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.