{"id":11235,"date":"2012-03-08T12:41:20","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T16:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/?p=11235"},"modified":"2012-03-08T12:44:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T16:44:00","slug":"john-schmitt-at-rockwood-music-hall-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/08\/john-schmitt-at-rockwood-music-hall-2\/","title":{"rendered":"John Schmitt at Rockwood Music Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"John Schmitt\" href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/johnschmitt\" target=\"_blank\">John Schmitt<\/a> headlined a set at <a title=\"Rockwood Music Hall\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rockwoodmusichall.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rockwood Music Hall<\/a> last night. We used to see John frequently. I knew it\u2019s been a while (with a couple of near misses recently), but I was actually shocked when I looked it up and saw that it was seven months ago. That\u2019s just crazy talk. Glad to have corrected that.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s the get the important stuff out of the way first. Either someone stole John Schmitt\u2019s beard, and a sizable portion of his girth, or we actually saw an impersonator last night (a pretty darn good one if so). Now we can get on with more mundane things, like the music\u2026<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/JohnSchmitt.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"JohnSchmitt\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/JohnSchmitt_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"JohnSchmitt\" width=\"240\" height=\"208\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Since it\u2019s been so long, let\u2019s recap the three things that the <em>real<\/em> John Schmitt has in spades:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Great voice<\/li>\n<li>Fantastic songwriter<\/li>\n<li>Excellent guitar player<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(that\u2019s how I was able to judge the potential impersonator, since he possessed two of those qualities. Clearly, if he was stealing John\u2019s songs, I don\u2019t know if he himself is a good songwriter.) <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wlEmoticon wlEmoticon-winkingsmile\" style=\"border-style: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/wlEmoticon-winkingsmile3.png\" alt=\"Winking smile\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There were a number of firsts (for us) in last night\u2019s set:<\/p>\n<p>John introduced his brand new <a title=\"Banjitar\" href=\"http:\/\/thebanjohut.com\/banjitar_mastercraft_banjo_guita.htm\" target=\"_blank\">banjitar<\/a> (that\u2019s a six-string banjo, tuned like a guitar, that sounds like a banjo). It\u2019s a great idea. Lots of excellent guitar players don\u2019t have the time or inclination to study the banjo, but have a few songs that might benefit from that sound. That\u2019s exactly what John did, to perfection.<\/p>\n<p>John <em>birthed<\/em> two songs publicly (first live performance). Both songs were great. We look forward to hearing them more often and embedding them in our brains like we have the rest of his set list.<\/p>\n<p>John played a solo cover of Cat Stevens\u2019 How Can I Tell You. <strong>Wow<\/strong>! He was choked up introducing the song, because he\u2019s currently in a long-distance relationship and singing this song is all too close to home.<\/p>\n<p>John had a full band plus one guest. I knew it would be a full band show, but I admit to being surprised to see two of the members, as in super-delighted-happy surprised. Left-to-right on stage, followed by the guest:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Matt Simons\" href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/mattsimons\" target=\"_blank\">Matt Simons<\/a> on grand piano, electronic keyboards, and harmony. Surprise <a rel=\"tag\" class=\"hashtag u-tag u-category\" href=\"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/tag\/1\/\">#1<\/a>. We love Matt and we\u2019ll be back at Rockwood on March 31st to see him perform his own stuff, but I didn\u2019t know he\u2019d be supporting John. In addition to being wonderful on the keys (as always), Matt sang a bunch of harmony with John, in particular on Going Back, since <a title=\"Lissa Farquhar\" href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/lissafarquhar\" target=\"_blank\">Lissa Farquhar<\/a> (John\u2019s regular singing partner) was very ill and couldn\u2019t make it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/MattSimons.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"MattSimons\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/MattSimons_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"MattSimons\" width=\"186\" height=\"216\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Quick commercial break (someone has to pay the bills here!). <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wlEmoticon wlEmoticon-winkingsmile\" style=\"border-style: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/wlEmoticon-winkingsmile3.png\" alt=\"Winking smile\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Matt just finished recording a new CD in Nashville. He told me last night that it won\u2019t be available until June. But, in the meantime, he\u2019s sharing bits of it with the world. On his Birthday, he tweeted the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/matt_simons\">Matt Simons ? @matt_simons<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As promised, here&#8217;s some reverse birthday love! It&#8217;s link to download a free song from my new album! Hope you enjoy it!