Muggsy's Brain

Yesterday Jeff & I had a gig at the St. Cloud Civic Center for an education fund raiser and awards ceremony. We were hired to play from 4:30 - 6:00 PM during the silent auction. Afterward the "regular" auction would begin. Well, either someone forgot to tell the auctioneer or he just decided on his own to start early -- really early, like 4:45. He didn't start selling things right away, he interviewed a few people who were looking at the items for sale and a couple of other people from area schools who had booths set up showing processes that had won them the awards they would be given later. Then he started selling things. We didn't know what to do at first, so we stopped playing and took a small break. The contact for the gig asked us to keep playing so we got up on stage and got back to work. The auctioneer had started the auction so early and the room was so empty that I watched an Adrian Peterson autographed football go for $75. That same football would ...

The time was somewhere in the early 2000s, I'm not sure exactly when, but my band, Collective Unconscious , had a gig at the Norshor Theatre in Duluth, MN. We were led to believe that we would be playing as a part of a big, multi-band music event in the main theater, when we got there we found that was not the case. We wound up in the middle of a community art jamboree that was going on all over the building, there were bands in the main theater, but we weren't one of them. Instead we wound up in the upstairs lobby sharing the stage with several smaller groups, right before us was a blues band. We also got exposed to what I call "teenage girl poetry:" My love is like dry, blowing leaves... UGH! The blues band got done playing and moved their instruments and amps out of the way, fortunately a sound system was provided. Unfortunately it was out of phase with the outlets we had our amps plugged into. Old buildings, like the Norshor, have old wiring and sometim...

And so the Holiday season is upon us and for me, not being a Black Friday shopper, it begins today. The George Maurer Trio is heading for Crosby , MN tonight for a gig entertaining the local hospital staff, we stay overnight and then head for Roseau , MN in the morning for a nearly identical gig entertaining the staff of their hospital. If you didn't look at the map, Roseau is a mere 9 miles from Canada in mid-western Minnesota and the route from Crosby to Roseau takes around 6-1/2 hours. The drive back to St. Cloud on Monday morning will take around 7-8 hours. There goes working on Monday. Tuesday (12/8) sees me playing holiday music with Andrew Walesch , a talented young singer who is out pimping his new holiday CD. We play two shows, one at 2 PM and one at 7:30 PM. Thursday (12/10) is a private party for General Mills at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. Saturday (12/13) is a concert at St. Edwards Catholic Church (I'd link to their site, but it's a piece of crap)...

We were supposed to leave St. Joe at 3:15 PM, that would have gotten us to the Arrowwood Resort in Alexandria, MN and set up with plenty of time to spare. George took the Tahoe full of sound gear and offered Jeff and I the chance to drive his Camero -- and who would pass up a chance like that? It took some doing, but we got our gear into the tiny, little trunk and practically non-existent back seat area -- we had to put the top down to get Jeff's bass amp in the the back, but everything fit snugly and we were ready to go. Jeff ran into the coffee shop to get an iced latte for the road, when he got back to the car he was on the phone. "Take everything out of the Camero and put it in my car," he said, "we have to go back to St. Cloud to pick up the lights." So down came the top again, and out came our gear which we quickly loaded into Jeff's mini-station wagon. We drove to the roastery in St. Cloud, where we store most of our gear, picked up the lights and w...

My friend Chuck loves tequila. During trivia one year, he drank one shot per hour for the whole 50 hours, he said after a while he didn't get any more drunk, he just leveled off. I, on the other hand, don't like tequilla so much, I find the taste to be somewhat unpalatable, but I think the same thing about Jägermeister and drink it anyway. Only once did I ever have a truly exceptional tequila. My friend Jeff had been in the wedding party of a college friend who married a Mexican girl whose family business was making the stuff and each of the groomsmen received a silver hip flask filled with the family's private reserve. That stuff tasted like ambrosia! It was smooth and delicious, there was no need to pollute the taste with salt and lime. If I could get a hold of some of that again I would do so gladly. Back to Chuck. For several years in a row he would show up at my birthday party with his bottle of tequila in hand and would insist that I do a shot with him. I hated it an...

This has to have been almost 20 years ago now, it was a whole career ago for me and I was still driving a delivery van for the St. Cloud Times so I'd have to put it in the early 90s, I got a call from a friend of mine asking if I wanted to play a "pick up" gig in Montevideo, MN backing up Bob Hope. Who wouldn't say yes to that? A whole bunch of us from St. Cloud piled into a van and drove there for an afternoon rehearsal led by Mr. Hope's musical director named Jeff. We only saw Mr. hope for a few moments at the end of the rehearsal to run a gag he'd do during the song Buttons and Bows. As Music Director Jeff explained it, the gag went like this: the band would kick into Buttons & Bows and vamp the first four measures while Bob would talk to the audience, Bob would then cut off the band, tell a joke and count the band off again. This would happen as many times as Bob saw fit, and then he'd continue with the song. Near the end of the song there wa...

