On the Band Front...

....or in the rear view mirror...

I've been sitting on this post for a while because...well, because first, it doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things, and second, because the epilogue sorta sucks. This isn't meant to be a rant, though it will likely come off as one. This isn't meant to be vindictive, though I readily admit it does not come from a good headspace. I blog it because after about a month, I feel I have to...maybe afterwards, I can Leave It All Behind, so to speak.

That said, about a month ago, I left New Ben Franklins. And I'm still not even really sure whether I quit, or whether I got the boot. It doesn't matter really, but the taste in my mouth is still bitter, but perhaps some background is worth shedding light.

My participation in New Ben Franklins began back around 20 months ago or so, after I answered an ad on Craigslist looking for a bass player. As it was put to me, the band was to be a melding of alt-country songwriting, with big shoegaze tonality. Hell, I was excited. I'm not a country guy by any stretch, despite my abiding love of The Sadies, but I've always been a big fan of shoegaze, even if the term is somewhat amorphous at times.

Now, New Ben Franklins wasn't exactly a "new" band, but a new old band. The frontman/guitarist of the band started the project back around '92 or so, and had run the band a couple times over the years, in a couple of iterations. But it was new to me, and it felt fresh. Having been bandless for the previous two years, most anything would, and the situation felt welcoming.

Anyway, as bands go, the beginning weeks were fits and starts. We had to replace our drummer after a month, because he'd missed half the rehearsals...okay, so we did, and we moved on. We eventually picked up the Wedge on drums, and we started playing shows in late November or early December of 2008. Hell, we even did an instrumental surf tune I wrote years ago for The Florenteens, slightly westernized. Matinee Idol Tommy joined us on pedal steel, and stuck around. Things were good.

Winter into spring, the gigs became fairly numerous, at least for a local band without a huge fanbase. I had no trouble booking us shows at several of the local Denver haunts, we even got to play the Bluebird Theater, we shared bills with some bands I really enjoy, and we started talking about, and eventually, recording.

Somewhere along the line, things started to go sideways.

The new songs were more country, less sonic, more sorta singer-songwriter-y. It felt like more covers. More slow tempo, more desire by the band for me to play, as I now put it, mostly whole notes with dotted whole rests between notes...and yeah, I started to chafe against this direction. Time to digress...I'm pretty fuckin' far away from being Jaco, or Stanley Clarke, or Victor Wooten. I hope I'm never asked to play pop and slap, because that's just not what I do. Count amongst my heroes the Ox, Bruce Foxton, Graham Maby, Paul Simonon, so yeah, I probably do overplay. I'm certainly not one of those who's going to be happy just playing root notes on the 1 and 3 all night. I mean, I can do that, but if a band wants their bass player to do that more than about 15% of the time, then we're probably not right for one another. And that's fine.

But I felt like this band was changing, in ways that were just making the music not fun for me. And I became petulant and surly during rehearsals at times. Yeah, I can wear my heart on my sleeve, consider it a fault, I suppose.

But we *were* a band, and a team. And no matter what else, everyone connected with the band was so incredibly loving and supportive and helpful and understanding during the Good Doctor Mondo's hospitalization and afterward. We were a family -- sometimes a bit more dysfunctional than before, but that's like, what...98% of all bands that have ever pulled into a PA.

And then I felt dissed.

The 5-song EP was finished, and shit...one of the songs had no bass. Okay. And then the last song had a bass player that was not me. Fuck. Seriously. Fuck. Our frontman decided to have a mutual friend of ours come in and play bass on a track. That's when I really felt to begin I wasn't part of a band. No one had asked my opinion about it first. That's when I decided what was a band was really the frontman's show and project, 100%. The rest of us were just sidemen. That's how I felt, anyway.

But I stuck around. We continued to play a few shows. Our shows were usually pretty well received. But my attitude didn't really get any better. I'm not sure why it would. I was the only member of the band who'd been replaced for part of the recording. The one song that had no bass had no drums, either, and I get that. Still, if you're going to leave half the band out, it's a bit less dismissive of those guys if it's on, say, a 10 song full length record, ya know?

