The BRW Blog

April 11

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 21:27:16 GMT

Have neglected the blog. Lots of computer work lately makes me run away from it when I can. Here is a quicky update.

Psyched! for Rick's tonight. We have new keys player George coming with Jason and I and Colin from CFZ in the truck. Colin is playing percussion filling in for Bubbles who is doing much better and should be back with us soon. George is both CFZ and BRW now and is a fantastic keyboard player and really cool dude. We are very lucky in both these bands.

i've been jonesin for some BRW action and it's finally here.

Adam and I got together to start writing a new original CD. I am amped about that. Adam has soem really great songs and put some kewl spins on some of mine. It's going to be fun. A little more country-fied than Uncorked.

May 2nd's GD Jubilee is shaping up to be a really great gig. We may try to blend Legion of Jerry's set end with BRW;s set beginning by rotating guys off and on the stage mid jam. More details soon.

Psyched to see the Dead in Worcester, then 10 days later I'm going to NJ as a guest of a friend for both of those shows.

The May 17th benefit is shaping up. I get to play with both my fav bands and we have Nick Muce and Tim Taylor, both founding members, joining us in CFZ. That is a big bright spot for me on the horizon.

Then the week after it;s Peace Jam in Maine. WOOOO.

Off to CT. More soon....

Maaaarcuus.

Mike 3/18/09

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:31:06 GMT

Lots of things happening around here. Many different gigs popping up.

This 27th we in BRW were going to play a private party in Millis Mass. Ended up being an internet scam. Yeah, unreal. The scam being they send you a rubber check for 2 gigs, then cancel one, you send the money back and once the rubber check bounces....band fucked. Luckily I am not (quite) that stupid.

May 2nd we are putting on our own little festival in one of the coolest rooms EVER. We will be at Avon Old farms Inn in Hartford CT. Avon Old Farms Inn is one of the Twentiest oldest restaurants in the good ole USA. an absolute beautiful place. We are both privledged and honored to get to play in such a cool spot. We will have good friend Jeff Martinsons band Legion of Jerry and a band called The String band opening up. We are making it quite the affair. Besides playing in the Bell Terrace ball room, the outside courtyard will be filled with hippie vendors and food. May 20th. 5pm - 1pm. You do not want to miss this one.

May 17th, a Sunday, we are doing a benefit for Nick's nephew who lost his mom in the car accident I mentioned last blog. We will have a silent auction of various cool things including a package from The Blue Water Resorts. It's going to be from noon to 5pm.

Also in May....MAINE! Peace Jam 2009. I can hardly wait for May. It's going to be a great month!

In Jukebox Zero news we did our first Rick's billiard's in Putnam CT and it went really well. Bunch of great singers including Nick Muce who sang 9 or 10 tunes with us. We got to re- live the early CFZ days by tapping into a couple of Violent Femmes tunes. Kiss Off and one I can't quite recall the name of. Great night. Friday the 13th we were back at Boagart's to a packed house and many good singers. This Friday we are hired to back up Stonehill colleges American Idol competition final. That should be a hoot.

More another time,

Mike

Mike March 3

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:04:55 GMT

Whew. Long ass weekend. Long ass week.

Rick's was awesome on Feb 21st. Great crowd. Great club. We sounded really tight. My brother Nick Muce came and got up and sang Good Lovin and Lovelight >>> What I Got with us. It was great to get him up on the big stage with us again. I wish I had blogged about it last week but I was sick and never got around to it and now after this weekend it seems mute to talk to much about it now.

