Where I'll be

What to do?

So I have a friend, actually an old banjo teacher, that is really a good guy. The only reason I left to look elsewhere for lessons was because I didn't want to do tab. And he couldn't teach me to read music. He really is a gifted banjo player. So, every day I visit Craig's List for musicians ads. Mostly its all crap, but occasionally there's real cool stuff. I got my first big time pay to play at The House of Blues, I played at the Viper Room through Craig's list, found some other occasional gigs there, met my banjo friend from Maryland there. Got a part in an upcoming Documentary there. So there's this picture, accompanying an ad that has been on there for about a month. Banjo player auditions for a national touring band looking for a new banjo player. Contact so and so. I look because I play a banjo and there are very few specific ads for the banjo on there. Its way out of my league. I'm not ready at all to play that this level. Then my friend I mentioned above changes his Facebook page to include the same picture, of his national touring band playing the same venue back east. Does he know? Should I tell him? My buddy the drummer says send him an email asking him. My wife says no, don't say anything. What to do? 

The Haiku Master by Takiko Morimoto

I just finished this today. What a great and marvelous story. All about Basho, a famous 17th Century

Japanese poet that is considered to be the finest haiku author that lived. You really feel the time and the culture and beauty of his writing and the beauty of his life.

Where I'll Be

All Of Me, the way my buddy plays it, I think. Musicians are a curious lot. He brought us, my little combo this song that he plays on Uke and sings, rather well actually. So we are trying to back him up on it. The drummer just hears it, The dulcimer player reads music well and groks it as they used to say in my youth (Grok is from a Heinlein novel "Stranger In A Strange Land"} Me, I need to figure it out and practice it. I need a one page doc that I can put on my Ipad and play from. He brings in a two page chart that requires that you jump from here to there to there and here. This is my translation.  

The spaces are so I can add diagrams for the chords I don't know by heart. The fact that I can glance at a diagram these days and play it quick, is a miracle in itself. At 62, there are still marvelous things that can be learned. My fingers ache, but who the hell cares. These is way cool.  

Mama Told Me Not To Come

http://www.stafaband.info/download/mp3/lagu_going_back_to_georgia_cover_dan_mcnay/

The Link to the above. They are giving away my songs converted from my videos, including my covers that I have no right to. Somehow I think its driving up the clicks on my YouTube Channel, so maybe I don't mind. You can download my songs right now from Reverbnation. The whole idea is to slowly build a fan base, get thousands of web hits and maybe get lucky- a viral hit could put you in the running for a label and club dates and other stuff. Its all smoke and mirrors. Pass this off to your friends. 

This Blog's stats

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8,058,214Rank in United States

--Worldwide Rank

Monthly pages viewed	< 300
Monthly visits	< 300
Value per visitor	--
Estimated worth	$610.91 *

Just wanted you to know where we are in the world. If you read this blog, this is what you are creating.
I really had no idea that this was how many hits I'm getting. $600.00 would buy me a lot of recording time or
a new banjo.

I think I need to be a lot more interesting. With more time in January, I'll try.

I'm retiring!!!!

Where I'll be

The Trio Live!

A couple from the Playa Vista Market yesterday.

The Latest From The Thrift Store

Their Web Site:
http://sons.com/

A Cd a few years old, by a group called "Sons Of The Never Wrong" Bruce Roper, Deborah Lader & Sue Demel.

A very cool CD. They seem to be Chicago based . Lots of videos to look at and listen to.

A whole lot of fun!

Where I'll be

The New Song

LAYING FLOOR

   G                                C
She’s learned a new word
   G                         D                          C
After a week of laying floor and barricades
   A                                C                                     G
Swollen hands have lifted her beyond the machines
         C                 Am
that growl and grind
   C                                    D7                   G
To set her again upon her feet in a further room

   G                                        C
She knows she does not like it
   G                             D                                 C
Dangling head and arms over the gate she wants in
  A                            C                            G
She howls like an angry saw at the pile
    C            Am
of ragged pieces
C                                D7                              G
Soon enough I tell her and then again soon enough

CHORUS
G                       C
Who shall she be
G                   D                             C
To have slid in socks upon my floor
G                    D                           C
And chased that dog out the door
G                             D                   C           G
Will she laugh or cry when it’s time to go                  

