CD Release Party: the Globe Inn, Thursday March 29th

Next stop the Globe Inn in Aberdeen. We're recording live AND releasing a new CD.

Drummer-Cam photos from Kemnay

A little photo essay from Les, a drummer-cam of last nightst gig in Kemnay. That the Son Henry Band, a monster talent like Bob Hall on the piano and a 125 friend and you've the makings for a party. And that's just what it was. I think I have the photos more or less in chronological order.

All in all an amazing gig. Bob Hall and Hillary Blythe played a great opening set of boogie woogie and some old blues classics and a couple of original tunes too. After a short break to let Donald the blues DJ work his magic it was all us, with Bob sitting in on the piano. Having Bob involved totally turned things on their ear in great ways- lots of off-the-cuff blues and boogie, a head-cutting session over a Slim Harpo selection. Phew.

OK, more of the same at the Globe in Aberdeen on Thursday, and then we're off to Turrif on Friday. Hopefully we'll see you there.

Live CDs are finally here...

Yep, here is the proof, and I have a stack of boxes to prove it as well. Finally, seems like this one has been a long time in the making!

Audio on myspace?

Do any of you actually download the stuff on myspace? I've got a bunch of unreleased live recordings that I'm thinking of putting out there, but don't really want to put the time into it if it's not something that y'all want.

on the fine art of friends and money.....

What a great way to loose a good friend. Shame too, I'd much rather have a house full of friends than a bank full of money. But it seems like a rule written in stone that if you end up loaning someone money you'll end up loosing a friend in the process.

Next time, I'm just going to call it a gift and not take anything but no for an answer. Too strange otherwise.

My father always used to say never sell your car to a friend, in the end you won't have either one , and I think that's sort of the message here too.

Globe Inn, March 29

This'll be the last gig in town before we head off to the Burnley Festival!

We're going to set up a little early so I can run y'all through some of the new solo material. It's really heavy on the lap-steel (acoustic that is), and so far the material has been well received.

I'll also be recording the band set, possibly as a CD release, more likely that it'll be some audio files we'll send to everyone on our mailing list. So, if you're a lurker but not on my mailing list there's a good reason to sign up, and it's as hard as clicking the link at the top of the page.

Oh- this gig is also the OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE of the new live CD too.......

Ribbon of the road

I asked my father, but he didn't know
how to choose between a woman and the open road


from "Ribbon of the road", recorded tonight.

The problem isn't having enough material for this solo record, it's clearly having a back-log of material that adds up to too much. What a good problem to have...

Recording, part 2

Yes, folks, we're recording in anger these days.

Spent several hours at Musical Vision yesterday recording some lap steel tracks and managed to finish two that I'm happy with:

1. Sackcloth and Ashes
2. Water and stone

And then, to make matters worse, was up to the wee hours of the morning working on guitar parts to

3. Mirror man
4. Born to roam

Tonight we're back at it, and we'll be finishing off

5. Fork in the road
6. Name for a number
7. The celebrated Mother in Law Blues

And then package everything off to sing and mix. Lots of this will come out on the next solor record, and the rest will be available for download on Snocap or myspace or something (not sure yet).

Ok, that's me done coming up for air in the middle of this creative frenzy. If you're waiting on me to return a phone call or something, I apologize. I'm focused and need this done. Man, I haven't even taken the trash out this week but that's probably something I can't let slide much longer.....

Peace!

Bob Hall, Son Henry in Kemnay, March 23

Need a great excuse to get a little out of Aberdeen? Here it is, then!

On March 23rd we'll be playing a gig with British Blues Piano legen Bob Hall in the Fetternear Hall in Kemnay (see the map). The night will start with a relaxed set from Bob Hall and Hilary Blythe performing lots of great piano based blues. From there we'll drag Bob into the middle of my band and play a few hours of classic Chicago Blues for danging into the wee hours of the morning.

It's an honor for us to support someone of Bob's caliber. If you were at the opening of the Dundee Blues Bonanza last year when Bob sat in with us, you remember that this is a dynamic combination. You'll hear lots of new material, stuff that I've never taken to a gig yet, but with this line-up it's going to be something else.

Seating is limited, so send me an email at info@sonhenry.com to reserve seats.

See you there!

New Band Photos

We had some new pictures taken and I've redone the web site to show you the WHOLE band. Click here to see the image! More pictures to follow after the Globe Gig!