My friend Scott Guinen in Maine, where the RV sat since the summer called and asked if I would help him and his girl rent a trailer to tow her Corvette from the Cape up to Starks. Since they have done so much for me and since I needed to get the RV back to fix it up for Maine 2009 I offered to bring it up to them on Saturday night. Pokey graciously offered to go with me to drive the RV back. So the plan was to leave on Saturday afternoon. We played at Bogart's on Friday night with JBZ, everything went nice and smooth. Packed house, great gig. I had just pulled the trailer up to load out at 1:10am when I got a text message from Nick telling me his younger sister Rosalie had died in car accident that day. By some weird twist of fate she happened to live in Portland Maine and thats where he was. So what was supposed to be a mellow trip to Maine and back to see Scott turned into much more than that. The ride up, on the 3 year anni of my fathers passing, was a little crazy towing the Vette, even gettign it on the trailer was a bit of a chore. Although we didn't complain much knowing our friend Nick's situation. Very stressful last 50 miles to Starks on the backroads with frost heaves ect, my arms and shoulders are still aching. We arrived at Scotts at 10pm or so. Chatted for awhile, got some sleep, and headed back on the road around noon on Sunday after unloadign the car and trailer. Pokey in the RV and me in my truck. We parted ways in Augusta, Pokey drove the RV all the way back without me (huge! thanks again Poke.) and I headed to Portland to be with Nick and to attend a memorial service that night. It really is one of the saddest and most heartbreaking situations I have ever encountered. A loving single mom of a 10 year old boy taken way too soon in life. We can take solace in the fact that Nick, his wife Amanda and his family are incredibly kind, strong and wonderful people and her son will never ever feel not loved and will always have people looking out for him no matter what...... but that certainly does not make it any easier. I love ya Nicky and I am incredibly sad for you and all of your family, the pain never goes away but it will get easier I hope. Rest in peace Rosalie.

in band news (which i know at this time is insignificant but i have to put it out here) : we are out on the last Saturday of every month at Bogarts, not out of the venue itself, he just found someone that fits better the last Saturday's of every month and wants to establish it before spring/summer when we stop doing it. I will try to book one more for this year. Honestly, he told me right after I had talked with Nick that night and I couldn't even see straight much less talk about dates and bands. Insignificant to say the least.

Mike

Mike Feb 21

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:55:06 GMT

Psyched for Rick's tonight. Sage mans the keys. Jason on drums as Pete still recovers. Colin from CFZ is coming to do percussion. My brother from another mother Nick Muce is coming to sing a couple with us. Bit of a long ride but thats ok, worth it for a great club.

So we have a new keyboard player. He is not official in BRW until he actually jams with us and everyone gets to meet him. But he played his first time with CFZ last night at Rum Runners and was simply put...fantastic. His name is George Smith and he used to play with reggae band Shango Axe. Really cool down to earth guy, great player who picks his spots, great sound, sings very well too. Just perfect. And he lives in Dennis which is awesome. Plays a Hammond HK-3 for you gear heads. Huge and lucky score on our part to find someone so good and cool..so close. I'd say with the utmost confidence that it's a mere formality for him getting the 2nd BRW keyboard seat.

Anyway, that's it for today. Gotta get the trailer unhooked and the back of the truck loaded for the trip tonight.

See you at Rick's!

Mike

Mike Feb 17

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:38:49 GMT

I have been tending to start these and then leave them for a few days. Makes them longer with more interesting things to say but certainly doesn't feed the blog well.

We had a great time the weekend of Feb 6-7 in both bands. Friday brought Daryl and I back to Longfellows in Brewster. Very nice 40th b-day party. Lots of nice people. Not many sang with us so we proceeded to pull a bunch of old Borrowed Time and CFZ tunes out of our collective ass. Really a fun gig.

Sat the 7th brought us to our first of hopefully many "Basta's" at Basta Bar in Weymouth. Fun place, really cool room, great owner. Couldn't ask for anything more. Met a bunch of new heads, saw some familiar faces. Pino played bass and brought a crew. Like riding a bike playing with Pino.

Kevin. You were awesome on keys. I can't even imagine picking up such a different instrument and playing a gig of complicated songs. The only thing close I can think of is I've done gigs before where I have had to play bass. And that was hard as hell so I can't even imagine. Stellar job.

got one video up from Basta, not sure any others were good because of the camera being low. So once people came down front you can't see a thing. I do have a hard drive that may have the 2nd set on it. Going to check it tonight. Could always grab the audio from the video too.

