One of two petri dish nephews spreading bacteria.

Needless to say, those two little petri dishes spread enough bacteria around the house to infect a small country, and by the end of their stay I was well on my way to a future of spending days in bed with body aches, a terrible cough and a general feeling of malaise.

The worst part about falling ill before a gig is the fact that my voice dropped in register and lost about 60% of it’s power. The cold began to take hold the Wed before my show and I spent all day Thursday in bed drinking water and taking copious amounts of vitamin C. Thankfully, the morning of the show I felt a bit better…at least well enough to take the stage, however my voice was still less than 100% and I spent the entire drive down highway 1 trying to warm up my vocals.

When I arrived at the venue I had time to grab a great dinner at Rae’s. I opted for breakfast for dinner: eggs, ham, bacon, sausage and pancakes! I knew I was feeling better because I was famished from days of a strict soup and tea diet. The breakfast/dinner was so amazing that I had to snap a pic of the meal that fuels rock ‘n roll:

Unfortunately I managed to leave my camera in my gig bag during the gig and I have no pics of the gig that I am about to describe, so I’ll try to portray the experience in detail without boring you to death.

My songwriter friend Luna opened the show to a room that was already filling up. Her set was fantastic. Great songs, and a great acoustic sound. Her set was well received and by the end of her show, the room was completely filled with BTB fans and Friday night bar-goers.

Shortly after her last song, the BTB were setting up. 20 minutes later we opened our show with a tribute to The Alarm in honor of their yearly rock n roll event called The Gathering that kicked off the same night as our set at Bar Pico. After the ‘Declaration” style intro we launched into the show. The audience was very responsive and there were so many beautiful people in the audience hooting, hollering and dancing! We had a bit of an issue with feedback during ‘Gasoline’ but Joe fixed it and we restarted the tune without a hitch. I was pleased that my vocals were holding up despite having been fighting off a cold a few days prior.

The band and I took a 15-20 minute break in the middle of our show to grab beers and to mingle with the fans. It was so great to see everyone. The lovely Erin D who I met at a family reunion and who was leading the hooting, hollering and dance party in the front row was there and she brought 4 people with her! It was wonderful to see her again and I was so glad that she was truly enjoying our set to the fullest.

My good friend Michael was there and so were high school friends Brian and David. My newly engaged friend Patiel and her gorgeous co-worker Lauren were there. My jazz singing friend (and ‘Bigger Picture’ investor) Jacnique was there looking radiant. And sitting directly in front of me (saving toppling microphone stands from falling into the audience) was beautiful Lisa who was enjoying her very first BTB show. I was thrilled that we were playing to a venue packed with a great looking audience! It was also validating to get accolades from strangers who had never seen us play before. The proprietor of the bar also loved our set and offered us a paid residency at the venue asking us to play once a month.

Second set kicked off with Luna and I singing an acoustic new song called “Grand Heights”. The band and I went deep after that…rocking the second set into submission finishing with another new tune “Taney County Town” and closing with our standard closer “State I’m In” which Lisa observed had a “Cage The Elephant” vibe which was a comparison I loved to hear because Cage The Elephant completely rock!

The rest of the night was spent mingling with fans and friends outside of the venue in the warm southern California January weather. Lisa and I and a few friends had plans to get late night food, but after trying in vain to find the 10 freeway, we abandoned those plans and I made it home at 3am exhausted and feeling like my cold was threatening a comeback. A pre-emptive strike with some bedtime tea, vitamin C and off to bed with another show under my belt. Looking forward to the next one on Feb 24th at a warehouse space as live entertainment for an art show in Korea town. Also looking forward to another great night with friends and fans. Feeling good about how things are unfolding for us in 2012.

Just the other day I was told by someone who owned a wine bar that they really liked our music and would love for us to play at their place. She then told me the gig paid $75 for a trio. Now $75 used to be bad money per person, let alone $75 for the whole band. It had to be a joke, right? No she was serious. But it didn’t end there. She then informed us we had to bring 25 people minimum. Didn’t even offer us extra money if we brought 25 people. I would have laughed other than it’s not the first time I’ve gotten this proposal from club owners. But are there musicians really doing this? Yes. They are so desperate to play, they will do anything. But lets think about this for a second and turn this around a little bit.

