Progressive Travels

Whatsamatteryou

2009-05-17T15:15:00.001-05:00

The band schedules have been in a constant state of flux so far this year, which is undoubtedly a result of the fact that I seem to find myself attached to more and more projects. This was a conscious choice of mine, albeit hesitantly so. Since my hours were cut back at my day job, I’ve been using cover band gigs to help make up the difference. I don’t necessarily like playing this much, but it is what it is. And right now, it is a financial necessity. So it goes.

There have been a few gigs since the last installation of this babbling weblog, and some other interesting stuff as well. I’ll try to encapsulate it thusly:

10 April 2009
BenWahBob played the opening weekend of the “Budweiser Party at the Park” at Fairmount Park in Collinsville, IL this year. This band has been playing those gigs every summer since before I was in the band, and I joined in 2003. We’re pretty much a staple there. It’s an odd gig in that we play for an hour to start, then play in-between the horse races...which usually only amounts to a few songs at a time. It’s fun, though, and a pretty decent paying gig. There are frequently 1000 people or more, and it’s a really good time when the place gets hopping.

One unexpected twist this time was an unexpected request from an unusual source. An extremely good-looking young blonde woman in a sock dress approached the sound man and handed him a note. He read it and handed it over to Carlos with a smirk. I assumed she was requesting a song we don’t know by a band we don’t cover, which is usually the case. When I asked what it was, I was told she wanted to hear some Rush.

Huh?

I usually remove any Rush from the set lists for these gigs, as experience has shown that it’s not venue appropriate. We have, however, been known to throw some in at the end of the night. This girl wanted to hear Tom Sawyer, which cannot be performed adequately without keyboards. We instead tossed out What You’re Doing, which I didn’t mind at all. I’m not sure why I am still surprised when attractive women are Rush fans, as I have seen plenty of them at their concerts over the years. For some reason, though, that is a band that is usually only requested by guys. This one was a rather pleasant surprise.

01 May 2009
BWB was scheduled to play at 21 Rock in Arnold, MO. The club had apparently had a few bad weekends in a row, and decided to cancel the bands for awhile. No surprise here. At least they told us before we showed up to play.

15 May 2009
The Incognito project was back at 21 Rock. The weather this day was more than a bit dicey, as there were severe thunder storms and tornado watches all over the St. Louis area. Before I even got into the shower, I called Bobby to ensure that we were indeed still playing. It’s a little over 50 miles for me, and I didn’t want to get there and find we’d been cancelled. He assured me that we were good to go, and we indeed were. After crawling around in the mud at Dawna’s (my van got stuck...don’t ask beyond that, as no good deed goes unpunished), the shower felt really good.

The gig went pretty well, and several of us joked that we sounded better this time after having not rehearsed for several weeks than we did the first time. I have long maintained that rehearsal for a cover band is highly overrated. I mean...after doing this for over 25 years, how much do you really need to practice to play other people’s music in bars for a bunch of drunks? Learn the songs, agree on the endings, and just play them. That’s where the magic happens anyway.

Some other interesting things happened in the last couple of weeks, too. I had to schedule a trip to Scotch Plains, NJ to work in an organ at St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church. It’s really more of a Catholic school with a church in the middle. They recently remodeled the place, and in the process had Wicks Organ Company install a new organ. Well, it’s not really new. The digital part is, but the pipes came from an older existing instrument that they bought from another church in Saddle River, NJ. They were having some issues with the digital part, and I was “elected” to go fix it.

This was not necessarily a trip to which I was looking forward. I made the requisite arrangements, and called the Area Sales Director John Klauder to let him know the plans. He informed me that one of his employees would be picking me up from the airport in Newark and driving me around, to save the expense of a rental car...a very kind gesture. John is a great guy, so this was really no surprise. He told me that normally he would do it, but he was going to be busy most of that week working in Manhattan. He had secured a contract to disassemble and move several pipe organs at The Julliard School to help facilitate their ongoing renovations, and would be working there.

After I hung up, I started to think about that. Julliard. Hmmm. I’ve never had any desire to go to New York City. It’s never been a place that fascinates me in the least. But, Julliard? Now, that fascinates me. That place is undoubtedly the most prestigious music school in the world. It kind of is to musicians what Mecca is to Muslims. That’s something for which I would go into the city. When I received my flight confirmation from the travel agency, I called John back and gave him the flight info. He was at Julliard at the time, and was in fact talking at the time with the head of the Organ Department Paul Jacobs. I asked if it would be possible to visit the school while I was in the area, and was told I would be more than welcome to come in for a visit. Sweet! How could I turn that down? My arrangements would put me there on Wednesday, and the work on the organ shouldn’t take more than a few hours. Since my return flight was not until 16:30 on Thursday, this left me all of that morning to get over into the city, visit the school, and get back to the Newark airport. No problem.

My flight landed on time, and John’s helper Barry picked me up right on time. We drove straight to the church and dove into the problems. I was installing some additional audio equipment, and had to wait for an electrician to run some lines for me, which took longer than it needed. Union guys. We made a couple of runs to pick up some supplies, and before we knew it, it was nearing 18:00. We connected the computer to the console, and started on the voicing issues. This organ was a mess. Barry and I ended up going through the whole organ stop by stop to make the badly needed correction. It was no wonder that the priest was so disappointed with the organ. It was much better by the time we finished. It was also getting very late. We discovered that we needed a few more parts, and also discovered that all of the electronics stores were already closed. So, the plan was to pick them up in the morning, and finish the touch-up voicing then.

I got to my hotel in Newark at about 21:00, checked in, and headed straight for the restaurant in the lobby. I hadn’t eaten anything since the muffin I got at the airport Starbucks in St. Louis that morning. I ordered a cheese steak sandwich, and it disappeared at an alarming rate. It was outstanding, too. I went back to my room, and called John to make the arrangements for the next morning. He said that he would be driving me on Thursday, as the work at Julliard had progressed much better than he had anticipated, and he wasn’t needed there again until Friday. Our plan was for him to pick up the little shorting jumpers at a store in Manhattan before coming over to Jersey to pick me up, thus saving us some time. When we finished, he would drive me over to the school and save me the trouble of trying to navigate the trains and subway for the first time. I was all for that.

The next morning I sat in my room awaiting John’s call. When he did call, he was not bearing good news. He was having trouble finding a store that carried the parts we needed. I was skeptical. These little jumper straps are a common item in computers. I suspected that John was not presenting his requests correctly. After he failed to find them at several stores, I told him to just pick me up and we’d find something in Newark. I knew of an electronics store on Rte 22, the one that was closed the night before. We went there, and had them in hand in a matter of minutes. Back at the church, we put the jumpers in place, which fixed the problem as expected. After some finally voicing, John walked over to the rectory to ask the organist to come over and give it a listen. I sat there at the console and noodled a bit (no Mr. Crowley this time). As I played, I became aware of someone staring at me. I looked over to see a nun standing there watching me. She told me that she needed to have some of here students practice their speaking over the PA system. So, I gladly stopped and let them do their thing. It is their church, after all. John came back and informed me that this was the organist’s day off, and that he would not be able to come in to listen to it until later that afternoon. After the student left, I played a little more while John walked around and listened, then he played a bit while I listened. It sounded 1000% better than it did when I arrived the previous day.

On the downside, it was now almost 13:30. As my flight was scheduled to depart at 16:30, it became obvious that we would not have time to drive into the city and still get back in time to make the flight. I was seriously bummed about that. The one reason that I had actually looked forward to this trip had now evaporated. Oh, well. So it goes. I had gone there to fix an organ, and had succeeded at that. Anything else was just a bonus. John took me to the airport, apologizing for not being able to get me to Julliard. Maybe next time.

I ambled my way through security, found a little deli for lunch, then sat at the gate awaiting the trip home. When I checked in, my boarding pass said that the flight was delayed by one hour. When I arrived at the gate, the departure was listed as “on time.” After sitting there reading for awhile, I noticed that several people were murmuring about St. Louis. I looked up from my book to see a group of people following an airline agent over to our gate. I also noticed that the flight information was no longer on the gate display. I got up and walked over to the arrivals/departures screens, only to see that all flights to St. Louis had been cancelled, presumably because of weather. Great. The gate agent gave us an 800 number to call to make arrangements for another flight. It was the wrong number. After several of us protested, she looked up another number for us. This one worked. The agent on the phone wasn’t much help, though. The only options she offered were a flight at 12:20 on Friday, or one at 21:30 that night from LaGuardia. When I asked if the airline was going to get me to LaGuardia, she didn’t answer, but just read back the flight info. When I asked if they were paying for a hotel if I had to take the next day’s flight, she gave me the same response. I chose the following day, and thanked her for being so skillfully uncooperative. Other stranded passengers recounted similar stories. After reclaiming my baggage, I went back to the hotel and checked in for another night. I had a pizza from the restaurant delivered to the room, and sat there reading for the rest of the night.

As it turned out, I would have had plenty of time to get over to New York City. Figures.

Once again, I ruminated over the idea of trying to get to Julliard in the morning on Friday. However, I did not want to take the chance of missing this flight. So, I just checked out and went back to the airport. The flight did indeed leave on time, but had to stop over at Chicago O’Hare. The flight crew asked if I wanted to get off while they prepped for the rest of the flight. I told them that there was no way in hell I was getting off of that plane until it landed in St. Louis. They got a chuckle out of that. I was glad someone thought it was funny.

I finally made it back to St. Louis, just in time to be two hours late for a demo recording with BenWahBob.

I love traveling.

Unseen

2009-04-05T16:05:00.003-05:00

Forgive me, reader, for I have sinned. Once again, I’ve shunned my blogging responsibilities in favor of that thing called life. It’s been three weeks since my last confession...er...blog.

20 March 2009
Rock Bottom has a bass player who, unfortunately has to go out of town occasionally, which leaves them with a void to fill. Deron had asked me some time ago if I could fill in on a couple of weekends, but couldn’t remember at the time the exact dates in March. By the time he did remember, I already had one of the dates filled with a new project. I never heard back from him, and assumed they had found someone else to play that weekend. I was quite surprised when, in the middle of that preceding week, I saw my name listed on their MySpace Status Update as “special guest Paul J. Smith on bass.” Uh-oh. I called Deron immediately and asked what happened. He said he didn’t know about the other gig I had, never got the email. That doesn’t surprise me. Yahoo has been dropping the ball quite a bit lately. On one of my accounts, all of my Sent emails from the past three months have completely disappeared from the folder. Whatever. I told him I could play Friday night, but not Saturday. He agreed, and eventually got Geo Romer of Ivory Tiger fame to cover Saturday night.

I arrived at The Hideout in Granite City after a nice dinner with Dawna and her family to celebrate her youngest son’s tenth birthday. I’d never played this place before. In fact, the last time I was even in that building, it was a truck stop. They had a decent stage erected at one end of the building, a modest-sized dance floor, some tables for seating, and a few pool tables. For some reason, it reminded me of Big O’s in Keyesport, IL. It just had that kind of dirty roadhouse feel about it. Deron said his take was more like The White House in Taylor Springs, IL, but this place didn’t have a dirt floor like The White House, and the stage construction was infinitely better.

I brought out the Ampeg SVT-4PRO bass amp and SVT-610HLF cabinet, thinking I would need the power to compete with Derrick for sonic space. I was right. His Marshall cabinet was sitting at about ear level, and was blasting at my head all night. I actually put in ear plugs after the first set, even though I hate playing with them. Even with my cabinet pointing almost directly at me, I could barely hear myself while he was playing. That stage was just ungodly loud. I had that post-concert ringing in my ears when I left at the end of the night.

