Alisha Ard, L.A. Trombonist and Jazz Singer

Here's a contribution from Los Angeles musician Alisha Ard. Besides being a great singer and trombonist, she happens to be the first person I took a lesson from when I started playing my trombone again after a two-year mission. Check out her music in the player above, and for more, including her bio, go to www.alishamarieard.com
And look! You can buy her CD here.

I requested that she hold forth on the life of a free-lance musician in L.A. and we see here that she has done so:

So last night's gig was one of those celebrity encounters. You know, the kind that makes for good story telling to my relatives who always like to ask, "Have you seen any celebrities lately?" I could tell it was a good anecdote in the making, and it got me realizing that I had had a few good stories to tell from my gigs in the last few days. In fact, I had been working solidly every night for, oh my!, a whole week! Seven nights in a row of work is quite an accomplishment for a freelance trombone player without (as yet) her own band. In most places such a feat would be well nigh impossible. So not only was it an accomplishment I could brag about, but there was a considerable amount of variety in that week, and, as mentioned, good stories. That's when I knew that this was the blog I had been waiting to write for my old college trombonist colleague, Dan Barrett.

The week we're talking about is Wednesday night, August 13th to Tuesday night, August 19th. I think the best way to do this is to just run through each night chronologically. Hopefully you blog readers out there will then have a better idea of what one full-time musician's life is like.

Wednesday was a gig with the Dry Martini Orchestra backing up a Rat Pack impersonator review to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Commerce Casino. It was very heart warming to hear how the casino gave $10,000 each to the two Olympic swimmers from that city so they could take family members along with them to Beijing. It seems they spared expenses on feeding the band that night, however. The term "bandwiches" refers to the less-delicious fare that is often fed to the band, made all the more poignant by the fact that we see everything that the guests get. Our bandwiches that night looked more like a buffet of buffet leftovers. Chicken, salmon, potato salad, grilled vegetable antipasto, cookies, and some cold seafood on a platter. Is that safe? I saw the trumpet player pick up a large shrimp and start to wrap it up in napkins. I said, "Are you saving that for later?" and he said, "It's for my turtle."

Thursday was a wedding rehearsal at the United Armenian Congregational Church. The church's music director was getting married the next day, and hired a brass quintet to play some processional and recessional music for the ceremony. Unfortunately for us (the musicians), his double duty as music director and groom meant he was a little scattered. He forgot the tuba music at the rehearsal so we cut up a photocopy of the score and taped something together. Luckily the rehearsal dinner food was better than last night.

Friday was the wedding we rehearsed for. The French horn player hadn't been at the rehearsal, but she was at the gig. Unfortunately, her music wasn't. (Remember our forgetful groom?) But she played an important role anyway - she realized that if the groom was too distracted to remember things like bringing her music, he might also forget to pay us too. So she took it upon herself to collect our names and get the best man to write us checks before the ceremony started. Then she mostly just sat and tried to look like she was concentrating on counting rests for the benefit of the videographers. An honest day's work for an honest day's pay.

Saturday was a bit of a mystery gig for me. All I knew was that I was supposed to wear black and be at the contractor's house at 4:45 to carpool to the gig. (A "contractor" is the person who hires you and pays you. Often, as in this case, it is another musician who also hires themselves. It's a bit of a misnomer as less than 1% of all my work involves actual contracts.) I showed up, and then slept most of the way as we drove east into the desert, ending at the Spotlight 29 casino. I blinked my eyes open at a giant sign announcing Paul Casey's ELVIS the Musical, and got really excited! Was that our gig? An Elvis show?! I'd never seen a real-life Elvis show! It was quite fantastic. No rehearsal, just a quick soundcheck. Then the theater doors opened and around 2000 Elvis fans shuffled in to commemorate the death of the King. Many were wearing sunglasses with big, lampchop sideburns attached. Paul's gyrations were quite impressive, and I was almost the only woman (backup singers excepted) who got to enjoy his pelvis work from the rear. He gave me a special introduction (a woman playing trombone is still a fun novelty most places), and, of course, I got a picture with him! But I didn't get one of those silky scarves that he wiped his sweaty face and chest with before tossing them out to a mob of women who thrashed around in front of the stage like hungry piranhas.

