Year End Wrap-up!

Shit, I've been busy! Hickoids played a ton and the Ladies and I really started to get things rolling (I really love this band!) We even had three Bigfoot Chester gigs! That's more than we had in the previous five years!

The Hickoids have two shows left this year, both with the Old '97's (Antone's in Austin on the 27th and House Of Blues in Dallas on NYE), and that will wrap things up, about 20 minutes before midnight, for this year.

On the Horizon for 2014, The Ladies and I are headed to the studio in late January (after Wiley has some surgery!). I'm not really sure what I'm gonna do with the recording, no plans yet for ANOTHER record, I just really want to get us on tape so I can hear it for myself!

Hickoids are headed for Europe again! June(ish) we will be hitting the continent (and possibly the UK). Right now everything is TBA, so stay tuned for details.

And as I mentioned here, South Filthy is booked for a festival in Mississippi for October. I am really excited about playing with Jack and Jeffry (and Walter) again. Hopefully we will knock out another record. We are making the drive after all...

That's it for now!

12/6/13

I am a week late on this one...

Hickoids made the drive to Houston and loaded our gear up those goddamn awful stairs. Good thing Rudyard's is such a good club. We were "Headlining" (last) on a cold and wet Friday night. The forcast kept screaming for ice and/or snow. It was gonna ba a long night. 

The drive there was easy and we loaded up and said our howdys. I got a falafel from next door and went back for the rock.

Shinta was up first. I love a band with a Lady! Good tunes and some screamin guitar. Bring it on! Barkin At Nothin had a splendid trio of songs about love, but their standout was "Get The Hell Out Of Texas". A brilliant piece of stupidity.

We went up and did the Hickoid thing. Finished and loaded back down the stairs... I hate those stairs... Started the drive home and everyone but me wanted food (damn falafel!) So we stopped at Denny's and watched some drunken Houstonians make fools of themselves. 4 AM, Friday night, it's a guaranteed good time.

The drive home was uneventful. The weather was kind and I stayed in the back and slept. Made it back home and into bed at 6:50. I was up for work at 8:45... Saturday was rough as hell. 

12/1/13

It was a driving kinda weekend. After I got home from Ft Worth I cleaned up, had a beer and went to sleep around 4. I woke up at 1 and lazed around til 5 then I drove to SA.

HIckoids at Sam's. It was a benefit for our buddy Jerry. There were a bunch of cool bands on the bill, but I saw no more than two minutes of two of them. This weekend I am that asshole....

We had a decent set. Nothing amazing, but nothing awful. The crowd was a little on the sparse side (in a room that big you need a hundred or so people to make it not look empty) but they were spirited and fun to play for.

We finish up and I hung out for a little bullshitting with some folks. Then I hopped in the truck and headed home for some more sleep (after a beer).

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.

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!