This Feb 28 at Bogarts has been cancelled. He booked a private party so we pick it back up one month later on March 28th. Great Fri the 13th with JBZ. Packed house.

This Sat we head back to Rick's Billiards in Putnam CT. Jason on the drums with Colin from CFZ on percussion.

Mike

Mike Feb 2

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:37:34 GMT

Wow...next thing you know you haven't blogged in weeks...
We had a great night of music on Saturday night at Bogart's. Dick Sage was on keys and brought along friend and Saxaphone player Ian Katz of the band Grow. Both Ian and Sage have the incredible ability to pick their spots. So all night we had little pockets of goodness everywhere. Really stellar night of playing all the way around the stage. Everyone was on and we tackled some new stuff and some stuff we had't done in awhile. Including an absolute on fire Loose Lucy, Dark Star >>> Cosmic Charlie and our first ever crack at Saint of Circumstance... which is my new favorite song to play. Dave Barrett also joined us on percussion and did a great job. Computer had a weird error neither Ray or I could get around. But John did videotape it so hopefull we will get that at some point.

Dead Tix
Got my Worcester tix for both nights. It's going to be weird going back to Woossa to see the Dead. The site of my very first show in 87. Psyched tho.

Basta
Looking forward to Basta Bar. Bassist Kevin mans the keys (see below for more on that) and #2 Pino is on bass. Dave Barrett again joins us on percussion. Will be great to see how multi-talented Kevin is and also to get to play with El' Pino.

Pete Waters
Pete had surgery on his bum shoulder on Wednesday. He is resting comfortably. Heal up brother, can't wait to get ya back on the hoss. and we are pickin ya up saturday to take you to the gig! You can be light guy or something!

JBZ
Did Stonehill college last week. This Friday we play at Daryl and my old stomping grounds The Northside (formerly Longfellows Pub). It's going to be very strange I think. It's been probably 10 years since we last played there. Daryl is now our new guitarist officially in JBZ. Really great to play with him again regularly.

LOTK
It looks like family and work commitments are going to take our LOTK away from us. We are all very sad to see him go and we hope something changes so he doesn't have too. But until that unlikely scenario happens, we move on in both bands looking for keys players. So if you know anyone, let us know........for the time being we of course have the esteemed Richard Sage and Kevin is valiantly filling in this Saturday. Talk about taking one for the team!

Mike

Mike January 10, 2009

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:24:21 GMT

What an incredible experience I had at WSFB on Thursday. Really something I have never done before.

I went south on Wed night, stopped in to see Dick Sage in providence. Hung out, watched some of a Tribute to George Harrison, ate some sausage and peppers I brought with me. Always a fun time hanging with Sage. He has a keyboardists dream in his living room now. To go along with the baby grand thats been there are now a 1984 Fender Rhodes and a 1949 Hammond B3 with rotating Leslie cab. Very cool.

I left Sage's around 8:30 and got to Nick's by 10pm. We went over a couple tunes, crashed and was up by 7am to get to the TV studio in Rocky Hill just south of Hartford.

The folks at Better Connecticut were as nice as can be. We had soundchecked by 8:30am abd then waited until the shows start 10am. Nick prepared his cooking segment and we just hung out and joked with his boss-partner Sean. I will profess to being nervous about this gig, mostly on Wednesday but not so much on Thursday. The crew and place were definitely calming. We played one song at the end of the show and 2 "grab's" which were 30 second snippets while they were going to commercial. We did "Be My Yoko Ono" by BNL for the first "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel for the 2nd. Lovelight was our tune at the end. You can see that here. It sounds good, I flubbed a note in my lead which probably only other guitarists will notice, I certainly do. The co-host Scott butchered my name and then made fun of it a little. Kevin asked if I was pissed and I really wasn't, I just wanted to play the tune as I had been waiting hours for that. You can actually hear me say "whatever" to the fact he called me Mick Pandicini. All in all a great time playing with my brother from another mother Nick and seeing how a live morning show is brought together.