And new songs were being written. And more shows played. Even learned a bunch of Waylon Jennings tunes for a tribute show. And yet, nobody in the band...well, at least not the front man, liked any of the bass parts I came up with for the new material. Too busy. Not enough pauses, not what he wanted. Okay. I try something else. No dice. I try something else. No dice again. Fuck it, back to surly Mondo.

Then I go from beyond dissed to pissed. Or, dissed and pissed.

Randomly surfing Craigslist, I see an ad for a bass player that didn't mention the band, but was unmistakably an ad for a replacement bass player for New Ben Franklins. It had all the code words that made it unmistakably clear that I was on my way out. Of course, I immediately quit the band via e-mail, even with gigs booked out in advance.

And then I had that little tiny shred of doubt, the kind you get after you've 4-bet KK preflop, and are min-raised. Does he have AA? A 5-bet always means AA, right? Could I have been wrong?

Well, I wasn't wrong. Good read, Mondo. Shitty situation, but good read.

The frontman put the ad out on his own, without telling the other guys. He came clean to us about it a couple of days later. I guess his plan was to just keep me around until he found someone he liked enough to take my place, and then just spring it on me. And I'm not going to be anyone's punk. I do respect him for coming forward and admitting it after the fact, though because of the way it went down, I doubt he would have done so if I hadn't figured it out myself first and called shenanigans.

In truth, I was on my way out. As I told the band, I probably would have muddled along in the band until July, because playing the Denver Post Underground Music Showcase is one of the coolest things ever. It really is, and the band's been slated to make a return appearance this year. It's going to hurt not to be a part of it. Yeah, I think I was planning on sticking it out that long, and then leave. But not sneakily, like bailing the night before a show, or anything.

Like I said, New Ben Franklins has always been his deal...he's certainly entitled to do what he wants, like when he was interviewed in the Westword a few months, and made no mention of anyone else in the band at all. Whatever, I don't think any of us have any real ego in terms of press and adulation. But I'll readily admit to having a certain ego when it comes to bass playing. I've been told many times that I write interesting bass lines. Other bass players I respect have complimented me on what I've contributed to songs. But in New Ben Franklins, I felt as if my creative input was unwanted. Whenever the band wanted to add a cover to the set (we'd do 2-3 covers a show), it was never anything I wanted to play, despite what I most often pushed for being a song by one of the frontman's favorite bands.

Anyway, yeah, I'm still bitter. In a cruel epilogue, I'd spent 18 months trying to get the band into one particular Denver venue, my favorite, because I've seen so many bands there I love and used to play shows there in a previous band. Each time I came up empty handed, the room wanted nothing to do with us. Now, the very first gig the band actually booked after my departure (not including already-booked shows), is at this very venue, an irony that is not lost on me. Now, the band was added to the bill by the headliner, and it wasn't booked directly between the band and the club, but that's splitting hairs.

We are still family. I don't forget how genuinely friendly, generous, and human those guys are. Hell, I love them, even the frontman. Though I haven't seen any of them since the break, we've been in touch. I hope to remain friendly them. I hope exorcising my anger this way allows me to be friendly with them. But I can't, and won't, forget the way in which I was dumped.

I wish them each well both personally, and as a band. Though at present, I have no desire to see the band play.

Fortunately, there is no small amount of excitement for me coming up real soon, on the musical front...more on that later...

Long Time A'Comin

Haha...no, not a major MTT score, though I did make another smallish final table yesterday.

After ten years in gigging bands, and after being involved in the recording of at least six different albums, I'm finally getting to play my very own proper CD release show. It feels good.



Of course, it's not as if New Ben Franklins are actually on a label, this is strictly a self-release. But we also had it properly pressed, as opposed to previous efforts with The Lime Twiggs, Jealous Lover Targets, and Subcity Six, which were all CDRs hand burnt on our own PCs, or The Florenteens' disc of a few years back where we had a friend put together 50 copies with artwork on the disc.

So we've pressed 250 copies of this lil' thing...I wonder how many folks will care. Or at least care enough to help us break even, so that we can record a full length later this year.