In spite of my whining about the stage volume, it was great to play with these guys again. To my surprise, Deron even whipped out Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb. I’d never played that one before in my life, and now that I have, I regret not having played it sooner. What a great song. We did our fair share of Rush as well, as one might expect, but didn’t get too carried away with it. In the end, everything came out at least OK.

The crowd wasn’t very big, but they made up for it in enthusiasm. There was a level of debauchery going on at the bar that one doesn’t normally encounter in every day life. Judging from some the pictures I’ve seen floating around on the internet, Saturday night made that look like a Sunday school picnic. To each their own, I suppose.

21 March 2009
One of the new projects I’ve recently found myself flung into is a revival of the band Incognito. This developed as a spin off of several other bands, including BenWahBob, Just Mr., and Lethal Judgment. The idea was to get together and play stuff we don’t normally play in our regular bands. We tried to put this together at some point last year, but couldn’t get it going for various reasons. This time we succeeded. We got together one evening and jammed, put together a set list, got together one more time, and showed up for the gig at 21 Rock in Arnold, MO. THAT’S how a band is supposed to work! Shades of Knucklehead.

I brought the SVT rig again, mostly because it was still in my van, but also because of the two guitar player arrangement. As it turned out, the stage volume never really got that loud. I really like the sound of that rig, though, so I didn’t mind a bit.

The crowd this night was small, as one comes to expect at this establishment. Most of the stuff we played came off pretty well, all things considered. I had quite a good time playing with these guys. Bobby and I have played together in BWB for some time, and I’d played with Tom several times while he was with Just Mr. Eddie and I have never played together before, though, which made it feel like an almost completely new band. Every one seemed to click together fairly quickly, and we sounded relatively acceptable. We even nailed the fun runs in Rush’s The Spirit of Radio. The owner really liked us (he likes Bobby anyway), and wanted to book more gigs immediately. I hope it’s not a snowy summer in Jefferson County.

Eddie’s son was there with a video camera, and Tom’s lovely girlfriend Lisa took some really great still shots of the band. Eddie and Bobby already have much of this stuff posted on their MySpace pages, and I suppose an Incognito page will soon follow. I’ll get some of the pictures up on my page at some point this week, perhaps even a video. Who knows...

28 March 2009
BenWahBob was back at 21 Rock in Arnold, MO...again. Joe, the sound man, teased me about having just been there last week. I have played there three times this year already, all of them within a four week period. I told him I was the new house bass player, which is funny if you know that he is the house bass player, less funny if you don’t.

There really is no more standard fare for the new BenWahBob. We seem to whip out different stuff every time we play. This is a good thing, after so many years of the same stale old shows. We did some of that this time, and I almost remembered all of the words to one song, and almost remembered some of the words to another. Carlos, seeing one on the set list, decided we should do two Rush tunes in a row. Easy for him to say – he doesn’t have to sing them. So, we did What You’re Doing as planned, then did I Think I’m Going Bald because Carlos likes that song. I’ll surely not complain about playing more Rush. One guy who was in attendance kept asking all night for more old Rush. At the end of the last set, Carlos actually started the guitar intro to The Spirit of Radio. Woops...bad move. Bobby and I jumped right in, and after some nervous glances back and forth wondering if we were actually going to play it, I walked up to the mic and started to sing. There were a few rough spots here and there, but we finished the song, including an outstandingly faked guitar solo which Carlos had never before played. The funny part...the guy who had been practically begging for more Rush had since departed, and that was one of the songs he wanted us to play. Lesson: never leave early, as the end of the night is when all of the fun stuff happens. We even started to play Bastille Day, got through the first verse and chorus, then decided to call it quits. We’d pushed the Rush thing far enough for one night. All in all, a pretty fun night.

Bass Hanger inventor Dan Martin came out for awhile, too, as I’d promised him a picture of his fantastic product in action. I’d used it the previous weekend, but didn’t think to bring my camera. I took some pictures this night, and still need to send them to him. Sorry, Dan. They’re on the way.

I also picked up some more music recently. I finally broke down and bought a box set of J.S. Bach’s Complete Organ Works. Wow. I have listened to almost nothing else since I got it. With 179 pieces of music on 11 CDs, it will probably be awhile before I tire of them.

Musical Snobbery

2009-03-15T22:46:00.001-05:00

BenWahBob has been fairly busy of late. We normally schedule gigs about every other weekend, as none of us really want to make it a full-time job. So far, though, the beginning of this year has been a bit heavier than normal, playing three weekends in a row recently.

That’s not really a big deal. In the past, I have been used to playing sometimes as much as 4 or 5 gigs in a week. It’s just a little unusual for this band. Add to that the several other start-up projects I have been involved in, and my time has been quite tightly regulated. It was with no small amount of relief that I found myself with some time to work on my pipe organ yesterday. I really need to get that thing finished, both so I can play it and so I can move on to other things.

Here’s a short synopsis of the three most recent gigs:

21 February 2009
All Stars Sports Bar in St. Peters, MO is a place I played several years ago before quitting BWB. The stage was a bit bigger than I remembered, probably due to the fact that we now have one less person up there. The gig went fairly smooth, in spite of the drunken idiots who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – stay out of the way while we were loading in equipment. There was one guy who kept ogling Carlos’ wife much of the night. Carlos made it perfectly clear to him that she was taken. I guess he later threw a fit when he realized he couldn’t have her, and got himself banned from the establishment, fortunately with no bloodshed involved.

28 February 2009
BWB went back to 21 Rock in Arnold, MO for what we all pretty much deem a paid rehearsal, as the turnout at this club is usually staggeringly low. On this night, though, we had a fairly decent crowd. All of the BenWahBabes were in attendance, including a rare appearance by The Lovely and Gracious Dawna. This gig was actually kind of fun. We whipped out some new (old) stuff, and almost played it right. Chuck Mann and some of his buddies came out for awhile, probably to promote their gig there the following weekend with the band Capone. There was one girl there who blew my mind. She looked young, and was very attractive with long, blonde hair and a nice body. Then, she smiled. She looked like a hockey player from the old Federal League, as she was missing most of her front teeth. Wow! Gotta love Jefferson County, Missouri. There was a chick fight at the end of the third set, complete with hair pulling and clothes ripping. Dawna (who was not involved) took that as her queue to leave, and she did just before the police arrived.

07 March 2009
Motley’s Pub in O’Fallon, MO has become a new staple for the BWB schedule. Jessica Motley runs a good bar, and is building a good reputation as a music venue. They even improved the electrical situation on the stage since the last time we were there. The BenWahBabes were out in force again this night, and they brought some of their drinking buddies. It was a pretty good party, with no real drama to speak of beyond the really drunk guy who was making most of the women uncomfortable until his wife drug him out of there. Jess gave us a hard time at load-out, citing the fact that it was nearly 04:00 already and she wanted to go home. She then giggled and noted that that included the change to Daylight Savings time, but only after she enjoyed the stunned looks of disbelief on our faces. I like her.

I didn’t want to take too much space recounting the details of events that you should have attended in the first place, because I wanted to address an issue that seems to be presenting itself more and more often of late: allegations of Musical Snobbery. This has been an issue that seems to have followed me for some time. I know why, but I refuse to accept the flawed premise. That’s why I’m going to address it head-on now.

What exactly is Musical Snobbery, you might ask? Well, as far as I can tell, it has absolutely nothing to do with me personally and everything to do with the misguided opinions of others. I prefer to listen to what I consider “good” music, and eschew what I consider “garbage.” Example: I like rock bands like Yes, Rush, Kansas, and Dream Theater, but have little use for bands like AC/DC, Poison, and Nirvana. Some people hear or read that about me and respond with something along the lines of “Oh...you listen to THOSE guys.” Ummm...yes, I do. I also listen to a lot of J.S. Bach and Antonio Vivaldi, if that helps you to reinforce your opinion.

...which brings me to my next example: I can read music and I play about 10 different instruments, which seems to make me “one of THOSE guys.” I’ve never understood how the pursuit of music can tag someone as a snob, even amongst his peers...especially amongst his peers. I can remember as a youngster hearing about people who could play many different instruments and thinking, “Wow, how cool is that!” I found it to be a source of inspiration, not degradation.

This all came boiling up again in a conversation I had last week with a drummer friend of mine who frequently gets tagged as an a-hole and difficult to work with. I’ve worked with this guy on several occasions. I can see where he might rub some people the wrong way. When I told him this, he wanted to know what I meant, as he is always interested in working on his “character defects” (his words). That’s the part that set this blog in motion.

This fella – we’ll call him Eddie – is one of the most talented drummers with whom I have ever worked. He’s worked hard over the years to get to this point, and continues to work hard at getting even better. He has no lack of natural talent either, which doesn’t hurt. The problem for him, though, is twofold; he expects the best from other musicians around him, and he’s honest in his assessments of them. Many people don’t seem to care for this second part. Musicians have notoriously fragile egos, and when it is not being inflated, and is, in fact, being brought down to earth by an honest opinion, this can cause friction. Thus, he’s the a-hole for being honest enough to say what others are probably thinking, too.

I don’t understand how we’ve gotten to the point where honesty and accomplishment and striving to be the best you can be have come to be considered a “character defect.” How is it that my desire to be a better cellist makes me a snob, but a band who has written the same three-chord song over and over since 1974 is awesome? There truly is no accounting for taste, especially in music, and I completely understand that. There are some really talented musicians in this world who make some truly awful noise. You don’t have to like it. That’s one of the great beauties of art. But, don’t call them snobs just because they are doing something you don’t like or understand, or because they choose to continue their efforts to better themselves.

Rather, try to use it as inspiration. I did. I still do.

I think I’ll go do a little more work on that Bach cello piece.

Buckets on the Stage

2009-02-01T14:42:00.001-06:00

Super Bowl Sunday. Yes, I said it. I wrote it. I’m publishing it on-line. So, sue me. I’ve been a Pittsburgh Steelers fan since I was a little crumb cruncher. The first time I saw Lynn Swann catch a ball that would have been uncatchable by anyone else, I was hooked. My father was a St. Louis Cardinals fan, and my grandfather was a Dallas Cowboys fan. Needless to say, Sundays were always interesting. History shows that Pittsburgh came out on top more often than not. They were a dynasty in the 1970s, and seem of late to be regaining that glory. It’s no secret for whom I am rooting today.

But, enough of that.

16 January 2009
I had one more gig on the schedule to help out my friends in Poisoned Apples during their transition. Not only were they in the process of replacing a bass player, but their drummer Steve was leaving as well. The current gig at hand was at ThatOnePlace in Fenton, MO. I had played there a few times before with Those1Guys, but that was back in 2002. The place hadn’t changed at all. I arrived around 19:30, loaded in my minimal equipment, and was ready to go in about 10 minutes. Sweet. I ordered some food, and sat down for some conversation with the band.

As we all sat there, most of us eating, it became apparent that almost everyone was sick. I had just gotten past some manner of flu earlier in the week. I wasn’t even sure I would make it to the gig until that afternoon. Everyone else seemed to be about two days behind me. Only Eric, the guitar player, seemed well.

