Cheapy Slides

Recently I've been playing a lot more slide guitar...I'm starting to feel more confident on it and it's really great fun. Only real challenge (besides the various factors of playing) for me has been finding the right slide. If you've played guitar with a slide I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Some are too light, some too heavy. Different glass and metal slides feel very different and sound different too...and tone quality is a big deal when you're playing in that style. Some slides I've tried are just too big for my fingers, like the Fathead slide and the Coricidin bottles. I have a few brass slides I like OK, but my fave is a little prescription bottle that Cyn found in a rubbish tip in the woods a few years ago. Right weight, right size, great tone, just felt very comfortable. Problem was that I didn't want to take it anywhere and maybe lose it, or break it, or something! And since they now issue prescriptions in those unfortunate little plastic bottles I wasn't sure what to do. Once again I thank the Internet and my search engine...turns out that 5 dram glass vials are easily available online, and for cheap too! I just got in 12 of them for 8 bucks. Can't even buy one single slide in a music store for that. They seem identical to my favorite slide, and now I'm back in business. May play a little slide at the Jam Session tomorrow...

Inspirations (and Intimidations)

I've had a couple of very inspiring (and kind of intimidating) musical moments this past week. The first one was seeing Junior Brown in concert! A good friend and client took Cyn and I to see him at the Ark this weekend. Amazing guitarist! The guy plays everything from Hendrix to Honkytonk to Segovia, all brilliantly...and then switches to his steel guitar and plays that brilliantly. Plus, he has a great singing voice and writes excellent songs. For a while after seeing him I was considering just throwing the guitar out the window and hanging it up. I think that would upset Junior if I did, though, so I won't. But Man! Get you over to YouTube and check him out. Beyond belief.

The other very inspirational event was watching a movie documentary of percussionist Evelyn Glennie called "Touch The Sound". Glennie is a Classical percussionist who does unbelievable improvisatory work, from walls of sound with the Kodo drummers to amazing delicate bits playing with chopsticks on plates, and much more. A very strange and almost mystical thing about her is that she is effectively deaf...her ears register very little sound at all. Somehow she has taught herself to "hear" sound using her whole body, and it seems that the experience is very rich and beautiful to her. The movie is a fabulous experience in itself, a dialog about sound and perception, and a treat to watch. Her duets with guitarist Fred Frith are worth the price of admission, seriously! Easily found at video rental shops and worth the time for anyone who ever enjoys music and sound.

So I have a gig tomorrow with my band The Mobsters...will I bring any of this inspiration to the table there? Well, I still don't have Brown's chops or Glennie's sensitivity, but having experienced a little of that kind of artistry sure won't hurt me. Knowing that there are far frontiers to explore, vast horizons to travel toward...music is an endless quest, a toy that keeps changing shape, an infinite journey into yourself and out into everyone else in the universe. And a lot of fun besides!

The Slowly Spinning Room

The lights go down...music rises from the silence. My head begins to spin. A tumult of sensation overwhelms me, and I'm helplessly off my feet and whirling, whirling through time and space, the lights too bright and the sounds too loud, round and round the maelstrom as I'm tossed ever lower, down into the depths...

Opium dream? Satanic attack? Bad NIN concert flashback? Nah, just a really nasty influenza virus that managed to get under my defences and kick my sad butt this week. Worst I've had in a long time...I can understand how epidemics of this stuff carried thousands and thousands off to the underworld, I felt like I got pretty close. I swear I think at one point I saw some guy in Plutonic robes smiling and beckoning me in, but I started swimming towards the surface and got away this time. Now I'm weak like a little kitten, and it all seems like a strange, very painful nightmare...must buy more oranges.

Looking at my folks old editions of encyclopedia, the Britannica and the good ol' World Book, I used to just thumb through those for fun. Now, amazingly, the same amount of information can just sit in a few GB of your hard drive, or even live accessibly out somewhere in cyberspace for instant retrieval. Although somehow I feel I trust Wikipedia less than Britannica, and I know I can't just open it up and read at random the same way (although I must say I use Wiki all the time). It's like I can't really get a charge buying music online the same way I do when I'm in a (now sadly rare) really good music store, I can't wander around the same right-brained way, stumbling into strange and wonderful stuff accidentally...or by hanging around jawing with the hip Record Store Guy. I was one of those once, by the way...not necessarily hip, but a Record Store Guy. I don't miss all of it, but I do miss turning people on to cool music...