I'm quite pleased to have King For A Day, Action Packed Thrill Ride, and Primasonic playing this show with us. All are bands we have played with before (some multiple times), and all are really great gents. The 21st is going to be a blast, and I'm particularly jazzed to get to share the stage again with Action Packed Thrill Ride, a band I first became acquainted with early last year, and a band that's spent more time in my iPod shuffle this year than most.

So in the alt-country spirit of the day, good luck on the felt ya'lls. Wish I could join you for Sunday donkfests, but Saturday was my wad-shootin' day of the week this week....

Oh How I've Missed Thee

Not much to say on the poker front, as I haven't played a hand in over a week. Last weekend was spent doing an online document review project for work which remains ongoing. I'd be working on it again this very moment, if not for a server crash...

It's been pretty impossible to find time to play any cards at all these days, what with all the interruptions that would ensue if I tried to sit down for even a 45 player turbo SNG. While the Good Doctor Mondo continues to improve incrementally nearly every day, the fact remains that our daily lives haven't returned to anything resembling normalcy. Since her own abilities to do the most simple things, such as getting up to get a glass of water, require someone to go to the tanks to turn up her O's, or being behind her every step of the way on the staircase..well, I just can't trust starting a tournament with any sense that I can actually play it through.

In better news, the Good Doctor Mondo's oxygen requirements continue to trend down. At rest, we now have her on 1/2 the oxygen she was at when she first came home, and her needs under exertion are about 18% lower, so she continues to progress. In fact, her doctors do now see a likely eventual 100% recovery. This is great news, indeed. Given how terribly sick she was, and the normal 12 month horizon for lungs to reach whatever final recovery level they tend to plateau at, her current pace indicates a higher final plateau than anyone would have thought as recently as two months ago.

Hoping to find a way to get a "day off" of sorts to get some play in this weekend, however. Of course, poker is of little importance in the grand scheme of things, but I'm feeling a real sense of withdrawal, especially having missed out on the recent #WBPT shenanigans, and seeing a fellow blogger take down a tidy $27k score in the mini-FTOPS...well, I miss the game.

Which reminds me, while I do think Hoy can reach levels of internetz douchebaggery at times unmatched by us mere mortals, he's a hell of a player whose game I've respected for some time. Congratulations Hoy, on your huge score. Not your first, won't be your last.

Speaking of fellow bloggers, one of my favorite bloggers in the pokerverse has just written a well thought out piece on the pitfalls and vagaries of staking arrangements -- well worth the read. Thanks, CK!

Oh yeah, one lil' band snippet -- New Ben Franklins got our pressed CD back from the manufacturer yesterday, well in advance of our CD release show next month.

This makes me happy on so many levels...those who've known me for a long time know that this is either the 6th or 7th album I've been a part of recording, and yet the very first one to actually make it all the way to getting a proper pressing (even if it's just a short run EP). Feels good to actually have something you can find on the shelves of local independent record stores soon. Previous bands of mine may have hand-burned small volumes to sell at shows, but having one properly packaged, shrink-wrapped, and all that other jazz, is just kinda cool.

Well, good luck at the tables...glad to hear none of the #WPBT crew got hooker-rolled in Vega$, or lost a kidney, or got to be a bad man's boyfriend in the Clark County Jail....

Wha? December Already?

What a long, strange trip it's been...2009, that is.

A lot of you poker bloggers worth your weight in bytes, or in cheeseburgers, or even bananas, will be taking your own long, strange trip next weekend for the 2009 Winter Blogger Gathering, WPBT, what have you. Drunken wheelchair races, getting rolled by hookers at the Geisha Bar, collecting bounties at Caesar's...what a way to start a winter, no?

For what it's worth, I would have loved to join the Last Longer on a team with Waffles and $mokkee, just to watch the incendiary fireworks between my teammates.

For the umpteenth time in a row since starting this pathetique excuse for a poker blog, I shall not be taking part this year. Oh, that was not my intention, to sit out. Not at all. But the events of this year have taken their toll, and it is too important for me to take care of the Good Doctor Mondo, now that she's at home, to take a few days off out further west than here. I do wish to all of you much much merriment, and lots of Aleve-laced waters when you wake at 3pm each day. If there's another such gathering next year, I really do hope to be able to join. As it is, perhaps I can make a run for the Vega$ border shortly after next April (when I have to be in North Carolina for a trial, for several weeks).

