physically visit each other. But it's pretty likely we would have abandoned SL relatively quickly if not for finding a social event that we both enjoyed a lot. It was called Triana's Music Trivia, and was held each Sunday evening at 7PM local/SL time. Right from the start, it became part of our weekly routine.
Skip ahead to 2017. Triana has been hosting her TMT events now for 12 straight years (and in fact had just turned 13 years old in Second Life, ancient by the virtual world standards). Every year going back to 2007 or so, I've done a live performance at her special event to celebrate TMT's anniversary, and that's what I did once again last night.
My shows for Triana are different than my usual shows. In fact, heh heh, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want someone to hear my set for the first time and assume that all of my shows were similar to my TMT performances. They're certainly not. First, I often have at least one song that's done in a silly fashion that I know Triana herself will find funny. In the past, that's been things like a version of Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues", but sung by Elmer Fudd. Or, I've claimed that Bob Dylan has joined me in my little studio, and created songs about Triana with the pseudo-Dylan singing them. Other songs, while performed seriously, are those that I know Triana finds annoying, and I do them to purposefully tease her. However, not everything I do at TMT anniversary shows are a joke. I often will put together a little musical theme which forces me to find songs to debut, and it's often that the songs I first perform at TMT will find their way into my regular set list.
Rocking a bunch of new tunes. Photo by Kat Claxton.
The lovely Triana Caldera, flanked by TMT regulars Alchemy Epstein and Nakira Tennen. Photo by Kat Claxton.
Playing house parties takes me back to my youth, when those were the only kinds of gigs I could get. Photo by Kat Claxton.
For last night's show, we ended up with a good crowd at the event, which is held in Triana's SL home. I think of it like a house party, which it essentially is. The trivia event is held downstairs, while the music portion of the evening happens in her upstairs attic area. It's intimate and fun, and we had a combination of my Zakster fans and regular TMT attendees in the audience. In addition to messing with Triana via her detested song by Hootie & The Blowfish and doing a short, rather silly acoustic folk version of "Baby Got Back", I decided to continue my '90s theme -- being the era where Triana was in high school and college -- and did a ton of songs I'd not played before, along with a few I do only rarely (including Triana's namesake tune). I'd say it went really well, and was fun for people who were familiar with my repertoire and got to hear a set made up almost entirely of stuff I hadn't done before.
One final note: in the past few days, we've been hit by a wave of humidity here in SoCal, and it was at 99% while I was doing my show. Needless to say, while I sweat a lot while performing music even under nice weather conditions, I was an absolute mess by the end of this show. I wrapped up, put down my guitar, and went immediately into the shower.
Sweaty Zak is sweaty.
TMT 12th Anniversary set list...
*Only Wanna Be With You (Hootie & The Blowfish)
I Like You (Zak Claxton)
*Hand In My Pocket (Alanis Morissette)
Bag of Nothing (They Stole My Crayon)
Bein’ Green (Kermit the Frog)
*Low (Cracker)
You’re Like a Cloud (Zak Claxton)
*Possession (Sarah McLachlan)
Bunny You Got It Goin’ On (FOTC)
*Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart (Stone Temple Pilots)
*Baby Got Back (Sir Mix-a-Lot)
Shame Chamber (Kurt Vile)
Triana (Zak Claxton)
*Indicates the first time I've performed this song in SL.
Many thanks to all of my great friends from our Sunday night fun times at TMT, and everyone else who came to the show, including the following who helped support it!
Nakira Tennen, Alchemy Epstein, Tyche Szondi, Samantha Poindexter, Kat Claxton, TheaDee Resident, and of course, most of all, my wonderful friend for life, Triana Caldera.
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