Playing music in a state of high fever is an odd experience. You can't really get anything done, but sometimes you get really strange insights. Running through some chord arpeggios and scale sequences while practicing a tune, and suddenly the patterns of "notes available while passing through time" became really clear. I could see the various interlocking scales and chord tones incredibly clearly, and how various choices could lead to different melodic and harmonic outcomes...and how of course that this is only the very first step. The next goal is to completely assimilate those patterns so that there are infinite options...and then, the transcendence of those patterns and into real freedom. If that sounds a bit Metaphysical, it's because I think it really is! Mastering music as a metaphor for the Spiritual journey...yeah, you've heard it before, but hey, it's my cosmology and I'm stickin' with it. But anything can have that metaphorical cosmology I think...what about that Zen butcher? He did his job so perfectly that his knives never got dull, and his focus on his actions was clearer than the monks in the monastery. But I'm stickin' with the music thing, you get shiny guitars and the chicks dig it.

Perhaps I'm still recovering a little...my mind seems to be wandering. Sometimes that's actually a pretty good thing, and I wonder if maybe a little stumbling around in the right side of the brain might not be just the thing in these strange dark pre-Spring weeks. But I'd much rather do it without the incredible sinus and joint pain, thanks!

Dire February

February is a month in Michigan where people are just really hanging on, trying to get through to Spring, still held by the icy teeth of Winter. Some types probably blog more during these periods...I seem to do less. Less is happening. I get to work. I get back. I lie on the couch. Cyn and I try hard not to get in each others way and to respect space, since we work together as well as live together, and that's a kind of weird vibe. I don't get to the studio to work as much as I should, but still practice with the Mobsters when the weather permits...we've had more than a few rehearsals cancelled due to heavy snow. Today may be such a day. A friend who was looking for a bassist with his new group called last week and I went out and played with them...quite a good Power Pop band, but I don't know if I'll really have the time to do it. I need to try to focus on working with this Swing stuff, and with my own original music, and that just may preclude any other projects.

Really I feel like I'm just waiting for the weather to break for good. So ready for it...I'd love to take a walk without freezing something off. Last night the Coyotes were howling again, and I called the barn cats indoors for protection. They ran in pretty quickly, too! I'm sure those Coyotes are hungry and Bitey or Bluto would be a welcome snack. Much as I admire the wild things, I'd like to avoid that.

I'm playing my new guitar quite a bit right now...it's made by Agile, a Korean company. Essentially a Les Paul knockoff, I've had a few Paul players tell me it's a good as many an LP. Sounds great and looks crazy...the top is all white pearlescent pickguard finish. I didn't expect it to sound as good as it does, but there's solid mahogany underneath that, and the pickups, hardware and electronics are surprisingly very high quality. And it's less than a tenth the price of a LP...which makes it possible for this particular starving musician to own one. Watch out, Korea is taking over the world...

Actually, it feels good to write in this journal again. I think it's easy this time of year to just get torpid and hibernate as much as possible...I know I've done that a lot. But writing kind of gets my internal motor going again, which is important anytime really. Now I've just gotta get out to the studio and finish off those pesky tunes of mine!

Catching My Breath

I took a little break from writing after the holidays...I'd just been a bit overwhelmed and there was so much going on. Now that the social obligations are down to a funky few, and the cookies have all been et (back to the gym for me!), and my folks have been packed off on the plane and delivered to Florida's land of Sunshine & Geezers, I've been relaxing a bit and playing catch-up with everything else in my life. Feels good! It's gonna take a little time to decompress...maybe take a holiday from the holidays...

Playing a lot more too, at least on guitar. The Mobsters band is a good impetus for me to woodshed, and I seem to be leaning into the Swing side of my influences again, which is really fun. Mickey Richard, Guitarist and Luthier Extraordinaire, found and gave me an old old old Doghouse Bass last week. Very Cool! It's gonna need some work, but not too much I think. I'm looking forward to stringing it up and working with that thing, maybe do a little Swing Duet action with Mickey...that would be great.

I also went Tech again and got Band-In-A-Box, a cool and kind of frightening tool. It's a software/MIDI/loops program, and what you do is basically type in your chords and time signature, etc, and then bango! The thing starts pumping out a full arrangement with drums, bass, guitar, horns and more. Scary really, but GREAT for practicing. I'd been just running through the Mobsters swing songs at home by myself, but typing them into BIAB and playing with a full band, much more fun! And strangely I find myself playing LESS notes, and leaving a lot more space. If this tool can help me then I'm gonna use it.