Day one results

Well, a few very productive hours in the studio today. All the guitar parts for:

Stranger Blues
Hole in my soul
Long way Home
Bound to ride that train
one foot in front
solitary blues

are done. Some harp, singing and percussion and these are all finished! Going to take a break from this for a bit, though. Need to spend a little time editing the lyrics to these songs so they're really sharp.

Recording Tomorrow!

Hey y'all

Work on the long-promised solo CD resumes tomorrow (Thursday) when I take that old National of mine into the Musical Vision Studio here in Aberdeen. I've made a list of the songs that need to be recorded and it's grown really long, but since tomorrow is the first day in this studio I imagine we'll try for getting three complete songs down and be sure to really get a feel for the place. But, if it goes well, there'll be a whole bunch of stuff coming out this year.

As a surprise, I'll be taking my new Stella guitar with me as well- it's an old, cheap plywood guitar that Billy Allardyce found on Ebay. It's got a classic sound for the old-school blues, it's something about the plywood top and old dirt from some grandmother's attic. No matter, I've got a tune or two for it, and if we're rolling tomorrow it'll get it's air time!

Really, there's no way to release all this music on CD, there's just too much of it, so I'm looking into the option of taking bunches of it straight to digital distribution. Tunes, Tune Tribe and a couple of other outlets and by-pass the CD process completely. Some will probably end up as free downloads on MySpace too.

OK, I'll check in tomorrow night, let you know how it all turned out. In the meantime, happy Valentine's Day!

Son

back in the studio

Well, it had to happen!

Starting Thursday I'll be back in the studio for some more recording, but this time I'll be finishing up that solo disk I've been working on forever. It's going to be an interesting mix of some tunes on the National, a bunch of acoustic and electric lap steel and some songs on the straight guitar. I'm anticipating that the songs will stand by themselves without the need for over-dubbed parts, but in all honesty being in the studio is like having a really big box of crayons to play with- might be hard to avoid the temptation to fill things out a bit. There's one or two songs that would really benefit from a little bass and drums too, so we'll see.

We've started the 'organization' process- slicing up the material that I want to record into easy to manage groups. For example, recording all the songs on the national in one pass (even though they won't end up on the disk like that), preening the guitar parts and the lyrics and generally making sure that the first set of songs are ready to be put under the microscope. It's an interesting process, and truthfully, sometimes these songs just don't measure up. Needless to say we'll record more than will appear on the final disk.

So, fingers crossed! I'll let you know how this goes....

Horns?

It's true.


We've added Ken Shorten on trumpet and David Hair on misc. saxophones. They've both got years of experience and can play their backsides off. They really make the sound of this band bigger than I'd ever believed possible!

Not sure when the first gig wil be, we're scrambling to get tunes together. Could be as early as the end of next month....

on the fine are of kicking ass....

What a great band I've got. It's not every night that you open for Jimi Hendrix. I mean,even if it's a tribute band, the crowd expectations are really high and not a lot of people go to see the support act. It's like being the dishwasher or something.

But with nothing to loose, these guys just corked one off. Amazing. Crowd of people pressed to the edge of the stage, digging it. Wow. Awesome all the way around.

I'm obviously wiped out, it's late and I need to crash. So rather than babble on incoherently, let's just leave it at this. Way to go guys!

Don't believe it's a small world?

Then you need to get to a Lemon Tree gig somewhere. Because there you can hear an Alaskan guitarist, mixed by a lassie from Scotland, and sit at the same table with a painter born in Bethel Alaska, a few folks from Shetland Islands, a Scottish Lap-steel maker and an assortment of folks from England and France.

Home Page Updates!

Well, I'm not a web developer, but sometimes I sure feel more like a web guy than a guitar player. But, all griping aside, I did some updates to my homepage at www.sonhenry.com.

Schedule page, recordings, news- lots of new stuff to crow on about. Take a look!

Burnley National Blues Festival

The brochure is out, take a look!

Click here

Supporting Hendrix and Rob Tognoni

Check it out- Saturday February 3rd at the Lemon Tree supporting the Hendrix tribute band, and the following Sunday afternoon opening for Rob Tognoni. Going to be a busy weekend!

http://www.lemontree.org for advanced tickets to the hendrix show!

See ya!

Glad I don't need to worry about hitting anything this big on the way home from a gig, but I must admit that this picture makes me more thana little homesick. Look at all that snow! Great ski season right now...