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.
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.
I give you for Friday, the genius of Tony Royster Jr.
His skills are well known and his talent prodigious.
What I like is how happy he looks when he plays.
He seems completely connected to the instrument and brings so much passion to his playing. He gets a lot of flack from some ends of the drumming spectrum for being just another super technical player but I think he has unique energy AND technical supremacy.
First, yes, this guy’s fashion sense is abominable. I mean, look at this get up….
But, man, can he play. His physical abilities matched with musical ones would make any self-respecting drummer or drumming fan twist over double backward. This clip is from one of his recent DVD tutorials and is just a snippet….
Watch his foot speed and overall ability to mess with the time with blinding skill and accuracy. Thomas Lang, you make me ill.
To a lot of drummers, Vinnie Colaiuta is a gold standard to gauge one’s abilities against.
For some.
Some of us, myself included, realize we will never be this kind of player or simply do not ascribe to be this kind of player. That said, even though I know this about myself I can appreciate his greatness and do. Often.
Here’s a clip of a fusionoid super group called Karizma with mega players like Michael Landau on guitar, Neil Stubbenhouse on bass and Dave Garfield on keys.
My man Vinnie obviously is slamming away on the tubs.
