Serenity Gardens (09.25.17)

The Zak Show at Serenity Gardens took an unexpected turn on Monday night. Photo by Triana Caldera.

I suppose you could say that my first time standing up in front of a crowd of people while playing guitar and singing was in December 1980. I would have been eleven years old at the time. Since then, I've played well over a thousand shows of various kinds, from coffee shops and Irish pubs to backyard parties, street fairs, sports bars and, of course, my many, many shows in the virtual world and on live video. Basically, it's been 37 straight years of playing live, and it often feels like I've already done it all. However, last night at Serenity Gardens, I managed to involuntarily do something new that I'd never planned on doing (or wanted to) in front of a live audience: I finished a song, and started crying. Ugh! Let me tell you what happened.

I'm a Sensitive Guy... Not a "Crying in Public" Guy
I know it's not necessary to make excuses for a display of emotion. I'm not so macho that I think men aren't allowed to shed a tear on occasion, when necessary. I should, however, give you a context for this. As many of my friends are already aware, my father passed away just over two weeks ago, on Friday September 8. I had postponed all shows during the time since, in order to get myself together and to focus on handling his affairs while still taking care of life as usual. So, certainly the fact that I'd dedicated a portion of my set to my dad and his memory probably had me in a somewhat emotionally vulnerable state.

But oddly, that's not what set me off. While my dad's passing was a shock, I've been able to handle it pretty well. I'm generally a pragmatist about the ending of life; it is, as far as we know, an inevitable aspect of life itself. I miss him as a person to whom I was close (and had continued to grow closer as I got older), but he was 76. Not terribly old, but not tragically young either. His dad, I should add, died when my pop was just 26, before I was even born. I got to have 48 of my years with my father, and I consider myself fortunate for that time, most of which was very good.

A Song for Garrett
Here's what caused me to blubber in front of a crowd that had come to see me play music and generally have a good time.

Music creates connections among people that might otherwise not realize things they had in common. There's a camaraderie that happens when two people discover that they really enjoy a style of music, or a particular band or artist. I've found that with much of the music I love, the bands/artists can be pretty obscure, and so when I meet someone who really loves the same music, it tells me something about that person. Awhile back, I was doing a Second Life show at Templemore, and I did a song by Sun Kil Moon called "Carry Me Ohio". A person who called that venue home was a guy named Garrett Lutz (known as David Drew in real life), and he was super enthusiastic about the fact that someone had played Sun Kil Moon at an SL show. I even wrote about it at the time, in May. Garrett and I didn't know each other super well, other than that I'd noted he always seemed to really enjoy himself at my shows when he turned up in my audience at various places.

One thing I didn't really know about Garrett was how ill he was. He'd been afflicted with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. There's no known cause for ALS, and currently no cure. It is a terrible disease; very few people live very long after its onset (with people like Stephen Hawking being an extremely rare notable exception). About half the people diagnosed with it die within a couple of years.

After learning about Garrett's illness and realizing that a) he might not have much time and b) we both loved this rather underground music, I made a commitment to learn more Sun Kil Moon songs so I could perform that music for him. But as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Garrett died on August 14, but I didn't find out about it until toward the end of the month, and then my dad passed away a short while later. Hence, I never had the opportunity to learn another Sun Kil Moon song -- which can be extraordinarily complex and difficult to perform -- and do it live for Garrett. Making it even more poignant, a good friend of mine, Tyche Szondi (who had been one of Garrett's closest friends) told me that Garrett had, on multiple occasions, told her how much he enjoyed my shows. Tyche related this to me shortly after I found out that Garrett had died.

Garrett Lutz in Second Life, photographer unknown.

Keeping a Promise
Last night, being my first show back, I was determined to fulfill my promise by performing a Sun Kil Moon song that I'd never done before. The song, called "Half Moon Bay", is a beautiful tune filled with deep melancholy in both its music and lyrics. While I couldn't do it exactly as written, I think I did a fairly passable interpretation, and ended with an instrument flourish that I thought sounded very good while I played. I hit the last note and said, "That was 'Half Moon Bay' by Sun Kil Moon, going out to my friend..." and then just sobbed. I got over it remarkably quickly and jumped immediately into my next song; if you weren't listening closely, you probably didn't even notice. But I sure did!

I have to think that the reason I cried onstage for the first time in 37 years of doing live shows was actually a combination of factors. My dad passing, the thoughts of Garrett and my unfulfilled plan of doing the song for him, and the song itself all added up to be an emotional atomic bomb. Interestingly, I feel better today than I have in awhile; perhaps that was a cathartic moment that needed to happen.

My show is usually a casual hour of fun and silliness, but it was okay that last night's show got a little heavy. Photo by Triana Caldera.

Pixels don't cry, thankfully. Photo by Triana Caldera.

