No bike blues

image sez it all......

Blues Matters Burnley Review

From the June/July issue of Blues Matters Magazine, one of our favorites, a review of the set we played at the Burnley National Blues Festival:

We headed upstairs to the auditorium in time for the main stage program, which began with the Son Henry Band. Son heralds from Alaska and is now living in Scotland from where he has recruited a powerful rhythm section. Together they have formed a unique sound, mainly down to Son's first choice of instrument; the lap steel guitar. The Blues they played were authentic stomping down and dirty and the slide threw in a different dynamic, at times having the force of a sledgehammer and at others a melodic subtlety. A couple of highlights were Muddy Waters 'I can't be satisfied' and a stunning rendition of 'Voodoo Chile'. We must get to see them again

Thanks Tony and Sue! Glad you enjoyed the set, and we'll cross paths again real soon....

in mid compostion.....

Ever wonder what it looks like? This is the look of intense creativity that you get in mid-song. Strange face, no?

Blues for my Brother, Nov, 2007

My annual benefit for the Brother Francis Shelter in Anchorage Alaska is going to happen this year. There were some doubts and concerns, but I think we have it nailed. As you might guess, Alaska is a hard place to be homeless. This is a worthy cause, and this year we'll be gathering a collection of local and international people to the same stage for a couple of great nights of music!

It's going to be a big blow-out, partially to make up for last year, but mostly because we can. The Saturday of Veteran's Day weekend will be the main show, with a smaller acoustic show at the Marsten Theater on Friday night.

So far, Bob Hall the brittish piano legend has agreed to headline. More bands and performers to be announced. Stay tuned there. And if you're interested in performing, drop me a line!

Big show, really big show....

airport blues

There's nothing like a long plane trip to make running into unexpected security hassles seem worse. So, this will serve as a warning that if you're flying to Atlanta with a guitar you need to either plan on entering the US somewhere else, or be sure your guitar goes as carry-on luggage.

I have ma acoustic guitar with me, it rides around in a really serious hard shell case. Indestructible. That means I can check the guitar and know that if I see it on the baggage trolley I'm ok. Until, that is, landing in Atlanta.

In Atlanta when you come through the International Terminal from suspect places like Paris or London, you need to collect your bags, go through customs like normal. When you leave customs, however, you need to put your bags back on the trolley to collect them at the FAR end of the airport in an un-secured area open to the public. Yeah, I understand it's a safety thing, and I'm ok with that.

Here's the snag: Guitars go on the oversized baggage trolley, suitcases go on the normal one. So, right off you have 2 different places in the airport to collect things. OK, fine, in the interest of security I can hang with that. What they don't tell you is that the oversized bag trolley goes through the part of the airport where all the boxes and other cargo is processed. Suitcases? They were there when we arrived, waiting for us. Not a problem. The guitar took 6 hours to make it to the same area. SIX hours. And that's normal, BTW.

People were leaving their golf clubs, etc, and coming the next day to collect them. But this is where all the kids car seats, guitars and other essentials of life go. Can you imagine? Six hours to collect your kids car seat after a 9-hour flight?

If this is the world we now live in, making parents wait that long for a car seat to take a tired infant home from the airport, it's hard not to feel like the terrorists are winning. Either that, or they've changed jobs and are now designing all the draconian proceedures we need to live by at airports.

Really, I'm totally fine with the extra security, and always thank the TSA people for what they do. But this is a little extreme, no?

more about junk mail

I must have hit a nerve here, I've had 3-dozen emails about junk mail. At least I'm getting email from people I know for a change. And we're talking about Viagra, and other slightly off-color topics. Odd, no?

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE LAP STEEL

1. Man buys a really poor quality guitar
2. Neck warps.
3. Too lazy to buy a new one, he lays it down and plays it on lao, also uses it as a TV-tray for beer.
4. Everyone lived happily ever after, until he realized he could plug it in.....

the junk mail blues

enlarger pumps
and cut-rate viagra pills
free credit card offers
to cut my telephone bills
i get nothing but junk mail
every time I turn my computer on
wonder where these people
got my address from?

nuf said. quit sending me this crap. I mean it.

Bellrock Blues Festival, Arbroath

Just in from the folks organizing the Bellrock Blues Festival in Arbroath. Here's our schedule so far-

1. 11am sat 25 Aug in the Central- da band
2. 2pm sat 25 Aug in the Newgate- solo
3. 8pm sat 25 Aug in the Station- solo
4. 1pm sun 26 Aug in the Newgate- solo

Should be fun, I love Arbroath, foods great, people are fantastic and the band is hot these days...

