Sunday, June 29, 2008

little nudges

My dad's best friend from high school was named Kevin, and he was an excellent musician - the kind of person who would get a three part harmony going with you, him, and an outboard motor. Although he didn't play music for a living, I think he really would have loved to be able to. We used to play together all the time, just sit around with acoustics and sing Neil Young songs until it got dark. He died almost ten years ago, and I was very sad, and I missed him a great deal.

Thankfully, his ghost keeps track of me, via: two songs I hear on the radio when I need them ("Old Man" and "Ain't No Sunshine," in case you were wondering); dreams I have from time to time; a spooky recording of him singing with my mom and dad turning up just when I was getting started in New York, you know, etc. My brother and I went to record at my uncle's studio yesterday, and I looked up and saw this:


Kevin's is the middle signature - my uncle likes to have people sign the walls when they come to record.

Whenever I need a little boost; a little encouragement not to give up on my biggest music dreams; whenever I think, "Oh, I'll just start my own popsicle company instead" - Kevin gently smacks me from beyond the grave.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Pizzas we have loved...

"The Puttanesca"


As the title suggests, these are some pizzas we have eaten and loved recently...

"The midnight"
The secrets are: use the tiniest amount of very good sauce possible; make sure your oven is really hot (500 F); use many different toppings but not too large a quantity of any one; use a little less cheese than you think you should. Make sure your crust has a little edge, or the cheese will run off the sides of the pizza and burn up on the pan.

In other news, both versions of the song you heard here the other day are now available for download. One third of the proceeds will be donated to Mercy Corps, a really well organized and effective charity. If the little song widget in the upper right of the blog isn't working, you can download the songs over here.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

It's Not Really a Dichotomy.

This morning, we weeded our lovely little garden plot.


Then we walked into town, had chicken salad sandwiches, and whiled away the hottest hours of the day at the childrens' library, populating and destroying building-block towns.

This afternoon, I uploaded this broken stereo remix of the trading nothing song:


Anglo American Blues - BrokenS by Sarah LeMieux and Peter Adamso
Fandalism Free MP3 Hosting





Now we're going to the grocery store to buy garbage bags and flour. It's more of a continuum, really.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Fruit of the interwebs.

So, if this lil' java app works, here's the song (you remember, I wanted the painting that the guy who was trading nothing was trying to trade, so I wrote an instrumental and whipped it overseas to the guy who wrote the words and sang the vocal and so on...)

I believe we will be attempting to sell downloads at some point. Check your pockets.

In any case. "The Anglo-American and World Recession Blues," music, all instrumentation, production and backing vocals by yours truly; lyrics, lead vocal and melody by Peter Adamson of England. Licensing inquiries welcome. Composition registered with ASCAP, June 2008.

The Anglo American and World R by Sarah LeMieux and Peter Adamso
Fandalism Free MP3 Hosting

Beach Week

Wednesday and Thursday of this past week (before I remembered that my family was renting a beach house in the town I grew up in for Friday, Saturday and Sunday) we spent all day at the beach in our town. It's almost eerily idyllic - all healthy, pleasant children racing after fat puppies; silver-haired ladies gracefully doing the breaststroke; middle-aged men laughing heartily in canoes. My town is like a postcard for a turn of the century (19th, not this last one) family resort. But not ritzy and irritating - just the barest whiff of Sag Harbor, not even. We don't even have a bar and grill. Just two delis, a playground, a beach, four art galleries and the library.

Anyways. Friday and Saturday we went down to the town I grew up in - another weathered, Connecticut beach town, although this one has been ruined by fanciness and commuters and the humongous Victoria's Secret display on the corner. My mother's whole family was there - her six brothers, plus their wives, girlfriends and children. A wonderful, vibrant, casual, funny, mildly tipsy collection of excellent people. My little lady had a total blast playing with all her cousins, especially the big girls. And I got some nice mental space and adult socializing time, thank God. I also got to revisit the scene of my youth, which brings up a nice melange of contrasting feelings.




Thursday, June 19, 2008

The recital I was telling you about...



I really enjoyed doing this with Noah. He wrote the song, and worked out the arrangement in garageband, and then asked me to accompany him on it for his senior voice recital. During the rest of which I was totally holding back the tears - Noah managed to choose all excellent songs from shows I did in my misspent youth (Godspell, I'm talking about you) and performed them with great skill and feeling. Thankfully he had the foresight to bring boxes of tissues, which he distributed about midway through.

I also really enjoyed the hummus, five kinds of fancy cheese, chocolate cake, crudites, Prosecco, cheesecake, rugelach and coffee that they had at the reception following :)

Metapizza.

Yesterday we had an absolute jewel of a summer vacation day.

We spent the entire morning at the beach in our town, which is absolutely gorgeous, not taking any pictures (of course). There are granite steps leading down from the seawall into the water, a la Venice, which I find very unsettling for some deep-seated psychological reason. Of course the little one loved them and we sat on them for about 20 minutes with our feet in the water. Then some local baby hooligans came running up like fury and threw themselves off the seawall like lemmings. Ah, youth.

After that we made this castle:
And then we turned this dough (from this recipe):

Into this pizza.
While reading this book:

Oh yes, indeed.

Hopefully today when dad comes for his visit I can little red hen it and finish the six career things I have flying around in the air like racquetballs.


Friday, June 13, 2008

So, this is a problem

My friend Julia forwarded this to me this morning.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Decathaday.

This is a post I wrote last Thursday and never had time to publish...


