At the Taxi.com Road Rally

I arrived from Ottawa just before noon.  Waiting around at the fragile/oversize baggage claim for my guitar I began meeting others (also waiting for guitars) destined for the Road Rally.  The easy camaraderie was already beginning.  It was a short shuttle to the Westin LAX, the conference hotel.  I checked in and inquired about a Staples store or shopping centre nearby.  The concierge told me that there was one about a mile down the road.  It was a beautiful day (about 31 degrees Celsius or 88 F) and I figured a mile was not too far to walk.  Got my sandals on and baseball cap and set off.  The airport neighbourhood is nothing pretty.  With all the bankruptcies and foreclosures, it made for an even more “scenic” walk.  FIVE miles later, drenched in sweat and dehydrated, I arrived at the Staples store and got what I needed.  Not a taxi in sight, I walked back to the hotel.  I managed to flag down one taxi half way back.  He declined to take me because he wanted to go in the other direction!!

I neglected to mention that when I left the hotel at 12:30, I noticed people already lining up for registration.  The early birds get their pick of the one-on-one mentor sessions.  These sessions last just 10 minutes.  But it is your opportunity to access an industry professional that you may not otherwise ever be able to talk with…let alone for 10 minutes.  Some, it was clear, were hotter picks than others and there were lots of keen Taxi members willing to camp out for hours for the chance to snag one.  Registration was set to begin at 5:30 and I lined up at about 4.  By this time the line snaked through the lobby and out into the parking garage for some distance…only half of what it was to become.  My line mates were friendly and talkative and the time went by relatively quickly.  EVERYBODY, it seemed, was friendly and talkative and interested in networking.

On the Road to Taxi.com Road Rally

It was touch and go for almost a week before the Road Rally.  Let me back up.  Taxi.com is a major on-line A&R service that shops your songs to TV, Film, music libraries etc.  It costs about $300 to join and the annual 3-day conference is included for free.  I joined some months ago and thought it was too good to be true.  But all the forum comments looked really positive and I thought I’d give it a shot.  All it cost me (aside from lost time and income from work) was the plane fare and hotel expenses.  I had a major meeting in Israel the week before and had just 3 days to catch up before setting off to L.A..  My wife returned from Israel with some terrible virus that just wreaked havoc with fever and cough and general unwellness.  I figured that if she didn’t improve, I was going to have to cancel my trip.

Well…that was interesting.  On the one hand I felt guilty for feeling resentful that she might be the reason for my cancelling.  On the other hand, I think I had a secret wish that if I did cancel, I could blame it on someone else.  I would be relieved of having to come down to L.A. alone, not knowing what to expect, vulnerable as usual as any struggling musician and it wouldn’t appear that I had chickened out (no offence to chickens).  I love my wife and only want what is best for her.  But boy, if I’m really honest with myself, what a lot of ugly feelings and thoughts permeate my soul from time to time.  Vulnerable…I never really understood it before.

Life Choices 11

My grandfather on my mother’s side was a drummer.  He had a band called Harry Marshak and his Minstrels of Melody.  They played the Cork Club in Montreal regularly and were, I think, on the radio.  The story goes that my grandmother laid down the law at some point and told him to lose the drums.  He loved her more than he loved the drums.  I don’t remember him ever once complaining about missing playing drums.  Judging from the way he tapped out complex rhythms on our backs as little children, I suspect he wasn’t bad.  He did always say that he was going to write a book.  If only he had the time to set aside to write that book.  But he worked hard (for his brother-in-law) and didn’t get paid that handsomely and just had too much to do…

I loved my grandfather.  He lived to age 90 and died a victim.  He was a victim in life and never had the wherewithal to do what he needed to do.  I’m not advocating that he should have left my grandmother, whom I also loved dearly and who made the best cookies to this day that I have ever had.  But it’s so easy to blame everything in this world on everyone and everything else rather than to say “I need to make the effort to do this thing”.  If you try and fail, well then you’re not a victim.  If you never try at all…If I never try at all (if docweissband never tries at all), well then I have nobody to blame but myself.

Life Choices 9

It seems, though, that it’s not enough just to play music on stage at a gig, or even an open mic.  The audience wants to hear you speak.  It took me a bit to understand this, but once I did, it really came very naturally.  There’s still lots of experimentation.  I know, for instance, that it never works if I make fun of somebody else, but almost always seems engaging if I make fun of myself.  It seems that the more personal a story is, the more responsive the audience is.  I just started collecting experiences that happen to me in the weeks or months prior to a gig…anything that seems quirky, odd, or makes me look foolish.

One such story I told between songs at a docweissband gig was about going to the guitar shop a few days before the show.  The guitar needed an adjustment and the strings had to be removed.  This was an ideal time to change the 9 volt battery inside the guitar body that powers my pickup.  You never want your pickup to conk out during a gig!  It’s impossible to access with the strings on.  So I go ahead and swap out the old battery and, like a good environmentalist, put it in my pocket for proper disposal.  A few minutes later I’m standing at the cash and feel a distinct and increasing heat in my pants pocket.  I realize that the 9 volt battery is sitting next to my keys in the pocket and the keys…being metal…are shorting out the battery…and getting very hot.  Moral of story, think twice before storing keys and 9 volt batteries together in sensitive places.

Life Choices 8

Clearly I had to develop some modicum of ability to play in front of others.  There was (now destroyed by fire) a little coffee house kind of funky place called Rasputin’s where they held an open mic night once a week.  If you were acoustic…this was the open mic to do in Ottawa.  It was very democratic.  Drop your name in the hat before 7:30 and, at 7:30 names were drawn one by one and you got to pen in your name in a time slot of your choice once your card was drawn.  If you were drawn first, you got the pick of the slots.  Last…you got the leftovers.  There was NEVER a shortage of names or empty spots.  There is some strategy to this that I am not really smart enough to calculate.  If you go first, you have to warm up the crowd.  If you go later, you risk following a really good act.