I want to try this too.....

BEND, Oregon (AP) -- Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks -- and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.

With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast -- he could turn a spigot, release water and rise -- Couch headed into the Oregon sky.

Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer's field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles from home.

"When you're a little kid and you're holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind," Couch told the Bend Bulletin.

"When you're laying in the grass on a summer day, and you see the clouds, you wish you could jump on them," he said. "This is as close as you can come to jumping on them. It's just like that."


--------

Yeah, a parachute is a good idea. But a GPS? That's a little high-tech for me...

Moorings Bar, Saturday Night

What can I say, there's a certain type of bar or pub that I really like.

A little on the edge, dodgy part of town. Reputation for being a little on the rough or wild side. I'm there. Perfect place to play blues.

And that's what we did again last night at the Moorings Bar in Aberdeen. It has everything I like in a pub, and on our second trip through the Moorings we kicked it pretty hard. Great to play for an enthusiastic crowd, a room full of SHB regulars and new faces. Oh, and some really loud lap steel, played with a steel overhead door and a bucket load of feedback. Some blues too.

If you're new to the band, you should get on my mailing list by clicking the link about (to sign up) and I'll send you stuff so you can catch us again!

So where is Joey Fender?

Any ideas? Joey, are you still out there?

Website is down, and he's gone with out a trace. The Alaskan Rockabilly-blues king, vanished. Odd.

If you know where Joey is or how to get in touch with him, send me an email ok?

Boss FDR-1 Pedal

It's supposed to be a Fender Deluxe Reverb in a box. So, how's it stand up to the hype?

I tested it two ways, the first was through my amp, a Fender Pro Reverb. I set it so it was clean sounding, the EQ was flat and the reverb was off. The pedal was set so that the volume was a little louder when the pedal active and the gain set around 6. I set the tone controls to be fairly flat as well. So, when played hard and driving the the amp pretty hard it's not a bad tone. Is it a clone of a Deluxe Reverb? Not quite. The pedal does have a gritty-ness in the mids that's typical of these COSM-type devices. The PODS have it too, to my ears. No matter, is it usable as an extension of my signal chain? Yeah, I think it has a place to that Derek O'Briend tone, a little louder and still clean but with a bit of hair and bite to it. I'll use it at a gig for sure.

The real reason that I bought this was to be able to plug my lap steel straight into a PA and not need to drag an amp to a solo gig. It's actually a respectable tone, again, it's not perfect and sounds a little processed. But it means that I can get on a train with an acoustic guitar and a steel guitar and play solo gigs on the road.

Over-hyped? For sure. Useful, once you strip all that away? Yeah, I think so. I'll take it to my gig at the Moorings Bar tonight and see if I can get a better tone out of the big bad-ass Marshall stacks they have for the back line.

Bottom line? My wife liked the sound and actualy commented on it as I was testing it this morning. That hardly ever happens....

Moorings Bar

Some Dundee Snaps....

Dundee Blues Bonanza (phew)

Another one come and gone. Seems like I spend all year in anticipation of thie great festival, and then it's over before I know it. Was it a good one? Nope, it was flat out amazing.

Our involvement started on Thursday with a warm-up party at Cafe Drummonds in Aberdeen. Late night, and a great chance to run through the material we're taking to the festival. Out the door around 1 a.m., and then up early to start getting organized.

4 hours sleep.

Friday night Tim Aves arrived from London. His flight was running late so we dropped his things at the airport and immediately left for a rehearsal. It was a good chance to meet, run through his songs and talk logistics for the weekend. I think we quit around 11, back at my place around 12, and stayed up late talking. New guitar strings on my strat. Up the next day a 6 a.m. to start packing the truck, printing maps and working out the logistics of moving 5 people and a ton of gear.

4 hours sleep again.

OK, now the fun starts. Tim and I hit the road around 11:30 and met the guys we were staying with at our block of self catering flats. Dr. Bendix, the Lyndon Anderson Band and a couple of others were all staying there to. Lots of gear being moved up a narrow flight of stairs. By 1:30 we have the gear shifted, our guitars in the truck, stage clothes on and we were off to the Bond for the first of Tim's gigs, as the Jalepenos.

The Bond is a great room, kinda small and at the south end of the Marketgait area. It was empty, echo empty as we were setting up. Dino, Tim and I ran off to get a quick to-go meal and by the time we were back, it was jammed with bodies. We had to be well over fire-code capacity. Tim kicked it off with a Howlin Wolf tune, 'Riding in the Monlight' and the room was instantly jumping. Tim's a great front person, real energetic and a solid guitarist and harp player (nice guy too, go figure). 45 minutes later, it was 'smoke 'em if ya got em' time to take a break and hang outside with the smokers-in-exile and cool off. Most of the conversation revolved around my snakeskin cowboy boots and how rattlesnake really does taste like chicken.