So how is the Good Doctor Mondo doing? Better every single day. Her first week at home was sort of a transitional week, where her mom and I were getting used to managing all the various oxygen-giving appliances, learning and administering the various medical routines (which the Good Doctor actually does much of herself), cleaning her trach tubes, and the like. But for the last few days, she's actually been able to sleep upstairs (gasp!) in our own bed. We truly feel like we are somewhat returning to some sense of normalcy.

Normalcy is relative, as she's limited to one trip up and down the stairs each day, and each trip takes a good 8-10 minutes with several breaks to restore her O2 saturation. But being in her own bed carries other benefits...she can now use the hand-held shower I installed last week...no more sponge bathing in the downstairs foyer bathroom. And now that we're together, we're both sleeping much better.

As I suspected, the Good Doctor Mondo's return home has, naturally, put a crimp in the amount of poker I've been playing these days, but it's more than a fair tradeoff. Typically, I'm either too tired to play after working a full day, then coming home and taking care of her until her routines are finished around 9:30 or so...though once or twice I've jumped on to play a couple of low buy-in 180 man turbos, to pretty much little success. It's hard to get in a groove when you start late and force the action, and feels like you're playing just so you can remember where the click buttons on your mouse are located.

I do hope to have a nice session on Sunday, though, depending on the weather. We've had a pretty significant cold snap here, and even with all the supplemental oxygen, it's really not a good idea for the Good Doctor to go outside in low double digits. So maybe Sunday will be a pokering day, we'll see.

Oh yeah, in other tidbits, my band just sent our five song EP off for pressing, so our January 21st show will be a CD release of sorts. We were hoping our Holiday Hootenanny show next weekend would have worked out as a release show, but we spent too many sessions mixing and remixing to have pressing/manufacturing done in time in an economical fashion. Sweet!

Catharsis, Of Sorts

Yeah, so I played the show last Friday, and I have to admit that things went well for the most part. We had a decent crowd, the room sounded great. You have to love a venue that's combo rock hall, BBQ joint, and bowling alley. The Big Lebowski approves.

Anyway, I know we showed a bit of rust (especially that suck ass bass player), but the energy level was high, and people seemed genuinely pleased with the performance. I suppose when we're rocking the fuck out that most of those little mistakes may not really reach the ears of individual audience members, unless it's glaring.

I managed to make it through the first seven songs of the set just fine, but then we played "Boy". This is a song our guitar player wrote that is particularly haunting and sad, and about fear and death. Not to mention the bass carries the melody, and about 80% of the tune, musically. Well, I asked for us to play that song, because the lyrics hit home with particular impact these days. We rehearsed pre-show, and I started crying towards the end of the song.

Wouldn't you know it, about halfway through "Boy" on state, I pretty much began sobbing uncontrollably, thinking about my Good Doctor Mondo, now in the ICU bed for a full month. It hurts just typing that last bit. Anyway, it was pretty brutal, but I somehow got through it and only donked a couple notes of the melody. Of course, we still have three more songs to play after that point, and I was pretty ragged the rest of the night, but I (and we) got through it. Cathartic...yes, it was. I think I *need* to do this band thing during our difficult process right now.

The Good Doctor's mother is back in town and staying for...ever? Certainly through the next six weeks of so.

Okay, happier stuff...I made TWO final tables on the same day a couple days ago. One in a Bodog $30 NLHE, and one in a $5r LO8 tourney. Yep, you read that right...a Limit Omaha 8 that is also a rebuy. Head asplode. Naturally, I didn't finish better than 7th in either event, but a final table is a final table, especially when it feels like forever since you got there.

Carry on.

And So It Goes

Yeah...all that non-poker stuff.

Well, the Good Doctor Mondo and I are breathing sighs of relief today. Our lil' all star doggie, Yorvie, ended up having a mass of some type, that a biopsy was not able to draw any conclusions from. So a few days ago, the docs shaved his shoulder, cut him open, and yanked it out. He looks a real mess right now with a big incision, but we found out in the last hour that the tumor was benign. He's already got his spunk back, but now we can breathe a lot easier.