At any rate, hopefully I'm back writing again...who knows, perhaps writing songs again too. I find that creative periods can occasionally be goosed into being, but for the most part they come when they will, and I've got to respect that and enjoy it when it's happening. Right now though, I'm off to work again...

Happy New Year (Or Thereabouts)

A new year in a strange century! The earth shifts, and the people wake to unusual changes in their world each day. New technologies appear and bend our lives and minds into bizarre new places, a bold new President prepares to lead this country into the future and who knows where, new arts and musics and more swarm into view to create beauty, chaos and controversy. And, all the while on a shelf in the shed, Kenny's Little Creatures on display.

As for me, I survived the onslaught of the Holiday Season, although barely. I get bombarded by friends and family who appear as if by magic and hijack any plans I may have made to get stuff done, and I have to kind of go with that and keep my seasonal cheer intact at the same time. I think I did pretty well considering...no fatalities (yet)! And there was indeed some good fun had by all. Although we were hampered a bit by some of the crappiest weather I can remember in the Xmas/New Year's period...we were snowed in a few days, iced in a few days more, and then camped out on my parent's floor for three more days when the windstorms knocked out power for about 30,000 people around these parts. Just glad me Ma & Dad were OK! Basically I just stopped over to our farm during the day, fed the completely demoralised cats and weasel, and turned on the generator to pump out the flooded basement, usually twice a day. Cleaning that is big fun! But that's part of the joy of country living. I'm just really glad to have things working again, and to have things a bit quieter. Now maybe I can get some music done again.

It's true, my upcoming CD has been sidelined by the Holidays, the weather and rehearsals for my new live band, but I've been back dusting off the studio and doing a little polishing of the existing recordings. This should be an interesting one...a little different from the last, with for some reason, a lot more electric piano (well it's just cool) and a good deal of groove-oriented post -beat songs. But as always, I'm not sure what'll happen till I'm done. Maybe it'll end up a Polka CD, I just don't know.

Anyway, a Happy New Year to all, and I hope you are having less travails with life and weather than us. If not, my condolences...please hang in there!

P.S. It's amazing! I wrote this out and the spellchecker only found one misspelled word..."what'll", which I guess isn't even officially a word. Can I be becoming a better speller in my old age? Very strange.

New Challenges

As I lie like a eastern pasha on my silken cushions in my library, fez askew, with the opium smoke wafting above me like the ectoplasmic ghost of Coleridge, I'm musing on my taking on the Front Man/Lead Guitarist role in the Mobsters band. My trusty but insanely unusual Custom Deacon Limited leans against a pillow, its pearlescent pickguard gleaming in the light of the oil lamps. Have I bitten off a bit more than I can chew here? Not, I think, for my bandmates, they seem to like my singing and playing well enough, but for me? I'm pretty picky (usually) about the guitarists I work for...and now I work for myself...I think I've got more shedding to do.

I know that I'm hard on myself about trying for excellence in music, but I can't fool myself in knowing where the bar has been placed in the areas that I want to be good at, and they're pretty darn high. I was feeling OK about my playing, and then the other night I went out with some friends to see George Bedard and Bill Kirtchen play...man! What amazing and tasteful musicians they are. Beautiful melodies and harmonies just flow out of those guys so naturally, it's a fantastic thing to see. Makes me realise where the heights are, and wonder about how high up the mountain I can climb. Thing is, I love to learn, I just wish I had a few more lifetimes to work on it all. In those strange hazy conversations I sometimes have with friends the question comes up, what if you had unlimited time to live? I always keep thinking, damn, I'd really have time to become a musician then. I think I could master that chord melody stuff in a couple centuries if I applied myself! And after a bit more of that for guitar I could concentrate on learning composition and orchestration. Then, a few more centuries for anthropology, science, literature...then some time for mysticism, and a millennia or so in meditation...

Thing is, my time is a lot shorter than that, and a lot of it is taken up with fairly mundane stuff. So I have to get a lot more focused on what I want to do with the little time I have to do it in! Believe me, I'm working at it. Tomorrow it looks like we'll be snowed in, and I'm planning on spending as much time as I can playing some music. And to anyone who thinks this is like hard work or something, think again! Really, it's as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. Although I've played lots of fine music in the nude as well...but perhaps the less said about that the better...

