The competition draws blues bands from all over the western United States and is usually the best time to catch hot West Coast blues bands doing their thing with the winner travelling to Memphis, Tennessee to play one night with other top blues acts from around the country. It’s kind of a grind, 9 bands in a night. Everyone uses the same back line (drums, amps, etc) and each act gets only 10 minutes to set up.
We went on in the early part of the first night and did a yeoman’s job in my humble opinion (I had to deal with a monster 8 piece drum kit, a big deal considering I play a 4 piece kit). We did a 5 song set showcasing some of our more rocking stuff. This clip is our last song from the set, a medley of Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “Pride and Joy” (done DBJ style) and “Love Rocket” from our second record “Sweet Sassy”.
Thanks to Chrissy Van Osdol for capturing it on vid for us.
As I struggled with my WordPress instance bombing on me the other day, it occurred to me that I was unaware how dependent I had become to having such a tool manage my website. Once I realized the extent of the issue I was having, I even resorted to uploading my old static website to my server while I figured out the problem. I quickly realized when re-deploying my old website how much of an effort it used to be to maintain it and update it with no current CMS modularity that I have come to enjoy using WP. Then I realized (as if this weren’t enough to think about) that I have 2 “bloggy” sites…one on Posterous and this website you are reading.
So of course, this made me debate why I have a website altogether. It used to be for showcasing my projects and my web based offerings but I left that side of my career behind eons ago. These days I have moved more to the planning/strategy side of the street and so therefore, by design I guess, my website needs are best quantified by what I have to say. Sigh…so THEN, I read through a lot of my posts to investigate if I felt I had something interesting to say. I determined that though I am not providing expert analysis or other kinds of genius through this website I AM having fun and so therefore, WORDPRESS IT IS!
Going forward I plan to be more active in using it too.
Stone Temple Pilots that is. This week (tomorrow, 5/25/10) sees their first new release in 9 years and a flurry of new dates coming.
Can’t say how thrilled I am to have one of my favorite bands from the 90′s back in action. Watched a concert from March in Chicago last night on Palladia which showed them in fine form too.
The cool thing for me is I have been going back to all the side projects too.
I liked Army of Anyone which came in out in 2007 but today I finally found Talk Show available for download on Amazon. This was the short lived project with Duncan Coutts (from Ten Inch Men, so-so LA alt something band). This was a really cool disc that I regretted losing over the years. The band didn’t sell any records but I just loved this album. Thought Duncan was a cool addition to their thing and he was a nice change of pace considering how f**ked up Weiland was in 96-97.
Anyway, regardless, happy to be listening to Talk Show and happy STP are BACK!
Been too long guys.
Been a while since I got to play outdoors but this summer is shaping up nicely. Kicked off summer with a Closed Captioned gig this past weekend at Bethany Vineyards in Ridgefield, Washington.
We played 3 long sets to many drinkers of wine and consumers of buffet food. Was perfect weather, 70 degrees and sun. Made me dang happy. More shows coming this summer from Dull Boy Jack too.
Back in November of 2009, my band Bull Boy Jack came up with a cool idea to help market ourselves. We set up at Quiet Life Productions in Vancouver, Washington (owned by our good friend Keith Laurent) and filmed a live rehearsal. Of course we gussied up the studio a bit and vibed it out but the end results are starting to come together.
I’m pleased to share our first video from this session for “My Dog Spike” from our first record “Buttered on the Right Side”.
This video can also be seen on our Reverb Nation page. Credit is also due to JT for putting this clip together with the footage from the shoot, and also to our 4th member Dave Boyle from Studio 212 here in Portland for the live sound and mixing.
Happy New Year to everyone by the way.
And indeed for me, New Years came with many gifts.
Not the least of which was hearing that Soundgarden are coming back in 2010.
A post came out over the Inter-tubes the other day directing traffic and prying eyes to a new website for the band. On the whole, I am very excited for this and it really solidifies my thinking about great bands and the fragility of making music.
If you go back in time to 1997 when they split up, Soundgarden seemingly could do no wrong. Along with Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam, Soundgarden were the owners of the new rock space. Grunge had given way to a whole new sound that (in my opinion) Soundgarden defined. “Down on the Upside” provided a view into where rock was headed. Huge riffs, pounding rhythms, Chris Cornell’s banshee scream, and time signatures a plenty. On top of this, was a layer of melody that was both sophisticated and interesting. Frankly had they continued, I think Soundgarden would have become the biggest hard rock band walking the planet. I was interested to see where they were headed and then…..well, they broke up not being able to agree where they were going.
So now, we get the chance to see where they would have gone.
I hope they take it seriously and deliver a sonic slab worthy of being called “Soundgarden”.
Because frankly, the only redeeming thing any of them has done since is Matt Cameron joining Pearl Jam.
I can’t consider Audioslave music but hey, that’s me.
A week or two ago, I posted about some recent musical activity with Dull Boy Jack, my Portland based blues/funk/twang trio.
We filmed about 6-7 hours of live footage and recorded as well at Quiet Life Productions sound stage in Vancouver, Washington. We’re going to be assembling the footage into a series of promo clips and a DVD.
This is a clip captured from the “drum cam” of us playing “Dimples” by John Lee Hooker.
It’s fun and gives a sample of what it looks like hanging back with the drummer.
There will be more to come for sure.
I’ve been giving a great deal of thought lately to what I am doing these days musically.
My past is filled with incredible memories, records, sessions, videos, pictures and other assorted memorabilia. I’ve definitely accomplished a lot musically in my past. But today, with the projects I am involved in, I feel a sense of greater accomplishment and pride. I think this stems primarily from the fact that every project I am a part of has balance and equity in how they operate.
None of my current projects are dictated by record companies, the desire to be a part of a record company, or fulfilling someone’s expectations of what we are doing. We do what we do, when we want to do it, and how we want to do it. This past weekend, Dull Boy Jack, my funk/blues/country-fried trio set up at our buddy Keith’s Quiet Life Productions facility with the intent to record ourselves in live performance, and, film it as well.
There was minimal concept other than this and the end result was incredibly satisfying. We had played the previous evening up on Mt Hood with our classic rock cover band and had rolled in sometime around 3 AM. We were all tired but really enthused to play our music and see what we could do. We ended the day after 6 hours of playing and filming with a shit ton of great HD video, lots of cool pictures (thanks again Paul Matera) and good energy towards putting this all together. Our good friend Dave Boyle came with his rig and recorded us and gave up his day for our project.
In the end, this was one of the most satisfying projects I have ever been a part of.
I think the look on my face says it all.
Anyway, thanks to my boys Rich and JT.
We’re enjoying ourselves that much is true.