We had one of those huge-ass long gigs yesterday. We were scheduled to start with a couple of sets of jazz outdoors at 5 pm and finish with three sets of variety/rock ending at midnight. The gig was, as far as we knew, scheduled to take place at Cragun's Resort on Gull Lake. We got there with plenty of time to set up and get things ready. I went in and talked to a young woman at the front desk, I asked her if there was a wedding or some sort of event scheduled and she directed me to the North Beach. The beach? Where the heck are you supposed to set up and rock band on a beach? Sand and musical equipment are not a good combination as we've found out in the past, the infamous End of Summer gig at the Pioneer Place didn't do anything good for any of our stuff. But ours is not to question why, so off we went to the beach. An employee suggested that we set up right by the beach on a patch of lawn. The wedding party was going to end with a bonfire and that would be the be...

I've been asked to sit in on lead guitar for Bobby Vee tomorrow at a private party at his son's house. It's a low-key gig but I'm pretty nervous. Stick me next to Tommy and I should be fine. That and a mantra of, "don't fuck up" ought to do it. Later in the night it's Collective Unconscious jamming. That's always fun. Don't fuck up… Don't fuck up… Don't fuck up… Don't fuck up…

On Sunday night the George Maurer Trio had another gig at Crossings Gallery & Gift Shop in Zumbrota, MN. We love it there, it's part concert space, part classroom, part art space, part cool stuff store, all housed inside one of the (former) libraries that Andrew Carnegie built between 1883 and 1929. The Zumbrota Carnegie Library was built in 1906 and has the distinction of being the smallest of them all. Each time we play there we see a lot of the same faces, and some new ones, too. The audiences are enthusiastic and surprisingly not jaded, when you look at some of the other acts who have performed there: Prudence Johnson , John Gorka , Dean Magraw , Michael Johnson and others. Marie, the owner, used to have a part Chow Chow named Biscuit who would roam the audience during performances, and maybe even make her way to the stage now and again. Biscuit died not too long ago and has been replaced by Odie, an old yellow lab mix that she got from an animal rescue group. Odie...

I don't usually get starstruck. I don't care what you've done, where you've been or who you are, we have the same bodily functions and that makes us equals. But in this case I'm letting it happen. Tonight we play at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis and our special guest will be Doc Severinsen!! We're talking a musical legend here! Before the tonight show he played with Charlie Barnet, the Dorseys and others. While musical director for Johnny Carson's Tonight Show he backed up probably every musical artist I admire: Stevie Wonder, Carole King, B.B. King, Ella Fitzgerald... the list goes on and on. And on! I want to have my picture taken with him and I want to place a copy on my mother's grave. She would be so proud! I'm thrilled and I can't wait!

Well, it's over … for 2008, at least. We closed the show in Zumbrota last night in front of a sold out house in a 90 year old theater. We had a really good show, the audience was very responsive and everything sounded really good. Last week's mini-run of Pet Sounds took a lot out of Jeff and me. Nature seemed just fine, but we were both tired and over-extended, vocally speaking. That morning was the first time in a week that I actually felt good, up until then I'd had a very strained set of vocal cords. Those of us who know him realized that Jeff was really holding on for dear life whilst singing the title track. He said he concentrated on every vocal lesson he'd ever had so that he could remain in control. He did and it was great -- not his best, but great nonetheless. It was so nice to come back to such a comfortable show. Pet Sounds is like playing some kind of orchestral piece, everything has to be note for note and perfect. BOTW, on the other hand, has ...

It went very well tonight! It wasn't perfect, there are some chords in Only Living Boy in New York that I have to go to school on, but on the whole it was a GREAT concert!! I have to say, I was amazed at the response that my song, Sky, got. Several people marked it as their favorite original song of the night and that just blows my mind, especially next to Nature's new one and Jeffy's Dark Days of Rain -- both of which totally fucking rock! I guess simplicity has its place. (It one of what I call my "Taoist" folk songs.) I wish this could be my 40-hour-a-week job -- well, this mixed with the Shake a Hamster Band. The projects we do are by far the most rewarding experiences I've ever had, from Abbey Road to Pet Sounds to BOTW. Each one is a unique experience and a lesson in songwriting. I am looking forward to the rest of the run very much, and I will be sad to see it end.