Birthdays

Just sitting with another cup of coffee, prying my eyes open after a festive evening last night celebrating my Birthday...my 56th! How the hell did that happen? I was 12 last week, 15 or 16 just a little while ago. You blink, turn around a couple of times and Wham! Suddenly there's all this grey hair and stuff. Weird.

Having a Birthday around Halloween (I was actually born an hour after, on All Saint's Day, but I usually celebrate on Halloween) makes for lots of opportunities for festivity, and we certainly took advantage of them last night! There was a musical extravaganza out at the Arbor Brewing Company, a local micro brew club, with our friends the Six Foot Poles (hey, they're from Hamtramick). Cyn and I donned our costumes...we went as the Corporate Clowns Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. She did some amazing and very disturbing makeup on us...as you can see. We had a gas at the party, the band was great and it was a lot of fun for all! Today, however, for some reason I feel a bit...subdued. Perhaps a side effect of the excellent ABC brews. But you know, it's worth it really.

It's certainly been a year to make me more reflective and maybe a little morbid, with all that's been going on. But if I look back on my life these last 56 years, I realize that I've been pretty fortunate, and I haven't done that badly. I've had the chance to play in wonderful bands, hang out with wonderful people, to do wild and crazy things that lots of other people just dream about. There are a lot of people who love me, I have a wonderful fiance, and a great family. I suppose I have some regrets...I've wasted a lot of time and braincells with drugs and alcohol, especially early on, and I wish often I'd been kinder sometimes to people. But overall, I think I've been pretty OK, and I've had lots of fantastic experiences. This next year I think I just want to try and improve on as many levels as I can...I want to get my recording studio and promotional service together, and try to help other struggling musicians. I want to start working on soundtracks, and to expand my compositional abilities. I want to play music a lot more and with more great musicians, and to grow there as well. And I really want to have more and more fun with Cyn, my family and friends! Life is good, gotta enjoy it as much as possible.

Memories of Charley Tysklind

I just got the news of my good friend Charley’s passing. I hadn’t been in touch with him in the last few months, and I had no idea he’d been that sick. This is really devastating, and I don’t know what to feel or do.

I think I met Charley in the late 70’s or early 80’s (my memory for dates is awful, and if anybody knows better please correct me). My friend Doug Cameron and I were in a band with his then girlfriend and a drummer, and Doug said that he knew a sax player from Lake Orion area who was good. When he showed up for a rehearsal, he was dressed kind of biker-like, and with his rough whiskey and cigarettes voice and his look I though “Man, here’s one tough customer”. It didn’t take long to find out this was far from the truth. Charley had an inner sweetness of spirit that came through right away, and we wound up getting along immediately. We had similar and complementary senses of humor, were both passionate about music, and were out for as much fun and adventure as we could get out of life. He proved to be a great musician too…I remember being much impressed by his ability to play two saxophones at once, in harmony, something he nabbed from one of his idols Rassan Roland Kirk. It suddenly gave us a horn section, and looked really cool onstage too.

Over the next six years or so we wound up being good friends and off-and-on housemates in various places in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, and playing in various ensembles wherever we could. I remember living on Emmet St. in Ypsi with him and some other sordid characters, and our lives of hilarious desperation and amusement. We both had various tiny odd jobs and gigs to keep us afloat, and along with the free pizzas from a sympathetic Pizza Store girl down the street we managed to survive. There were quite a few rather ill-conceived and unsuccessful bands that we were both in…one trio that we had with a amphetamine-fueled pianist whose name escapes me wound up playing in the then very rough Cross Street Club every week for happy hour weekends. The bouncer had a ball-peen hammer that he kept on a leather cord around his wrist, to discourage any messin’ around. Charley said it was a place where they searched you for weapons at the door, and if you didn’t have any they gave you one! But we opened up for everybody in town, playing jazz tunes out of the Real Book. I think we were paid in beer and burgers and stale cigars…we were all smoking like chimneys.

