05.31.09 | You Get What You Pay For!
DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A JOKE! KEEP READING! FOR REAL RATES, EMAIL ME!

A lot of people ask me what I charge for gigs, and to make it easy, I've decided to post a little blog telling people exactly how much I charge for various services and exactly what you get for them. Here are my regular rates:

One gig, no rehearsal, no travel: $200

One gig, one rehearsal, no travel: $250

Gigs, rehearsals, travel: $300 per show, $50 per 2-hour rehearsal, travel expenses.

If you'd still like to play together but don't feel like you can afford it, check below for the discounted packages. I would love to play on your set, let's make it work!

For $75, you can get: One gig of seven or less songs, during one of which (of your choosing, of course) I will flub a note.

$60 gets you: One gig, seven or less songs, under 45 minutes long, and two flubbed notes. You may choose to have the notes be in the same song or different ones, your call. Just give me some sort of signal.

For $50, you get: One gig, six or less songs to last no more than 40 minutes. The gig will not take place in any location more than four blocks from a subway. Upon your cue or cues, I will flub two notes and play one chord mildly out of tune.

$40: One gig, six songs or less, 40 minutes, 3 blocks max from a subway, a longish string of questionable notes/and or pitches, and a missed entrance.

$30: One gig, five songs, half an hour tops, no subway transfers, a noticeable series of wrong notes in at least two songs, a missed entrance, and one chord palpably out of tune.

$20: One gig to be played no more than three stops from my apartment, four songs, and I must be at home in bed before 11 pm. In addition to a solo that goes nowhere and has at least 12 wrong notes, I will hit three prominent entrances late and out of tune. Or, if you prefer, I can hit a loud distortion pedal at a particularly inopportune moment, like during a really soft ballad or something. Again, your call.

$10: Three songs, same stop as my apartment, in bed by 10. Solos on two out of three songs will be completely inappropriate and characterized by obviously failed attempts at difficult passages of fast notes. Most of the prominent entrances, endings, and unison points will be completely obscured by my out of tune playing, obstreperous belching, and painfully awkward leg movements on stage. If you happen to have any female relatives or significant others in the audiences, I will wink lecherously at them. Should an elderly relative of yours happen to pass close by to where I'm sitting, I will make multiple attempts to play "footsie" and yell "Get me a Pabst, you sultry wildebeest!" In between songs, I will cough loudly, noisily tune my instrument and complain audibly that your guitar is out of tune and that "one of us up here needs some lessons." Immediately after the end of my solo in the last song, I will start to put away my equipment well before you've finished the tune and make sarcastic comments to the audience like, "Isn't he great? Wow, what a song?" while you strum away. Should any of your relatives, friends, or fans come up to me to talk to me after the show, I will again wink lecherously at them regardless of their gender. When I reach home (by 10 pm) I will call or text you to tell you that I am in bed with one or more of your elderly female relatives.

I look forward to working together!

05.06.09 | Nightmares about Gigs, Part 2
In this nightmare, we go beyond my usual phobias of dropping picks or being unable to find my slide (though that's part of it) and delve into new territory. The setting was a New Year's gig with Nation Beat, which from the jump was not going well. First of all, we were playing in a tiny square room, seated in chairs along the wall. About four people were there listening, not really paying attention, the lights were on, and we were playing terribly. We launched into an up-tempo forro, "Cabeca Feita," and for the life of me I could not remember how to play the intro. Not only that, but instead of just letting it be, everyone kept stopping and saying, "wait, wait, something's wrong...do that again...that's not right, is it?" I was on the spot and could not figure out how to get these notes to fit correctly in time.

After that debacle, Scott called the tune "Lickety Split," a second line groove that always gets people dancing. I started it, and about two bars into the intro, the vibe at the party was definitely improving. At this point--I kid you not--Barry White stands up and starts dancing, clapping, and singing. Unfortunately, he's singing "Feel Like Makin' Love" instead of the song we're playing. We start trying to follow along, but I couldn't remember the song right and he's singing it really strangely, so it's horrible. Eventually he turns to me and says something like, "Nah, man. No." At this point everything unravels--I can't figure out the chords (even though I know the song), Barry White thinks I can't play, and then--my slide disappears. All of a sudden, it's gone. Frantically I start searching in my pockets, which are full of slides, but none of them are the right one. There are dobro bars, pens, weird little things shaped like bullets, these strange ones that look like speedskates, but not the Dunlop slide I use. Mercifully, I woke up soon after that, leaving only a fleeting afterimage of a scowling Barry White and an avalanche of metal slides.

03.21.09 | Nightmares about Gigs
I tend to have nightmares about gigs fairly often. I'm not sure if other musicians have them too, but I thought it might be amusing (to me, at least) to write down some details about them. Typically the nightmare revolves not around my playing but around all the other aspects of performance, such as plugging in cables, getting on stage at the right time, strings breaking, picks and slides disappearing, and instruments turning into objects other than what they are.

Last night at around 4 am was a doozy. I dreamt that I was on a gig with someone I used to play with a lot, who asked me to do a show again after a number of years. I had forgotten all the music, so I was kind of following along and not really doing too well. Suddenly I looked at my lap steel and it had become a big piece of orange-yellow rock on a keyboard stand. It still played the right notes when I dragged my bar over it, but I was really upset that my bar was being destroyed by the stone. It also was really wobbly, and I was worried that it was about to fall off the stage.

That's happened, by the way, on more than one occasion. I am a clumsy guy in general, and I have learned to prepare for this when I play live: I not only have picks all over my setup--in between the strings of the guitar, on the stand, in my pocket--but I also keep an extra tone bar for my lap steel on stage just in case--and yes, it's happened--the one I'm using flies out of my hand and rolls off of the stage.

I'm sure there'll be another nightmare soon enough, so stay tuned!

09.23.08 | Farm Aid 2008!
Hi,

So, I mentioned that Nation Beat was slated to perform with Willie Nelson. This past weekend, we did so, in front of an audience of some 20,000 at Farm Aid 2008. Not only that, we were televised live on Direct TV to a nationwide audience. To put the icing on the cake of an amazing day, Willie opened the show by introducing us to the audience and giving us possibly the best endorsement I have ever heard. Check the video below to see what I'm talking about, and to watch us playing Blue Eyes Crying the Rain together. There's much more to write about what's going on inside my head due to all this, but I'll save that for when I've muddled through it a bit. Right now I just want to say thanks to everybody that was involved in getting me here, there is no way I could have done this alone. Thanks, and I'll try to keep making you proud.

Watch the video! Listen to Willie's beautiful guitar work...totally unique, people should be trying to sound like him instead of the usual people that we all try to sound like.

See you soon,
Raphael

08.26.08 | Nation Beat to perform with Willie Nelson
Hey everyone,

Just wanted to let you know about an exciting event I have coming up. On September 20th, Nation Beat, a project I've been involved in for a long time, will be playing at Farm Aid with Willie Nelson. And I do mean with Willie Nelson--the man himself will perform two songs with us on stage. The concert also features amazing artists such as Dave Matthews, Kenny Chesnet, John Mellencamp, and one of my all-time favorite artists--Neil Young. I am very excited and will be sure to put up lots of pics of the day when I get back from Massachusetts!

02.28.08 | New York Singer-Songwriters
Lately I've been playing a lot of gigs as a sideman to some really great singer-songwriters. In particular, I've played a few gigs with Neil Nathan, who has some great stuff out, and just recently began playing with Fergus McCormick, who has a beautiful voice and just put up a wonderful new Cd. Check out the links!