As we began the first set, some strategically placed beer buckets appeared on the stage – in the event that anyone had a gastronomical emergency. Nice. Brandy put hers behind her at the front corner of the drum set...right in front of me. When she told me why it was there, I informed her that if she puked in front of me, I would probably puke on the back of her head. She looked at me in somewhat disbelief, and I suggested that she really not take that chance. She left it there anyway. Steve had one next to him behind the drum set, and Eddie put one next to his guitar amp. This was looking like it might be an entertaining evening.

We made it through the first set with no spewing. That was a good start. About midway through the second set, Brandy turned around and gave me a look of desperation. She said, “I almost puked at the end of that song.” Great. Here it comes. If it happened, I knew I probably wouldn’t get past the reflex, and suspected that the others onstage wouldn’t either. That would surely start a stampede towards the door for any patrons lucky enough to witness it.

As it happens, no one spewed all night. We made it through the last set with scarcely even a belch. I must say, Brandy sounded quite good considering the situation. Kudos for the professionalism.

I know this is without a doubt the grossest blog I’ve ever written. But, hey, I’m just recounting the story as it happened. Don’t hate the messenger.

I used that little Ampeg B200R combo amp again, as the BA500 was still out of service. Eddie played bass on one of the songs in the third set, which afforded me the opportunity to get out front and listen. That little amp sounded great. It had just enough muscle to be heard on the stage, too, which is quite possibly the deadest stage on which I’ve ever played. Kudos to Carlos Bedoya for another great design.

Load out went pretty quick at the end of the night. Eddie went looking for Eric to give him his cut of the financial bonanza, but couldn’t find him. He turned up later coming out of the restroom where he had apparently been puking. That made it 100%. Everyone was officially sick.

Of course, we’re musicians – we’re sick anyway.

New Places, New Faces

2009-01-15T10:54:00.001-06:00

09 January 2009
The main ideas behind the new trio format for BenWahBob were to play more stuff we wanted to play, play some different places, explore the challenges of gigging as a three-piece, and just have fun for a change. We seem to be accomplishing all of these. Our set list has changed drastically in the last year, we’re digging the trio challenges, and we’re having more fun than we’ve had in many years. We are also booking at some venues that are new to us. This past weekend, we played at a place in Smithton, IL called No Jacks Bar & Grill. It is a relatively new place which has only been in existence for about a year. A friend of Bobby’s recommended it to us, and thought we would go over well there. So, we booked it.

We got together the weekend before at Carlos’ shop to tweak Bobby’s newly revised PA system. Our friend and long-time cohort Mike Stevenson came by to work some of his magic on it. The sound went from white bread to art bread in no time. The man definitely knows how to massage audio equipment.

I got to the club around 19:30-ish. Bobby was already there, and had half of the trailer unloaded already. While we awaited Carlos’ (who got lost) arrival, we debated the idea of using the whole system. The room was not nearly as big as we had been lead to believe, and it had quite a lively acoustic. In the end we opted to use both subwoofers, as this would be much easier than trying to get the top cabinets on and off of the stands. Carlos arrived just as we were putting the cabinets in place. We made a few spatial adjustments to accommodate the pool table, plugged everything in, and were ready in no time. Bobby’s system has been refined to the point that it takes more time to move everything into place than it does to connect it; one speaker harness to each side of the stage, plug in the microphones, done.

We started just shortly after 21:00. Other than a few changes here and there, they were essentially the same sets we played a few weeks earlier at Motley’s. The first set felt a bit awkward, though, as everyone just kind of sat there watching us. It was hard for me to gage whether they found us curious or where simply disinterested. This was not a new phenomenon for me. I recalled the days at Granny’s Rocker North in Alton, IL when we would play to what seemed a room full of cadavers, and at the end of the night receive glorious praise from most everyone. Once we got to the first break, however, several people began complimenting us.

Bobby had arranged several 21 minute song files on his iPod to play during breaks. Everything was flowing like clockwork. During the second set, we started to get dancers. I guessed that we weren’t so scary after all. We did start to get a little feedback out of the monitors late in the evening, probably due to their proximity to the front vocal mics. We hadn’t really changed anything, but seemed to have gotten louder. Some quick adjustments to the electronic EQ killed most of it, and we learned to just deal with the remainder. I noted that it seemed to be bouncing off of my face when I got near my mic, and quipped to Carlos that I shouldn’t have shaved that day.

The end of the night turned into something of a free-for-all jam session. We started to ignore the set list and play whatever we wanted. We did a couple of Led Zeppelin songs by request and some off-the-beaten-path Black Sabbath tunes as well. We even did the odd Rush song I Think I’m Going Bald at the end of the night for the “one more song” crowd. They actually liked it.

We tore down the stage, received our compensation for our efforts, and were on our way in no time. Well...almost no time. Bobby’s truck died and needed a jump-start. I stopped at the White Castle in Belleville near the Belleville East High School campus. It’s almost a ritual, you know. I had the second disc from Dream Theater’s Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence in my CD player, and listened to that for the drive home. I need to start picking up some new music again. It’s been awhile.

Condensation of the Year

2008-12-27T20:39:00.002-06:00

One could have come to the conclusion that this Blog would have been titled “Life is Always Interesting, pt. 2.” This would not have seemed unreasonable. However, the following encapsulation of the majority of the year begged for something more fitting. It is the Readers’ Digest condensed version of the remainder of the events of my year as a BarStar.

After April’s short stint with Just Mr. – again – I settled back into the BenWahBob groove for awhile. We played some of the same places we had been playing for years on a regular basis such as Baha Rock Club in St. Charles, MO, and the summertime “Budweiser Party at The Park” gigs at Fairmount Park in Collinsville, IL. We also played a few places relatively new to the BWB circuit, like Motley’s in O’Fallon, MO, and 21 Rock in Arnold, MO.

The annual gig on the big amphitheater stage at Bearcat Getaway in Lesterville, MO kicked off yet another typical summer for the band. Dawna and I had so much fun this year that we decided to go back again about a month later for a weekend of camping, swimming, and canoeing on the Black River – without having to schlep music gear around. We took her two boys and a cousin, and a great time was had by all. It was nice to sit around a campfire and listen to the band for a change. We also enjoyed the most hellacious thunder storm any of us have ever had the stupidity to endure in a tent. But, we survived the night, and came away with some great stories.

I also had the fine opportunity in July to fill in again for a couple of gigs with my friends from Rock Bottom (I promised Boozie I would quit using the umlauts). Their bass player had a less-than-positive encounter with the local constabulary in Jersey County, Illinois, which left them in need of a bass player for a few weekends. I was happy to oblige once again.

The rest of the year was relatively uneventful until we were told by Jim after the October gig at Baha that the December gig was cancelled, and that we would not be booked for 2009. Apparently, Greg the owner made up some BS about us continuing to play after he told us to quit at the end of the night. Jim was off that night, but knew right away that it probably didn’t happen that way. Greg is essentially a drunken idiot who has had it in for us ever since Dale left the band. We were told that he did this to another band as well. About two weeks later, Jim called to tell us that he, too, had walked out on Greg. After managing his bar for over 10 years, he could no longer abide Greg’s drunken rants. Needless to say, we will not be playing there again as long as it remains under the current ownership. That’s too bad, really, as it has long been one of our favorite places to play, and BWB has been a fixture there since it was called Key West. Oh, well...onward.

Another fun turn of events came in December when I received a call from Eddie Cerny. His wife Brandy’s band Poisoned Apples had fired their bass player, and wanted to know if I could fill in for a couple of gigs until they found a replacement. Since they didn’t seem to interfere with any BWB gigs, I agreed to do it. Eddie had since left as drummer for Just Mr., and had been playing guitar and keyboards with her band. I had just returned from two weeks working in Helena, Montana to install the newly refurbished pipe organ at the Cathedral of St. Helena when I got the call. By the time they were able to get me a setlist, I had about four days to learn a couple dozen songs – most of which I had never played before, and some of which I had never even heard before. For the Sharky’s gig, I was able to bluff my way through pretty much everything (I’m a trained professional, kids...don’t try this at home), with only minor gaffs here and there. Everyone in the band generously guided me through the evening, and I had fun playing stuff I never imagined I would ever play. I believe there is still another gig with them in January, if they haven’t found someone by then.

Dawna and I finally got to see the Trans Siberian Orchestra this year. Of course, there is an entertaining story to go along with this, too. During one of my fill-in gigs at The Phoenix with Just Mr., Eddie introduced me one night to his friend Angus. We talked a bit. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me he was working on a few solo original projects, and was touring with the TSO. My instant reaction was, “yeah...sure you are.” If I had a dollar for every time some idiot tried to convince me that they were somebody... Well...fast-forward to the night before Thanksgiving. Dawna and I went to see Eddie’s last gig with Just Mr./Evolution. Brandy’s band was playing as well. Toward the end of the first set, this same Angus ran up on the stage and grabbed Eddie’s guitar and started jamming with them. At the end of the song, Eddie introduced him as “Angus from the Trans Siberian Orchestra.” When Dawna gave me a curious look, I blew it off and told her he was just one of Eddie’s friends whom I had met before. Two days later, as we sat in the Scott Trade Center watching the afternoon TSO show, I pointed across to the other side of the stage and said to her, “Look...Eddie’s friend Angus really does play with the TSO.” I already called Eddie and related the story. So, I guess this is my public apology to Angus Clark for blowing you off like that. Sorry, dude.

All in all, it was a pretty good musical year for me. I got to play BarStar, not only with my own band but with several others as well. I got to work on some really fantastic pipe organs at the Wicks Shop in Highland, IL, in churches in Denver, CO, and in Helena, MT. I got a considerable amount of work done on my own pipe organ at home. I completed a fair amount of string arrangements. Most importantly, though, I finally settled on a format for my own progrock original project. As soon as the organ wiring is complete and it is assembled, that will be my primary focus until it is done.

Life is Always Interesting, pt. 1

2008-05-11T15:17:00.003-05:00

OK...so, where was I? Oh, yeah...now I remember – I was AWOL from the Blogisphere. Again. It was a combination of life getting in the way (wait, that was another blog) and a shining lack of interest in sharing the details at the time. Sorry if that rubs the wrong way, but it is the simple truth. When I first started this blog many many years ago (2004, I believe...when it was still on AOL even), it was a fun and new experience and I couldn’t wait to write it every Sunday to relate the entertaining experiences of the weekend’s adventures as a BarStar. Of course, I had more time to do it back then, too. I also had more readers who would offer feedback, which helped to spur it along. Here lately, not so much so. I have to say; it’s not so much of a priority anymore.

So, with that said, here is a brief run down of some of the events swirling around me since the last posting in March.

08 March 2008
BenWahBob made its first foray into Baha Rock Club in St. Charles, MO since becoming a three-piece. This was really the only gig about which I had any worries. I have known for many years that the owner Greg is not a fan of trios, and has pretty much refused to book them. I expressed this concern to the other fellas, who agreed that it might be a problem. This was supposed to remain a BenWahBob gig, to be played by the four-piece band with Dale still singing. Unfortunately, Dale was unable to find a replacement drummer after Bobby quit. He called Carlos one day in disgust and told him that he too was quitting. This left the Baha gig in our laps. We had to play it because we would have felt bad leaving them high and dry on such short notice. Besides, we were certain that they would like us regardless of the number of band members on the stage.

When we got there, we were instantly inundated with questions about the circumstances of Dale leaving the band. Apparently, as we would find out later, Dale had been talking to Jim the whole time and he knew Dale was quitting before we did. To his credit, he didn’t immediately cancel the gig and replace us. He was willing to give us a chance. We took it and ran with it. We put on one of the best shows that night that BWB has ever played there. Everyone seemed to recognize the change in the band’s character, and recognized it as a positive change. We were having more fun on stage, and now had a wider variety of sound with the three of us singing. Karen, the lighting goddess at Baha, was especially happy to see me back in the band. She has been a big supporter for many years, and has always been incredibly gracious to me.