BRIDGE

  G                           C   

She’s just turned three                                                                                      

    G                             D

Out of the terrible ‘nos’

G                             C

She thinks she’s a princess

D7                                     C

I’ve told her it just isn’t so 

    G                          C
But she has little time                                                                                      

   G                                  D                                     C                                                
When the barricades come down she races from room to room           

  A                           C                                       G                                                                
To catch up with herself and what she knows                                            

       C                Am                                                                                              
She has some sense I know                                                                                            

     C                                         D7                                   G
When asked how she likes her new floor she will point and smile 

CHORUS TWICE

Goin' to Sierra Madre

Absolutely the best offer I've gotten in a while. A nice lady. I had sent her a come-on for their festival in the spring (Sierra Madre) and she thought I was asking for their winter thing on Nov 29th. The quattro we have going can play on the 2nd story balcony all day, as long as it's not too loud and we can set out a tip jar on the sidewalk downstairs. (With someone else performing downstairs) I thought we could put Toto in a basket on a rope and haul him up and down with the tips. She did offer a 1/2 hr on their stage too. We have other things going the 29th. A band of four with gear is a bit to haul for a 1/2 hr, but all day! She said to contact her in January for the spring. I liked her.

The Interview

The Interview of

The Latest Videos I'm happy with:


Westchester First Fridays this month

 

Daydee

The 2nd draft finished tonight. Anybody want a pdf of this version let me know. There is a 3rd draft planned. Done in January 2016, if I live that long.

What a ride!

I Finished It

I finished it yesterday. It started out interestingly enough- a narrative of a surrealist journey of the main character and his friends traveling toward an unknown setting in an imagined war zone. This was written around the beginning of World War II. Interesting writing and imaginative images. About half way through it dissolved into a rant of sorts and just went on from there in rant mode. All the horrible surreal images you can eat. I think I had one of the original paperback copies and it quickly dissolved apart as well. Read every day at lunch. Tried to do 10 pages a day. Some I skipped. By the end I wasn't sure what it meant, if anything. Just a guy foaming at the mouth.

Which is what I think I've doing a bit at work these days. I've put in for my retirement. January 5th is my last day at USC. I'm looking forward to it. Get to write, finally, in the daylight. Got a notion of getting up, doing 10 miles on the bike, coming back & showering and sitting at my desk every day until noon. I'm about a week or two away from finishing the 2nd draft of a new novel. The 3rd draft should go real quick. Have lunch, read, take a nap. Practice the banjo and work on all the stuff I've not had time to practice. Maybe even start painting again. Play some weekday Farmer's Markets.

Remodel our backyard. Go back packing when I want. Go to a museum again. (The last time has been years - since Paris 2 years ago) Go to a senior matinee. Go thrift store hunting. Write some more here!

I finished it.
 

Tall

This woman is actually 4 inches shorter than I. Her eyes would look across at my nose. The perception is all sorts of things for short people, intimidation, envy, insecurities, instant sort of weird respect if you are not scared. 

I've never been scared of little people. Unless they have a gun. I've never been scared of other people in a physical sense unless they are as big as me or bigger.

A friend once said that she thought I had no natural predators. She watched me on Venice beach dismissing a panhandler. You can get away with that sort of shortness with people. It's a little like fulfilling the angry father. Everyone knows to slip away. 

Anyway, let's talk about tall.

Fundly

powered by

I changed the amount- I'm really looking for about $2,000.00

Rhubarb

It started because we (Craig and Ian and I) are now rehearsing as a trio and will be playing in Westchester on the 11th. So I thought we needed a name for the band. I thought of using the old band name, because I still have a sign and a banner and some left over business cards with that name "Rhubarb Meringue Pie" but my wife thought the name probably comes with too much baggage. She's probably right. I thought of this name and started looking up Rhubarb for the hell of it. I found an old Northwest Indian tale about how the animals were trying to figure out what to do with these human babies that had just appeared. It was believed that a symbol of the species throw into the ocean would either sink or float. If it floated it meant that the humans were probably all right to help out, since they weren't going away, and they would proper. So I thought of this. It probably won't be the band's name, but I thought it leant itself well to a CD cover. Got a year to go on the music for it.

The band thinks it should be Danjo the band (o) or something like that. The banjo teacher said the same thing without any prompting on my part.