Click Here for Lovelight

Click Here for Nick's cooking segment

Some good things should come out of this show, one they want to book BRW for a show in the future and two we also should be able to get a gig out of Avon Old Farms where Nick works. In a gorgeous 100+ year old ballroom.

It twas a good gig all the way around.

Practice with BRW on Monday night. Can't wait!

Marcusssssss

Mike January 7, 2009

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:10:58 GMT

My first official blog of 2009.

I got this call from former CFZ'er Nick Muce yesterday...
"what are you doing Thursday? you wanna play on TV with me?"
Well.....Yeah of course I will.
It seems Nick does regular cooking demo's on a morning show called Better Connecticut on channel WSFB in Hartford. The owner of his restaraunt saw us play at Nicks wedding and told the TV people of his other talent. So they booked him to cook and sing. I am along for the ride but am told they will plug BRW's Feb 7th gig at Rick's Billiard in Putnam CT. Pretty frickin cool. Here is the website for the show.
http://www.wfsb.com/betterct/index.html

Speaking of ex-cfz'ers. It's been exactly 10 years since I started this band with Nick. So i did a webpage celebrating it. I wrote a little blurb, did a timeline and searched for old pictures....and I found some dooozies......here are my favorite ones......

the main 10 year page is here
http://www.carefactorzero.com/10/index.htm

My favorite incantation (incarnation?) (besides of course the one we have now!)
http://www.carefactorzero.com/10/images/cfz2_1.jpg
Me ridin' the Rhino Pete Waters!
http://www.carefactorzero.com/10/images/3/wow.jpg
Like the blue pants? with my very good friend Eric Short
http://www.carefactorzero.com/10/images/pics/band3.jpg
Cartoon me with Goatee and ponytail
http://www.carefactorzero.com/10/images/pics/mikehead1.gif
Bob Jansons Bubble photo
http://www.carefactorzero.com/10/images/bobs_photo1.jpg

well thats it for now, need to get to work and then travel to CT later.

peace,

Marcusssssss

PS: I forgot this one, from a promo for our cartoon series
http://www.carefactorzero.com/10/images/pics/PEPPER%20CFZ.gif

Mike New Years 2008 Review

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:34:45 GMT

Happy New Year!

Ahhh 2008. Was a fine year musically for me. All 3 bands did great, especially BRW. CFZ did 15 beach gigs, only 2 inside which was a nice change. A quick count gives me 26 shows with CFZ, 24 with BRW and 17 with Jukebox Zero. 67.............a really good year. I don't talk much about Jukebox Zero in this blog but we had a great year too.

A huge shout out to Pokey, Colin, Ray (for the first 2 anyway) and Wally Y on the festivals. Pokey came to the first one and then played the next 4 with Colin. But not only were those two doing a set with CFZ, all of them were BRW's 'crew' and we could not have done it without them. Thanks guys.
It was a really great year and here is a kind of long summary of it:

January brought one gig at Our Place. This was the infamous LOTK "I forgot my keyboard" gig. He preceeded telling me with "you are gonna be pissed". I was not, I just started searching music stores on my GPS when luckily it was deemed his friend Dave had a Casio not but a mile away. We still sounded great, keys may of been a little 'thin' but I don't think anyone noticed..... Adam was still new to us but getting his legs under him. Great gig. The 2nd set was a monster.

Feb brought us back to the OP. I did a Reuben for soundcheck by request, Pino followed half hazardly on the drums of all things. This was a 2nd set that never really paused once. Limelight magazine showed up to do a feature on us.

March, first we headed to Phi Delt at Dartmouth College. Katie from the Rhythm Ship joined us on keys. Monumental jams at this show. I remember being between Pino and Adam and them just doing sonic battle with each other through me. Killer 4 part harmonies.......Crazy time as usual at Phi Delt. March also brought us back to Our Place , this time with Ray on bass and his wife Laurie doing the Donna thing. I don't rememeber a ton about this gig but I know we sounded real good and I know I came out of my first Donna experience thinking 'yes, we could do this sometimes, this is good!". Great Cassidy if I remember correctly.