At that time I was going to school at WCC, and I don’t know if Charley was registered there or not, but he was out there a good deal. The Jazz Ensemble I was in played weekly out at the Halfway Inn at East Quad in A2 and he sat in on those sessions a lot. His sax style back then was cleaner in tone than it became later, and his jazz chops were good, especially for the time. At some point we both moved from Emmet St. to Pearl St. in Ypsi, to a house we shared with Wayne Indyk, Brian Tomsic, Ray Torres and several other nefarious souls. There were many parties and good times to be had there, and we had them. We were in our 20’s and into chasing after girls, gigs, mind-altering substances and the meaning of life, usually all at the same time. Charley had a huge appetite for it all, and ebullience that made being around him a gas. He and Wayne and I started the Movie Fun Club, gathering friends and going out to the cheap matinees of cheesy Sci-Fi and Fantasy flicks, laughing and throwing popcorn around. Fantastic afternoons.

Somewhere around that time Charley hooked up with Steve Wethy and the Blue Front Persuaders, who were based in Ann Arbor and just starting to get their Retro-Swing thing together. The first gig I know of they did was out in front of Rick’s American Café during the Art Fair in A2, and Rick’s had just opened. To grab the substantial crowd outside, the owners offered the Blue Fronts a gig that night if they’d just tell the audience they were playing there, and that it was “Quarter Beer Night”. Of course they did, and the crowd swarmed down into the basement club, and the band played all night. Steve and Charley and I shared a table completely covered in full plastic beer glasses. We went through some quarters that night! The Blue Fronts caught on like wildfire in A2, fueled partly by the Blues and Jump resurgence brought on by the Blue Brothers and the like, but mostly by the fun-loving, manic personality of the band itself. On a good night they could kick some serious swingin’ ass! Again, Charley’s persona and stage presence was a key element in the band’s chemistry.

Not too long after that I was recruited to be the band’s bassist, and we started playing at a new level, both musically and professionally, than either of us had before. We had all our weekends booked, and many weekdays too (as well as sub gigs that turned up at places like Mr. Flood’s Party and others). We were doing dates throughout Michigan and Ohio, and I can think of no better band to start doing it with than that one, and no better friends to be sharing the experience with, especially Charley. Many very wild nights were had by all, and hilarious after-gig parties that I mostly remember. It’s true that we were all a pretty hard-drinking, loose-living band at that point, but given the times and our youth I think it was a pretty natural kind of thing really. Charley could always drink me under the table though, and he frequently did!

During this period we both had summer jobs being park rangers in Ypsi’s Jyro Park. It was a pretty place to be, a decent day job and had the perk of many pretty park rangerettes, who we pursued with varying degrees of success. Charley wound up hooking up with Deanna, a lovely and sweet girl who really cared deeply about him. They got closer and closer, and I was happy for them both. I remember very well the night we were playing at the Soup Kitchen in Detroit, when he told me they were going to announce their engagement later that week. He was playing beautifully that night, and sang “I’m Gonna Stay Right Here” with such feeling (and essentially directly to Deanna) that I got choked up on the stand. I was planning to drive home with them that night, but my bass wouldn’t fit in Deanna’s little car, so I rode in the van with Steve and Dennis. It was later in the morning that we found out about the horrific car crash that they were in, the result of a drunk driver in a car chase racing down the wrong way on the highway. Charley was busted up some, and Wayne (our soundman at the time) had serious internal injuries and lost his spleen, but Deanna was killed instantly. We were all devastated. I don’t think Charley ever really got over that. He was a mess for a long time…how could he not be? But even much later, you could see the change that tragedy did to him. I think the dark streak of self-destructive behavior deepened then, his drinking and related consumptions became a little more pronounced and more to cushion himself against the pain than just for fun. He recovered, kept playing, returned to the world and to mostly good humor, but it left its mark.

After I left the band, there was a while were I didn’t see Charley, but we wound up sharing space again in Ann Arbor on Michigan St., in a very large house with a crazy bomb shelter that the Blue Fronts used to record in. I think his darkest period was behind him by then, he had mellowed somewhat and was living with another girlfriend, but we still had the connection of our good friendship and shared humor. We still were able to party, and occasionally we’d stumble across the street to Arwulf’s, either to entertain him with some freeform sax duets (I should mention that I don’t really play sax at all) or just to jabber and listen to Arwulf’s amazing music collection, which we had plundered before in search of obscure Swing tunes in the earlier days of the Persuader’s career. I do remember a few instances of excess during that time…one night I was woken up by an amazing cacophony downstairs in the living room. I stumbled down there and found Charley, wearing stereo headphones, playing Wagner’s “Flight Of The Valkeries” at top volume and waving his arms wildly, conducting into the air! Only problem was he had neglected to actually plug the headphones in! I treasure moments like that though. After our house broke up, we drifted apart, and I would only see him briefly and infrequently over the years. Just last year he contacted me by email and we wrote back and forth for a bit, but one of us (probably me) dropped the ball and I hadn’t heard from him in a bit. I’d just been thinking of reconnecting again when Steve sent me this news.

