Collapsis

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I gotta admit: having played in a semi-popular 90s band has ended up being a pretty good gig. Decades later, you can play in a town where you did relatively well and bring a decent crowd. People sing along. People take pictures. People stick around after the show to tell you how you haven’t changed in 30 years. And, the best part, you get to play your own songs.

On Saturday, July 15, 2023, Collapsis reunited for a show at Motorco Music Hall. The Mad Starlings and Alex Lawhon opened the show and the night was well attended. Originally, I had planned a much longer night of music, but after we got together to rehearse, the consensus was to pair down the set a bit. As the show ran, we played for 75 minutes, which is still fairly hefty.

The set that emerged in rehearsal took the basic order from our album, Dirty Wake, but substituted a few songs here and there. Rather than open with our single, “Automatic,” we saved that for second to last. In its place, we put an unreleased rocker, “Crocodile.” On four of the songs, Mike Ivanitch from the Mad Starlings played percussion. He rounded out “Wonderland” and “Dirty Wake” quite nicely. We closed with a cover of R.E.M.’s “These Days,” which most of us have been playing at the Maxell 90 R.E.M. tribute shows.

Most of the things about playing in a club band are still the same. For me, it never gets old seeing that your band is headlining a venue. It’s a bonus when someone takes the time to write your name in chalk on a massive chalkboard. I always like to read the backstage dressing room walls, too. Most of it is either dirty talk or band promotion, but it’s also like a crossroads. Every line tells a story. Every story has at least a pinch of truth.

The most interesting part of the night happened towards the end of the set. I heard someone in the crowd shouting for “Clay Pigeons,” a song we did for the film of the same name. We don’t play it often, if at all, because on “Clay Pigeons” I play piano and Ryan plays acoustic guitar. It’s a completely different posture for the band and we weren’t set up for it. So, as a spur of the moment thing, I played a vamp of “Clay Pigeons” before kicking into the heavy part of “Chartreuse.” Usually, a tease is enough to assuage a random request. But then, after the show, the woman who requested “Clay Pigeons” told me that it was her favorite song of all time and was disappointed that we didn’t play it. So, I grabbed an acoustic guitar, Carlos grabbed a snare, and we played a version of it on the club risers.

Collapsis will return.

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Neither the ice storm nor the pandemic caused my show at Common Grounds to be postponed. On Saturday, January 22, 2022, from 8 pm until about 11 pm, I performed my first all-piano coffeeshop show.

Playing a piano show out live is uncharted territory for me. I’ve played solo piano limitedly, a few times, and I have been trying new gear setups each time. These have consisted of either running straight out through the stereo output of my Yamaha keyboard or using a less than ideal MIDI keyboard to trigger robust samples. This time, however, I tried using my Yamaha keyboard into my MacBook Pro where I triggered a piano in GarageBand. I liked this outcome. 

Collapsis played three reunion shows in 2021. As such, Dirty Wake, our principal album, has been on the fore-front of my mind. The first set of the evening was nearly all of Dirty Wake in sequence, with the exception of “I.O.L.” That song is tricky and seldom played. The second set was nearly all of Semigloss Albatross, the exception being “The Wall of Flies.” Rather than take a set break, I went straight into what was going to be the third set, which ended up being a handful of cover songs and balanced with a smattering of originals. 

I look forward to doing this again. While my sets were structured, not all of the songs I chose lent themselves easily to the piano.  Next time, a better approach would be two 45 to 50 minute sets, with more attention to overall flow and ease of performance.

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As we played our set on the Waterfall Stage at the NC State Fair, I thought about time travel. Between songs, I announced, “We’re Collapsis, a band from the year 1998. We’ve traveled here to the future to play for you.” To me, the essence of that statement is true. There, at 7 pm, on October 23, 2021, a band that was moderately popular some three decades prior reunited to play the same songs it played long ago. A synergy from the past traveled through some kind of conceptual wormhole only to appear years in the future through the vessels that created it.

Having played the NC State Fair twice now, I can confirm that the greatest obstacle a band faces when playing anywhere near the fairgrounds when the fair is in full swing is getting to the stage. We attempted to caravan to the stage after meeting up at Sushi Nine, only to fail in that simple one mile distance. Our caravan fell to pieces, first because of the size of one of our vehicles and second because of poor pedestrian management near the vendor admission gates. Note to future self (and any musician reading this): arrive on the fairgrounds in one vehicle and allow and extra two hours for transit.

Once we got to the stage, the production and production management was world class. Crisp clear monitors and an exciting stage made for an excellent show all around. Special thanks to Deep South Entertainment for doing such an excellent job with the Waterfall Music Stage.

We only omitted the Big Star cover from our planned set. We substituted “Seems” by QSS at the very end.

  • What I look at: set list, cheat sheet, amp/fx selection board.
  • Mid-Atlantic Wrestling probably used this particular dressing room back in the 80s.
  • I don’t know what this is.
  • We achieve the Collapsis font by placing “Council” font in all caps and putting an extra space between the letters.

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In Modern Problems, a truck accidentally sprays Max Fiedler (played by Chevy Chase) with toxic waste. In the movie, Max gets super powers. But in real life, Max would probably get really sick if he were sprayed with harmful fluids. Similarly, in All of Me, Roger Cobb (played by Steve Martin) is an attorney who runs across the street after work to play a jazz set on guitar. But in real life—and I know this from first hand experience—an attorney playing a gig after work is actually quite tired. Yet, in spite of the fatigue, I was excited to play at the Magnolia Street Music Hall once we got close to showtime. 

I rolled into Wake Forest, NC around 5:00 pm. I turned my Mazda down the alley way behind Magnolia Street and saw Scott loading in his drums from his Toyota. “In a suit!” he said. I literally walked from the closing table at Coltrane & Overfield to my car and didn’t think about changing until I had arrived. I loaded in my gear and greeted Ryan and Chris who were on stage checking their respective rigs. The room was small but big enough for our 75 pre-sold ticket holders to comfortably enjoy the show.

We took our time dialing in the sound, playing seven or eight songs during sound check. The trick to playing a small room is keeping the stage volume low enough so that the vocals can cut through but loud enough to inspire a good performance. 25 years ago, performing in a listening room meant playing acoustic and stripped back. But now, with amp emulation technology and improvements in small room live sound, we were able to perform in the space without compromising tone.

We began the show with three songs we don’t usually perform:“Crocodile,” “Trouble in the Barnyard,” and “Wonderland.” The first two were from my early-90s solo albums Building a Hole and The Lessons of Autumn. “Wonderland,” of course, was from Dirty Wake. The remainder of the set was nearly identical to our set from the Grove, minus three cover songs. We retained the Big Star and Pink Floyd covers. I felt like we played better at Magnolia Street than we did at the Grove, as a band does after a few shows and rehearsals. 

Were you there? If you were, and would like to be featured on my next podcast, send me a voice memo of your experience. Please answer three questions: (1) what did you see? (2) what did you hear? and (3) how did you feel?