We had a really good night, albeit with a fairly light crowd. The club, unfortunately, took this as a sign that we wouldn’t be able to draw as well without a singer. This is a classic anti-trio argument that is every bit as invalid as the “can’t put on a good show with only three guys” argument. However, we only lost one person all night because of the Dale thing...and she was one of his long-time friends who obviously just came in to make her presence known, then made an even more obvious exit after making some remarks about us being no good without Dale. Funny, she was the only one who seemed to have a negative opinion of us. Everyone else really dug what we were doing. The crowd may have been mediocre, but they stayed all night and had a good time.

At the end of the night, we got the expected lecture from the manager. Some unfortunate angles arose as well. We were given a pay cut (ala Club Richard’s) because we were only three, and told we were on some sort of “probation” until we could prove that we could draw a good crowd.

Huh?

BenWahBob has been playing Baha Rock Club since before it was even called Baha Rock Club (the Key West days). To be told that we are now on “probation” because we made a personnel change makes absolutely no sense at all. Did that happen when I became the new bass player, or when Bobby became the new drummer, or when Chris became the new bass player? No, it didn’t. Frankly, it’s quite an insult. If anything, we should get a pay raise. We have THREE singers now. We didn’t get cuts on an individual basis, but as a band we took a 25% cut. That’s just wrong. Baha has always been considered the premier BWB gig because it’s a big club with a nice stage and a big light show. Now, it’s our lowest paying gig. We get more from the smaller venues we play just across town. I must confess that changes the way you look at a gig.

04 April 2008
Bobby used to play at 21 Rock in Arnold, MO quite a bit when he was with Alibi. He talked to them and got us a few gigs there. I had played there a few times as well, but not in several years. Since then they have moved the stage from that awful position in the corner to a much better location against a side wall. It’s also much bigger now.

I sent emails to all of the people I know who live in that area around South St. Louis/North Jefferson Counties area to let them know that we would be in the area. Many of them have long whined that we never played down there...and rightly so, because we didn’t. Of all the whiners, though, only my former coworker Gina from Findlay Industries actually made it there. It would be tough for her not to, though, as she lives just down the street.

We had a pretty good time at this place. I’ve never really seen it crowded in all the times I’ve been there, but we had a pretty decent crowd this night. It’s kind of an odd crowd in that they really go there to play pool. Thus, the band gets mostly ignored most of the night...until the alcohol kicks in and they remember that we are there. The women danced enough I guess, but the guys just kind of stood in the back leaning on their pool cues and watching. We got a good number of compliments as they were leaving, so I guess they didn’t completely ignore us. House sound and lights makes this a pretty easy gig, too. Carlos even stretched out and played some stuff he doesn’t actually know. He threw a Van Halen riff in the middle of one song, and played and sang a song he’d never done before. I was amazed. I’ve never seen him like that, mostly because he was always afraid of doing something that might distract Dale. I warned him of that dangerous Knucklehead-esque slide, that slippery slope from which there is no return. He just chuckled and said, “That shit was fun.”

Uh...oh...
That’s how it always starts.

11 April 2008
I thought I was to have this weekend off. I thought wrong. My friends from Just Mr. called in need of a bass player for Friday night. Ted had some trouble with his new defibrillator (that apparently involved spending some unintended time on his kitchen floor), and had to go in for some more repairs. The surgery was postponed by a couple of days, and they asked if I could play the whole weekend. How could I not agree to that?

Friday night was at The Phoenix in South St. Louis County. This is always a fun gig for a lot of reasons, all of which have been previously explained. They changed the backstage area considerably. It was now cut in half. While it was much smaller now, it was also much more quiet, as the other end no longer opens into the bar area divided only by a curtain. Some guy approached me at one of the breaks and started waxing on and on about always wanting to go back stage and hang with the band. When I told him that was not possible, he started asking me about what actually went on back there. He wanted to hear about all the incredibly perverted things that bands do to groupies in dressing rooms, and wanted to know if that was going on at that moment. I told him I couldn’t possibly know because I was not back there, and was instead standing there talking to him. He gave me that knowing smile and nodded as he walked away.

During the next break, the door to the dressing room opened and in he walked. He stepped into the middle of the room and looked around all proud of himself because he was backstage with the band. I was leaning against the new wall talking on my phone to my girlfriend, Eddie was sitting at a table smoking a cigarette, and Damon was over in the other corner talking with some friends. This guy just kept looking around the room waiting for something nasty to happen. I started to tell him that he had to leave, but then realized that it would be much more fun to watch the air fizzle out of his balloon that to burst it all at once. He wanted to see porn in action, and all he got was a bunch of guys sitting around relaxing in a space away from idiots like himself. Kirk finally came in and shooed him away with something to the affect of “Who are you? Get the hell out!”

To play this gig, I had to learn about eight new songs in about a day and a half...and I almost did. In spite of that, I made it through without too many flubs, none of which were particularly fatal. At the end of the night, after tearing down my gear and moving it to the edge of the stage toward the door, Damon looked up at me and said, “Paul, I approve of your playing.” I looked at him and laughed as I asked if he had indeed just said that he approved of my playing. He said, “Yes I did, and you can put that in your fucking blog. ‘Damon approves of Paul’s playing.’”

So there it is, Damon...and thanks for your approval.

Oh, oh, oh...I almost forgot; I got a Just Mr. guitar pick!!!

12 April 2008
The return to the scene of the crime; Sharky’s in Collinsville, IL. I vowed I would never fall on that stage again, and I kept my word. In spite of those waiting with baited breath and blinking cameras, I was able to keep my head above my heals all night. Even the Lovely and Gracious Dawna came out for awhile to see the potential spectacle. It was a mostly uneventful evening, though, with the singular exception of the infamous Booger leaving early because the bar refused to serve him anymore. Imagine that. There was one Van Halen song during a section of which I had a complete brain fart. I just threw up my hands, turned to Eddie who was giving me that unmistakable “WTF?” look, and nonchalantly said, “I simply don’t know this song.” I found it again, lurking behind Eddie’s shaking head, and was able to mostly finish it. Oops.

At the end of the night, we all retired to Denny’s for breakfast and had a blast taking shots at one another. The food was really good, but the waitress was truly terrible. She should really consider another line of work.

It was fun playing with these guys again. Ted’s ticker is all good again...again...and he is back in the saddle. Tom has, however, announced that he will be departing the band, and they are currently searching for a new guitar player.

So, at the risk of running this too long, and ruining what’s left of my Sunday, I’ll chop this off here and continue the saga in a few days.

A New Spin

2008-03-04T23:12:00.002-06:00

Friday, 22 February 2008
I got a call from Deron earlier in the week informing me that Rock Bottom’s new bass player Derrick Howard was in New Orleans all week for a job, and would not be back for their gigs at Eddie’s in Granite City, IL on Friday and Saturday. He asked if I could cover them. As it happened, the first BenWahBob-less trio gig was to be that Saturday. When I told him as much he paused momentarily, then asked, “Can you do Friday? I’ll worry about Saturday later.” I agreed to play Friday with them.

We’ve had an actual winter in the St. Louis area this year, complete with snow and ice storms, for the first time in a long time. While it’s nice to see all of that global warming BS fall by the wayside, it’s starting to get old already. I’ve gotten spoiled by the mild winters of the past few years. The days leading up to these gigs saw more of this inclement weather yet again. I had put my 610 speaker cabinet back in the basement after the last gig with RB, figuring I would not need it again. I decided this time to just take the 210 combo and 1-15 cabinet that I keep in the shed for ease of loading. That big SVT cabinet is a bear to get up the steps. Unfortunately, Mother Nature must have felt I needed the workout (and she’s right), because there was about an inch-and-a-half of ice in front of the shed door preventing it from opening. Guess I would be hauling the 610 up after all.

I got the truck loaded after work and headed to Granite City. As I arrived, so did Boozy. I loaded in my gear, then went back out to help him load in his drums. It turned out that this was unnecessary. His large, movable drum riser apparently also serves as a pair of dollies when split in half (half-in-two?). So, he just stacks everything on the two sides and wheels them in the door. Very cool. I set up my rig, played a little to warm up, then sat back with a watered-down cola and did some people watching. Granite City really excels in this arena.

Everyone showed up pretty much on time, and we commenced with the audio onslaught. Deron must have been in a frisky mood, as he whipped out Fly By Night in the first set. Boozy told me later that he leaned over to Deron after that and told him he was quitting (inside joke). One thing that was quite noticeable was the stage volume; we were painfully loud. I had the SVT4PRO head almost cranked, and could barely hear myself. Granted I was only using one side of the power amp, but that’s still nearly 700 watts! Did I mention we were loud? Jeff must have been going nuts at the soundboard.

Most of the night went off pretty well as I recall, of course I’m writing this about a week-and-a-half after the fact. At the end of the night, though, some friends came up to jam, and things went slightly south. While nothing was really a complete train wreck, there were some rough landings. Overall, though, it was a really good night. The Rock Bottom Nation came out in force, in spite of the weather, and everyone seemed to have a really good time. And that, after all, is what it’s all about.

I tore down my stuff, was paid for my presence, and sat around chatting with a few people about completely silly things until about 03:30. I stopped at Jack-in-the-Box for some tacos, and headed back to my tiny little berg to crawl back under my rock. I had the latest Dream Theater CD already in the player, so I just listened to that for the drive home.

23 February 2008
Many moons ago, when I was still playing bass for BenWahBob, we had some issues. One was the singer Dale’s constant coughing fits on stage. The other three of us devised a plan to learn all the lyrics to all the songs so we could jump in and save the day when this happened. Each would learn the songs that we felt we could comfortably sing. It then started to develop into the idea of playing some gigs as a trio. We got together a couple of times in this arrangement and organized the plan, but never really had the time to properly pursue it.

After I left the band, this apparently became an issue once again, and they re-initiated the trio idea with their new bass player. Unfortunately, he could not sing well while playing bass...a rather important necessity in a trio. He confided this to me in an email shortly after they began the pursuit. Not long after that, Carlos and Bobby asked me if I would be interested in doing the trio thing with them. I’ve always been a sucker for a trio, so this appealed to me right away. I didn’t, however, want to jump in and push out the new bass player. This was not to be the case, though, as this project was to remain independent of the original BWB. In the mean time, Bobby and Dale had another clash that caused Bobby to quit the band. BWB was now looking for a drummer to continue on as they had for nearly 15 years, while the three of us continued on our quest to make the trio work.

We got together at Bobby’s house and worked out the plan once again. We divided up the BWB set list by who could sing what, tossed out the songs that we really never liked doing anyway, added some of the cool songs we had long wanting to learn, and set up a rehearsal schedule. Carlos made CDs for everyone with the songs we would be singing, and we learned them. When we got together again and started running through the list, we sounded surprisingly good. It was immediately obvious that we could indeed make this work just fine. There were a few rough spots here and there, and a couple of songs got bumped for various reasons, but over all it was pretty decent. Our ambitious rehearsal schedule got trimmed down quite a bit by busy work schedules and infectious diseases, but we were pretty comfortable going into the first gig.

