Recently in Music Category

My band, Fairmount Chase, played a benefit gig last night. We rented a room in a local tavern downtown and had some bins for the local food bank. Lots of work people and friends of band the band showed up. We played three sets and had dancers a-plenty. At the end of the night, we had to tear everything down and load it all out. A five-piece band has a lot of gear! Driving home, my feet were killing me. Today, I feel like I have been run over. And we still had to unload our stuff into our practice space in the basement of the VFW. It’s a lot of fun to play with these guys, and we draw fun and engaging crowds, but I wish we could hire some roadies. I suppose gigging in the future will be a lot easier: a band will just use the transporter (a la Star Trek) to beam there gear to the venue and back. Hopefully I will live that long.

Unfortunately, Jakki had to work, and my parents had a dancing engagement, so I don’t have any photos of the gig to the post. I’m thinking that I might need to ask Santa for a video camera, so I can begin building up a video library of the band to put on youtube for potential venue owners to look at.

Last night I played with a band for the first time in several years. It was lots of fun, and they are an easy-going bunch. My playing is still pretty rusty, but I was surprised I could keep up on songs I didn’t think I knew very well. It will be hard work to get back in shape for regular playing, but I’m looking forward to it— revisiting a large portion of my life is worth it to me. The band is called Fairmount Chase and hopefully we’ll be playing out in Spokane soon. Now I’m off to ice down my fingers again…

My new favorite band this week is the John Butler Trio.  Check 'em out.  He's a heckeva guitar player, accompanied by an upright bassman and drummer.  He mostly plays fingerstyle acoustic, sometimes through a wah-wah pedal.  But he did name his daughter "Banjo".  You can download his live shows at Archive.org.  Pretty cool, eh?  If I had a band, that's what I'd do...

While searching for more on Beattallica (link from Kevin Bryant), I stumbled across a new music festival:
Mamapalooza! The self-proclaimed festival for mom's that rock.

Apparently there is a whole Mom Rock Band movement that I, just now, am hearing about. This is waaay cool! Such artist include:

• The MyDols
• Placenta (Afterbirth Cometh Rock)
• Black Flamingo
• Frump
• Housewives On Prozac
• The Mothers (from the UK)
• Sin & Tonic
• Betty
• Pilley & Ila's Dress

Today I've been working on horn arrangements for Devo's "That's Good". Hopefully I can talk my father into having his band play it. I think the song lends itself well to horns. Check it out here in Lo-Fi (60 Kb/s) or Hi-Fi (144 Kb/s) Windows Media formats. Feedback is welcome, complainers can bite my shiny metal ass.