Whew!
Well, it’s been an eventful summer, filled with all kinds of exciting opportunities, new places, new people, and, most importantly, new music! I’m very happy to say that my new group, Forum, has our demo finally online. In addition to finding it on the homepage of this site, you can also check it out at http://www.forumtheband.bandcamp.com. This is the product of a summer’s worth of rehearsals, investing in recording gear, songwriting, and actual recording. On the track “Good Grace,” we feature a great guest singer, Chelsea Dews. She really brought some awesome female energy and rock vocals to the table and we are extremely grateful and can’t wait to work/play with her again!
In other news, I’ve been playing around town at mainly two venues: The Big Bang Piano Bar, located on Broadway right in the heart of Downtown Nashville, and Nero’s Grill, a classy comfort-food bar and restaurant with a piano and an auspicious clientele! One day I stumbled in to grab some food, looked in the corner and beheld a bespectacled Australian man playing piano and singing classic rock tunes. Bedazzled, I was introduced to him by Robert Frye, a local event producer who frequents the bar. Turns out Andrew and I share a common love for both popular music and jazz, and since then we’ve been sharing the Wednesday night bill at Nero’s as a “one piano, two players” act! Very fun, especially when we share the piano bench (I’m sure anyone who’s seen us do our thing knows what I mean)…
The Big Bang, Nashville’s Piano Bar, is a quintessential…well, piano bar with lots of sing-along, clap-along, Bachelorette-serenading, toasting, roasting, and general romping. It’s always fun to pick up a shift there or to sub for one of the other great players from time to time, who include Eddie Thompson, Justin Nault, and Geoff Smith. If you’re out and about this coming Tuesday (9/17), check me out for Happy Hour from 6:30-8:30!
Almost forgot to mention, last Tuesday, Forum played three songs at Kimbro’s Songwriter Night…which was awesome. Kimbro’s Picking Parlor is a fantastic music venue in Franklin, TN where local songwriters and bands come to play music, network, and hang. We followed the unrivaled Kristin Larkin, who just had her Kickstarter for her new EP successfully funded. We played three originals to an incredibly receptive crowd who accurately described our music as a cross between Weather Report, Steely Dan, and James Taylor. Yay.
Let’s see, what else…OH! I’ve also been hanging out/jamming with drummer extraordinaire John Alvey who also lives in Franklin and who does quite a bit of teaching and playing around the Nashville area. It’s just been a lot of fun to sit around, eat Zatarain’s Red Beans and Rice, and listen to John Coltrane and Horace Silver in their avant-garde stages.
I also wanted to share some pics of this super-cool Ashram place that my buddy Brent Shaw and I visited last Friday… people from all over the world visit it to meditate and to participate in the workshops there. It has the largest meditation dome in the midwest, which I forgot to take a picture of (doy!), but yeah, still some cool stuff.
Anyhow, I think that’s all for now. Thanks for reading and if you haven’t already, SUBSCRIBE!
Talk soon,
-Pierson
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WEEKLY POST SCRIPTUM
I went out to Foobar last night as part of my established ritual of going out every night, and there was this CRAZY band playing there. They had a couple of guitar players, a bass player, and a drummer, and I think everyone except one of the guitar players was wearing a mask… they also had some ardent followers jump around the room and rile people up… at one point they just started piling the drum set, microphones, cables, and guitars on one of the dudes in the band (actually, I’m not exactly sure if he was in the band, could have been some random dude). Anyway, I couldn’t resist posting a couple pics on here for your enjoyment:
Only in Nashville, LOL. Hope you enjoyed that! 🙂
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