What if I told the wine bar owner that I have a great band and we are going to play at my house. I need someone to provide and pour wine while we play. I can’t pay much, just $75 and you must bring at least 25 people who are willing to pay a $10 cover charge at the door. Now wouldn’t they look at you like you are crazy? “Why would I do that” they would ask? Well because it’s great exposure for you and your wine bar. The people there would see how well you pour wine and see how good your wine is. Then they would come out to your wine bar sometime.”But I brought all the people myself, I already know them?”
they would say. Well maybe you could make up some professional looking flyers, pass them out, and get people you don’t know to come on out.”But you are only paying me $75, How can I afford to make up flyers?”

You see how absurd this sounds, but musicians do this all the time. If they didn’t, then the club owners wouldn’t even think of asking us to do it. So this sounds like a great deal for the club owners doesn’t it? They get a band and customers for that night, and have to pay very little if anything. But what they don’t realize is that this is NOT in their best interest.

Running a restaurant, a club, a bar, is really hard. There is a lot at stake for the owner. You are trying to get loyal customers that will return because you are offering them something special. If you want great food, you hire a great chef. If you want great décor,you hire a great interior decorator. You expect these professionals to do their best at what you are hiring them to do. It needs to be the same with the band.You hire a great band and should expect great music.That should be the end of your expectations for the musicians. The music is another product for the venue to offer, no different from food or beverages.

When a venue opens it’s doors, it has to market itself. The club owner can’t expect people to just walk in the door. This has to be handled in a professional way. Do you really want to leave something so important up to a musician? This is where the club owner needs to take over. It is their success or their failure on the line, not the musician.The musician can just move on to another venue. I’ve played places where for whatever reason only a few people have walked in the door on a Saturday night.The club owner got mad at me, asking where are the people? I turned it around on him asking the same thing? Where are all the people? It’s Saturday night and your venue is empty. Doesn’t that concern you? What are you going to do about it? Usually their answer is to find another band with a larger following. This means the professional bands get run out of the joint in favor of whoever can bring in the most people.

Eddie Mechanic who has slaved all week fixing cars at the local dealership also plays guitar. Not very well,but he’s been practicing once a week with Doctor Drummer, Banker Bass Player, and Salesman Singer. Usually they just drink beer between rehearsing a few tunes in Eddie’s garage, but this week they answer a craigslist ad and line up a big gig. Well they don’t sound that good, but they sure all work with a lot of people everyday. All these people can be given a flyer on Monday and after being asked “are youcoming to my gig?” everyday all week, will most likely show up on Saturday night. So mission accomplished, the club owner has packed his venue for one night.

But here’s where the club owner doesn’t get it. The crowd is following the band, not the venue. The next night you will have to start all over again. And the people that were starting to follow your venue, are now turned off because you just made them listen to a bad band. The goal should be to build a fan base of the venue. To get people that will trust that you will have good music in there every night. Instead you’ve soiled your reputation for a quick fix.

I think we as musicians need to fight back. Sure you can get mad about it, but that won’t do anything.We could all agree not to play those for the door gigs, but you know that isn’t going to happen. But what we can do, is explain to the club owner that it’s not in their best interest to operate their business like this. There is too much at stake for them not to be truly invested in the music presented in their venue. Convince them that if they think that live music is important to the demographic that they are trying to reach, then they need to reach out to that demographic in a professional way.

If you asked a club owner, “who is your target demographic?” I doubt they would answer “the band’s friends and family.”
But yet clubs operate like it is. Another example, I answered a craigslist ad for a nice looking place in Beverly Hills. The ad read: “looking for a high energy jazz band, if you can bring the band and have a following, I will put you on stage.”
That logic seams to say that they think musicians in a jazz band know lots of people living in Beverly Hills. And the people those musicians know,have lots of money to spend. Those are two pretty big assumptions. Good luck finding that combination. Even if you find that combination, are you going to find it every night? Because friends and family of a professional musician won’t come out that often. They can’t. This is what we do every night. Would you expect the chef’s friends and family to eat at your restaurant every night? How about the dishwasher, the waitresses, the hostess? Or how about the club owners friends and family? You see, when you start turning this argument around, it becomes silly.