On a general basis in regard to the show, I should note that while my voice was feeling a bit rusty after a few weeks without singing, the show overall seemed pretty good, and people seemed to be glad they came. Regardless of all the other stuff, that's all that matters. The little four song mini-set in the middle with two songs each by Steely Dan and James Taylor was dedicated to my dad, who loved both.

Serenity Gardens set list...
Pretty Pimpin’ (Kurt Vile)
Always Tomorrow (Zak Claxton)
Carey (Joni Mitchell)
Any Major Dude (Steely Dan)
Rikki Don’t Lose That Number (Steely Dan)
You’ve Got a Friend (James Taylor)
Carolina in my Mind (James Taylor)
Falling Down (Zak Claxton)
*Half Moon Bay (Sun Kil Moon)
Blew the Dust Away (They Stole My Crayon)
Things Behind the Sun (Nick Drake)
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)

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

Huge thanks to all who came out to see me play live, with super special thanks to those who helped support the show!
RoxxyyRoller Resident, Kathrise Resident, ErikKottzen Resident, go2smoky Resident, Triana Caldera, Asimia Heron, Aurelie Chenaux, Tyche Szondi, TheaDee Resident, my lovely manager Maali Beck, and the great management team of Serenity Gardens, Tilly Rose and Ilsa Wilde!

Four Memories of Steely Dan/Walter Becker (1950-2017)

Genius musician Walter Becker, one of the two people who founded and made up the constant core of Steely Dan, died yesterday. I thought I'd share some memories of Walter and the Dan, since their music was impactful in my life.

1975
I am six years old. We've moved from Marblehead, MA to Rancho Palos Verdes, CA. I'm in second grade, and my favorite thing to do is to go through my parents' big vinyl record collection and listen to the music that sparks an emotional reaction within me. Sometimes it's Beethoven, sometimes the Beatles. But if I'm feeling really rambunctious, only one song does the trick: Steely Dan's "Reelin' in the Years" off Can't Buy a Thrill, an album that was always in heavy rotation in my home in the early/mid '70s. I don't know what it was about that song; perhaps it was the driving 6/8 shuffle, or the harmonized solo guitars. But every time the song comes on, I go into this insane combination of spastic dancing and a sort of early version of parkour, jumping over furniture, caroming off walls, and rolling around the entire living room. I get seriously fucking nuts each time the song came on, from the very first bent guitar note of the intro all through the fade. I'm six, and Steely Dan is my favorite band. And you wonder why I grew up weird. Case closed.

Also: there's a naked lady on the collage artwork of the album cover, and I sneak furtive glances at her when my mom isn't around.


1979
I'm a more mature guy now at age 10, about to start middle school, and I'm really into music. I've been playing piano since I was three, and took up violin and guitar early on. Now I'm ten, and my tastes in music have become more sophisticated as I begin to appreciate what goes into creating stuff beyond the 5-6 chords I can play well. Meanwhile, the Dan has released Aja, an album that my mom would put on and listen to start to finish, and why not? Track by track, it remains one of the best albums ever released, with many moods, many shades, many feelings between putting the needle down on "Black Cow" and taking the record off the turntable after "Josie" is over. It's a mystical journey through time and space. I listen to the album over and over, just trying to hear what these guys are doing. I've already got a terrific ear and can play many pop songs just by listening to them once, astounding my parents and teachers alike. But I can't play Steely Dan -- I can't even tell what those chords are, for God's sake -- and I find this both challenging and scary.

Unlike a lot of other bands, Steely Dan seems to shun the spotlight. The guys in the band seem to be reclusive, and when they do rare interviews, their answers are heavy in sarcasm, cynicism, and rarely answer the questions being asked. I find it intriguing, and I find them funny. I also find it weird that only two guys seem to make up this band, and they have super geeky names, and they look really geeky too. Definitely not like Peter Frampton. It takes awhile before I ingest the idea that Steely Dan is whoever Donald and Walter are working with at a particular time.


1985
It's summer, I'm 16, and I'm between my junior and senior years of high school. I'm a good musician for my age, already playing in little garage bands, and leaning toward difficult music that young musicians often find compelling, such as progressive rock and metal, and a little jazz here and there. I'm enrolled at Berklee College of Music for their summer semester, and I'm at least temporarily living in Boston, 3,000 miles away from my parents. During one of the first days, I meet with a counselor who asks what I'm interested in learning. I tell her that I want to expand the level of sophistication of my music for songwriting and performing, pushing beyond the simple standard barre chords of most pop and rock. I want to play more than boring pentatonic scales and blues motifs. I don't say it like that, though. I tell her I want to play chords like Steely Dan. She understands.