The Latest Recording

The original version of this song I found in a 1899 family songbook I picked up at a thrift store in Long Beach after one of our Nursing Home gigs with the folks from the dog park jam. That was two years ago? The chorus I thought was wonderful- the rest of it stunk. It was written by a guy in the mid-1800s. Although a really sad themed song, it became a fast upbeat fiddle tune and I've learned it was recorded early in the 1900s with bird calls and players trying to make bird songs on their instruments. Anyway, I rewrote the verses which in the original were four lines each, tried to get the band to play it- they weren't having it. Added another verse, played in own my own fast and slow with a variety of roll patterns. Recorded it for the first CD- realized the four line verses weren't working. So here it is. I think I'm done.


An earlier incarnation here: Listen To The Mocking Bird

Just got 4 dates for The Oaks

So I Looked It Up

 Can you tell the difference between 1965 and 1975?
 
We had cards and probably too much to drink and it came up that the last of the baby boomers to retire would be around (now I don't even remember what the year was- somehow it seemed absurd.

"December 31, 2029 - The last of the boomers will turn 65. The 65+ population segment is projected to double to 71.5 million by 2030 and grow to 86.7 million by 2050. Possibly eighty million plus will be on Medicare and Social Security." from a CNN site. This is an error.

Wikipedia says according to the leading theorists, etc, a generation is 20 years.

"However, as the 19th century wore on, several trends promoted a new idea of generations, of a society divided into different categories of people based on age. These trends were all related to the processes of modernisation, industrialisation, or westernisation, which had been changing the face of Europe since the mid-18th century. One was a change in mentality about time and social change."
-from Wikipedia's Generation entry.

If start the clock at 1945 and you add 20 years, 1965 is the end of births for our generation. So 2011 to 2016 is around the correct time period for retirement,

But this is a make believe notion that people of the same twenty year time span of birth share something in common.

The difference in moral values, and lifestyle and a thousand other things point to the fact that there are major differences between people just ten years apart in age. 

If I need to explain that, than most people need to get a life.

Me thinks, like most of everything else you get from the media is popular thought revolving around the notion that Time-Life can sell you music of your generation. Even they are not dumb enough to try to package the golden oldies in twenty year increments.

Where I'll Be

Streets of Laredo

Marty Robbins.

A buddy from the Glendale CC Swap Meet this morning told me about this version of "Streets of Laredo" -which I sing- below is probably the original version from the late 1700s. I told him, well maybe I'd try out this version- he said "Oh no! Everyone knows Streets of Laredo. You can't."

I only started singing it the first place because it was the only song one of my old bandmates requested. Over two years until, he brought in a song he had written, it was the only song he had ever asked us to do.

I'm tempted to do this version.

Note that Mercury(II) chloride or mercuric chloride was an early treatment for syphilis and is a white salt:

As I was a walking down by the “Lock”,

As I was walking one morning of late,

Who did I spy but my own dear comrade,

Wrapp'd in flannel, so hard is his fate.

Chorus.

Had she but told me when she disordered me,

Had she but told me of it at the time,

I might have got salts and pills of white mercury,

But now I'm cut down in the height of my prime.

I boldly stepped up to him and kindly did ask him,

Why he was wrapp'd in flannel so white?

My body is injured and sadly disordered,

All by a young woman, my own heart's delight.

My father oft told me, and of[ten] times chided me,

And said my wicked ways would never do,

But I never minded him, nor ever heeded him,

[I] always kept up in my wicked ways.

Get six jolly fellows to carry my coffin,

And six pretty maidens to bear up my pall,

And give to each of them bunches of roses,

That they may not smell me as they go along.

[Over my coffin put handsful of lavender,

Handsful of lavender on every side,

Bunches of roses all over my coffin,

Saying there goes a young man cut down in his prime.]

Muffle your drums, play your pipes merrily,

Play the death [dead] march as you go along.

And fire your guns right over my coffin,

There goes an unfortunate lad to his home.

