5/25/22

 

Walter asked me to do this quick little pickup gig at the Sahara Lounge with him and Danny B Harvey, uhhh… yes!

We went up with no rehearsal, no set list and very little clue as to what was gonna happen and it was great!

45 minutes of straight covers called out right before we played them. For the most part we were on it. And really dug playing with the drummer Clint. I met him a half hour before we went up. We gelled pretty quick and threw the fuck down like we’d been at it for years. Yeah!

11/30/13

The Ladies and I made the drive to Ft Worth. Draya was up there visiting family so it seemed like a good time to go and do a little playing out of town. Traffic was awful. 35 was a post holiday parking lot. It took us over four hours to make the drive, easily the worst part of the trip.

Finally make it to town and head to Fred's Texas Cafe. We are playing three sets and we learned a bunch of new tunes to fill things out. Four of my old ones (two have never been played by a band) I wrote two new ones and we snuck in three covers. We rocked that place.

One of the new ones was inspired by Otha Turner via Walter Daniels. After a Bigfoot show he was talking about doing a drum and fife thing but playing harmonica instead of the fife. I stole that idea in a heartbeat and threw some words on top. Suddenly I'm playing harmonica again. It felt really good, but I am extremely rusty and my mouth hurts like hell. There are many hours of practice in my future...

I won't get in to a blow by blow here, but Fred's is great. The crow was ready to have fun. We got people up dancing in no time and a lot of folks stayed for all three sets. The staff kicked ass and we got fed, free booze and paid. Thank you.

At the end of the night the Ladies and I came to the conclusion that we should play Fred's as often as possible. Before we tried it we were all a little nervous about playing three sets (I haven't done that kind of thing since I lived in Knoxville) but by the end it felt like we were the kind of band that's made for it.

9/23/12

Bigfoot Chester at Million Dollar Sound.

I don't know who came up with the idea, but when I was asked about it I said "Hell YEA!" immediately. This was Bigfoot Chester with Ted Roddy singing and playing Harp. We did two of the Howlin Wolf tunes we've played before at the Wolf birthday party (we did those songs with Ted then) and we hit one that was a harmonica "duel". Two harps and a twelve bar in E, GO!

The first song Walter didn't even play on it. He just let Ted do his thing (so cool). I almost screwed up one of the endings in a big way when Ted was blowing some bad assed harp. I'll admit I'm easily excitable, but that solo on the way out of "You'll Be Mine" was pretty amazing. Walter came in to the tracking room to blow some sax on the second number and, of course, harmonica on the duel at the end. I can't wait to hear it.

This is the fourth or fifth location of Million Dollar Sound I've recorded in. As usual Kurtis has his shit together and his gear dialed in. Things were sounding really good and he is SO easy to work with. He got everything set up and three songs (five takes) with minimal overdubs done in under three hours. Thanks Kurtis!

A very nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

3/26/12

Another Bigfoot rehearsal at Trailer space Records. This one was even stranger. We got a late start due to some forgotten gear and before we started the guy working there gave Walter the key to the door and said "go ahead and lock up. I'm closing early". We forgot to lock the door and people started coming in to watch. Like eight or ten people. Which is about double the amount that have watched us there in the past.

Of course we eventually remember to lock the door... about a half hour before The Golden Boys needed to drop off some gear after driving back from Memphis.

What a shitty drive.