There was so much I admired and liked about him…he was a master storyteller, specializing in the tall and preposterous tale that was usually based in fact; a gifted artist, who could whip out an off-the-cuff comic or portrait without thinking about it; a great musician and musicologist with a vast knowledge of Jazz and R&B; and a cat with a fantastic imagination, who could entertain himself and everyone around him with nothing but the contents of his beautifully twisted mind. And a really good friend with a huge soul and a warm and generous spirit. I’d always hoped we’d have a little more time to be together and talk, and I’ll always regret I didn’t work harder to make that happen. I feel like a large part of what made me myself has left the planet. Charley, if you’re still out there somewhere, good luck, man, we loved you. I hope you have a fantastic journey, and a sublime destination.

Radio Six

I've recently been put on the playlist on Radio Six in Scotland! It's a very cool station indeed, and I reccomend anybody who likes eclectic and interesting music to go check it out...if you're not in Scotland, it's available worldwide on the web at www.radiosix.com ...and I'm not just saying that to plug my CD (although it is quite a fablulous collection of tunes, and available for your listening enjoyment and gift-giving pleasure at www.beowulfkingsley.com ). As I've said before elsewhere, I am on their playlist in the Male Vocalist catagory, something I find both amusing and disturbing. But I'll take it, thanks very much! I was actually kind of blown away by the coverage Radio Six has besides its local broadcast and its web radio presence...here's the total list...

Our broadcasts are carried by a network of transmitters around the world, on shortwave, medium wave, VHF and Satellite, via the facilities of our affiliates WBCQ, Celtic Music Radio, World FM and Radio Tatras International. Our current schedule on 1,530kHz and 88.5MHz analogue and Sky Channel 0195 and Eurobird 1 28.5 east 12.523GHz, Horizontal (Symbol rate: 27.500 MSymb; FEC: 2/3, Original Network ID: 2, Transport stream ID: 2611, Service: 55012 PID: 2322) is as follows:- (All times GMT)
23:00 to 06:00 Daily Sky channel 0195 on digital satellite covering the United Kingdom and Ireland
23:00 to 06:00 Sunday to Friday 94.2 (30kW Stereo) Poprad and 94.8MHz (15kW Stereo)Kosice, Slovakia covering most of the country and with some spill into neighbouring countries.
23:00 to 06:00 Daily on Eurobird 1 satellite at 28 degrees east on 12.523GHz Horizontal 27500 2/3 covering Europe.
00:00 to 02:00 Saturday to Sunday 88.5MHz (500mW Stereo) from Tawa to Redwood and Tawa, New Zealand
06:00 to 07:00 Daily 88.5MHz (500mW Stereo) from Tawa to Redwood and Tawa, Wellington, New Zealand
06:00 to 08:00 Saturdays 88.5MHz (500mW Stereo) from Tawa to Redwood and Tawa, Wellington, New Zealand
06:00 to 08:00 Saturdays Sky channel 0195 on digital satellite covering the United Kingdom and Ireland
06:00 to 08:00 Saturdays Eurobird satellite at 28 degrees east on 12.523GHz Horizontal 27500 2/3 covering Europe.
12:00 to 13:00 Fridays 1530kHz for Glasgow and surrounding area
18:00 to 19:00 Mondays Sky channel 0195 on digital satellite covering the United Kingdom and Ireland
18:00 to 19:00 Mondays 94.2 (30kW Stereo) Poprad and 94.8MHz (15kW Stereo)Kosice, Slovakia covering most of the country and with some spill into neighbouring countries.
18:00 to 19:00 Mondays Eurobird satellite at 28 degrees east on 12.523GHz Horizontal 27500 2/3 covering Europe.
19:00 to 20:00 Thursdays and third Saturday of every month 1530kHz for Glasgow and surrounding area
22:00 to 23:00 Monday and Tuesday 94.2 (30kW Stereo) Poprad and 94.8MHz (15kW Stereo)Kosice, Slovakia covering most of the country and with some spill into neighbouring countries.
VHF Transmissions - 88.5MHz Stereo - Tawa, Wellington, New Zealand; 94.2MHz Stereo - Poprad, Slovakis and 94.8MHz Stereo - Kosice, Slovakia.
We have regular transmissions on World FM a LPFM station in Tawa, serving Tawa & Redwood, on the edge of the city of Wellington. You can hear us daily between 7 and 8pm NZ time, and also on Saturdays and Sundays between Noon and 2pm NZ time. Our programmes are broadcast in stereo. More details on the World FM website. Our programmes between 23:00GMT and 05:00GMT are carried via Radio Tatras International on their FM transmitter network in Slovakia, and can be heard in parts of adjacent countries. This service was suspended earlier this year because of regulatory problems in Slovakia, but these have now been resolved and the FM transmissions will resume on August 27th.
Shortwave transmissions - 5.110 and 9.330MHz
Occasionally, our programmes are carried on 5.110MHz and 9.330MHz from transmitters in Monticello, Maine, USA targeted at Europe and south America. These broadcasts are sporadic and not normally announced in advance.