Redwoods In The Spring-Part One

Left Sunday morning to make a solitary backpacking trip to the Redwoods north of San Francisco. The plan had included a stop overnight at a camp ground just outside SF but I got there about three in the afternoon and decided to drive on. Got to Ordick about five thirty. The place to get the wilderness permit was closed but they had a nice parking lot and restrooms not locked so I decided it was ok for the night. I had taken the back seat out of the van so I could just lay out the sleeping bag and pass out without the bother of the real camping thing. Went to eat dinner at Ordick's only restaurant. Ok food except for the salad bar which was a assortment of those funky mayo based things that some aunt would bring to a picnic when you were a kid forty years ago.
The owner found out what I was doing and told me to see Fern Valley if I got a chance. It was where the Ewok planet scenes in the Star Wars movie was filmed. I went back and parked in the lot by the Visitor Permit place and slept in my van. I was up early and cleaned up and ate breakfast and was still a couple of hours away from the place opening, so I got out my folding chair and my plastic banjo I take on camping trips and played until the folks came to open. A tourist came over, curious about what I was doing. He was dumbfounded and wanted to know all about backpacking. And did I carry the banjo on the trip?
The family and friends were all concerned about me making the trip alone. My wife said that if I died she would never forgive me. A lady I knew started into a whole harangue about what if I was injured. I said that I would drag myself out. I have been backpacking about ten years now. I told them all, well...I did hitchhike across country by myself when young and I didn't die or get hurt.
The tourist wanted to know what I would do with a bear? Or a mountain lion? I didn't think any we're going to be here.
The place finally opened. I had a bunch of different routes and after talking them over, I opted for Pigeon Prairie Park. I was on the trail about ten. The first day was just five miles through some old growth Redwoods and then down to the beach to a backpackers camp. The old growth groves are these very quiet places where you seldom hear a bird and there were no bugs. It was very serene. Very lush. There were donor benches along the trail, where you could sit and just enjoy. They all had plaques with the donor names on them. I got down to the beach pretty easily and set up camp and took a little nap.
There were two other guys that came into camp. One was a PhD candidate from Miami and the other was a UN intern from Austria. I had rum and they both were drinking whiskey. We gathered firewood and sat up late, talking music and soccer and literature and girls. They both seemed fine with my crazy attitudes and that I was their father's age. I had a great time.
The next day I did a day hike over to Fern Valley. It looked just like it did in the movie. Very very lush overgrown giant ferns and beds of clover and wild strawberry bushes and poison oak. Everything is lush and very moist and the ground in long stretches was spongy and gooey. No mosquitoes at all. Ran into my Miami friend coming the other way.

Onward

Goodnight Jack

Visiting with my inner craziness tonight. How dare I work to harness my soul to the formula of music? Measures? Counting? Bah- Uniform pitch and chords progressions that belong and make sense? Stifle the soul and spoil the rod? (That's not right.) I once spent twenty years trying to perfect and understand the seemless paragraph. It has to be done. Ah to be a Van Gogh and not Picasso, Kerouac- not Hemingway. Balzac - not Flaubert. But its not to be. I learn and dream of flying free. I will learn this foreign thing. Goodnight Jack.

Nice to Have Things That Still Work

Heading north in the car tomorrow morning to go backpacking in the Redwoods. The body still works and the soul is still willing. Hoping to find some quiet time in the tall ancient trees. Be back next weekend to continue on. A gig next Sunday morning and recording another song in the afternoon. I'm rehearsing with a drumer these days. Its making me work even harder.

Song At 11:00

The newest song, Even got a chorus, but you don't get to see it yet, Got to muscle these words into a standard uniform meter. I wanted to include the real singer of the family into the new Cd, but she got a big big voice, so I thought I'd write the song and let her sing it, maybe with a little banjo behind. I was telling a friend, the secret to song writing is to figure out the chord progression and sing it over and over to yourself until a melody appears.
I'll keep you posted.
(there's already three verses here -all of seven lines)
Really, if you want to write songs read Thomas Wolfe, he wrote millions of sentences all in Iambic pentameter.
.
LAYING FLOOR

for my Alexandra at three



She’s learned a new word,

After a week of wood laying and barricades.

Swollen hands have lifted her beyond

Mastic, the tongue and groove of patterns

Undone, and the machines that growl and grind,

To set her again upon her feet

In a further room.

She knows, even now, she doesn’t like it,

Dangling head and arms over the gate,

She howls like a hungry saw

At the ill-fitting pieces.

“Soon enough,” I tell her,

And then again, “Soon enough.”

