Erick Rudiak. Songwriter. Singer. Human.

It was nice to have fans recording the Brothers K show last month, though it does imply a much lower margin for error than usual. I finished the show with Creator (a.k.a. "Reputo Pro Vestri").

My next, and probably last, tour date for the summer is the Underground Lounge showcase on Wednesday, June 25th at 9:00 PM.

First, a follow-up to A Tale Of Two Stories. That's the one where I suggest that my songs might have commercial value. I'm not quitting my day job, but I do want to make an open and unabashed call out to the folks at Uglydoll: if Cinko ever gets his own TV show or maybe even a commercial, this should be the theme song/jingle:

Cinko.mp3

Second, a follow-up to My Very Own OINY Moment.
I was going to be really excited about the Event Promoters Ordinance passing in Chicago, because that would have meant that cool acts like Mozart and U2 and Elton John would've had to play tiny venues in Oak Park and Evanston. But then the whole thing got tabled (to thunderous applause from the local music community, natch) AND I found out that Steve Poltz is touring the midwest and had a night available to play in Evanston.

Steve and I will be playing songs and spinning yarns of epic ant battles on Wednesday, May 28th, starting at 7:00 PM. All this will happen right here in Evanston at the inimitable and unsurpassed Brothers K Coffee. Donations (preferably in Euros, but we'll take what we can get) are encouraged - baristas have needs too, you know!

My next attempt at "playing for a hostile crowd" will be at Hotti Biscotti, opening for blues rockers Mike & The Michalaks. OK, it's actually The Mike Michalak Band, but I'm going to be up front requesting The Living Years anyway. Mike's cool that way. Showtime is 9:00 PM Friday, May 2nd.

Over the past few weeks, a lot of people have been telling me that I need to see Once because, you see, I'm a singer-songwriter and it's about singer-songwriters. I couldn't figure out why they did not also tell me to see From Russia With Love on similar grounds, but I trust my friends and I tend to agree with The Regular Guy and The A.V. Club, so I rented Once this weekend.

The story is certainly engaging and resonant, the songs are strong and the depiction of the songwriting and recording process (yes, there is definitely a "car test") was refreshing, if a bit treacly. But I couldn't help wondering how much having heard an hour of Glen Hansard on Sound Opinions helped me along while watching the movie. Knowing what I did about the history of the movie made it easier to get into the music and the story and not be distracted by the question of whether these were actors playing musicians or musicians playing actor (if you haven't seen the movie and it matters, try not following the link, OK?). It also helped knowing just enough about slavic languages to have a good guess at the key phrase in the second act, although I have to agree with the director's decision not to subtitle the Czech.

All of which, ultimately, tells me that Once is a good movie but an even better DVD - the extra features and commentary help the movie make an intimate connection which is so critical to the songwriting and performing process. It is, in effect, the all-important banter inbetween songs that brings audience and artist together. Certainly, there are plenty of artists who can walk on stage, say nothing at all, and perform for 90 minutes and make it worth the price of admission. Elvis Costello comes immediately to mind, though the last time I saw him at the Chicago Theater, he did take time between songs to respond to someone in the crowd by announcing "I will not play [expletive] Veronica." It was still a great show with great artistry and I'm glad I saw it. For my money, though, there's something about a show with a storyteller that takes artistry to a new level. Some shows don't need it, and I don't think I'm going to start watching movies exclusively with the DVD commentary on from now on. But I will continue to hope that, if I've discovered a new musician whose songs I like on the radio or online, they'll tell stories about them when I go to see the show. Once was helped by it quite a bit.

P.S. Shotgun Stories was the best movie I saw in 2007 (that was released in 2007). The intensity of the third act was impressive, given the understated tones of the entire movie throughout.

Hey, gang. Hope you're having a great new year. I've created a slew of songs
that have led a truly sheltered life here in the little hamlet of Evan's Town -
they lie on the couch drinking homemade izzes, or maybe they go hiking and
munch roasted marshmallows by the fire. It's about time they saw the harsh,
real world out there, so I'm taking them out to Lilly's in Chicago on Friday,
January 11th. They'll face the harsh reality of an unfamiliar public, a dark
room, and the threat of merely-conditional love. Won't you join me and help
them feel a little bit at home? I knew you would :-) $6 gets you into the
song-desheltering party at 8pm-9pm, with nu-jazz outfit Project 99
following.

Unrelated to the changing kilogram (although, frankly, that's a much more interesting story), changing meter is a too-rarely-used songwriter trick: start out as a rock song, finish a waltz. Of course, it's not a maneuver that's confined to the singer-songwriter genre. Otherwise, orchestras would have drummers and not conductors. But it's something that always catches my attention, particularly when it's done well. I've had mixed success myself: Reputo Pro Vestri is an example of a nice, smooth transition (5/6 in verses, 6/6 in choruses); my collaboration with Luke (3/4 verses, 4/4 coda), not quite as much.

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The photo above was taken in St. Petersburg in 2004, just outside the Mayakovskaya metro stop. The sign next to the box of kittens read something to the effect of: "Please help, we need money for our medicine. Meow." Why boxes of kittens aren't an Internet meme yet is only a minor mystery to me. I'm willing to do my part, though.

World, welcome Box Of Kittens, the song!

This was the best that my daily vigil of keeping-up-with-the-wacky-world-of-security generated today:

• The bad guys are using clever channels to communicate!
  
• If you have unpatched vulnerabilities on your machine, browsing random websites will lead to nothing but trouble!!
  
• If you're on a shared network and you're not encrypting traffic that matters, some nefarious malefactor may already be using your account!!!
  

One thing I've learned over the years is that it helps to know your audience (which is why this blog is 90% songwriting, but I digress...). Observation #1 about the audiences of the three publications above: odds are, they've been online long enough to know about the perils of patch management, unencrypted data and botnets. That's been drilled into us from all angles, including the aforementioned trade press. Observation #2: odds are, that audience is largely corporate in nature (i.e. not a lot of weekend computer enthusiasts working their ranches from sun-up to sun-down are glued to computerworld.com in their leisure time). Observation #3: the security story that's really going to scare that particular audience straight is that there's an unpatched SAP vulnerability out there. Cheers to infoworld.com for reporting it; jeers to all three for offering as news things we already knew back in 1998.

At last night's Poltz extravaganza at Uncommon Ground, Steve regaled us with the tale of how his song "You Remind Me" wound up as the music in a Jeep ad, and now we have a double-album to look forward to in January. It all started with a PR exec contacting Steve to confirm that he was indeed the songwriter and inquiring about publishing rights and, a hilarious email exchange later, "You Remind Me" was playing as Jeeps cavorted through a giant sandbox. Later that night, Steve was gracious and generous enough to have me play a song, and I thought it was a good time to explain this eerily similar -- except for one very important detail -- email that I got a few weeks back:

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Sadly, this didn't come from The Onion.

"This scares me politically. There is no anger that comes close to the anger of an American that cannot get television," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said at a hearing last month.


Source: USA Today | TV's digital switchover has a downside.