Coyotes, Cranes & My Secret Identity

I find more and more that as I go on as a musician that almost everybody has to have a few hustles to survive, in this incredibly difficult time for the arts and entertainment world...a Secret Identity if you will. I've had many periods where I made my living just playing, but usually that's when you're on the road for 200+ dates a year, which kind of makes having a home life out of the question! So most of us have side gigs or day jobs. I remember playing a show with the keyboardist from Molly Hatchet, who was working a furniture delivery business between tours...and I understand that Colin Moulding was driving a lorry even during the glory days of XTC! So glamour be dammed, I have to pay some bills. Over the years I've done such jobs as House Painting, Psychedelic Drug Reviewer (really), Flower Delivery, Library Clerical, Nude Art Model, Record Store Guy and Prep Cook. I do teach and I do recording, engineering and production for people, but the studio is still just getting off the ground (except on Friday nights, when it is sometimes at an altitude of 40,000 feet). So Cynthia and I own a cleaning business, where we and our associates hop into people's McMansions and office buildings and chase the fearsome dust bunnies around. There are many worse fates!!

The other day we were headed off to one such gig, a summer lakefront cottage rental that we brush up every week. I like to take the back roads out there just because it's such a pretty drive, and we were in no particular hurry. I was turning onto a side road when something ran up from the bushes and stood watching me in the middle of the road. It was a huge coyote! I know that the ones you see out West are little guys, but these Michigan coyotes are really big, as big or bigger than a German Shepherd. I stopped the car and we watched each other for a while, and then he ran off into a field of soybeans on the other side of the road. Cyn and I could see his head appearing and disappearing as he jumped up and down through the beans (I guess he couldn't see where he was going) till he was gone. A nice nature moment!

We finished the cottage and started driving back to town toward our next cleaning gig, and were on a dirt road next to a wheatfield, where we had our next cool animal sighting. Four Sandhill Cranes were in the field, gleaning the leftover wheat and walking about in their weird prehistoric way. I see these guys (I don't know if they're always the same ones) occasionally out by our house, we're out in a major wetlands area (OK, I'll admit it, we live in a swamp). Again, we stopped and sat and watched them for quite a bit...I never really get tired of checking things like this out...

It occurs to me that my Secret Identity allows these kind of moments probably better than most jobs would...we're traveling in rural areas a lot, and we don't have a terribly fixed timetable most of the time, and we both really revel in this stuff. I certainly never had experiences like this when I worked at the record store! The animals there were of a quite different sort. I wouldn't trade the experiences I've had touring in Europe, Canada and the States for anything, and I'll be doing it again I know, but right now things are pretty good. My new CD's getting really good reviews, I'm having fun working on the next one in the studio, my new band is shaping up well and I'm playing out on sub gigs here and there when I want to. Plus, I work a day job with the coolest Redhead ever, and I get to see Coyotes and Cranes!

Yet another Magic Guitar

I would be totally remiss if I didn't mention another amazing guitar I have...this one is a restoration of a kind of historically notable model, the Ovation Deacon Limited. I got this one for $60 from a co-worker when I worked at a record store, but it was in pieces. I figured I could put it together and at least use it for photo ops, since it looked like an interesting instrument. But getting it playable took a long time, and several very competent luthiers worked on it to no avail. Finally my friend Mickey Richard got ahold of it and wrestled it into submission...by pretty much rebuilding the thing! When I got it there was a hole chiseled into it (to badly accommodate a bad tremolo bar) that you could see daylight through. He filled that with matching mahogany and put a veneer over that, which is so finely done that you have to look very closely indeed to see the difference in woods. Plus he re-fretted it, put in a new bridge, and new pickups, cut a new pickguard and refinished the thing with violin varnish. It looks (and plays) amazingly well...you can see what a nice job he did on it!