But she has little time.

When the barricades come down,

She races from room to room

To catch up with herself,

Before beginning to tiptoe over the finished wood.

She has some sense, I know,

If asked how she likes her new floor,

She will squat and point and smile.

Things I Love

Just ordered this for myself

What's Next

Upcoming Dates

Live and learn

So the other down side to letting people touch stuff they don't really understand, is that then you have spend another night making sure it didn't get screwed up. Everything is working perfectly, thank goodness. I have have all day Sunday to cover eight performers.  It helps to read the manuals before you start screwing around. I honestly have had enough bad sound to last me a lifetime. That could be a couple of chapters in this book about doing music at sixty. I should have just shooed her away and fixed it myself. 

SoulDogs.com

Dan-

I am very sorry but I don't know what you're talking about. I have no idea what was going on with your sound system. When Sharon and I left your vocal and banjo were coming through the mains. What happened after we left I don't know. There was also a problem with my mic when we played and I was told my vocals were barely audible and very reedy sounding. The sound system appeared to go in and out as if there was a short. Again I am very sorry. We did not intentionally leave you with no sound because you did have sound when we left. I don't know what else to say. Thank you for the opportunity to play but blaming your sound problems no us sounds a bit absurd. It is your system and we did the best we could for you considering the problems it seemed to have. We're not electrical engineers. Guess you're pissed but I don't really understand why you're blaming us. 


Steve Kaufman

This is a lie. I have a video of myself, with no sound for the entire evening. The redhead was fixing my sound. They left and waved at me. I assumed that if I could hear myself through the monitor, it was going out the mains. If she didn't know how to fix it, all they had to say to me was you have no sound through the main speakers. But I assumed they had taken care of me. So, when my wife came over to tell me there was no sound out the mains, I thought she meant it was just weird sounding. So, I want to rule out purposeful screw up, I assume no one is that crazy that they would purposefully screw you. I'm just assuming that they were embarrassed because she didn't know how to work the sound board. I would have confessed. Here's the thing, they threw people at me, like I was going to accomodate them and their friends. Now I get this response. "We're not electrical engineers." You don't have to be an engineer to know if sound is coming out of a speaker. I really don't like being fucked with. Beware of these people. They are just old people playing old music and they even beat out the worst prima donnas I've encountered so far. They also cost themselves and their friends a paying gig DTLA next Sunday. 

Where I'll Be Tomoroow Night

Sorry, but I can sound bad with my friends

Dawn,

I'm a heavily rehearsed performer. I don't do pick-bands any more. I will only perform with people I have rehearsed with. I've been burnt too many times. I've had people show up to play with me that don't know the songs. It sounds awful. I'm also doing my own songs and covers of more current things. I'm just not willing to do it. Sorry. Be more than happy to split the time with another performer.

Dan

On 3/20/2014 10:39 AM, Dawn Vallin-Flores wrote:

yes or you could play together.  they both are blue grass and folk 

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:39 AM, Dan McNay <mcnay@mosis.com> wrote:
Dawn,

Splitting the time? Probably ok. Like two hours each?

Thanks

Dan

On 3/20/2014 9:29 AM, Dawn Vallin-Flores wrote:

Ok,,,looking forward to working with you again.  Also, would you be willing to play with an additional 2 players?  

Dawn

Having Fun

One of the fun part of doing this whole thing is getting to play around with doing flyers. I'm good at it. Thank you USC for playing for my training.

 

What I did Today

So's I get photos from these folks and I make a flyer. Steve emails me back three days later, 'Oh, its Soul Dog "s", so I say ok, And correct it and send it again. Then, Rianna, sends me another pic of herself and wants to know if it can be switched out. I said I'd try Then I get this from her late in the day, after I swapped out the photo:

i just noticed you put Rianna llamas

mu stage name is Angelina Llamas

thats my middle name but thats okay lol

On Tuesday, March 18, 2014 3:43 PM, Rianna Llamas wrote:

thank you

So guess what I'm doing in the morning. I'm really a lucky man. I'm doing this at work- - I'm also incredably quick at Photoshop these days. I only print enough to distribute to the stores on the street, so its not a big deal. But you gotta be right up front with your potential markets, right?