Sunday was supposed to be a day off for me. I was relaxing at the beach when I got a phone call from one of the sleaziest band leaders I know. He said he had a gig that afternoon, and it was right in my neighborhood. It was only a couple hours, and I could wear whatever I wanted, so it sounded painless enough. It turned out to be a salsa band playing at an indoor swap meet called La Fiesta. There was a DJ who had a wheel to spin and hand out prizes, greasy Colombian food, and in between our two sets a duo got up and played traditional music from the Andes mountains. One guy had a large, animal-skin covered drum slung over his shoulder that he beat with a feather-covered mallet in one hand and a thin stick in the other. The other guy was using a foot pedal to play a wood block with his right foot while he played a small guitar, and cradled a pan flute in the crook of his left elbow that he tore off some amazing melodies on. I was quite impressed. Our piano player explained to me that the small guitar was made out of a "medello", which is an animal. I thought something got lost in translation until he told me that the "medello" has a hard shell, and I realized he meant an armadillo. But not speaking much Spanish, that was almost all that I understood for the whole three hours. I faked my way through salsa standards like "Llororas" and "Carnaval" and felt like the only woman in the place who wasn't pregnant.

Monday I definitely felt more in my element. It was a Ron King Big Band performance at Charlie O's Jazz Club. Charlie O's has different big bands every Monday night, and so I've done that gig many times. Once it was a big band debut for "Family Guy" composer Ron Jones, and Seth MacFarlane, the show's creator, came and sang a few Frank Sinatra tunes. That boy has talent, I assure you! He could have definitely had a career as a cruise ship singer. Ron King's band, however, was less of a draw. We had a sparse audience, but still had a few jazz luminaries. Frank Capp was there, as was Manhattan Transfer vocalist Tim Hauser. I got to sing one number, but the rest of the night was uncomfortably wedged up on the tiny stage in the trombone section. I realized that with our awkward arrangement I happened to be the only band member who had someone in front of me (the baritone saxophone) and behind me (a trumpet player). Whenever the bari sax player stood up to take a solo, he'd push his chair back into me a little more. I felt like Luke Skywalker, and I wanted to tell C-3PO to shut down all the garbage smashers on the detention level.

Which brings us to last night - the final gig in this little tour. We're back where we started - another Rat Pack show with the Dry Martinis. This time we were at the Sunset Tower, a Hollywood landmark residence-turned-hotel that's been around for almost 80 years. It epitomizes the words "posh" and "swank". I bashfully turned over my 1992 Camry that is covered in bird droppings (because I park it on the street under a tree) to the valet and hauled my gear onto the terrace. There was a dance floor emblazoned with the words "Will You Marry Me?" and the napkins on the table said "Yes I Will!" and had huge (fake) diamond rings for napkin rings. Everything was black and white and had a very Old Hollywood vibe. It was a celebration of the 60th anniversary of a couple's engagement. After the soundcheck the band leader took us all across the street to the Saddle Ranch Chop House for dinner. It's also a trendy spot (as are all places on that part of Sunset Boulevard) where you can ride a mechanical bull, and all the wait staff look like actors. Then we took our places on the band stand and waited for the guests to enter from where they were taking cocktails by the pool. (That would be the same pool that Iggy Pop used to dive, or attempt to dive into from his room window.)

The band played softly while the guests dined. I got out my plunger to play the melody on "Georgia", and I noticed guests at the head table pointing at me and mimicking the action of a trombone plunger. But these weren't just any guests. In particular it was "Let's Make a Deal" game show host Monty Hall, and actor Kirk Douglas and his wife Anne. How many trombonists can say they've had Spartacus mimic their plunger? Then, in a fitting end to a Hollywood evening, I stood waiting for my dirty old car to emerge from the garage amongst all the guests' Porsches and Mercedes when out from the hotel walked the self-proclaimed world's first supermodel - Janice Dickinson, and her date for the evening! I recognized her because of her appearance on an episode of "America's Next Top Model", and she was just as crazy last night as she seems on that show. A man walked up to her and offered her a cigarette, and soon they were blowing flumes of smoke and mispronouncing basic German phrases. Then Janice started screaming "Liar! Liar!" for no apparent reason. I didn't think anything could shock me after that, but the valet who drove up in my car saw me loading in my gear and he said, "Is that a trombone? Urbie Green is a good friend of mine!" Urbie Green is a trombone legend I idolize, and probably the only one of those old legends who is still alive, but I've never met him. How crazy that my valet hangs out with his son!

Now my total earnings for this week of work came to a paltry $915.00. I suppose that's one of the reasons that Jack Daney said, "To be a musician is a curse." But you can't buy these kinds of experiences either, and I love what I do, so that's probably why Jack added, "To NOT be one is even worse."