Practice? Take the A train to 59th Street? There are many ways. Mine involved hitching my wagon to musician/comedian Stephen Lynch's star. His "3 Balloons" tour rolled into Carnegie October 24, 2009 and pulled me along for the ride.

I was introduced to Stephen about 10 years ago by his manager, my old college buddy, Eric Zohn. Eric told me about this up and coming artist he was representing and asked if I would be interested in working with him. I was.

In the last 10 years Stephen has done 2 Comedy Central Specials, has been nominated for a Tony for his starring role in "The Wedding Singer" on Broadway, and has released 4 albums (3 of which I've played on). Now he's headlined Carnegie Hall.

Stephen usually plays concerts solo on guitar and voice with help from one or two of his sidekick buddies, Rod, Jo Berg, and/or Teich. But once in a while when he has a gig in NYC and is doing something special like a live recording at Symphony Space ("The Craig Machine"), a gig at Town Hall, or Carnegie, Lynch calls us to put the band back together. It's always a blast when we get to do it. Rich-piano, Dean-drums, Jon-violin, David-cello and myself-acoustic bass plus all 3 sidekicks at once, with Lynch and his brother, Drew, gave us 10 people on stage. We're not quite as populated as the Berlin Philharmonic. But we made some noise all the same.


In spite of the photo of me warming up at sound check all alone in that revered theatre, it was actually a sold out show with a standing ovation at the end. It doesn't get much better than that.


Here are Stephen and I onstage in the Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. Imagine that! It was more than a little surreal, definitely a career high moment.

Your pal,
Ivan

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