{"id":8954,"date":"2011-10-06T13:31:22","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T17:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/?p=8954"},"modified":"2011-10-06T13:32:29","modified_gmt":"2011-10-06T17:32:29","slug":"martin-rivas-at-rockwood-music-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/06\/martin-rivas-at-rockwood-music-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Rivas at Rockwood Music Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

We would have come to see Martin Rivas<\/a> at Rockwood Music Hall<\/a> anyway, but we were already there because of the set before. Martin happened to be a guest performer on that set as well (Sierra Noble<\/a>) so we got a 1.5 dose of Martin last night.<\/p>\n

\"MartinRivas\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been coming to Martin Rivas shows for two years now. They range from large Rock\/Soul extravaganzas to solo shows, with a number of configurations in between. Even the solo ones can vary dramatically (from Campfire shows which are largely request-driven covers to Martin\u2019s original music only).<\/p>\n

Last night was solo only and was special in a number of ways. While Martin played a few crowd favorites, the majority of the set was new material that is destined to be recorded on his upcoming CD (release sometime in the first half of 2012). A few of those were so new that Martin had to refer to the lyrics. One was so new I believe Martin said the lyrics had been written this week!<\/p>\n

Sitting in the audience at the bar, about five feet directly behind me was Alex Wong<\/a>. Alex is producing Martin\u2019s CD and the two of them just returned from a retreat upstate NY (in the devastated Schoharie County) where they were planning the CD, a process I\u2019ve heard termed pre-production<\/em>.<\/p>\n

During a number of the songs, I tried (or rather found myself) thinking \u201cwhat\u2019s going on in Alex\u2019s mind now in terms of how will he produce this song?\u201d. Meaning, Martin was delivering it to us raw<\/em>, accompanied by an acoustic guitar, but we\u2019ll hear something quite different wen it\u2019s all put together in the studio (or so I was thinking).<\/p>\n

Last Friday, Martin complained that he strained his voice singing with Greg Mayo<\/a>. It couldn\u2019t have healed up much better or quicker, because Martin\u2019s voice was spot on last night. His guitar play was fine (as it always is).<\/p>\n

\"MartinRivasGuitar\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But, in the two years that we\u2019ve been seeing Martin regularly, he did something last night which I don\u2019t believe we\u2019ve ever seen before (of course, at my age, I space out a lot, so I would not be shocked to find out I\u2019m wrong!). Well into the set, Martin put down the guitar and went over to the grand piano and played two consecutive songs on it.<\/p>\n

\"MartinRivasPiano\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first was the song I mentioned above, with the lyrics being hot off the presses (I think it\u2019s Believe in Love). He said that he played the song for Alex (presumably just the melody\/chords) and told him that he didn\u2019t think it would make it onto the CD. Alex insisted that Martin was wrong, and that it needed<\/em> to be on the CD! Alex was right, in particular with Martin\u2019s freshly minted words!<\/p>\n

The next song on the piano was Pray for the Impossible, one of the long-time crowd favorites (with everyone singing along on the chorus). Still, I don\u2019t recall him ever playing it on the piano before.<\/p>\n

Martin finished up with a very upbeat song that most of us clapped to throughout. Unless something forces a change in our plans, we\u2019ll be seeing Martin again on Saturday, 10\/15\/11 at Rockwood 2, 9pm. That will most likely be a full-band show.<\/p>\n

This set list was written in tiny letters on the corner of one of Martin\u2019s Lyric sheets. Rotated and blown up for your pleasure. \"Winking<\/p>\n

\"SetList\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We would have come to see Martin Rivas at Rockwood Music Hall anyway, but we were already there because of the set before. Martin happened to be a guest performer on that set as well (Sierra Noble) so we got a 1.5 dose of Martin last night. We\u2019ve been coming to Martin Rivas shows for […]<\/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":[483,513,1367,493],"class_list":["post-8954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-2","tag-alex-wong","tag-martin-rivas","tag-music","tag-rockwood-music-hall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8954","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=8954"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8956,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8954\/revisions\/8956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}