April saw 2 gigs with brw. Our return to Arturo's on the Cape. This was another real good show. Lots of Cape people that hadn't seen us in awhile were there. Killer Viola Lee, Knockin on Heavens Door and Hey Pockey way. This to me is when Adam really started hitting a stride. not that he hadn't sounded great already, he had, It just takes time for people to jell and we already knew how good he was.......I think he was still treading water at times fitting into our thing.... still seeing where he fit in. But that night he was on fire, leading us through crazy jams in Scarlet >>> fire and Terrapin. I can remember driving home with Pete, Jason and LOTK and having the conversation about just how good a player he is.
Back to The Op for 4-26. Cosmic Charlie >>> gin and Juice was fun. Another solid gig.
Back on the 18th I had filled in on guitar with The Rhythm Ship at Mill City Brews in Worcester, great time learning and playing their fine material. Def a different place for me, playing lead guitar and not even having a mic in front of me. weird! But a real good experience.
I'm pretty sure around april was when we lost Kevin Pond and gained Ray as our soundguy. No knock on any other soundguys....but Ray has been the best. Really, and I don't say that lightly as I have had some great loyal soundguys. He sets up and breaks down quick, most importantly people tell us how good we sound in all 3 bands. He took our PA system and fine tuned it so it sings. A little public acknowledgment of your quality work brother. Thanks!

May was a tough month, saw my 15+ year old dog Ruby pass away. Still miss her. And my 8 year old Strat stolen from me. I still miss that guitar terribly. I don't often go for an ax without thinking about it, especially at Bogart's. No BRW gigs in May of 08, OP got double booked if I recall correctly.

June started for me with a return to Rum Runners with CFZ one night and then seeing DSO on Sat at the Melody tent. Nice weekend of music. we did our first of 5 Maine Festivals which was Freedom Fest. We went on at 2am and played until almost 4am on friday (well technically Saturday). Then took the longest set break ever and came back on at 11am on Saturday with a Morning Dew opener. A body painted female topless frisbee player was of course an added bonus....not that we looked.......we heard rumors.......A fine fest.

July was Somerset County Jam which by far was the WEIRDEST festival. We had already planned to have Ray and Laurie along on bass and vocals. We knew Pete couldn't make it so Jason was solo. Two things happened that we didn't expect. LOTK couldn't make it and the day before we were to go Jason jammed his middle finger when it wrapped itself around a drill. So we hired local pro Chuck Torlone on keys and had Colin from CFZ play drums Friday night. Jason toughed it out (warrior stuff, and I do not say that lightly at all, he was seriously jacked up) on Sat with Colin on percussion and we played well. We survived it. This was also the "Kill da Wabbit" trip. I may not have ever laughed so hard in my life on this trip. My sides hurt for days.
We also started our 5th (not sure) year on the beach at The Blue Water Resort with Care Factor Zero. we missed LOTK on the keys some dates but Katie Whelan filled in just fine all month. Even added a new dimension with her singing. We did 9 Blue Water gigs from June 28th to July 29th.
the 27th brought us our newest best-es buddy Kevin Keene on bass. No one, well except maybe Adam too, has ever assimilated himself both personally and professionally into a group so fast. Our first time at The infamous Improper Bostonian and we really had a good time and sounded great.

Aug we did 8 gigs with CFZ. 7 at the beach and 1 at LOTK and our buddy Benji's house. Hempstock brought a whole new band for me an Adam. Pete and no Jason on drums with Dick Sage and his buddy Fred Wilkes on bass. Fred was awesome, great guy and player and playing with Sage was a blast. Hanging with him and seeing him in that element (funny.....he took to it, we all do!) was really cool. We also got to jam with Sage and Fred's buddy Ian from the band Grow. Ian is incredible and made our set.
We did our second Improper gig, while turnout was a little low due to a massive rain and lightning storm, it was still a great night with a lot of friends and family showing up to support us.