New Ben Franklins just keeps on keepin' on. We had our first "get shafted by a club" experience, when we lost the gig we had tomorrow night because the club double booked the venue. 'Tis a real shame, because we were really looking forward to getting to play with bluebelle, one of our favorite bands (any of you Billy Childish fans out there would LOVE bluebelle). And we always dig doin' it with Dario Rosa. And our frontman made such a cool simple poster for the show, too, such a shame to waste it.



Frankly, I can't say I'm surprised, given the debacle that was our last show at that venue. I mean, we were negatively affected, but the bar threw two more bands on the bill at the last minute, and one of the bands that was booked with us didn't get to play. So I'm not shocked that we'd get the short end of it, and we didn't deal directly with the venue on this gig. Oh well. But it's hard to get overly worked up about it when...drumroll...we're booked to play the Bluebird Theater! WOOHOO!

That means absolutely fuckall to a poker blogger, but it's a real bloody venue, capacity about 400 or so, balcony, the works. Heck, in the last year, bands like Daughtry and Vampire Weekend have graced that stage. It won't be the biggest room I've played, but it will certainly be the nicest to date. Here's a few pics of the joint:



What?!?!? I have TWO monitor wedges, just for lil' ol' me?



Nice view from the balcony.



Just a few of our fans. Yeah, right. But one can hope. Maybe someday. But the Bluebird looks pretty cool when it's packed to the gills, no?

Oh yeah, and we've started recording, too....

Spreadin' the Sonic Alt-Country Love

Okay, I can't seem to actually post a file to this here blog, but my lil' band New Ben Franklins has our first recording up of the current iteration.

As long as you don't have Myspace blocked, you can go here and click on Horse 2009 in the embedded music player, if you want a wee taste of what keeps me away from the poker tables most of these days.

It may or may not end up being the final mix of what ends up on our eventual album, but the most excellent Radio 1190 (University of Colorado's radio station) wanted something from us in advance of our next show, which they're presenting at the Larimer Lounge on the 23rd, so we recorded this track over the last week.

Enjoy!




BTW, if you're local to Denver and seeing this, you should really come out to this show. Jim McTurnan's new band is a-freakin-mazing, and Dario's long had one of the best bands in town.

He Looks Funny Without A Beard

"Just a good 'ol boy...never meaning no harm..."

Some folks tend to associate Waylon Jennings strictly for his cultural contributions to the Dukes of Hazzard, but the dude could flat out play. Next week, New Ben Franklins is going to change things up a bit in his honor.

I'm pretty sure most of my miniscule readership ain't exactly local, but so what. I think our guitarist does good flyer, so I'm gonna share them.



Right now, I'm mostly just looking forward to the Fire Drills / Bluebelle show at the hi-dive tomorrow night. If you have any inkling at all who Billy Childish is, then you'd love Bluebelle. I checked out the middle band, Pacific Pride, and think they're going to be pretty cool stuff live, as well.

I expect a poker-free weekend, unless I can wangle a few donkaments on Sunday night. Tonight, it's Slumdog Millionaire for the Good Doctor Mondo and I. She's had a long, tough week, and as much as I'd love to see some of my favorite songwriters (frontmen from Cowboy Curse, Cat-A-Tac, Breezy Porticos, and Astrophagus) playing solo sets tonight at the Meadowlark, it's really important for me to be a good hubby tonight. As supportive as she's been of the massive timesuck that is my love of live local music, she deserves much more than she gets.

Caution: Weekend Warrior Video Ahead

So someone I don't know was at the New Ben Franklins recent show at the Larimer Lounge, and captured a couple of our performances on video. While she didn't get the actual drum into to Bad Days Good on video, and while my own performance on Kodiak Love Song managed to include a couple of gratuitously flubbed notes, this blog is meant to be representative of life, warts and all.

So I present to you --- New Ben Franklins, caught on tape:

Bad Days Good:



Kodiak Love Song:



Honestly, we do it because it's fun. I'm chuffed that someone would care enough about it to stand there and catch it on video. Thanks.

Oh yeah, we added a pedal steel player to the band last night, he's going to work out really cool, even more so when he starts adding echo and delay to the mix. As DeVoe calls it - "Country twang with sonic ferocity"