Archive for the ‘Music’ Category
June, the Wedding Season! A Few Tales…
It’s been a very hectic & busy June for Steve and I. The main reason? It’s wedding season! Love is blooming and making itself known all around us.
Steve, being a professional bass player, has been kept very busy being hired for weddings across the state, and beyond. One of the bands he plays with, Marmalade Hill, gets frequent super-fancy wedding gigs through the summer, many of them in Sun Valley, Idaho… a 5 hour drive away.
These gigs sporadically began in April, and he’s spent a couple weekends on the road with Marmalade Hill playing a Friday Night at Whiskey Jaques, then a wedding the next day, to return home on Sunday. But this month it’s been almost EVERY weekend that we’ve had a wedding.
Wedding season began for me on Memorial Day, where I took the 2 hour drive north to Logan, Utah to photograph the wedding of my sister’s childhood friend, Kristin to her boyfriend Corey. Their wedding was held at a park, and the weather was just perfect. My sister was also a bridesmaid, and I had a lot of fun taking photos that day!
The first weekend in June was our one and only *free* weekend. We celebrated my 32nd birthday by having a BBQ with friends on Saturday, then on Sunday (my actual Birthday), rowing on Oquirrh Lake in the morning, doing some shopping and relaxing in the afternoon, and going to a family dinner that evening.
The next weekend was the wedding of my dear friend Cindi to her longtime boyfriend Jason. Their wedding took place in Moab, Utah at a place called the Red Cliff’s Lodge, which overlooks the Colorado river rushing along giant red rock cliffs. We left early Saturday morning to get down there before the wedding began. I toted along all my photography gear… (because really… I can’t go to a wedding without it), and went a little crazy taking photos, while trying to stay out of the way of the photographer she had hired, the beautiful & talented Sarah Drown of Sparkle Photography. Their ceremony was one of the most emotional and touching I’d ever witnessed. We had a fabulous time!
After Cindi & Jason’s wedding on Saturday, we crashed at a hotel on main street in Moab. We woke the next morning ready to explore. We had planned to get together with all our friends and hike Delicate Arch in Arches National Park. The weather was scattered thunderstorms that day, though, so most people opted out of the hike. The only ones who ended up going were me, Steve, Sommer and Mike.
It was such a weird day, temperature wise. It would rain, then the sun would come out, then go back to rain again. I opted for pants instead of shorts, because cold breezes kept ripping through the canyon, and I really really hate being cold. Halfway into the hike, though, I really regretted the pants. Part of the Delicate Arch trail is a huge slickrock hill. It’s completely exposed… there is no shade or trees at all, and the sun absolutely beats down like you can’t imagine. I was so hot I was tempted to just take the pants OFF and hike in my knickers. 
That area is just so gorgeous, though. I kept stopping to take photos. I could take photos in Southern Utah for hours and hours and never get tired of it.
After a long day of hiking, Steve and I packed up and drove home. We got home Sunday late evening, and pretty much crashed.
The very next weekend, I didn’t have to work anywhere… but Steve had a wedding gig he was playing in Sun Valley. This one was for some College Football star (whose name has slipped my mind) and it was some big fancy shindig. Steve and his band left early Saturday morning to make the drive and get there in time to set up by 2pm.
That evening, just as the wedding had started, I get a call from Steve. “You’ll never guess who I just spent the last 10 minutes talking to,” he said. “Guess. Someone famous.” Obviously, that’s too broad of a clue. I had no idea. So he just told me.
“Rush Limbaugh.”
Auuugh! Gross! I proceeded to laugh and ask questions… we both absolutely LOATHE that man. Steve has a real knack for only running into celebrities he hates. [Tangent: last month his band ran into Kobe Bryant while the Lakers were in town to play the Jazz in the playoffs. End Tangent.] Rush was a guest at the wedding… a friend of the Bride’s father.
“Why can’t I run into someone cool, like Jeff Bridges or something,” Steve asks. Then he sent me this phone pic. Rush is the disgruntled looking dude in the gray suit.
So Steve and his band spent the whole evening chatting with Rush on and off. Despite how much we dislike him, he said he’s perfectly nice in person. I had to text my Pop, who’s a Rush Limbaugh fan, and he told me to have Steve tell Rush that my Dad is a total “dittohead.” So Steve did. Rush liked that. (I guess a dittohead is someone who loves Rush’s show.) Steve also enlightened us all with a few fun observations. Rush is a horrible dancer, but will not hesitate to be in the front of the crowd dancing anyway. Rush is a chain smoker. He smoked cigarettes allllll night long back to back. (When Steve asked him why he wasn’t smoking a cigar, Rush told him they ‘take too long’.)
And finally… Rush is totally deaf. One hundred percent deaf! He has a cochlear ear implant that allows him to hear at all. He told the band that if he takes it out he can’t hear a single thing. Dan, one of the members of the band, being a total smartass replied, “Well, can you still hear YOURSELF talk?!”
Everyone laughed, but the joke went right over Rush’s head. He replied. “Yeah! I can hear myself.” Hah! [Another tangent: Dan is also the member of the band that said something so offensive in the microphone at the bar when they met Kobe Bryant, it caused Kobe & his entourage to storm out of the bar. But that's a story for another time!]
