Gearing Up for New Year's Eve

The Swinging Orangutangs have been woodshedding for weeks for our show on New Year's Eve. Today, December 30, was filled with lyrics gathering, set-list finessing, guitar string changing, bikini waxing, and gear loading. The van is groaning from the load of amps, speakers, monitors, guitars, and heavy-duty pennywhistles.

The van is already loaded. Normally the activity of equipment load-in and load-out conjures rainstorms. Not today. Is that bad or good?

Vinnie's fingers rarely leave his hands when he plays the keyboards.

Drummer Steve listens carefully to a song we're learning.

The pain of practice often calls for some painkiller, as bass player Marty demonstrates.

Zick the Mistress of the Lyrics organizes, copies, collates.

On Tuesday night I went gig clothes shopping for the boys in the band. At a local El Cheapo clothes outlet I found matching white shirts with blue polkadots and almost matching ties. Steve, Vinnie, Marty and I will all wear dark blue suits. We'll look swank--maybe not Hilary Swank--but certainly swanker than we normally look. Zick the Band Chick also scored a gig outfit that will complement the duds of her sidemen.

The official uniform of The Swinging Orangutangs.

I'll head to the hotel to play my normal Sunday morning jazz gig and then will spend the day setting up, tuning up, napping, and doing my pre-gig ritual of primal-scream yoga and Tuvan throat singing. Then I will fill my bandmates' individual brandy snifters with their chosen color of M&Ms, place them in each dressing room, check the Green Room spread, and we will be fully ready2rock.

Squint your eyes, There's a secret message in these song titles from our actual NYE set list.

I am really looking forward to this show. We're debuting a lot of new material, including some originals, and several completely knock-out covers (see: Burnin' Down the House our first song after the stroke of midnight). Among the bands/performers whose music we'll be covering are: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Marley, Talking Heads, Ryan Adams, Wilco, Lucinda Williams, Tracy Chapman, Sublime, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, John Mooney, Sonny Landreth, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Beck, John Prine, War, Jem, The Cure, Cheryl Wheeler, Steely Dan, The English Beat, Rod Stewart, The Violent Femmes, Santana, Fleetwood Mac, The B-52s, Tony Joe White, Bruce Cockburn, Cyndi Lauper, Albert Collins, Richard Thompson, Bonnie Raitt, Bad Company, The Grateful Dead, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Wilson Pickett, The Classics IV, Rufus Thomas, and Modern English, among others.

I'm sure I'll have a post-gig post or two but that'll have to wait until next year.

Hope y'all can make the scene. You'll dig it if you do.

Oh, and New Year's Day we'll start our 2007 birding year list off with European starling in the hotel parking lot.