Which brings us to the first gig. Before I was asked to participate, Carlos had booked some gigs at a new bar in O’Fallon, MO called Motley’s Pub & Grub. These were booked expressly for the trio, as all of the regular BWB gigs would still be played by that band. Several of our friends have played there since it opened, and all had really good things to say about the place. The owner has been a long-time fan of BWB, and had no qualms about booking them.

I arrived just after Bobby, who had pulled his trailer along the front of the building. We loaded in my stuff – the big rig that was still in the truck from last night – and started on the PA just as Carlos arrived. We only needed a small rig, as this is not a very big place. We used a box mixer, two mains on sticks, and two monitors on sticks washing the stage from the sides. We brought in one light tree, and Bobby’s new foot controller. I got the honors of being lightman. Once we got the PA set up and tested, I set up a few scenes that highlighted whoever would be singing, and one that flooded the whole stage. These, along with a blackout, provided the light show. Through the PA we ran the vocals and a little guitar for presence, and that was it. Drums and bass were right off the stage.

Running a PA from the stage can be a tricky ordeal. I got the honor of being soundman as well. We basically guessed at the levels and went with it. Carlos sang the first couple of songs, which allowed me to jump out front and check the mix. It was surprisingly good, and only needed a bit more guitar. After that minor adjustment, we were off and running.

We rolled through the prescribed sets with little trouble; a couple of rough endings here and there, but over all pretty good. The crowd seemed to like what we were doing, and the owner had some kind things to say about us as well. Many of Bobby’s friends came out, as it’s close to home for them. Carlos and his wife brought in a large group of family and friends, too, including my old boss Brad from Findlay Industries and his lovely wife Heather. It was good to see many of the people I hadn’t seen since leaving BWB. Everyone was very kind to us. The maiden voyage appeared to be a success.

At the end of the night, we tore down the small stage and had everything loaded in no time. Next came another part that I remember about playing in a trio; you get paid what you’re actually worth. I hadn’t made that much money in one night since the gigs with Just Mr., and Those1Guys before that. That was nice.

It started to snow unexpectedly as we loaded out the gear. I was razzing Bobby about not having a White Castle nearby, when I looked up and saw what looked like blue and white striped awnings just down the road. When I drove down there, they turned out to be the green and white awnings of a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. Bummer. I was really looking forward to some Sliders, so much so that I stopped off I-70 at the Whitey’s near Mid Rivers Mall on the way home. Yummy.

The snow got pretty heavy after awhile – hour and 15 minute drive home in good weather – and by the time I got into Illinois, the roads were truly awful and visibility was quite low. I rarely got over 45 or 50 MPH the whole way. On the bright side, I got to listen to a couple of Symphony X CDs. I started with New Mythology Suite, and ended the drive with The Odyssey. Very inspiring stuff.

Beach Birthday

2008-02-06T13:09:00.000-06:00

01 February 2008
Steve Hall, the venerable singer for Röck Böttöm, celebrates his birthday every year on 31 January. I’ve heard this year he is 29...ish. Strange. I would almost swear I recall him having a 29th birthday way back around the initial Knucklehead days. I could be wrong, though.

So, anyway, as this date fell on a Thursday this year, the party was scheduled for the day after. Röck Böttöm was booked at Club 111 in Pontoon Beach, IL, and this was billed as Steve’s Birthday Party. Normally, this would solicit a fairly large turnout. Unfortunately, a big storm blew through the St. Louis area the day before, dropping the temperature 50° in just a few hours and dumping about 8” of snow. Bummer. It’s Steve’s birthday, it’s my last gig with RB, it’s at a club that has been struggling to stay afloat, and now the weather took a dump on it. It was not looking like a promising night.

I arrived around 20:30, much later than I had hoped, but seemingly the standard anymore. I walked in to find the place much different than I had anticipated. I was in there briefly once many years ago, and the band (I don’t even remember who) set up over in one of the corners. Now, a professional stage covered 2/3 of the north wall, and they had a pretty decent house PA system. Deron’s stuff was on the stage but not set up, and Boozy’s kit was nowhere to be seen. Hmmm. Someone came up to me and asked where everyone was at. I had no answer. What I had forgotten was that everyone was at Pop’s lending support to Ivory Tiger, who had a gig there opening for a couple of tribute bands.

I loaded my equipment in and set it up on the stage. I got everything connected and ready to go. I hit the power switch and everything on the stage – in fact everything on that side of the building – went dark. Uh-oh. My gear had been in my truck since the previous weekend. Had condensation inside the amp caused a short? The soundman came up and reset the breaker, and then suggested that I plug into the other side of the 4-way outlet behind my amp, as it was on a different circuit. I did, and with some trepidation, hit the power switch again. Everything powered up just fine. I tuned my bass and after a brief sound check, proceeded to practice for awhile, rolling through some of my favorite Rush tunes that serve as great exercises in self-indulgence.

The rest of the guys rolled in eventually. Noticeably absent was Boozy’s drum kit. It was now 21:30, and there were no drums. This place apparently has a house drum set that they tear down when RB plays there. Boozy was planning on using the house kit, and the house was planning on him bringing his own. Whoops. They whipped out the kit and had it set up in no time. I think we were playing by shortly after 22:00.

It was, for the most part, a fairly normal Röck Böttöm setlist – well, fairly normal while I’m with them, anyway. There were a few departures here and there, like the insertion of Iron Maiden’s Two Minutes to Midnight. Lots of friends came out, too. In fact, lots of RB fans came out in spite of the weather. What a great following. Many of the regular faces from Eddie’s were there, too. One of the regular faces must have had one too many shots of testosterone, and some drama ensued next to the bar. Cooler heads eventually prevailed, and everyone relaxed and remembered how to have fun. It’s truly sad to see this happen time and again, and it’s almost always the same people. It’s not hard to see why people are hesitant to go see a band at an East Side bar.

For the most part, though, it turned out to be a pretty good night. The crowd stayed all night and the band played all night. I was puzzled, though, to see people smoking inside the bar...scarcely one month into the statewide ban. I was a bit disappointed, too. If I were a struggling bar owner, I would probably be unlikely to expose myself to the potentially large fines that this could incur. But, what do I know...I’m just a musician.

I packed up my gear at the end of the night, and headed back to crawl under my little rock. I took a cue from one of my MySpace friends Liz, guitar player for the LA area band Redeemer (formerly Hellsing), who had an Adagio song playing on her page. I hadn’t listened to these guys for some time, so I dug out their Sanctus Ignis CD for the drive. You gotta love symphonic metal.

If this blog seems a bit terse, it may be influenced by my current battle with this upper respiratory thing that seems to be sweeping through everyone I know. Not wanting to be left out, I spent as much time as I could around The Lovely and Gracious (& Infected) Dawna last weekend. If you have yet to contract this vile infection, I would recommend making every effort to avoid it.

Smoke Free in GC

2008-01-28T23:35:00.001-06:00

Sorry I never took the time to write about the New Year’s Eve gig with Röck Böttöm at Rumors in Wood River, IL. Two things happened: I didn’t really have the time, and I didn’t really have the gumption. Not unlike Deron, I seem to occasionally lose the drive to spread these stories. It seems like most of the people who read it on a regular basis were there anyway.

In spite of it all, I had a really good time. I got to play with some great friends, many other friends came by and said “Hi” or sat in with us, and I got to spend some time in public with the Lovely and Gracious Dawna. The night went long, of course, and she ended up succumbing to the unbelievable amount of smoke that accumulated in the bar after they locked the doors at 02:00. So, we had to exit earlier than many would have preferred. I again offer my sincerest apologies to everyone this affected. With the new Illinois indoor smoking ban in place, I’m sure this is no longer an issue for those of us who don’t smoke.

Thus was the entrance of the new calendar year.

Friday, 25 January 2008
Deron contacted me a couple of weeks ago to tell me that they had a gig booked the day after Steve’s birthday, and wanted to know if I would play it with them. “Absolutely” was the only correct answer. That would surely be a blast. He then told me that they also scored some dates at Eddie’s in Granite City, two of them being the weekend before the birthday gig. I agreed to do those as well. I’ve had a lot of fun playing with these guys. As they seem to have now picked a permanent replacement for Chuck, this would soon be coming to an end.

At the first gigs I played with them at Schatze’s just before the Holidays, they had commented that I was not as loud as they had become accustomed to hearing. This came up again at Rumors. So, this time I would have a fix for that. I left the small Ampeg BA500 combo at home and broke out the big rig; the Ampeg SVT4PRO amp and SVT610HLF cabinet. I was going to throw at them 1400 watts of 6-string bass through a speaker enclosure the size of a small refrigerator. They would surely hear that.

I arrived at Eddie’s around 20:30 for setup. Everyone else had their stuff on-stage and ready to go, but all were gone except for Jeff still connecting the PA and lights. I plugged everything in, tuned the bass, and pounced on the thing. New strings, plenty of power to spare, and the always fantastic tone of the Fishbone bass...I was in hog heaven. I stood on the stage for the next half-hour just playing with the volume low, just enjoying the sound. It served as a pretty good warm-up, too.

Everyone else arrived with about 10 minutes ‘til go-time. We chatted a bit while Deron fussed at his guitar. His lovely fiancé Becca asked me where Dawna was. (I love doing this) I told her in quite a manly manner that Dawna was at home cleaning the house and baking cookies, like a good woman should be. She gave me the most priceless incredulous look, not knowing if I was serious. Deron snickered, and I lost my composure, too. I confessed that she had her kids this weekend, and would not be coming. When I later told Dawna about this, she laughed and said to tell Becca that she would indeed make me some “special” chocolate cookies.

Once everything was tuned and checked, we were on our way. The crowd was a bit sparse at first, but picked up quickly after we started playing. We had a major problem with low-frequency feed back that seemed to dog us for most of the night. No one could figure out from whence it came. We dealt with it, but only barely. It was quite annoying.

During the second set, a couple of Casanovas started flirting with the hot band chicks. Normally, there’s really nothing wrong with this. It’s one of the hazards of being on-stage while the hotties are on the dance floor. You learn to deal with it, and so do they. I usually find it quite entertaining to watch Dawna shoot them down like poorly-trained Libyan fighter pilots. This was the normal situation, too, until one of them got a little too touchy-feely with Becca. She eventually shooed him away, though. Deron mentioned at break that he may have to beat the guy. Later, as everyone was standing on the dance floor talking, this guy apparently tried his moves on her again. Deron took a strong exception to his touching her yet again, and went after him. It was broken up quickly, but the skinhead and his buddies got the message: If you’re going to mess with someone in the bar, don’t make it the biggest guy in there...or his girlfriend.

The last set turned into a near free-for-all, as we ventured off the “normal” RB setlist and into more of a Knucklehead moment. We started whipping out stuff like Metallica and White Zombie, and the crowd loved it. I heard a couple people ask for Tool, so I launched into Sober, which was another KH staple. I fully didn’t expect Boozy to jump in on cue, yet there he was, and we actually played the damned song to the end. That was fun. That’s always a fun bass song.

Our friends from Ivory Tiger rolled in at the end of the night. They had finished their gig at Porky’s in Wood River and stopped in to see the circus that is Eddie’s at 02:30. Naturally, they came up and did a few tunes with us. A bunch of people made their way to the stage, and eventually I was delegated to a small corner next to my amp. We finished off with some manner of big rockin’ tunes, and called it a night.