Steve got home that weekend late Sunday night. Again, exhausted, he crashed and got ready for another week of work.
Then, finally, to wrap up the weddings of June, last weekend I traveled to Moab again to shoot the wedding of Angela and Chris, the cute couple whose engagement photos I took in a lavender field last summer. Their wedding also took place at Red Cliffs Lodge… the same as Cindi & Jason. I was glad, because I was now familiar with the spot, and knew just how to prepare. I took Lindsay with me as my photo assistant. Steve had yet ANOTHER wedding he was playing on Saturday, but in Lehi. So again, we had to spend the weekend apart working at weddings.
Lindsay and I left early Saturday morning. We made great time and got to Moab with plenty of time to spare. We checked into our hotel, walked around the shops, and stopped to get ice cream and cupcakes. After filling up on sweets, we got dressed for the wedding and made the short drive up scenic UT-128 to the lodge.
Angela & Chris’ wedding was phenomenal! We started shooting photos at 3:30pm, and didn’t stop until after 10:30pm. Needless to say, I took thousands of photos, and my hand was totally cramped by the end of the day, but it was so worth it! Angela & Chris hired the band Great American Taxi to play their wedding… which featured the lead singer from Leftover Salmon. The band was just AWESOME and they played under the clear starry sky with a full moon. They also had a campfire set up, and even a fire thrower. Those two sure know how to throw a party!
I’m still working on editing the photos from that wedding, so I don’t have any to share here yet. But hopefully this week I’ll have them done and up on my Flickr and Portfolio site for all to see! They’re some of the best photos I’ve ever taken, I think!
Now, it’s July. And, with a sigh of relief… we’re finally relaxing. *whew!*
Yann Tiersen is Coming to Salt Lake!
I adore music… my life would be utterly empty without it. However, I’m not always the biggest fan of live shows. Blame it on dating far too many musicians and therefore sitting through entire sets in one too many smoky bars, or maybe it’s the fact that I’m always the 5 foot tall chick in the crowd listening to the band, and staring at peoples backs unable to see over the crowd.
Basically, it takes a lot to get me to go to a show these days. I have to really love the artist.
Well, my brothers twitter today informed me of what just might be one of the best concerts I’ll ever see. Next month Yann Tiersen is coming to concert here in Salt Lake! All the way from France… to the Urban Lounge of all places!
In case you’ve never been there, I’ll describe it for you. It’s a smallish dark warehouse of a room with black painted walls and a bar in the corner, a dance floor in the middle, and a typical 3 foot stage. Perfect for local bands. (In fact, Steve has played there dozens and dozens of times with several different bands…) It’s a bit dirty and dingy… definitely not the place I’d picture Yann Tiersen performing! But it is small and intimate, which should make for an amazing show.
Yann Tiersen, in case you didn’t know, is the composer who did the Amelie Soundtrack. That soundtrack is haunting and beautiful and an absolute classic. It’s one of my very favorite albums of all time. I always pictured Yann to be some old guy… but he isn’t! He’s in his late 30s!
In searching for information about his tour, I found this article which made me even more excited. Here’s what it has to say about him:
Guillaume Yann Tiersen is a French musician and composer known internationally for composing the score to the Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie Amélie.His music is recognized by its use of a large variety of instruments in relatively minimalist compositions, often with a touch of either European classical music or French folk music, using primarily the piano, accordion or violin together with instruments like the melodica, xylophone, toy piano, ondes martenot, harpsichord and typewriter.
Typewriter?! Oh man this is gonna be good. Then I went on to read a recap from someone who has seen him perform live…
He began his set on grand piano – and his piano pieces are rarely other than delightful. What wasn’t obvious from listening to his albums was instantly so here – it isn’t someone playing melodica or accordion with him as he tinkles the ivories. Oh no. He plays both instruments at the same time.
After each track, rapturous applause greeted him as he shifted between piano, melodica, accordion, violin, viola, bass, guitar and even vocals. A rare chance was afforded to the audience to hear a solo viola piece, Qu’En Reste-t-il? from L’Absente, in which at any moment sparks could have flown from the instrument as Yann fiddled for all he was worth. Here was a man making electricity spark from an acoustic instrument before our very eyes. His playing was enough to make members of his audience weep at its beauty.
Wow. I simply cannot wait. So on April 25th, you’ll find me weeping and breathless in a dark corner of The Urban Lounge, to be sure.
Steve’s Latest Gig
Hi everyone! It was an excellent Christmas, which I’ll sum up with pictures & videos very soon in a little movie I’m working on, but I wanted to first post this movie of Steve playing with Ryan Hiller on the 26th at The Spur in Park City.
Ryan is a musician / songwriter from San Diego, but is originally from Utah, so when he comes here to visit he usually books a few shows with his “Utah” band, Steve and drummer Brian Thurber. They are absolutely dynamic when they play together, and whats truly amazing is they sound this spectacular even when they only rehearse one time for a couple hours before a gig. Each of them individually are so amazing, they just make it work, and sound like total Pros. I wish Ryan came into town more often so I could hear them play all the time. (Or maybe we should move to sunny San Diego? Hmmm…)
Here they are covering Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe”.
Ryan Hiller Band @ The Spur from Jenny Bauman on Vimeo.