Sept
We be Jammin Fest! Pino dancing naked on CFZ's stage.......rubbing his junk on LOTK's shirt. Ahhh the memories....He still has the shirt and when wearing it gladly points out "you know what this shirt is ....don't cha?". Full band and 2 monumental shows. Great time. The week after we traveled to NH and the Bouchard wedding. Just as cool as a wedding could be. We rocked out with cousin Dupe on bass and Sage on keys. Great show.

Oct : Oh Harvest fest......how i love thee let me count the ways. Ummm Infinity. Just incredible. Playing to over 1000 people in front of us both nights. 3500 or so showed up I heard. Mind blowing gigs, even Sundays show was well recieved and attended as was CFZ's set on Saturday. This was Kevin's first taste of how lucky we are to have this band, he was instantly hooked I think.

Nov had 4 BRW gigs. 2 were on the same day. Pete played two gigs with a torn rotator cuff and biceps, another warrior moment. First we played a bday party at the Beachcomber in Quincy. Adam had just traveled from a vaca in Peru so we had Pino come sit in on guitar just like old times. Not since 3-25-05 at the Chatham VFW had Pino manned the "Jerry" role. After that gig, Pete, Kevin and I met Adam and Sage in Putnam Ct for our first time at Rick's Billiards. Absolutely another great gig and room. We are back there in Feb and April and hopefully beyond.
11-22 brought us back to Phi Delt as a 4 piece with no keys. Me, Adam, Colin from CFZ and Adam's buddy Zac. We rocked out to a packed house and another fine time at Phi Delt. 11-29 was our last gig of the year. This will be forever known as the "golden rd" gig, where Adam blew the roof off (and the top of everyone's head's as well) with one swooping and soaring outro lead at Bogart's

No gigs in Dec, everyone deserved a nice 60 day reprieve. Back to work on Jan 29th.

Proofreading this brings back so many memories and little things that would take me days to type up. One thing is those festivals. I explain it to people like this. "we get to go to a dead show....hang out and camp in the parking lot, and then WE GET TO BE THE DEAD!". And then we get to see and meet really cool bands and people from all over. Especially Don and the crew from Maine Vocals. It is truly amazing and an honor to be a part of it.
I think though that the biggest thing that stands out is that I love all these guys. Really, a great bunch of talented guys in all 3 bands that enjoy each other and just have fun with it. No one gets too serious, no one gets too high or too low. We like to get up and rock the F out and enjoy spending time with each other while doing it.

Thanks guys and any and everyone who came out to see all the bands in 2008, here's hoping we all have an even better 2009!

Mike aka Marcuss

Mike Dec 23

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:39:38 GMT

Nick's wedding was a good time. Long motherlovin snowy drive on the way up...thankfully I have 4wd. I saw spinouts, accidents, people in little 2 wheel drive cars FLYING around like idiots....crazy......easy drive on the way back tho. Saw his son whom I haven't seen in 10 years or so. Tall as a tree at 16. Mind blowing that is. We did a little set at some point in the middle of everything. It was to the best of my knowledge this ;

Romeo and Juliet
In Your Eyes
Corinna
Jack a Roe
Brown Eyed Girl
Lovelight >>>
What I got
Don't Be Cruel

I may be missing a tune or two. Really nice wedding. Great to see him and see him so happy.

Christmas is here. I did all my shopping online as usual. No malls for me.

Confirmed some new dates for CFZ at Rum Runners. No word on Sugarloaf.

One of my friends is in the hospital. My brothers best friend. They don't know what's wrong with him. Something in the top spinal cord - brain stem area. Being poked and prodded over xmas and not even knowing whats wrong is just horrible, especially as serious as it sounds. So be thankful for your health and think a positive thought for our friend Pat sitting up at Mass General.

Hopefully going to work on my end of the year blog tonight. I think I can blast out what I have left in an hour if I type fast.

Pino is at The Middle East this Saturday Dec 27th in Boston with The Big Bad Bullocks. Opening for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I'm trying to go, so should you.

Marcuss