A short recording session

We went in to the studio to knock out a quick track for an upcoming compilation of protest songs. We chose "Kill For Peace" from the Fugs. It's a real simple song with a boneheaded easy chorus that repeats over and over.  We dumbed it down a little more by making the intro and middle section the same. Even idiots like us couldn't screw it up at this point.

Curtis from Million Dollar Sound was the engineer, but we did it in this rehearsal place down south called Space. We got our levels and ran through a pretty good version and went in to the control room and decided it needed a little more of the "Louie Louie" feel. So we dumb it down one more time and it's dead on.

We knock out the "village style" backing vocals and some guitar solos and we are finished with it all in forty five minutes. That's how the pros do it.

Working with Kurtis again got me thinking I need to get the Ladies in at his studio. Soon!

11/8/13

Hickoids at the Triple Crown. I made the drive in 32 minutes! And I wasn't really speeding (much)... I load in and Pure Luck is setting up. They have a Drum Kit, Bass rig with 4 10"s , Orange amp with two 12"s, two Peavy's with 2 12"s each and Cody sets up a Fender pro Junior with 15 screaming watts of power through a 10" speaker. Luckily the sound guy (an out of costume Steve Vegas) knows what he is doing and everything sounded great. Rockin set!!

At some point someone popped a string and Smitty got his out to loan. The dude was playing a solo on it and it came to me that he was touching virgin territory on that guitar. A joke I beat to death by the end of the night...

We went on and had a good set. Not great, but we were fine. I only used one cabinet and it felt a little lean to me. "Steve Vegas" had it sounding good, but I've gotten use to having both cabs.

Mr Lewis and his Funeral Five were last. Good stuff. To over simplify them I'd say they sound like Tom Waits with a clean voice. For a few of the tunes they had a guy playing percussion with the drummer, getting closer to the double thing I love so much. 

The world needs more drums.

10/31/13

Let's talk about a bill payin show.

Bigfoot got asked to play at a Karate school on Halloween. No one had anything else going on so we were all happy to make a little money.

When I got there there a Jazz combo was playing. They were top level musicians who were obviously bored out of their minds playing uninspired standards by request. It would seem like a waste of talent, but I bet everyone of them liked getting paid for a show that was over early enough to play again later.

We were next and played fine. Nothing too exciting. We were fairly quiet and everything seemed to be a little fast. Kinda off for a Bigfoot show.

After us was this really sexy songwriter who was falling out of her extremely low cut dress. DAMN! We all noticed her when she came in to the room. Turns out T-Bone Burnett produced a recoded for her... And now she is playing after Bigfoot Chester at a Karate school on Halloween.. Bill Payin Show!

 When we finished Walter gave me some cash and told me about this. In many ways it was a very successful night!