Like an idiot, I started playing there by doing instrumentals.  People like instrumental music, don’t get me wrong.  It’s just not a crowd pleaser when you’re a no-name-they-couldn’t-care-less-about-you act.  Especially when you’re playing something they’ve never heard before.  People want to hear words and be entertained.  Oy.  I sang a few songs like one I wrote for my wife’s birthday (I Just Wanted You To Know…on docweissband.com) and got a polite reception.  At least it wasn’t blank stares.  I still didn’t know I didn’t suck.

Life Choices 6

Then we moved.  To a big old house in a nice downtown neighborhood.  And put the medical practice in the basement of the house.  It was considered brave (or stupid) when we did it.  But it didn’t make sense not to.  I was working in a big group practice with no control over costs and a practice that was increasingly at odds with my partners.  Working out of my home meant huge savings, tax breaks and paying off a mortgage in a few years instead of a few decades.  It also meant less travel.  I spend almost no time in a car.  There’s no commute and, at least for a number of years now, I no longer do hospital work.  Imagine all those minutes adding up to hours that get freed up when you walk down a few stairs to get to work instead of stewing in a car..

When I invested in a new acoustic guitar in 1997, it couldn’t have been more than a day before the first piece came out of my fingers…just a little instrumental.  Then another and another.  My wife bought me a 12-string for one birthday and my first piece with lyrics came out (Freight Train – check it out at docweissband.com).  Slowly but surely the songs kept coming…but what to do with them?

Life Choices 5

To get the ‘doc’ into docweissband, you’ve got to go to medical school…and it’s a killer.  Not just that, but getting into medical school’s a killer.  You’ve got to get top grades and put up with the seedier side of some competing comrades who somehow get old exams to study with and remove certain books from library shelves and may, after all that, be very smart as well.  I remember writing a song after the birth of my first child which was in first year med school.  A song for her.  Playing and writing were fading into the background and that was the last song I wrote (1983) until I wrote a little instrumental piece in 1997.  I worked hard getting decent grades, slogged my way through medical school and then setting up a medical practice, paying back debts, racking up more debts (mortgages are debts people pretend aren’t).

At one point I bought an electric piano that I could play with headphones on so as not to disturb the family early in the morning.  But when you’re up at 5:30, work all day, are on call at night and have very important baths and bedtime stories to read, there just isn’t an ounce of energy left for creativity.  That couldn’t last.

Life Choices 4

I am going somewhere with all of this…stay with me here.  I had to make that choice and it wasn’t difficult at the time.  I was in love (still am!) and really wanted to have children (at the age of 21…got my first one at 27).  Marriage to my love and children and providing for a family and getting the right intellectual stimulation were all incredibly important to me.  I must confess one more thing.  I didn’t know if I was stupid or not.  Seriously.  I grew up in a family of 5 boys and I was the middle, overshadowed by the giant and sometimes intimidating intellects of my 2 older brothers.  They were smart for sure!  But I was so unsettled and unhappy and finally gave up in Grade 10, never to return to that high school (Don Mills Collegiate) with the only memory of school being unhappiness and crappy grades.  There you have it…docweissband leader is high school dropout physician!

I had to prove to myself that I wasn’t stupid.  Not that I didn’t want to go to medical school.  They definitely treat you nicer making a reservation at a restaurant under the name Doctor Weiss.  And I have to admit that medicine is a pretty fantastic career if you don’t mind bodily functions & fluids.  There have GOT to be easier ways to build confidence than going through medical school, but there you have it.

Life Choices 3

It was at that point that I went back East to visit my parents.  In the basement of a friend’s house I met my wife-to-be.  I was coming off a year of being a hermit (so I didn’t talk much at the best of times) and I was struck speechless (at the sight of her) on top of it.  I don’t think I said a word.  Over the course of the next 2 weeks we saw each other through this friend Rene.  I had my ticket to return to Vancouver and got Rene to invite her to go out with us using my departure as an excuse.  Well.  Let me tell you, that was it.  We talked for hours and hours and the bar closed and we continued talking and walking most of the night away (stopping only to pee in a police station…nothing else was open!).  I did not return to Vancouver.

My ambivalence regarding music and need for stimulation and fulfillment was all the more acute when I understood that Debbie wasn’t crazy about the idea of marrying a musician (we just met, but I was marrying this girl…she just didn’t know it yet).  Did I want to be a starving artist?  Did I want to struggle financially and travel constantly?  Could I tolerate constant rejection?  I think, no I know, that musicians (good, like docweissband, and bad) will meet constant rejection at least early in their careers.

Life Choices 2

That was all fine.  But it was a tad lonely, let me tell you.  I wasn’t going to give up, though,  I weighed each new relationship and activity carefully and deliberately…I must have seemed like a total nut.  But I didn’t want to enter into anything that wasn’t going to be healthy and constructive.  Mind you, it wasn’t all that healthy necessarily for my brother to hear piano scales incessantly, back and forth, up and down the keyboard, as I warmed up…often when he was still sleeping.  He was also a smoker which I recognized was not healthy for him or me.  So I would regularly attack him in his sleep (in the morning) to encourage him to quit the evil weed.  It eventually worked.  But I’m sure not because of me.

During this pre-docweissband period I met lots of fellow musicians and looked into the programs available at Berklee School of Music.  I have to confess, I did not find the camaraderie very stimulating intellectually.  While reading music was a struggle and trying to perfect, or at least improve, technique was a challenge, there was no intellectual stimulation for me in the way that I needed it.