Around that time, and over the subsequent years, I dig deeper into the Dan's catalog, getting into the deeper cuts from Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied, The Royal Scam and the rest. I obsessively pore over the liner notes, seeing the names of the many studio musicians who add their skills to these magnificent recordings... names like Michael McDonald, Larry Carlton, Jeff Porcaro, Hal Blaine, Rick Marotta, Chuck Rainey, Bernard Purdie and many others. As I start getting into creating my own little multitrack recordings, I marvel at the quality of the records themselves, wondering how the sounds were captured with the degree of pristine clarity that is a hallmark of the band.

I attend Musicians Institute in 1988, and then enroll in college as a music major at Cal State Dominguez Hills, where I graduate in 1992. I get much deeper into the world of music history, theory, and composition. I start to better understand the music of Steely Dan, even though I still can't really play it or write any original stuff that's comparable. In 1993, I start working in the music/audio products industry, only to discover that at trade conventions, when manufacturers wanted to show off the quality of their high-end speakers, almost always do so by playing back Steely Dan. It all makes sense.


2013
I'm in my 40s, and have had a personal backlash to heavy musicianship. I tend to listen to music that is much more about the vibe than about perfection, and hence have put Steely Dan on a remote back burner while my interest lies in exploring new music by indie bands... kind of the opposite of the Dan. But in some ways, Steely Dan is the ultimate indie band. They never, at any point in their career, created music that was purely designed to fit in with other current popular music styles. Nevertheless, when my mom gives a birthday present to Christina and I and they are excellent seats to see Steely Dan perform Aja in its entirety at what was then the Nokia Theater (now the Microsoft Theater, probably soon to be the Uber Theater, or PornHub Theater or something) in downtown LA, we are excited. The show, held in August of that year, is spectacular. It might be the best-sounding, most well-performed live music I've ever experienced in person in my life.

At the show, the band has impeccably gone through the album being featured and is now playing a selection of other hits and misses. One of them is "Hey Nineteen", and in the midst of the tune, Walter Becker starts addressing the crowd, which is jarring since the Dan summarily ignores the audience on a general basis. Walter is giving a little speech. It's somewhere between a pep talk, a rant, and sage words of advice from someone who's been there and done that many times over. He's talking about psychedelic drugs, he's talking about where to go and what to do after the show ends, he's listing the names of communities around the LA area with which the Dan is, of course, intimately familiar.


I realize, while driving back to the South Bay after the show, that despite all the amazing music I'd experienced, the most memorable portion of the night was probably Walter's chat solo. Why? I don't know. But here in September 2017, the day after Walter passed away, I feel that that I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for something that probably transcends whatever words I might write next.

Zak Claxton Happy Fun Show (09.02.17)

For the first time since February 2016, I did one of my live-streamed video shows on Ustream that I call the Zak Claxton Happy Fun Show. I started doing the ZCHFS way back in early 2010, and for awhile, I was doing them pretty regularly, interspersed with other video-based live stream shows. But frankly, my time to be a musical fool has been limited in recent years, and it's as much as I can do to keep up with a regular schedule of shows in the virtual world of Second Life.

I currently only have scheduled shows for my bi-weekly Monday night events at Serenity Gardens, so on this Saturday in between my shows, it seemed like a good time to turn on the old camera and give the ZCHFS a refresh. I will say, I'm glad I did. We didn't have a huge crowd -- just a handful of folks, though I can never tell exactly who's watching unless they join the live chat -- but the people seemed to have fun, and it was a good showcase for the style of indie acoustic music on which I'm focusing these days. Interestingly, in the time frame between my last Ustream shows, apparently they are now called "IBM Cloud Video", but that doesn't sound very rock and roll to me.

Takamine Love
I should brag for a moment about the sound of my Takamine P5DC. For the record, Takamine is a client of mine for my RL marketing firm, but I'm speaking for the moment purely as an owner and player of this guitar. I have been nothing but incredibly impressed with this guitar since I got it about a year ago, and while I didn't think it would happen this way, I've barely touched my Martin D-18V since getting the Tak. This particular model, with its solid spruce top and solid rosewood back, is part of the Pro Series, so it's handmade in Japan. It's a seriously nice, professional-quality acoustic-electric. Especially for something like the ZCHFS, where I like to move around a bit, having high-end electronics in the guitar and not being confined to a mic made the show much more dynamic. And, perhaps most importantly, the guitar sounds like God.

ZCHFS 09.02.17 set list...
Airport Bar (Martin Courtney)
Blew the Dust Away (They Stole My Crayon)
All Lives, You Say? (Wilco)
Abrasion (They Stole My Crayon)
Things Behind the Sun (Nick Drake)
Carry Me Ohio (Sun Kil Moon)
Falling Down (Zak Claxton)
Box By the Cliff (They Stole My Crayon)
Dusty Rhodes (Lotus Plaza)
Bang and Blame (R.E.M.)
*Pedestrian at Best (Courtney Barnett)
It’s Easy Like Walking (The Sadies w/Kurt Vile)

*Indicates my first performance of this song.

Thanks to all who tuned in to this ZCHFS episode. There will be more to come!