Hotel Chelsea (12.03.24)

A nice crowd on a happy Tuesday evening at Hotel Chelsea. Photo by Kat.

Well hi there, friends and enemies and everyone in between. It is I, Zak, here to tell you about various things... including a terrific show at Hotel Chelsea in Second Life on Tuesday evening. But first, let's just kinda chat about various things.

How are you doing? Pretty good? Not so good? Totally not at all good? Okay, well, glad we had this chance to discuss your feelings. Me? I'm alright.

That Video Shoot for Takamine Guitars

As a good portion of the people who read this blog know, I work in the world of musical instruments and professional audio gear and related industries. I normally don't talk about that much, and I'm not planning to now or any time soon. Why not? Because it's work, and frankly -- despite having a job some folks might consider glamorous in some ways -- work is work. I'm not one of those people whose being is defined by what I do for a living, and I try not to let work take up most of my attention when I'm not actively doing it.

But every so often I do something interesting, which is the only reason I'm mentioning this now. On Saturday November 23, I headed into LA proper and did a video shoot for Takamine Guitars. Takamine is my marketing client, but for this project, I was just there as talent, and that was nice for a change.

Here's what we did. Myself, another guitar player -- the great Jake Allen -- and a moderator took part in a podcast-style conversation where we first tried every shape of guitar that Takamine currently offers, and then took one shape -- the ubiquitous dreadnought -- and tried it out in many combinations of top and back woods. That guitars were miked very well, and I thought the whole things came out superb (though we'll know for sure once the edit is done). It's due to air in mid-January 2025.

What's that? Play every one of these guitars on camera? Don't mind if I do.

It's never as glamorous as it looks onscreen.

Me and my Takamine posse... Tom Watters and Jake Allen.

Why have two different players to demonstrate these guitars? Because a lot of the sound of a guitar is in the player's hands, and if you only feature one person playing, it doesn't tell the whole story. So while Jake played his usual intricate, virtuosic style, I stuck to a style more recognizable for typical singer-songwriters, where I'm strumming through chord progressions.

Anyway, I haven't seen anything yet, but the draft edit was well received. I'll send around a link to folks once it's up and live next month.

Sniffly 

The days leading into that video shoot, I had a horrible cold. Actually, strike that; it was a cold and it was horrible, but every time I get any illness, it seems awful, but the symptoms were all what you'd expect form any cold virus. And this one definitely seemed bad in context, because I hadn't had a cold for exactly five years, since November 2019.

Think about it; since that point, nearly every time I was out in public in close proximity to people, I had a mask on. And I was washing my hands multiple times per day, every day. Even though that was in the specific effort to avoid getting COVID-19 during the pandemic, the routines also worked well against my picking up a seasonal cold that I otherwise would have caught once or twice each year. I even got COVID once, but not a single cold in all that time.

And this one sucked, like they all do. In fact, it was slightly miraculous that after feeling shitty all the way through Friday of that week, I found myself greatly improved on that Saturday morning, allowing me to get up and go to work on that video shoot. Since then, I've continued to recover well (though the typical lingering cough after a cold plagued me for another week).

What About Turkey Day?

Thanksgiving was very good. We did our usual tradition, which was to go nowhere and for me to kick a bunch of ass in the kitchen. We cooked the same feast as I've done for a long-ass time... turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, yams, green bean casserole, and bread rolls. Pumpkin pie (which was purchased, not baked) for dessert.

It was good to enjoy that meal with my immediate family here. Thanksgiving is also a time, for those of us who have family members that are no linger among the living, to more acutely feel those people's absence. But regardless, like most people who cook Thanksgiving at home, we had enough turkey for plenty of the most amazing and delicious sandwiches the day after... and to be utterly burned out on turkey by Saturday, when we got rid of the last of the leftovers.

My bird came out perfect... moist and tasty.

And the entire meal. I wouldn't change a thing... and I seem to keep getting better at preparing said feast each passing year.

Okay, Now How About That Show?

So, all that lead-in was for a reason. Between the cold I had and it being my absolute busiest time of year work-wise, I went for weeks before his show without singing. I can't say the same about guitar playing; I'd done plenty of that. But I was a bit concerned when I got up on Tuesday morning and my vocal range was... limited, to put it nicely.

But I know myself by now, and all it took was an extra-long period of warm up to get my voice back to the point where I feel confident enough to perform in front of a crowd. I do, I should note, have a series of vocal warmups that I do before every show or recording session. Just like an athlete stretched before taking the field, it's important to get those vocal cords working in a proper manner before trying anything challenging. I felt like my voice -- while still a tiny bit scratchy from the cold -- sounded fine by the time I got onstage.

And I should note... we had a surprisingly large crowd for this venue. I don't feel like I do a huge amount of promo for my shows, but between myself, my manager Maali, and the great Shyla the Super Gekko, we pulled together a good-sized batch of people in the audience right from the start. Considering that Max Kleene was scheduled after me, the crowd only grew from that point on.

That's me in the spotlight. Photo by Kat.

Rocking some originals and covers, as usual. Photo by Kat.

I enjoy doing my final song out in the crowd so the person following me can get set up and ready to roll. Here's me and Kat, with Max onstage behind us. Photo by Kat.

Hotel Chelsea set list...

River Man (Nick Drake)

Jane (Barenaked Ladies) 

Long December (Counting Crows)

Swing Low Magellan (Dirty Projectors)

Blew The Dust Away (They Stole My Crayon)

Don't Let It Bring You Down (Neil Young)

The Waiting Boy (Zak Claxton) 

Free Man in Paris (Joni Mitchell)

Abrasion (They Stole My Crayon) 

It's Good to be King (Tom Petty) 

Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills & Nash) 

Holly Jolly Christmas (Burl Ives)

Thanks to everyone who came out to the show, with super special awesome thanks to the following who helped support it!

Buck Dezno, Maximillion Kleene, Rusty Seisenbacher, Trixee Trotter, lexi Beery, Persephone Phoenix, Trouble Streeter, Tove Abrams, cristoofarr Resident, Richy Nervous, Kat Claxton, ShadowFX1999 Resident, my terrific manager Maali Beck, Hotel Chelsea manager Shyla the Super Gecko, and Chelsea's great staff!