I’ve started arguing with club owners about this. It happened after I played a great night of music in LA. We were playing for a % of the bar. There were about 50 people there in this small venue, so it was a good turnout. At the end of the night, I go to get paid, and hope to book another gig. The club owner was angry. “Where are your people?” he asked. “All these people, I brought in. We had a speed dating event and they are all left over from that.” I pointed out they all stayed and listened to the music for 2 hours after their event ended. That was 2 more hours of bar sales, because without us, you have an empty room with nothing going on. He just couldn’t get over the fact that we didn’t walk in with our own entourage of fans. Wasn’t happy that we kept a full room spending money. Right when we were talking, a group of people interrupted us and said “you guys sound great, when is the next time you’re playing here again?” The club owner, said “they aren’t playing here ever again, they didn’t bring anyone.”

I went home that night bummed out and sent him an email. Telling him most of what you are reading here and how his business model and thinking is flawed. After a lot of swearing back and forth, because I’m guessing that musicians never talk to him as a business equal. He eventually admitted that what I was saying made sense. BUT, that’s not how LA clubs and restaurants work. And he has bands answering his craigslist ads willing to do whatever it takes to get the gig. It’s been a couple of years now since that conversation. I called his bar, and the number is disconnected. So there you go LA club and restaurant owners. The advice is free. But you’ll most likely ignore it because “That’s not how it works”. But if more musicians kept telling them the same thing, perhaps it would start to sink in.

- Dave Goldberg

During the latest session I filmed footage with my flip video camera to share with you all. Enjoy the video and be sure leave comments!

The band and I are working hard prepping for our next show on Jan 27th at Bar Pico. We have been asked back to Bar Pico after our amazing gig there last month. I enjoyed designing a new poster for this show and I am very proud of this one…mostly because of the distress/texture and effect that I achieved on the photo and the background. Also, I think out logo looks pretty rad in this poster.

During set break I will be in the audience taking pictures to post on the next blog installment, so if you come to the show on Jan 27th your pic could end up in this very blog!

I arrived the the venue early on the 2nd (after watching a beautiful sunset off the Santa Monica coast) to sort of get a feel for the room as The Brian Travis Band had never played there before. The room was filled with happy hour patrons drinking heavily and getting a bit sloppy and talking very LOUDLY. There was a silver-haired bluegrass singer/songwriter belting traditional country songs to the mostly unresponsive room. I felt for the guy, as I have played so many shows just like this myself…a lone acoustic guitar and voice against a sea of apathetic ears and loud voices chatting over you as if you were not there.

Another songwriter followed and it was obvious that he needed some help wrangling the PA system, so I dialed in his sound (there was no stage manager to be found and I just offered my assistance). He played a strange set of cover songs while speaking in an obviously fake and unconvincing British accent. A lot of the songs were started only to stop short after the first verse as the artist admitted that he did not know the rest of the song. As a professional singer/songwriter, watching his half-hearted attempt to entertain made me feel a bit anxious and uncomfortable. After about 30 minutes another songwriter named Koah took the stage.

Koah had some real talent and a good voice. (check him out here) He played a lot of covers, but they were stylize to fit his unique presentation. It was really pleasant and enjoyable. The best part of his set, was the fact that he drove out all the LOUD people (they stumbled off to their next adventure) and the BTB audience began to filter into the venue by this time. Our producer George Landress showed up as did about 50 other friends and supporters. The front lines: Anita, Lucie, Daniela, Karuna, Devon, Kristina, Lauren, Niousha and Annie (tardy, but she more than made up for it with her hoots and hollering during second set!). The reserves: Laurie, Mandy, Aeb, Colleen (all the way from NYC!), Tamra, JC, Shayna and the first timers: Torna, Bonnie, Stephanie, Kristopher, and anyone else who I have forgotten.

