Imogen Heap is a tremendous talent. She reminds me of a young Kate Bush in a lot of ways. I actually like her material from "I Megaphone" more than some of her more current stuff in that it's more aggressive and gives her a little more to work with in terms of emotional range. But nonetheless, her new album is awfully good too - "Hide and Seek" in particular. If I had any complaint about the show it was that she only played one song from "I Megaphone" - but it was one of my favorites ("Come Here Boy") so I can't complain too much. If you haven't heard Imogen Heap and are a fan of female singer/songwriters, I strongly recommend checking out her work. You won't be disappointed.

As part of the same trip, I also got to see several old friends for the first time in a long time - including former Machines drummer Brad Kemp. Wow, it's been way too long but it sure was nice to catch up. How odd that I actually have more friends in LA than in Phoenix.

From the standpoint of preparing for the audition, the timing couldn’t have been worse. At the time, I was trying to wrap up two other projects simultaneously – so between that and the very aggressive audition schedule, I ended up with just a handful of hours to prepare. I’m pretty meticulous, so this was a bit frustrating.
I learned three songs off the new record (all three of which were produced by the most excellent Atticus Ross, so they had some tasty synth & production work), and created rough approximations of the sounds.

The audition process itself was actually quite brief, due in part to a combination of the tight timeline and my flight into LA being late.

In the end, I don’t think I was able to demonstrate my capabilities particularly well. But on the plus side, I did get to say hi to Jonathan (it’s been 10 years), and met Richard Gibbs, who’s the musical director for the tour. Richard is responsible for, among other things, the music for the first season of The Simpsons. I still have fond memories of the “Patton” motif he used in an episode where Bart & some of the local kids take on Nelson and the other bullies.