Our second set was better than the first, and played for an even larger crowd. When we ended with Tim's son 'Wageslave', it was 5 pm, time to break down the gear, pack the truck and run off to the Abode for our solo gigs.

I was supposed to start at 6:30. It wasn't hard to find the club. Parking was miserable. So I double-parked in a taxi rank and we forced our way through a standing-room only crowd to get the guitars up to the small area reserved for the solo performers. Oh, I had to park about 1/2 mile away.

As it turned out I started bang on time. I had my acoustic lap steel with me and played all the new songs on my acoustic CD, and one or two standards on an electric guitar. It's magic playing for an audience that knows you and looks forward to seeing the new material that you bring to a show like this. Intimate isn't really the right word, but it was singing in close quarters for sure, and a wonderful room full of friends, both old and new. Interestingly enough, 12 people asked me where Louise was, why didn't I bring the national with me? Simple, no room in the truck. Next year, I missed that guitar as much as y'all did.

I was done at 8 pm and Tim took over. I could only stay long enough to get him settled and then I had to walk back to the truck and head back to the flat so Dino and I could load up the PA. 3 flights of stairs, I might add. And then we were off to the Old Bank Bar to follow the GrooveCats for a 10 pm show.

The Old Bank Bar is huge, and by the time we started there were easily 500 people there. Easily. Our soundcheck song was 'Love my little baby' a jumping west-coast shuffle. I'd thought to make a quick one just to check levels, but the room just burst into dancing and so we finished the song and went straight into that Bo Diddley-style version of 'Who do you love', slightly Cajun-ized. The rest of the set was a blur. Band was as solid as ever. Great to see Paul from Glasgow, Anna, Eric, Lovat, Marion, Alan and the rest of you trouble-makers!

We were suposed to quit at 12, but by the time we were finished playing encores it was much closer to 1 am. Last song? A really swinging version of 'Reconsider Baby'. What a great time. Phew. Time to shift the gear again, up 3 flights of stairs and finally get something for dinner. Nothing like a late-night Kebab and a beer. Off to bed around 3 am. Dino snores. Dave does too. No curtains on the window, so the sunlight hits early too. Up at 6.

3 hours sleep.

Spent most of the morning watching the news about the Glasgow airport. Puts everything in perspective. At noon we all shuffled off for a breakfast for members of the Blindman's Blues forum. 16 of us in all from all over the world. Great people, all good friends. Known some of them for years and still meeting them for the first time.

Back to the gear shuffle. Tim had another gig at Satchmoes. I know the PA and the Parking situation there so it was much less stressful. Leon Hunter and the gang always take good care of us there. True to form, 5 minutes before we start the room fills up. It's a room full of faces that we've seen at every gig. How great is that? Good gig, by now I'm starting to get a little tired. Slamming Red Bulls in pairs to keep moving. 2 hours later (5 pm) it's time for more gear moving and a quick run over to Alleycats for my last gig.

OK, by now I really am wiped out. It was supposed to be a low-volume acoustic gig with Billy Allardyce and Davey Blair on drums and bass. As it turns out I was in the zone and wantedto play lots of lap steel. So, with Tim sitting in on the harp, we played our first set to a small crowd of folks that had followed us over. Small because we had our start time changed from 7 to 6, so low pressure out of the gate. By 6:45 the room was filling up and by the time I started at 7 it was standing room only. we ran through the solo CD material again, and then I brought Tim, Dave and Billy up for a lap-steel romp through some originals, old blues covers and some odd stuff too.

There's something that happens when you get that tired. It's as though the creative barriers all melt away and you tap into a reservoir of energy and creativity that wasn't there before. It was euphoric, the guys did a great job tagging along, and we took turns pushing each other. Although we were supposed to finish at 8, we played later, much later in fact.

Ok, blah blah blah. More gear to move after cleaning out the flat. Home around midnight, in bed by 1am and then up a 6 to get everyone ready for school and work.

5 hours sleep, finally.

This afternoon I fell asleep on a city bus, and the bus driver woke me up at my stop. I'm still dead on my feet. But I wouldn't trade weekends like that with so many friends for a bag of money. Dundee is how I mark my anniversary of living in Scotland, where I go to recharge my creative batteries and reconnect with all my friends.

See you next year!