It was such a rush to see a full house and to be able to rock 2 sets worth of BTB music. For me, the show had a little bit of everything…country twang, folk, alternative, vocal harmonies, and a few choice cover songs including “If I Had A Gun” by Noel Gallagher in the second set. Another highlight for me was having Aeb join us once again on the flute for “Siren”. I love it when Aeb joins in…I’m doing my best to convince her to join us more often, but she is a busy artist in her own right. Check out her music.

Setting up at Bar Pico.

Another BTB show begins...

Good thing that railing was there to contain all the rocking...

We took a nice long break after the first set and got a chance to hang out with everyone who showed up. I was a bit overwhelmed with everyone I had to say hello to, but it was my favorite part of the night, snapping pics with friends and fans and feeling all the good, happy energy that our music helped cultivate in the room.

BT & Aeb after sharing some stage time at Bart Pico.

BT & George Landress

The BTB <3 Annie!

Kristopher's first BTB show!

Hugging it out with Torna!

For my money second set was the set to see. We played seminal versions of BTB numbers like “Gasoline”, “See In You” and “Stacy The Trailer Park Girl” Here is some footage of “Siren” with special appearance by Aeb:

All in all, it was a damn near perfect show. We made 15% of the bar (which only really came to $90, but it was still nice to get something…even gas $ is better than the great big ZERO bands usually get for playing in LA…) The barstaff and the owner had a lot of nice things to say about us and invited us back. I’d love to see this gig turn into a regular thing, pulling a big crowd every time and growing a scene with new fans showing up and bringing friends. Keep spreading the word true BTB believers and we will keep up our end of the deal and keep rocking great shows. See you next time!

Now of course, I have garageband. Now I record on my mac to track up new musical concepts and to lay down guitars and vocals as demo recordings for these new song ideas. Last week I was in my rehearsal studio working on a new song called “All These Lovely Things”. I got so into the tracking and editing on this song that I did not wrap things up until 2:30am and decided to just lay down and crash at my studio space because I was too tired to drive home.

A few days later I was booked to track acoustic guitar overdubs with my producer at his home studio in the Hollywood hills. I arrived at his place on a drizzly and overcast southern California morning and we spent the better part of the day cutting takes and playing around with rhythm strumming ideas and explored the sonic merits of playing the guitar both with and without a plectrum.

The very next day I made my way to engineering/recording department of the Artist Institute in Santa Monica as a guest artist to record a demo of one of my new songs with a friend,fan, and recording engineer student named Taylor. Taylor and another student named Vickey diligently slaved away in the studio to capture a simple acoustic song of mine called “Bird of Prey” that I wrote on mandolin earlier this year. We had already cut acoustic guitar and vocals and we added drums, percussion, bass and backing vocals to the mix during this session. We had a great time and were very productive.

I’ll be heading back into the studio for an all night session that will last from 8pm to 8am. It seems like I am spending a lot of time in recording studios lately and for that I feel blessed. It is an honor to spend your life doing what you love to do and I give thanks for every opportunity I have to live a creative life.

I’m starting to get excited to record a new album…It was strange to be in the studio cutting takes again…I began to get that “hold on tight, here we go again” feeling as we were laying stuff down. Recording projects tend to take on a life of their own once you begin. We are scheduling the additional tracking on the four songs we completed a few weeks back and will eventually head back into the studio to cut more songs.

I really need to get to writing new material. I have been feeling blocked creatively and recovering from a massive depression sparked by a devastating break up that has left me with minimal motivation. It is unlikely that the person that I miss so badly is wasting any energy thinking of me at all, so I know I had best get on with my life and get back to work being a songwriter and performer. I have a lot of songs inside me and a lot to say right now. A lot of frustration and anger that I have been holding in really needs to come out. I am trying to find a way to say the things I need to say without writing the same broken love songs I’ve written in the past. I do not want to repeat myself…but I need to express myself. I wonder if Robert Smith ever worried about writing too many depressing songs? Maybe I should just write whatever comes out without thinking too hard about it. I can’t hold it back much longer…the levy is about to break.

