Carole and me

A woman approached me after yesterday's gig to say how much she enjoyed the music. "You sound just like Carole King!" she exclaimed.

Not surprising. Of all the people we've been compared to, I think her name comes up the most. I assumed it was because we were both singer/songwriters who play the piano. A friend insisted that it was my voice.

It took a long time, but a few years ago, while listening to Tapestry, I finally heard it. Though we don't approach singing in the same way, there's something similar in the vocal quality every now and again.

Interesting.

One of these days I would love for Cinder Bridge to open for Carole King. She does still perform sometimes. How cool would it be to meet up with her after the show and say, "So do you think I sound like you?"

Opening acts rock

Ron and I haven't gone out of our way to find opening acts. Maybe it doesn't occur to us because our sets tend not to exceed two hours. Opening acts come in handy when the main act would otherwise have to play for a long time. For instance, in the Music on the Mountain concert series, performing artists are given five hours in which to do their thing. Those who don't want to collapse onstage opt to let other people play before them, which is how we scored a two-hour slot in next week's MOTM.

I thought of it as sort of a utilitarian thing. But now I'm reassessing.

Ron the Drummer happened to know a guitarist, Lucas Barber, from a vitamin store he frequents. Lucas was interested in playing with us. We liked what we heard on his Myspace page, and we said yes. He and buddy Brad Sconzert, another guitarist, played a half hour set at our Cottage Bakery gig last night.

Sharing the stage with another band made everything more fun. The cross-pollination was nice too. The people who came for Lucas and Brad had never heard of us, but they liked us.

So yeah, we've got to do this more often.