We had our first rehearsal with pretty much the whole band last night, we were only missing our lead trumpet player… more about him later… I must say, I was a little nervous about this whole thing until last night. I wondered if we were really going to be able to do this wonderful album justice. There is so much going on for as simple as everything sounds, and there are some studio tricks that would be hard to reproduce live, but I don't miss them. There's something about the immediate visceral response that your body has to live strings, brass and reeds that makes up for the loss of a "special effect" or two. Although I still don't know quite how we're going to reproduce the HUGE snare sound in Bridge Over Troubled Water and the Boxer. That will be the sound man's job, and we've got Dean Boras, one of the best in the business. Last night was the first opportunity we had to hear Jeff sing Bridge Over Troubled Water and he sang the shit out of i...

Now that trivia is over I can start concentrating on learning the music for Bridge. Nathan, Jeff & I had our first real sing-through on Saturday night and we got together with some of the horn players on Sunday. Unfortunately, I am fighting a case of the "creeping trivia crud" and my concentration and vocal ability were left wanting. I've spent the last few weeks getting "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" and "Song for the Asking" under my fingers, they are by far the most challenging things I have to play. Most of the album is pretty simple from a basic musical standpoint, Simon was and is a folk singer, after all. He throws a curve at you now and again, but if you know basic folk and blues chord progressions you can find your way through most of the music without too much trouble. The challenge is going to be finding the nuance within the song and to try to recreate it live -- instantly. They spent months in the studio perfecting each song, we ...

And so, we begin another project. This time it's the brilliant album by Simon & Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water. Since this is going to be a major event, and a great challenge, I thought I'd start blogging about it, starting with my general thoughts about the album. In 1970, when BOTW was released, I was only six years old. Seems strange to see that number in front of me, I hadn't really figured it until now, I thought I was more like eight. I remember listening to it a lot, seems like it could have been daily. Sometimes I'd listen to it alone under headphones -- big, ungainly, late 60s headphones that pinned your ears to your head -- sometimes I'd listen with my brothers and sister. We learned every word, which was easy, because they were printed on the back of the album jacket, and sang along. We'd argue about who got to sing Simon and who got to sing Garfunkel. Basically, everyone wanted to sing the lead. The music spoke to me, not in the p...

It took us 2-1/2 hours to get to downtown Minneapolis last night for our gig at the Dakota Jazz Club . As usual, Jeff & I meet at the Clearwater Travel Plaza and travel the rest of the way together. When we were about a mile and a half from the Hasty, MN exit traffic slowed down to 5 mph. We crawled along, looking at all the four-wheel drive vehicles in the ditch (those people are idiots, they think because they have four-wheel drive that they can drive normally when there's 2 inches of snow on the ground) with a plan: we'd take the Hasty exit (I know, I know) and take as many back roads as we could. We must have passed 100 cars or more! We rolled into downtown Minneapolis, late for a meeting we were going to have with a guy who wants to rep my coffee in the twin cities (keep your fingers crossed), but on time for our gig. We played from 7 until 11 pm... and made $100. That fits in perfectly with what we call the "Engholm Corollary" (yes, we know it's no...

This was the first year the St. Cloud's Holly Ball was held somewhere other than the Holiday Inn. Aparently it got too big and they we're turning thousands away. I'm not sure what the Holly Ball is all about, a friend of mine called it the Old People Prom. All I know for sure is the St. Cloud's "Movers and Shakers" are there (I remember seeing Stearns County Prosecuting Attorney Janelle Kendal -- she's a babe!). the mayor was probably there, too. Anyway, there's a whole lot of money floating around in that room, tables go for over $2000 and there were a lot of tables! We were hired to perform in various forms, the end of the evening featured the George Maurer Variety Group trading off sets with Bella Diva. We're a good match, GMG does 50s, 60s & 70s rock and Motown, Bella Diva, a group fronted by three women, features more 70s, 80s & 90s with a strong emphasis on disco and other high-energy dance stuff. The early part of the evening ...

Yesterday we traveled to Ladysmith, Wisconsin . We left Minneapolis at 8:30 am so that we could give a short performance for the students at the high school at 1 pm. There were about 400 teenagers in the auditorium and they were surprisingly well behaved, quiet, as attentive as teenagers can be and inquisitive. We took questions from the audience, and as expected, my Minnesota Vikings jacket drew some fire. "Who's the Vikings fan?" asked one of the younger ones, "You know the Packers play the Cowboys tonight, don't you?" "Yes, yes," I replied, "I know the Packers are better than the Vikings this year," (wild applause), "all I care about is that they beat Dallas, because I hate the Cowboys." (more wild applause). Afterwards one of the teachers was talking to me, "Not many of these kids will come to tonight's concert. The Packers play the Cowboys tonight, so most of them will stay home to watch it." We spent the a...