This is what I got on the Motor Street Farners Market Site:

Dan McNay has lived in LA 25 years and for a lot of that time has worked at USC. He has been active in numerous writing workshops and studied in USC’s Masters of Professional Writing Program. He has written "It Knows You By No Other Name" available at Amazon and has produced his first demo CD “Where Are You Going?”

This was a photo they took off the Melrose Trading Post Site from three years ago, after I complained because they put up a picture of Dan McNay, the bass player from Montrose, that lives in Sacramento. I only play there maybe every other month. And I do solo these days, have for the last year.

I was breaking the law

No more tips, endless playing of Saturdays, no more eggs, no more favorite egg guy. We were breaking the law. They like things quiet in Dana Point. They told the Farmer's Market Manager no music.

NOISE STANDARDS

Noise Zone	Noise Level	Time Period
1	55 dB(A)	7:00 a.m.—10.00 p.m.
	50 dB(A)	10:00 p.m.—7:00 a.m.

In the event the alleged offensive noise consists entirely of impact noise, simple tone noise, speech, music, or any combination thereof, each of the above noise levels shall be reduced by five (5) dB(A).

        (b)    It is unlawful for any person at any location within the City to create any noise, or to allow the creation of any noise on property owned, leased, occupied, or otherwise controlled by such person, when the foregoing causes the noise level, when measured on any residential property, to exceed:

        (1)    The noise standard for a cumulative period of more than thirty (30) minutes in any hour; or

        (2)    The noise standard plus five (5) dB(A) for a cumulative period of more than fifteen (15) minutes in any hour; or

        (3)    The noise standard plus ten (10) dB(A) for a cumulative period of more than five (5) minutes in any hour; or

        (4)    The noise standard plus fifteen (15) dB(A) for a cumulative period of more than one minute in any hour; or

        (5)    The noise standard plus twenty (20) dB(A) for any period of time.

        (c)    In the event the ambient noise level exceeds any of the first four (4) noise limit categories above, the cumulative period applicable to said category shall be increased to reflect said ambient noise level. In the event the ambient noise level exceeds the fifth noise limit category, the maximum allowable noise level under said category shall be increased to reflect the maximum ambient noise level. (Added by Ord. 92-11, 11/24/92)

Ah Shucks

Hi Dan,

I can't thank you enough for coming out to our Pancake Breakfast yesterday!  It was a real treat to have such great entertainment and I just wanted to let you know how much we appreciate you! Everyone really enjoyed your music!

YIS,

Donna

Cobalt Cafe

Getting jaded in my old age. Had a band looking on "Indie on the Move" 
for somebody to share a night. I checked them out and thought it was 
close enough and contacted them. They emailed me last week and said, yeah, come on. But you got to contact the booking guy. 

I did -three days in a row with email and phone and finally gave up. He calls today. Says he's already booked the slot, but he'll squeeze me in by giving half the slot to me and making the guys that offered me the slot, start 15 minutes later. An half an hour he says. This, actually, in booker's real time, translates into three songs. I've learned the hard way- most 45 minute sets at clubs become 30 minutes. You'll go on by 9:00 usually means 10:00 or later. I told him, that was ok, maybe some other time. 

Oh yeah, this was for this Sunday night. 

The Repaired Nut

Lorraine Tolliver

I just learned a good friend is gone. Lorraine Tolliver. A poet and teacher, she was our grammar expert when the kids were small. This is a poem she wrote me on my 40th birthday. I tried to turn it into a song, maybe its time to revisit it. She wrote 100s and 100s of really nice poems and published over 200 of them. There's a few of us that have her anthology. We would walk and talk for hours. We should've stopped there.

Boulevard Music -just a couple of miles from the other place

A mile or two away you can sign up here for their monthly open mic and do 3 songs and there is no contract and you don't have to bring bodies. And the folks are nice and friendly and its a real stage and big room for seating.You just have to go the first Sunday of the month to sign up.

Pay to Play on a cheaper scale, but you have give her your first born

What you have to do to play 3 songs at this venue (little scuzzy coffeehouse in SM)
I asked if I had to give up my 2.5 hour gig with tips to play there? And I have to bring bodies- $15.00 to $30.00 worth of bodies. I asked her what she did with the $80.00 in covers she made for putting the thing on?
She emailed me that I didn't have the right attitude to succeed in original music.