As I stood around socializing (yes, I actually do that sometimes) with Geo from IT, we were approached by a couple of young ladies apparently bent on snaring a man. They started groping on each other and kissing each other, and generally making fools of themselves, all in the name of trying to impress us. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to burst their little bubble, and so I did. As I chuckled and shook my head, one of them asked if we “wanted any of this,” to which I replied, “Not hardly.” They looked at me kind of incredulously and asked again, saying they couldn’t believe I wasn’t interested. I told them that they apparently haven’t seen what I have at home...well, she wasn’t technically at my home, but you get the picture. They went away after that. I have little tolerance for fake lesbians. Go play your silly games somewhere else...I have neither the time nor the inclination to participate in your farcical little ruse.

Rick Schroeder of Just Mr. made an appearance as well. He didn’t come up and sing, but we did get to talk a bit at the end of the night. After convincing him that I have never played with a certain former band of his, he razzed me about the night I went rubber-side up on-stage at Sharky’s in Collinsville, IL while playing with JM (his fault, not mine).

I eventually collected my share of the monetary compensation, put away my bass, and headed for home. As I’ve been on a bit of a Rush kick lately (yeah...surprise, surprise), I opted for my favorite album Hemispheres as my soundtrack for the drive home.

Saturday, 26 January 2008
In slept about half of the day on Saturday...or so it seemed anyway. I arrive at Eddie’s later than I had planned, but still ahead of anyone else. Deron rolled in shortly after me, and the rest followed him. I even teased Steve about not being the last one there, as Boozy was apparently now the late-arriver. We started off the night only a few minutes late. Not long after we started, so did that annoying rumble. Jeff went over and kicked his amp rack or something, and it went away, never to return (actually, he just tapped on his crossover...but that doesn’t sound as cool). He also later asked me if I could turn down a bit. I just smiled, and told him I could turn down or up, whatever he wanted.

The crowd was better at the start of this night, which is usually the case at Eddie’s. I have to note another thing about the crowds. It’s quite interesting to look out and see a virtual sea of Röck Böttöm T-shirts at their gigs. The “Röck Böttöm Nation” really seems to step up and support this band. That’s very cool.

At one of the breaks, I was approached by a woman who looked vaguely familiar. She grabbed my arm and told me that she had seen me play with Just Mr. when I was sitting in for Ted May. She then proceeded to relate the story of seeing me fall down on the stage at Sharky’s, and then she giggled.

Why does everyone think that was so funny?

You see...Rick got his mic stand caught on a drum mic cable and...oh, never mind. When she said she was glad I didn’t get hurt, I told her that I had indeed hurt myself. I went down against Damon’s keyboard stand and on top of my bass guitar stand. I had some seriously sore ribs for a few weeks after that. It didn’t do my back much good either. She giggled some more, and excused herself to go back to her friends. I suppose that is to be my legacy with that band.

The guys from Ivory Tiger came in at the end of the night again, and helped us plow through a bunch of songs that had us playing until almost 03:00. We sat around afterwards chewing the proverbial fat (sorry, Dawna...a little injun lingo there), and I didn’t get my stuff torn down and loaded until after 03:30. I heard Deron mention something about tacos sounding good. Bastard! I stopped at QuikTrip for gas, and ended up two cars back behind him in the Jack-in-the-Box drive-thru. They were slow as molasses, and it was about 04:00 by the time I got my tacos (2 for 99¢) and was headed home. I haven’t had JB tacos in a long time, especially at 4am. I cranked up the Symphony X CD New Mythology Suite for my driving music, and was home and in bed just past 04:30. Needless to say, Sunday was a waste.

Bass Player for Hire

2007-12-26T23:41:00.000-06:00

Friday, 21 December 2007
“It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog.
Can’t count the tears of a life with no blog.”

...indeed.

All Zeppelin bastardizations aside, though, I haven’t written one of these since June of this year. The reason for this is simple: I haven’t actually done anything notably entertaining since then. As the sole purpose of the existence of this blog is to recount the entertaining moments of my musical life for your viewing pleasure, there was really no reason to waste the time or the space for the events of the last six months.

I’ve really just lead my normal, boring life; eat too much, sleep too much, work too much, spend not nearly enough time with my painfully beautiful girlfriend. Even my pursuit of personal musical growth has been severely limited. While I have spent a moderate amount of time with my cello this year and a small amount with my guitar and my keyboards, I did not actually even touch my bass from the first week of June to sometime in early December. After the last gig with Just Mr., I put it in the case and there it stayed. I have done this often over the years, but rarely for this long. I just had no overwhelming desire to play it.

That’s not to say I have been musically dormant. On the contrary, I feel I have accomplished much. My cello playing has grown nicely, I’ve written loads of stuff for my various original music projects, and I’ve completed string arrangements of Antonio Soler’s Keyboard Sonatas #1-7, the first five of which are already available on my website as free PDF downloads.

I have not been slacking, I assure you.

I did start to hear some rumblings a few months ago about some trouble within the ranks of BenWahBob. Their new bass player (well, not really new anymore) Chris Ashley and I had traded some messages on MySpace regarding a growing rift between Dale and Bobby. This was later confirmed for me by Carlos, who also confirmed that they were rehearsing in BenWahBobless-mode once again. We did this once before when I was still with the band on the premise that Dale seemed to be having more and more trouble getting through a whole night without severe coughing fits, and we wanted to be able to cover essentially everything between the remaining three of us. Now they were doing the same thing, but under a different premise; Bobby had refused to do any more shows with Dale. He told them they had to find another drummer.

When I spoke with Carlos, he expressed his concerns that they wouldn’t be able to learn enough of the songs as a trio before their looming gigs at the beginning of the year. Chris apparently doesn’t sing as much as he and Bobby, so he asked if I might be interested in filling in with the ‘Bobless project in the event that Dale was unable to find another drummer. As I have always had a preference for the trio format and was intrigued by the challenge, I agreed that it might be fun to give it a shot. We divided up the BWB songlist and came up with a little over 50 songs that we could do – more that enough to get us through the pending January gig at Baha Rock Club. We’ve rehearsed together a couple of times, and everything looks like it will work just fine. Should be interesting, though.

Another development of interest occurred in the last couple of weeks as well. My good friends in Röck Böttöm encountered a bit of internal strife for themselves. I have very little knowledge of the exact details of what lead up to it (it supposedly involves a Rush song...?), but bass player Chuck Mann apparently became angry enough one night to walk off of the stage during a gig. At break time, he packed his gear and left. He sent out a notice the next day on MySpace announcing his departure from the band. As the rest of the band was uncertain of his long-term intentions, Deron asked if I might help them get through their remaining gigs through the end of the year.

I actually had to think about this one...for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I had no intentions of stepping in and taking anyone else’s gig. I like Chuck, and didn’t want to give the impression that I was swooping in like a vulture at a moment of weakness. Deron assured me, though, that this definitely was not the case. Chuck had disassociated himself from the band in every way, and appeared to have no intentions of returning. Second, and no less compelling, was my recent re-association with the BWB-less project. I checked the schedules and found no immediate conflicts (here we go with that again), so I agreed to play their remaining gigs with them.

One of the interesting ironies of this is the Knucklehead angle. When Deron, Steve, and I were looking to put together a band in 1993, Robin Crattles (he went by a different name back then) was one of the drummers we considered. We were even leaning towards him until we found that Steve Wenos was available and interested. Such was the founding of the original Knucklehead...version 1.0. Now, it seemed, we would be gigging with that lineup afterall...albeit 14 years later.

As a matter of trivia, the working name for that band in ’93 was Walrus Gumboot (don’t ask).

So, that brings us to the events of this past weekend, as noted by the date way up at the beginning of this novella. I got home after work, loaded my gear, and headed to Belleville, IL to a place called Schatze’s. I played there back in 2002 with Those1Guys, and had been there once since then to see Jägertÿme. I still lived in Granite City then, and found that it is much easier now to get into the east side of Belleville coming from St. Jacob. It’s all highway.

Amazingly, I arrived before anyone else in the band. Jeff was putting the finishing touches on the PA and lights, but that was it. Deron rolled in shortly after me and expressed his surprise that Boozy hadn’t yet set up his massive drum kit. He did arrive shortly thereafter with a smaller kit, though, and we were able to start a mere half-hour late. Not so bad for a Friday night really. In the intervening time, I was able to fix the broken solder joints in Deron’s wah pedal. I like the easy stuff.

One frighteningly familiar aspect of this gig is the notable absence of any written setlists. Not unlike Knucklehead, they have something of a regular show that they play. The setlists, though, as Deron had told me on the phone a few days earlier, were somewhere in his head. He had nothing to give me beyond verbal queues on stage and the occasional wry smile and nod that the next song would indeed be what I thought it might be (some communication is beyond words). This works just fine in this arrangement as, unlike in KH, I didn’t have to plan ahead for keyboard patch changes and MIDI pedal setups.

I just had to play bass and occasionally sing some harmonies. The bass playing part wasn’t so bad, as I knew most of their stuff anyway. The few songs that I didn’t know I have heard enough to bluff my way through. Deron went over a couple of chord changes with me before we started, and we were off. Nothing like playing off the cuff, as it were.

Everything seemed to be going along just swimmingly for the most part. Boozy and I finally locked in together at some point, and I thought we actually started to sound OK...all things considered anyway. They complained that I wasn’t loud enough (read: not as loud as they have become accustomed to), so Jeff pumped a little bass through the monitors and everyone was fine. We did on occasion throw in some old KH stuff just for yucks (or is that nyucks?). Someone even asked for some Iron Maiden, which we eventually obliged. This went against every tenet set out for us, which was to remain a Röck Böttöm show and not become Knucklehead. The people dug it, but we kept that to a bare minimum.

At some point in the last set, my throat started to give. I had been trying to battle off a sore throat/cold since about Wednesday, and thought I was winning. My voice told me otherwise. I eventually just stopped singing completely. At one point, as I was standing there watching the other guys play (that’s sometimes more entertaining than the drunks in the crowd), I felt something brush past my arm and whack me in the side of the face. I flinched quickly enough to see my mic stand thump against the stage floor. I looked over just in time to watch a drunk guy roll up against my right leg. He had apparently fallen backwards over the floor monitor and onto the stage. One of the bouncers helped him go somewhere else, I know not where. I didn’t see him the rest of the night.

We finished the night with some putrid, moldy, cheesy stuff that everyone loved (AC/DC, I think), and called it a night. We made it through, in spite of ourselves. It really wasn’t so bad, I guess. There were a few moments that were obviously lacking in luster, but for the most part it went fine.

I did notice that not playing for six months can affect your technique in a decidedly negative manner. At several points, I found myself playing wrong notes for no apparent reason. G to D was coming out as G to D#. It was silly the first time, and curious the second time. After that, it was becoming somewhat alarming. I started to put some thought into it as we played, and came to the revelation that the fingerings on a bass guitar are not exactly the same as those on a cello. In practicing with my cello and ignoring my bass for six months, I had altered my feel for the fretboard. I spent the rest of the gig that night practicing my bass technique on stage.

Boozy, his lovely wife, and I spent a little time talking in the parking lot before heading home. I stopped at the White Castle on IL-161 on the way out of town, and thoroughly polluted my system. Man, I love those damned things. The drive back to St. Jacob was fairly quiet, as the roads were mostly deserted. I listened to the second Circus Maximus CD Isolate for my musical accompaniment. I certainly hope that the rumors come true of a US tour for them.