Morning:

Woke up, had yogurt, gardened. Ate the first sweet, crunchy, fresh peas from our garden. Laundry folded, baths taken, domesticity everywhere.

Afternoon:

Very [challenging, rewarding, professionally satisfying, neat] recording session with this guy, who works with my friend and is really quite good -

Afternoon (2):

Out the window, I notice uniformed men randomly spraying chemicals on my spinach and cilantro. I say, "hey, not the garden!" and etc., and find out it's herbicides and pesticides. They say if the cilantro isn't dead by tomorrow, it's still safe to eat, and they'll watch out for the rest of our food. I call my landlord. I say, "heads up next time, please?" and etc.

Afternoon (3):

We continue our recording sess-

Afternoon (4):

I slather the little lady with sunscreen and send her out for her visit with Dad, bearing extra clothes, sand toys, three specific dolls and a pocket full of kisses.

Afternoon (5):

-ion.

I am really looking forward to hearing how it turned out. And cashing the check. But mostly the music part, of course. Of course.

Afternoon (6):

The little lady and her dad return, loudly. We decide to call the session.

Evening:

I drive the little lady to see her Dad play country blues at a Mexican restaurant. I idly wonder if the tomatoes on our nachos are riddled with salmonella.

Evening (2):

I return seven phone calls. We go and spend a gift card at the drugstore. Woozy, I buy some almonds and a vitamin water and some kind of women's magazine to revive myself.

Evening (3): In progress. The little lady is doing some kind of water experiment in the bathroom while I blog.

Perhaps I should go investigate that.

Update: She was washing her tummy.

:)

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Communication

My Darling Child: "Momma? Where did you get the soft, golden toilet paper?"

Me: ::thinking?::

MDC: "When you made me?"

Me: ::?::

MDC (thinks, "my poor, foolish mother"): "Where did you get the soft gol-den toi-let pa-per that you made me from?"

Me: ::lightbulb:: "Tissue. Your body has soft tissues. Not like toilet paper. Like skin."

MDC: ::?::

Monday, June 9, 2008

On Task


If I had photoshop for my current OS (oh, frabjous day!) I'd probably get even less songwriting done.

Friday, June 6, 2008

Text only.

Sorry. I usually like to dress up my posts with some zazzy pictures or video, but I got nothin'.

I drove about 5 hours round trip last night and got really entertainingly lost in Boston for probably about a half an hour - I saw Fenway! And I was like, "hey, Fenway! Crap! Fenway!" - and then I played about 20 minutes worth of music at the fairly subdued gala fundraiser for the Art Monastery.

Worth noting:

I wore my prom dress, which I bought in 1997, which looks better on me now, HA!

The Boston police give very good directions and were extremely courteous, and called me ma'am (possibly something to do with the prom dress).

Serious hors' d'oeuvres - marinated olives and goat cheese, asparagus and prosciutto, fancy things on skewers, m&m's in a dish...

Also, due to a strange convergence of life elements (my best friend from high school and her mother, my musician selfhood, the unfamiliarity of Boston, hors' d'oeuvres) I got the shaky-hands, sweaty-brow, paranoid stage fear for the first two or three minutes of my set. On the one hand, unpleasant; unusual for me - and on the other hand, pleasantly personal-growth inducing. I talked myself through it and played well in spite of it, or possibly because of it. Ever since I hid in the bathroom when it was my turn for karaoke the summer I was ten, it has been my mission in life to kick the jitters.

In other news, it was the last day of school today, and my last day being my kid's teacher (for the forseeable academic future, anyway). My feelings, in a nutshell: "Whew! Awww. Sheesh. Euuuoo. Whew! Hmmm...awww. Sigh, sniff. Whew!"

Still processing, really. Time has been passing awfully quickly lately.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Montastic!

photo courtesy the art monastery

Even though it is suddenly the last week of school before summer break, and even though tomorrow is actually the second to last day of school, and the second to last continuous day of one of the more intensive years of effort in my life, I'm driving 5 round-trip hours to Boston to sing 15 minutes worth of music at a fundraiser for this art monastery.

I'm hoping that as a result of the quantum inseparability principle, this will result in:

a) me and the child being generally showered with blessings (although actually, we really are. Awww. ) and/or

b) us getting to spend some lovely organic time eating delicious Italian things and lying down in hammocks in Umbria.

I'm gonna try and snag some video. I'm also gonna try and cram myself into a fancy dress. Get the crowbar.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Random red fizz

I don't recall submitting to this, but I'm featured on the front page of Red Fizz today. Some of the comments are nice, some are slightly...NSFW...still, overall, I'm getting good ratings.

Imagine.

Monday, June 2, 2008

So, I don't know if you knew this,


...but I've become involved with a fiendish plot to, um, get a lovely painting. And promote myself. I traded Andrew Henderson a song for the painting you see me snuggling above (it's now hanging on my bedroom wall). It's called "Lotus," by UK artist Evelyn Kharag, and the moment I saw its blurry, pixellated likeness on tradingnothing.com, I knew I had to have it. Because I like lotuses. Loti. Lotusi? Those flowers.

In any case, it is just breathtaking in real life, and completes my bedroom wall like Renee Zellwiger in Jerry Maguire. Andrew has now traded my instrumental blues track to the man on the left (Andrew is, deductively, the man on the right), in exchange for fancy rock memorabilia.


Peter (on the left) is going to sing on the track and send it back to me to mix in and fancy up. Behold the power of Web 2.whatever-it-is-now. Of course, I will let you all know how it goes down.