band | Jenna's Everything Blog

Oh, you didn’t know that Thornfield has a band manager?

Well let me introduce her. Her name is Ellie.

Now where could she be . . .

Napping with the equipment, of course.

You guys ready for the show, or what?

Now lemme look over that set list . . .

. . . okay, okay, I see where you’re going putting some of those newer songs up front . . .

She is exactly what you want a band manager to be–aggressive, assertive, fierce–and she doesn’t cut a deal that doesn’t benefit her.

She also has a mean set of feline teeth that may or may not have chomped down on my arm completely out of the blue. Hey! Are you trying to disable one of your musicians!? I challenged her. But she was unfazed.

I’m the queen. I’ll disable WHO I want to WHEN I want to.

Now what did you think of my proposal to change the band name from ‘Thornfield’ to ‘The Ellie 4ever Tribute Band’?

We had just ordered a bunch of new sound equipment, and the living room at Carrie and Eric’s was strewn with cables, mics, and who knows what else.

Ellie carefully inspected it. She gave everything the full sniff-down.

I was also playing the guitar at the gig for the first time, so she went over my instrument inch by inch.

It seems to check out . . . just make sure to tighten that B string. Did you change it recently? ‘Cause it’s looking a little loose to me.

She supervised all proceedings until every piece of equipment was packed into the car:

If she could just refrain from physically injuring the members of her band, everything would be quite perfect.

Today I’m checking out (verbally) and am just tossing out a few shots that my husband, Carrie and I took of the band after our gig last weekend. We had learned our lesson from the many failed attempts of our first photo shoot, and this time around came armed with props: an Audrey Hepburn-style cigarette holder. A top hat. An umbrella with a parrot head.

A cloche hat.

A pot of tea.

The melodica.

A harmonica.

This recorder.

Props make posing so much easier, because instead of wigging out over your awkward interaction with the staring eye in the scary lens, you can just ignore the camera and interact with your prop instead.

The parrot head and I became quite close. I dubbed him Mr. Snoffelhopper and told him all my deepest, darkest secrets–like the time when I consumed that family-sized bag of Doritos in one fell sitting.

Of course, my sister Erica was in on that too. She goaded me on, Mr. Snoffelhopper, I explained, so you can see that I’m really not such a bad person! Really!