Saturday, 22 December 2007
I awoke to the raging sound of telephones ringing Saturday morning. A small but mighty storm had blown through the area Friday night while we played, and I arrived home to find I had no power. I guessed limbs were blown onto power lines somewhere, as half of St. Jacob had power and about half didn’t...my half, of course. I plugged in a corded phone to call Dawna and hadn’t unplugged it when the power was restored right before I fell asleep, so they were ringing all around me when she called. It was a good thing, though, as I needed to get my derriere moving to finish some last minute Xmas shopping. That was an adventure unto itself. It seemed that a certain “spirit of the season” was noticeably absent on this day. I opted to not participate in the smash-em-up derby going on all around me. (I know...it’s easy for a Buddhist to take shots from the outside looking in.) The rest of the day passed relatively uneventfully once I got away from the commerce centers.

Dawna was going to go with me to Schatze’s, but elected at the last minute to stay home. She, too, was a bit under the weather. So, I tossed my bass in the truck and headed to Belleville. I arrived around 20:00, fully an hour before the “scheduled” start time. I had planned to either grab something in town or just eat at the bar. I recalled that they used to have pretty good food, so that became the plan. I was not disappointed. I had one of the best burgers I’ve eaten in a long time.

While I ate, I occasionally chuckled at the loud-mouthed 50-something guy sitting at the bar screaming at the Missouri-Illinois basketball game on one of the TVs. He might as well have been saying, “LOOK AT ME! I’M A DRUNK IDIOT!” Every bar has one. I could tell when the game was over, because his attention turned to me. I had worn my Pittsburgh Steelers jersey the night before, and my Detroit Red Wings sweater this night in honor of both teams having been in town that week. He started out making disparaging comments about the city of Detroit (as if it were any worse than north St. Louis) and all their Russian players. When that didn’t garner my attention, he started in on my hair. The bar employees tried to calm him, but he was on a roll and not to be stopped. Everyone seemed to be awaiting some kind of response from me. I thought about walking over to him and asking him how many Stanley Cup Championship banners hang in the rafters of the Scott Trade Center, or what kind of season the Blues had in 1929, but I figured that would be lost on him. In the end, I simply turned half around on my stool, put my finger to my lips, and gave him a quiet “Shhhhhhhhh.” He wasn’t amused at that either. One of the bouncers came in shortly after that. I don’t know what he said to the guy, but he was pretty quiet after that. Jeff had arrived during the entertainment, and we sat there watching the water dripping off of one of the ceiling tiles and into a dish bucket on the dance floor in front of the stage.

Steve actually arrived before Deron...quite a rarity...and Boozy was the last one in. We started pretty close to on-time. I approached Deron and stated that I hoped they hadn’t hired me for my singing voice...or at least that’s what I attempted to say. What actually squeaked out was altogether different. My voice was almost completely gone, and the cough had become worse. I was eating cough drops like candy. Steve offered me some Mucinex, but I was hesitant. I’m not much on taking medication, especially the over-the-counter variety. They generally do nothing but mask the symptoms, and I’m never sure how they will affect me for the drive home. So, there would be no three-part harmonies this night.

We rolled through the first set with little trouble that I can recall. As Boozy and I were standing on the stage at break discussing the virtues of Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, we heard a loud WHOOSH followed by a SPLASH. The tile gave up in its battle with the leaking roof and collapsed onto the stage where I was standing and playing just moments before. In the process, it had also dumped a couple gallons of water all over the dance floor. When the bouncer came over to assess the scene, I leaned over and asked him if perchance they didn’t like me there. When he gave me a curious look, I recounted that they had thrown drunks at me the previous night...now they were chucking chunks of the building at me.

After that, the rest of the night seemed relatively uneventful. We made an effort not to stray off the RB path. These guys have a good following, and for good reason. Although there weren’t many of their regulars who made the trip to Belleville, there was a good crowd there and they stayed all night. They even insisted on “ONE MORE!” several times. We finally quit after three of those.

Teardown went pretty quickly at the end of the night. We got paid fairly quickly (by bar standards, anyway), chatted a bit, and went our separate ways. There doesn’t seem to be any RockStar attitude in the band, and the band “wives” are all pleasant women. It’s a pretty good gig. I don’t mind at all helping these guys. They are good friends, and I’m honored that they had the confidence in me to call.

I stopped to pollute myself again on the way home. This night, though, I opted to listen to a disc of Vivaldi string concerti for the drive home. Whiteys and baroque string music...life doesn’t get much better than that, eh?

Catching Up

2007-06-10T23:16:00.000-05:00

10 June 2007
I suppose it would be prudent to start off with an apology regarding the recent incredible lapse in my weekly blog. This seems to be more the norm than not lately. So…sorry about that.

Naturally, way too much has happened in the elapsed time since March to recount it all here in detail now…which is a shame, really, because there were some infinitely entertaining stories that occurred along the way. I’ll just give a general recap and move onward, though, rather than feebly attempt to remember them all and not give them their due justice.

I played my last gig with BenWahBob on 09 March 2007 at the “Budweiser Party at the Park” at Fairmount Park in Collinsville, IL. We didn’t get all teary about it or anything…we just played the gig and moved on our separate ways. BWB has been through a lot of musicians in their nearly 15 years in the STL club scene. This was not a new situation for them. They are working professionals, and as such continued on their journey. If you have not yet seen them with their new bass player Chris Ashley, shame on you. While they are still pretty much the same band as always, a new member always brings with him a new dynamic to any band. Chris is much more active on-stage than I have been in many years (read: “not boring”). If you have the opportunity, you really should see them live.

Next, of course, was the situation with the incredible Ted May and Just Mr. As was recounted in the previous blog (yeah…three months ago…I know), Ted had to endure some medical procedures to repair some heart deficiencies. As it turned out, it was a bit worse than they had initially imagined. He ended up getting two valves replaced, one repaired, and a double bypass. A couple of weeks later, he required a pace maker as well. Ted, of course, took it all in stride. This was his third brush with mortality, and he’s starting to get good at it.

So, while he was out on his little cardiac “vacation”, the band for which he plays bass – Just Mr. – was in need of a replacement bass player. That turned out to be me. The timing of it all also seemed to work out quite well, as the first gigs with them came the weekend after the end of my commitments with BenWahBob. It was a perfect transition.

Just Mr., of course, has been a long-standing fixture in the STL rock scene. I must here admit that I have long wanted to play the kind of music these guys play. Unfortunately, it never really happened in the previous situations. We came pretty close in both incarnations of Knucklehead and in Those1Guys, but always seemed to stray into the bubblegummy/cheesey stuff. Now, that’s not to say that JM doesn’t play that stuff, they just play a lot less of it. They center their sets around bands like Kansas, Styx, Boston, REO Speedwagon, and, of course, Journey. The Journey songs are important because they also do a Journey tribute show called Evolution, which is outstanding.

Needless to say, as these guys have been a staple for over 15 years, it was an honor to play with them. The talent level in that band is quite impressive. I’ve been privileged to play with some fantastic musicians over the years, and these guys fall squarely amongst the best. They made it very easy for me to step in and help…even in a time of internal turmoil, as they were also in the process of changing singers.

I knew guitarist Tom Ackman from his days with Jägertÿme, but apparently didn’t know him quite as well as I thought. Tom’s playing ability far exceeded anything I had seen him do before…probably a function of the level of alcohol imbibed on-stage at a Jägertÿme show. His prowess on the guitar is quite admirable, and he gets some fantastic tones.

Damon Atkinson is one of the most talented keyboard players I’ve met to-date. His command of the instrument is awe-inspiring. Not only does he breeze through some of the tougher passages in what are considered challenging rock songs, but he casually warms up with classical piano repertoire as if it were nothing. Obviously, a well-educated and well-rehearsed musician.

Playing with drummer Eddie Cerny, though, was a pure thrill. Here’s a guy who obviously has an immense amount of talent that has been reinforced with years of healthy practice, studio work, and live performance. I thought that T1G drummer Brian Bayley was a great drummer (and he is), but playing with Eddie was at yet another level. We share a passion for the same kind of progressive rock music (Rush, Dream Theater, Liquid Tension, etc.), and seemed to lock in together quite well. His ventures into odd time signatures and off-beat accents, while perhaps less appreciated by the new singer, were always a fun and challenging ordeal. I don’t believe he ever once failed to come back around to where he needed to be when he needed to be there (“You play in 5/8, I’ll play in 6/8, and I’ll meet you at 30…the rest of the band catches up 2 measures later and we’re all good again!”).

What can I say about their new singer Rick Schroeder? I was a bit apprehensive about him from the time I found out he would be replacing Tony as the new frontman. I’ve known Rick from his days with Ivory Tiger, and the drama that ensued from that. He has enjoyed a less-than-admirable reputation since then…much of it quite deservedly. He seems like a different person with these guys, though. Perhaps it is a function of the new environment, but he seems much less “intense” than he used to be. His voice seems to work well with the Journey stuff, which is quite important in that band. Now, if he can just get past that whole “Lead Singer Disease” thing…

Another fun aspect of my time with JM was singer Wes Stillman (of Ivory Tiger and Maiden America fame). When all of the madness with their previous singer Tony came to a head, Wes was there for them to fill in the dates until they could find an adequate replacement…and he did a great job! Wes is…um…well…unusual on stage. He has more fun than any one entertainer should be allowed to have. As a singer, he doesn’t suck either. It was fun playing shows with him until Rick was ready.

Teddy started “sitting-in” a couple of weeks ago, and slowly worked his way back into his gig. Last weekend he played two sets on Friday night and all but the first five songs of the last set on Saturday night. While still obviously tired from his ordeal, he told me backstage at The Phoenix that it was “spiritually uplifting” to get back out there and play. You could see the difference in his eyes. Ted was back. This, too, worked out pretty well from a timing standpoint, as I could not play this weekend because of some surgeries Dawna was to have (everything came out well for her, too). I called Ted Saturday afternoon, and he tells me everything went fine for him on Friday.

I really did have a blast playing with these guys. As I said before, it really was an honor to be a part of that group, even if only temporarily.

Another interesting twist that occurred while I was shirking my blogging responsibilities was the acquisition of a pipe organ. Try as I might to be a good boy, another opportunity fell into my lap. This one actually worked out, though. I drove to Perryville, MO to inspect the instrument, agreed to purchase it, and returned the following weekend pulling a rented trailer. Dawna and I loaded the organ into the trailer and brought it back to my house, where it is now taking up most of the room formerly known as my living room. I cannot thank her enough for the help…not to mention her sons Derek and Samuel who helped us carry everything into the house the following day. It is still a mess right now, as I have had little time to pursue the refurbishment. However, that is all changing now that I have fulfilled all of my obligations to other people’s music projects and can now endeavor to complete my own. Besides, I have to get the organ parts out of the way so I can get to the rest of my studio equipment, which was previously moved into the former-living-room-now-turned-studio as well. I can’t wait to dive into it this week. There is also a page on my website devoted to this project. I will try to keep it updated as things change. It can be accessed from the link on the main page, or by just going directly there by copying and pasting the following link: (http://www.metalsmithmusik.com/Organ.html).

As for music…the new Spock’s Beard album came out a couple of months ago, the new Rush album came out a couple of weeks ago, and the new Dream Theater album came out a couple of days ago. New albums from Circus Maximus and Symphony X are also due out soon. Needless to say, I’m in prog heaven right now. It’s a very good time to be a music fan.

A Blister & Just Mr.

