This Friday: Hit @ Windjammer
Plus clips from my solo set in Chicago
Sup everybody,
This Friday, August 7th, Hit is BACK in da Big Apple, playing a stripped down but still rockin’ set at the Windjammer (552 Grandview Ave, Ridgewood) on a stacked Footlight Presents show with Old Table, Sky Mall and Salt. We’ll be playing some rarer tracks that no one in the tristate area has ever seen live. Starts at 8:30, you can get advance tix here.
I did actually play all these rare tunes solo at last week’s Chicago show though. Big thanks to shortblade and Modern Cults, who were both great, for hopping on the bill and making my vain side quest of playing a solo show on a trip to see family possible. Here’s a snippet of a song called “Doorstop,” a teaser of which was featured in a past newsletter:
I also played a couple songs off our first album Bestseller, including a droney version of “Never Gonna Get It Back Again”:
But there were two songs from our forthcoming album that I both felt would suit a solo arrangement especially well, and was especially nervous about screwing up. One is the B-side “Homework,” which I was originally going to do with backing tracks as the song is built around a pair of pitched up/down vocal lines in lieu of bass or percussion. It’s the one song no other member of the band plays on, and here I tried it by combining four parts for two instruments:
The other was “Griffey Strum,” which is the centerpiece of the new album. It’s got three main sections, here’s most of the first one, which is basically like a verse and chorus:
Then there’s a middle section, one of my favorite moments production-wise on the record, which I kinda Billy Braggified here. You can also hear the beginning of the last section, a poppier coda, but you’ll have to wait for the album to hear the whole shabang..
This set underwent many iterations over the last month or so. I originally made these janky drum tracks on my Kaossilator for every song, and was going to karaoke “Griffey” to the studio instrumental track. But as a recovering rockist it felt increasingly un-Craiglike, and the margin for error seemed too thin (thinking of the fabled Van Halen “Jump” Disaster of Aught Seven). Gradually I ditched the tracks, then whatever songs wouldn’t work without them, and finally landed on the all-live set I wound up playing.
Even as I was soundchecking, I was thinking, “Damn I sound horrible, why did I do this,” but mercifully, the show itself was the best run through I ever did of the set, and people liked it! Friday’s show will be kind of a midway between the solo show and our usual full band ones. Will you mercifully like it? Come to the Windjammer and find out…
- Craig