JAVA WITH JAVELYN
UNURBAN CAFE
3301 W. PICO BLVD.
SANTA MONICA, CA 90405
310-281-7454

Contract, Performance Procedures and Policies

We would like to welcome you and thank you for performing at Java With Javelyn, an Indie Music Nite at the Unurban Cafe.

Important: To avoid any confusion, please read this contract carefully. Whether you are manager, agent or the leader of the group, it is your responsibility to make sure that all performers (and fans, family, agents, managers, astrologers, record company execs, etc.) understand the policies explained herein. After reading the contract, please print your name below, and fill out any information which has a blank line attached to it, for our records. It is our wish that you, your guests and our staff all have an enjoyable time before, during and after your performance.

Booking - We require that if you are doing one of our regular sets (25-45 minutes) that you cannot have another gig within a 50-mile radius within seven (7) days before or after your booking with us.

Promotion - We encourage the use of MySpace and your other websites to post announcements about your gig with us. Please post your announcement to show you performing AT LEAST 30-60 minutes prior to your allocated gig time, as we run pretty much on time (relief), and out of that respect, ask that you think about giving your fans respect to see you, as we know a lot of other gigs tend to run late or give you early times for "real time". Please note that the time we give you is pretty much "real time".

Parking – There is parking on the streets, and you can park for free in the parking lot behind the U.S. Bank across the street. Do not park in the parking lot behind Unurban Cafe or you will get towed.

Set-up/Time – It is important both as a courtesy to patrons and as a measure of our professionalism that performances start on time. We require all performers to be at the Unurban Cafe at least 45 minutes prior to their scheduled time of performance. Bands we require at least 60 minutes prior to give time to settle in and be ready to load in between sets, so you have plenty of time to get your gear on stage before you go on. If possible, please check out the venue before the date you play.

Sound – PA and soundperson is provided. As Java With Javelyn is mostly an acoustic, ‘unplugged’ night, we will set levels for you just before you go on. If you plan on bringing a 'guest soundperson', then it MUST be cleared with Javelyn before the show. We do have bands at end of night, and we expect them to keep the volume at a reasonable level as pertains to your audience and the room.

Equipment - Space is limited at the Unurban Cafe. Some performers prefer to wait and bring their equipment in just prior to their show. If you have special needs, please remember to tell Javelyn your setup prior to show date.

Donations/People Minimum – Cover charge is $3. Every artist needs to make sure their people know they will be paying a cover charge inside, or they will not be able to stay. Each artist is required to bring at least five-ten people in order to play a 25-30 minute set. If any artist or act does not bring the required minimum number of people, then they might not be asked back for another set at Java With Javelyn. We ask all of the artists to encourage your people to not leave right after you play or to come early to support the other artists playing throughout the night as JWJ is a joint effort by everyone who performs. If you do not have many supporters you can bring, you can always book and come back whenever there is room to play two songs at the beginning of the night. Because there is such a demand for sets and limited spots, we must have this requirement now to keep our new venue, and since every artist brings a few people, it's only fair that you do too, or else we also find that people tend to leave and not stay for your portion of the show.

Merchandise & CDs: We strongly encourage you to bring your CDs and merch to sell, as well as bring your email lists, and be prepared to network with the other artists and people attending the event - THAT is how you make money, build following and make a successful career. We cannot stress it enough.

Filming – Any filming must be cleared through Javelyn prior to the scheduled date.

Cancellation – We require at least a 3-day cancellation period of time, period. No exceptions - If you cancel after this cancellation period of time, and do not come up with a suitable sub, you will not be asked back.

Rotation/Residency – If you come and play for Java With Javelyn and meet all of the above requirements, we can talk about the possibility of your being ‘in rotation’ with Java With Javelyn. We put our most efforts into artists who help us build and respect our guidelines - in helping us build our indie music community, you help yourself build in your music career, and you can earn one of the precious JWJ indie artist residents spots every 3-4 months. If at any time you do not follow the above requirements, we can, at our discretion, choose to discontinue your residency with us.

If you have any questions email Javelyn at info@javawithjavelyn.com or call (310) 281-7454. For emergencies only, Jav’s cell is (310) 739-7445. We thank you very much for your cooperation. Have a great show!

Javelyn
Java With Javelyn
www.javawithjavelyn.com