...and how does it sound, you may ask? It's a kickass little guitar! Tonally it sounds somewhere between a Gibson SG and a Fender Telecaster, very open and live. Its very thin mahogany neck is somewhat sensitive to changes in humidity so I don't take it out to outdoor gigs, but I'm gonna start taking it out to club dates now and then, since it's a lot of fun to play, sounds so good and also looks crazy cool!

Loop Composition

For those crafty individuals who have been following my adventures, you know that I've embraced the Acid Pro 6 program for working with loop-based musical compositions. I started using it because I never could seem to get my drummer friends to make it out to my rather isolated country home, or if they did make it we never seemed to have enough time to do too much. Drum machines seem dreadful to me, and I don't think enough like a good drummer to create a great part that way anyway...and actually I think there are very few people who can pull that off. But with drum loops, you have 2 to 16 bar sections of recordings of actual drummers, and you can mix and match them if you have a good set of collections (thanks, Beta Monkey and Drums On Demand!). It does take time, and (for me at least to get what I want) a LOT of tracks...on average probably 30 to 40 for a drum part, including cymbal hits and such. But I can usually get a part that will be very difficult to tell from a real drummer (at least if that's what I'm trying to do). Hey, it fools many of my professional drummer friends! Is it a replacement for a good percussionist, playing live with a smokin' rhythm section? Hell, no! But try to get those guys out to the farm at 3:30 in the morning...hmm, Cynthia might have something to say about that too...

Now, however, I've been delving into this medium more and more, putting horn parts on tracks for clients as well as percussion...and I've been experimenting with doing compositions that are nearly all loops. At first those experiments all sounded like very bad hip-hop, but as I've gotten more used to working with Acid I've found that I can get a really good-sounding (to me at least) pop song or classical bagatelle happening. Again, it takes a lot of time, lots of slicing and dicing of the material (it helps to have a huge library of loop CDs as well), time moving, reversing, transposing and mangling the stuff into a usable form. But it can be done, and I'm thinking that several of these will be out on my next album!

For a while I was kind of embarrassed about admitting to using this kind of technology...I really am more of a player than an engineer at heart...but I've decided that creativity can transcend those concerns. There are lots of amazing writers using loops, and the collage aspect of making something out of little bits of nothing is very appealing. Plus, I'm will wind up playing on anything I do...I can't help that. It's just part of the fun...and if it's not fun then I'm not doin' it. It's certainly not for the giant dollars! Hm, I must find some of those giant dollars sometime.

The new blog home

So I'm finding that I have to move my headquarters to new digs! While I'll include copies of this log on my other sites, I think that this spot right here will be central for now. We'll just see how it all works, and if I can tie my other sites to this tether! The layout should look nice anyhow.

I'm sitting here with an insistent cat on my lap (Isis the Abbyssinan, a serious love junkie), just minutes before I leave for a foray into the Big City and a quick visit with friends Death Kitten and the Six Foot Poles, who are playing a gig in Liberty Plaza. I'm hoping I'll have a little time after to get back into the studio and work for a while...between trying to maintain this old farmhouse and help out my aging parents, I'm not getting nearly enough time to work on the new CD! There are lots of strange ideas boiling around in my backbrain, and they're gonna blow if I can't get them out onto some virtual vinyl. Of course, they may blow anyway, but I still have to record them. The voices tell me to!

This is also the first day in a couple of weeks without the constant pain I've had in my back...not to whine too much, but after a while it does grate on you. Perhaps the chiropractor's tender ministrations have finally done their good work. I sure hope so! Between me hurting and having to deal with my Dad's problems with his fractured hip, I've been in an ongoing invalid mode...it just feel so good to take a breath without that "stabbed in the back" sensation. There, whine over!

Now I'm off to check with the guy up the road who has the Rhode Island Reds to see if there's any fresh eggs available (living in the country has its perks!), and thence off to Liberty Plaza. I'm gonna try to see my friends from Treatment Bound this evening, too, if the studio doesn't suck me into its evil hypnotic embrace...