I will leave you with a live video of a song from my last album…this is another video from our show at Kulak’s. This song is called, “See In You”

I’m finally getting around to cutting up the footage into bite-sized video chunklets…hope you all enjoy the video:

The rehearsals went well and we felt good when we wrapped things up on Friday night after a triumphant four song run through. Early Sat am I met up with my band-mates and we carpooled in The Spirit of 86 to Woodland Hills where we met up with my drummer and the engineer already at work getting drum sounds at Snuffy Walden’s Taylor Made Studios. The studio space was glorious. Isolation rooms and a big engineering room with a massive soundboard. The studio was filled with acoustic and electric guitars and there was a room with a grand piano as well. To make the studio complete, gold records and music scoring awards for film and TV adorned the walls.

Around 1pm, once we were warmed up, and after a few miss patched signal flow issues, we began to cut live takes of the tunes. We cut 7 takes of the first song, experimenting with the ending, adding a jam to the end and extending the song and adding some inspired magic. The next 2 songs came easily…each take sounding better than the previous one. By the time we got to our third song, we nailed that take in the first track and took 2 more takes just for insurance.

We took a long break after that and had a pow wow with the producer. We talked about the state of the music industry and the producer said, “I hope you do not take this the wrong way, but I think your music falls somewhere between R.E.M. and Oasis…” Considering that those two bands are pretty much in the genre that I’ve been aiming for for years, I was pleased with this assessment of my music.

We finished our session early, around 6pm, about 4 hours before the session was scheduled to end and we all left the studio feeling satisfied and productive. We are currently listening to the takes and picking the ones with the most ‘mojo’. We have plans to do additional recording on these ‘live’ takes in the near future and our producer wants to lay down another sessions worth of basic tracks on more songs. Basically, we have the closest thing to a record deal that an indie band can get in 2011. The producer is paying for the studio time and is interested in recording and mixing a full Brian Travis Band album! We are all very excited for future sessions and curious as to how the final product will sound.

For those interested, I will leave you with footage, haphazardly caught with my hand held flip camera, of the session:

The BTB have taken to playing opening sets for other bands, or playing headlining slots at cafes, boutiques and Art galleries. We are not getting paid to play these shows, however we DO NOT HAVE TO PAY anything to play them either. Sometimes we even sell a few CD’s if all the planets align correctly and if Venus is in the 7th house of Jupiter during the spring equinox.

One such “alternative venue” show was our recent appearance at The Chocolate & Art show in Koreatown at The Monk Space on Sept 17th 2011. We played 2 sets of music in front of a very receptive audience in a nice sounding room with all kinds of artwork adorning every inch of wall space. It was a nice setting for us to play our blend of folk-rock to an audience of artists and art appreciators.

Underneath my dusty bowler is a crop of HOT PINK hair…It happened to go well with backdrop of vibrant colored artwork that filled the walls.

Sitting in with us is Aeb. An amazonian beauty who rocks the jazz flute like no other! She sat in with us on a really special version of “Siren” that brought the house down.

This was the 3rd song in our set. A rousing version of ‘Wasteland’ complete with Jason “Ace” Gonzales on Mandolin.

Here is The Brian Travis Band version of “Pirates Cove” by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers from their most recent (and best) CD, Mojo. Pay close attention to the break after the second verse…you will witness a very rare and early attempt at a guitar solos by yours truly. As a songwriter I do not take solos often, however I think I sort of nailed this one!

All in all it was a great night of music and the venue was really appreciative of our contribution to the night. Thanks to Annie Boxell for snapping pics and what would I do without my flip video camera to capture the shows live…(apologies to Mark Wickliff for accidentally cutting him out of the live video shots..when you do the video yourself, it is hard to get it perfect, especially when you have to focus on performing onstage…I just set it up and hit record and did not have the luxury to check the angle of the shot to make sure it caught the whole band. But you can hear mark rocking those drums with authority!)

I hope you enjoy the footage and I hope to see *YOU* at our next show…at an alternative venue of course!