Deconstructing "New York State of Mind": Part II

Over the past 2 weeks since the released of the "New York State of Mind" video, I've gotten some questions about it. Let's answer some.

Did you visit places in NYS that didn't make it into the final video?

Yes. There were a number of places that we filmed but just didn't have enough time to include. Especially since I wanted to make sure the video wasn't too heavy on the NYC locations. Because of that, Little Italy and Chinatown didn't make the cut, as well as few Long Island spots. Here's a video I put together of locations that were deleted due to time constraints:

There was also one spot we visited but didn't end up filming, and that was the United Nations. Why? Because they didn't have any flags out when we got there, and without the flags it's not really all exciting. And that's about 8 blocks of walking that I will never get back.

Many shirts, washed shirt, or stinky shirt?

Somewhere in the middle, actually. On the first 3-day leg I had a different black undershirt for each day, and I took the blue button-down off and hung it up between locations. Each of the other days were filmed separately, so I was able to wash my shirts no problem. But I will let you know that I wore the same jeans. These are the sacrifices you have to make.

What was your favorite location?

I really loved being in the Adirondacks because I spent a lot of time there when I was growing up but hadn't been there in years. A friend's grandparents had a house right on Tupper Lake and I would go up with him and his family (his aunt, uncle, and cousins live there now...and yes I drove by to see it!), so it was great to be there again. But my favorite location was Whiteface Mountain. For all the time I spent up there I had never made it to the top before, and if you've never been you have to do. Amazing views and great history.

Niagara Falls is obviously also spectacular.

The video is up over 3,500 views and climbing. Let's keep it going.

Deconstructing "New York State of Mind": Part I

I've gotten a bunch of questions about my recently released video for "New York State of Mind" - everything from what was your itinerary, to did you visit places that didn't make the video, to how dirty was that shirt by the end of shooting? So, let's break it down. First, the video:

I wanted to include a cover song as a bonus track on Over The Edge from the beginning, and since "New York State of Mind" has become a bit of a standard for me it was obviously the most appropriate song. But I wanted it to be more than that. So early on the idea came to make a video about me traveling around New York State to go with the recording. I distinctly remembering having my first conversation about it with Tony Basile at Gourmet Pizza in New Paltz late one night in August/September 2010 (that's how long I've been planning this out). It was very important to me that we show New York State as more than just "the city," which is what a lot of non-New Yorkers think when you tell them where you're from.

The first 3 days of shooting took place September 25-27, 2012, and they broke down like this: Wappingers Falls to Buffalo, Buffalo to Potsdam, Potsdam to Wappingers Falls. We traveled over 1,400 miles, and our days started at 5 or 6 in the morning and didn't end until 9 or 10 at night. It was 3 days on the road and it was a lot of fun. Some places I had never been to and more places Tony had never been to. Niagara Falls was great (the only part of the video filmed outside of New York), as was going to the top of Whiteface Mountain (which neither of us had done before). And I think I can speak for Tony when I say that the best place we ate along the way was Piggy Pat's BBQ outside Utica, which we were turned on to by my friend Matt Taube.

One Sunday afternoon the next month, we were supposed to do some shooting for the "Shadow" video, but we had to reschedule. So, Tony & I decided to use the time to instead shoot some of the historic areas near us in the Hudson Valley. And it was that day at the FDR Presidential Library where this picture occured:

Bad ass.

The next plan was to shoot Long Island, but we got hit with conflicting schedules, Hurricane Sandy, and winter, so we had to wait. Shooting resumed on June 18, 2013, with a one-day trip through Long Island and back. I very much wanted to get shots of the historic Montauk Point Lighthouse at the tip of the island, and we got there at 5:15PM. It closes at 5:30. We got lucky. The most fun of that day was shooting the test-of-strength scene at Adventureland in East Farmingdale, but damn was it hot.

Six days later, on June 24, we set out to do all 5 boroughs of NYC. This turned out to be somewhat tricky because you could make multiple videos of just New York City, so we had to pick and choose what we shot. And again, my plan was to show that New York State was more than just NYC, so we didn't want to overload the video, anyway. We hit the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, then took the Staten Island Ferry into Manhattan. We then went up to 125th St. and started making our way down the island. Its safe to say that we walked well over 60 blocks, and believe me when I tell you it was hot and humid, and I was wearing jeans, two shirts, a fedora, and very inappropriate walking shoes. Plus I was carrying my trumpet for the scene at the Apollo Theatre. It was an adventure.

All in we traveled over 2,500 miles to shoot what we did. Obviously we could've traveled more, but time kept us from getting everywhere we wanted.

That seems like enough for now. More breakdown in my next blog!

The. Worst. Gig. Ever.

Getting paid to spend a Sunday afternoon playing with my band right on the edge of the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie for an estimated crowd of about 1,200 sounds like a fantastic way to spend a day, doesn't it? Sunshine, the river, a large audience, music - how could that miss? I'll tell you how: rain. Lots and lots and lots of rain. And thunder. And lightning.

Sure the day started out beautiful. We got there, enjoyed some rudeness from the event organizer over how many cars we had brought, set up, and sound checked. Everything sounded good, the sun was out, I had rocked the sunblock so as to not burn from the sun bouncing off the water, and we were ready to go. In fact, we actually got going. We played about 11 songs before it started to rain. And it wasn't coming down hard at first, but to protect our equipment we had to unplug the electric (to the distress of the event organizer who didn't understand why we couldn't have the PA on playing music). But then we looked at the radar. Bad news bears.

It's hard to put into words just how much rain came down and how wet our equipment got. Luckily, I don't have to so much because I took some video:


As you can see, damn. And that rain went on for like 45 minutes at least. It's worth noting that the tents you saw over us are more for shade than for protecting the equipment from that kind of weather. You may have also noticed a couple non band members standing under the tents with us. Those were either event volunteers or attendees helping us hold the tents down to keep them from flying away. Yes, there was that much wind. At one point we almost had one tent fly away and that would've been game over for some of our equipment. By the end of the storm, I was so wet it was like I had jumped into the river itself.

But we got through it, and everything seems to be in proper working order. I shall never forget you, worst gig ever. May we never meet again.