<a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/HJbfld3d\">noisetrade.com\/mattsimons<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If I heard him correctly, next week he\u2019ll be doing the same thing with a second song. I\u2019ve already seen a few musicians tweet that they\u2019ve heard the new CD and are in love with it. I can\u2019t confirm or deny whether I\u2019ve had a sneak peek at it, but if I did, I\u2019m sure it\u2019s fantastic. If I didn\u2019t, then I completely trust the folks that said the same thing. <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wlEmoticon wlEmoticon-smile\" style=\"border-style: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/wlEmoticon-smile4.png\" alt=\"Smile\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/MattSimonsJohnSchmitt.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"MattSimonsJohnSchmitt\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/MattSimonsJohnSchmitt_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"MattSimonsJohnSchmitt\" width=\"240\" height=\"196\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Back to our regularly scheduled programming.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Brian Killeen\" href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/rocknrollbrian\" target=\"_blank\">Brian Killeen<\/a> on electric bass. Brian was surprise <a rel=\"tag\" class=\"hashtag u-tag u-category\" href=\"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/tag\/2\/\">#2<\/a>, also an awesome one. Even though Brian (one of our favorite bassists) played with John the last time we saw him, that too was a <em>fill in<\/em> job for John\u2019s regular bass player, <a title=\"Pasquale Chieffalo\" href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/pasqualechieffalo\" target=\"_blank\">Pasquale Chieffalo<\/a>. Brian was great at that last show, but he was even better last night. Buttery smooth and constantly laying down sophisticated bass lines throughout.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/BrianKilleen1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"BrianKilleen\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/BrianKilleen_thumb1.jpg\" alt=\"BrianKilleen\" width=\"196\" height=\"216\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mike Sutton on drums (still can\u2019t find a good individual link). Mike is John\u2019s regular drummer and he\u2019s done a great job at every show that we\u2019ve seen him play. Clearly, he knows John\u2019s music cold and it shows.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/MikeSutton.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"MikeSutton\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/MikeSutton_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"MikeSutton\" width=\"195\" height=\"216\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Scott Tofte\" href=\"http:\/\/scotttofte.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Scott Tofte<\/a> came up to sing harmony and shake some shakers on two numbers. Beautiful job. He had to consult the lyrics on his iPhone, because he joined John for one of the brand new songs.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/ScottTofte.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"ScottTofte\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/ScottTofte_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"ScottTofte\" width=\"120\" height=\"216\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/ScottTofteShakersJohnSmittBanjitar.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"ScottTofteShakersJohnSmittBanjitar\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/ScottTofteShakersJohnSmittBanjitar_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"ScottTofteShakersJohnSmittBanjitar\" width=\"240\" height=\"196\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the set list:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/SetList6.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"SetList\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/SetList_thumb6.jpg\" alt=\"SetList\" width=\"240\" height=\"183\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I couldn\u2019t stop laughing throughout 7 Drunken Nights.<\/p>\n<p>Lots of familiar faces in the audience, which Lois couldn\u2019t help but <em>document<\/em> for our memories (and now yours). <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wlEmoticon wlEmoticon-smile\" style=\"border-style: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/wlEmoticon-smile4.png\" alt=\"Smile\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/JohnSchmittChadVaccarino.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"JohnSchmittChadVaccarino\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/JohnSchmittChadVaccarino_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"JohnSchmittChadVaccarino\" width=\"222\" height=\"210\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/LinaIanAxelLeivParton.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"LinaIanAxelLeivParton\" src=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/LinaIanAxelLeivParton_thumb.jpg\" alt=\"LinaIanAxelLeivParton\" width=\"240\" height=\"181\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Schmitt headlined a set at Rockwood Music Hall last night. We used to see John frequently. I knew it\u2019s been a while (with a couple of near misses recently), but I was actually shocked when I looked it up and saw that it was seven months ago. That\u2019s just crazy talk. Glad to have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[757,856,650,900,1367,493,1220],"class_list":["post-11235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-2","tag-brian-killeen","tag-john-schmitt","tag-matt-simons","tag-mike-sutton","tag-music","tag-rockwood-music-hall","tag-scott-tofte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11235"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11239,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11235\/revisions\/11239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}