2007-03-08T22:51:00.000-06:00

With a month off since the last BenWahBob gig, you’d think that I would be well rested and ready to go. You’d be wrong, of course. Perhaps it’s one of those endless bugs going around, or perhaps it’s just the fact that my sorry-derriere is sadly out of shape. Whatever the case may be, I was just plain tired this weekend.

Friday night was the freebee night, so Dawna & I decided to go see Just Mr. playing at Sharky’s in Collinsville, IL. We really were going to see their bass player Ted May. I’ve known him for many years, and Dawna used to work with him at L.S. Electronics. Ted’s been having some medical issues of late, and we wanted to see how he was doing and show some support. More on this a bit later. We didn’t stay too long, departing after listening to the first set. Wes Stillman of Ivory Tiger fame was filling in for their recently departed singer, and did a fine job with the Journey, Styx, and Kansas.

After leaving there, we ambled our way to Eddie’s in Granite City to see Röck Böttöm. We haven’t seen them for some time, and were long overdue. We ran into some other friends whom we haven’t seen in awhile as well. At the conclusion of a slow dance, during which we took the opportunity to taunt RB bass player Chuck Mann (couldn’t help it, Chuck), I was summoned to the stage by Deron and pushed unceremoniously in that direction by my own lovely and gracious Dawna. Hmmm… Wasn’t I going to not sit in with anyone this night? I had successfully refused Ted’s overtures earlier in the evening. Now, here I was being literally pushed onto the stage. OK…whatever.

Deron had mentioned when we came in wanting to do some Stevie Ray Vaughn to get it out of his system. I was certainly OK with that. Suddenly, when I asked which one we were doing, I was told Tom Sawyer. Huh? The Rush song? Without keyboards? It appeared that this was indeed the plan, as Boozie clicked it off and away we went. Deron very capably covered the important keyboard parts on guitar, and we flew through it unscathed. Boozie then teased the intro to YYZ, and we actually ended up doing that one, too. Normally, I would be all for that. One thing about Chuck’s bass, though: its position on the strap leaves it hanging right around the knee area…great for “rockin’”, not so great for the intricate work required to play this song. My left hand was so distended and bent oddly around under the neck that my fingers started to cramp about half way through the song. This was the impetus behind my later comment to Chuck that he would need to sweep up all the notes I dropped before returning to that side of the stage. We also did Zeppelin’s What is and What Should Never Be for their soundman Jeff Newman, and ended the charade with AC/DC’s Highway to Hell…an eclectic mix of tunes, to be sure.

Another note about Chuck’s bass…he plays with a pick, I play with my fingers. His tone is set to his attack style. While I was playing, I had no definition at all. I found myself over-attacking the strings in an attempt to better hear myself. As a result, I ended up with a real nasty blister on the tip of my right hand middle finger. I’d surely pay for that.

Saturday, 03 March 2007
Baha Rock Club, St. Charles, MO – time to pay for that blister.

Dawna and I arrived at the club shortly after 20:00. Yes…that’s right…Dawna actually went to Baha with me…a rare treat. We rolled up to the front of the club just as someone was pulling away from the curb right in front of the door…RockStar parking! I debated with myself momentarily as to whether or not I really wanted to park there. After the last incident, I wasn’t so sure, and considered just parking in the municipal garage as usual. However, since I had the Hottie with me, I decided to capitalize on the opportunity to afford her the RockStar treatment. She even carried in my 40-pound bass for me…best-looking roadie I’ve ever had. She even wore her “My Face Is Up Here” shirt. My shirt was even more inappropriate.

Set-up went through with its usual quickness. Even sound check was fast, which is an unusual feat for John. He captured a few notes for what was essentially a signal check, gave us a quick monitor check, and we were done. I must say, too, that my monitor mix this night was the best one I’ve had there in a long time. There’s something to be said for brevity.

We fired up the BWB circus promptly at 21:00, and surfed through the first set with scarcely a care. It was shaping up early to be a smooth night. At the end of the set, I stopped and spoke briefly with new BWB bassist-elect Chris Ashley, who had come out to play a bit. He took over for the second set, and I gladly sat with my sweetie and watched. Dawna did comment that it seemed odd that Dale had put the bulk of the danceable songs in the first set…when no one really cares to dance yet. I think I commented something to the affect that she would not be at all shocked by this if she were in attendance more often (just kidding, Boo). Many of the harder-edged songs reared up in the second set, and Chris sounded like he was comfortably up to the task.

The third set was the standard dance set, albeit only in the middle this time when we tossed out the funky stuff. For having old strings on my bass, I was getting a pretty good meaty kind of funk tone for the slap-n-pop stuff. It turned out to be a productive set, as the dance floor remained pretty well populated most of the time. We even ended it with me singing Where The River Flows…a sure-fire way to clear a dance floor in a hurry. My blister was screaming at me by this time. Every time I raked it across a string, it felt like I was shaving off the tip of the finger. I eventually semi-trained my ring finger to partially compensate for it, but I was spilling notes all over the stage again.

The last set picked up right where we left off with the third…with me singing. It was all about me now. We started with Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song, then Carlos unexpectedly jumped into Rush’s In The Mood. I’ve not always been so fond of this one, but it is a known tune in St. Louis, and people seem to like singing along with it. We then slammed into What You’re Doing, a much cooler Rush tune as far as I’m concerned. I’ve always liked doing this one. It’s fun to sing, and Carlos and I have a blast staring each other down during the unison guitar/bass runs in the bridge sections (“WEEEEEEE!!!”). We threw in a few other tunes by I-don’t-remember-who-or-what, then ended the night with Ozzy’s I Don’t Know, followed by the ubiquitous War Pigs. Carlos even cut the solos short, as we had clearly run over past 01:00 and were being stared at by Jim in his crossed-arms-looking-at-his-watch pose.

As we tore down the equipment and readied for the trip home, Jim had to sneak in his comments about not paying the bass player…again. Funny guy! He paid me nonetheless, but got in one last jab when I walked back in to make the requisite “idiot check,” with a shout of “QUITTER!” Dawna and I had discussed the possibility of having shirts made to that affect, but time was insufficient to make that happen. Oh, well…perhaps later.

We made the arduous trek back to St. Jacob to the accompanying strains of a CD of Antonio Vivaldi’s String Symphonies performed by Shlomo Mintz. Dawna tried to sleep, but said she couldn’t help staying awake listening to the music. (I really don’t deserve her.) We had listened to the first Infectious Grooves album on the way there, so this was 180° in the other direction. It was a nice way to end the evening, to be sure.

We were bums for most of the day on Sunday. We got up late, went to breakfast at the Cracker Barrel in Troy, IL where we were stared at by the church crowd, then just played around on the internet for a good part of the day. We had planned on attending an organ concert by David Erwin at Ladue Chapel Sunday evening, but couldn’t motivate ourselves to go after the long weekend of partying like we were young again. Besides, I had a slight headache, and an organ concert is no place to be in that situation. I pulled up some streaming organ music on the internet to help assuage the tinge of guilt from not going. I’m sure David’s heart wasn’t broken over our absence, though.

********************************************

I also received a call from the venerable Ted May. He confirmed to me that the rumors of an impending medical procedure are indeed true. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 1991, and during the treatment received a heavy dose of radiation to his chest. This apparently damaged a valve in his heart, and the only way to fix it is via open-heart surgery. Naturally, he will be out of commission for a couple of months while he recovers, and asked if I would cover for him in Just Mr. until his return. I gladly agreed to do so. While it doesn’t seem to fit into my plan of removing myself from the cover band scene to pursue the original projects, it was an opportunity I couldn’t resist. After all of the years that I’ve been playing and learning countless songs along the way, there is finally a tangible benefit to it. I have the honor, and the ability, to step quickly into another band to fill in for a friend in need. There was no way I could have said “no” to this. So, it seems I will be playing with them for the next couple of months starting next Friday at The Stratford Bar & Grill in Fenton, MO. As my last gig with BenWahBob appears to be this Friday at Fairmount Park, the timing of this all seems to be impeccable.

The saga takes yet another unexpected twist.

More Bass Players Than Knucklehead

2007-01-30T21:02:00.000-06:00

20 January 2007
Guess where I played this weekend?

If you guessed Baha Rock Club in St. Charles, MO, then you win a great big smile from me the next time I see you! (Yes, I do occasionally smile, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.)

While it may seem like the only place we play any more, a glance at the newly-revised BenWahBob website will correct this obtuseness. Carlos has apparently been a busy little boy in the scheduling department, as there are many more dates on there already with the promise of more to come. Not to worry, kids…BWB is not going away. I, on the other hand, may be going away sooner than even I thought.

As the witching hour approached Saturday afternoon, Dawna called and informed me regretfully that she would not be going with me to Baha as originally planned, as she had familial obligations to fulfill. Bummer. I was really looking forward to spending some time with her. The weather had been taking a turn for the worse, and as much as six inches of snow was expected. Driving to St. Charles in this didn’t exactly tickle my fancy, either. As it happened, though, the snow held off until after I had arrived at the Club.

Upon loading in my gear, I was informed that there were indeed three bass players coming out to sit-in and audition with the band…very cool. They had all three arrived before we began playing at 21:00, and we all stood around in front of the stage yakking like a bunch of musicians. They all seemed like pretty decent guys.

We played the first set through with virtually no interruptions in the flow. That was a nice change of pace from our recent trend of goofing around between songs. There’s nothing wrong with that, unless you consider loosing the crowd’s participation wrong. We even ended the set on time. Wow! Dale must have read my last blog…or, more likely, Chris read it to him (thanks, Chris!). Whatever was happening, or for whatever reason(s), I thought we came off a lot more professional this way.

I snuck outside – as usual – during break to call my sweetie (go ahead and make the whip-cracking noise…I’ll wait until you get it out of your system). It was cold, and the snow was coming down pretty good by that point, so I didn’t stay out there too long. It was when I went back into the Club that I realized there was quite an exceptional crowd there…not too bad for a snowy night in January. They stayed with us most of the night, too.

The second set started out normal for the first two songs, and then the auditions took over. Two of the guys played three songs each during this set. As I walked off of the stage for the first guy, Jim, the Club’s Manager, started immediately giving me grief about not playing, saying he would dock my pay at the end of the night. As the second guy went up to play, Jim feigned disbelief at me still not playing. I was standing next to the sound board talking to the crew, and getting guff from pretty much everyone. It’s nice to be so loved.

The third set went pretty much the same way, except only one bass player was left. Again, I was assaulted with verbal tirades about my alleged sloth. We did, in all of the offensive banter, find time to actually listen to the three bass players, though. The first guy was OK, but apparently mentioned some issue he has requiring a 12-step intervention program. The second guy seemed extremely uneasy on-stage, and his playing was very timid. The last guy seemed like the best of the three to all of us at the sound board. Of course, this will ultimately rest on the three guys in the band to decide.

I finished the third set, and played all of the last one, mostly to alleviate the pressure mounting in Jim’s head as he figured the amount he would be docking me (I think it was at about $20 at this point). We even played War Pigs early in the night for those who always complain about missing it at the end of the night.

During one of the breaks, when I wasn’t outside, I was standing on the stage talking with Carlos. We were approached by a couple of young ladies, one of which handed me a card. Apparently they were playing some sort of bachelorette party game that required them to fulfill the task on the card. I read the card and snickered. It said, “Get a guy to take off his shirt and flex his muscles in front of a crowd.” Now…what made her think I was the one to do this, I have no idea. I tried to engage her in a conversation aimed at revealing the aforementioned thought processes, but was getting nowhere quick. Carlos seemed to be enjoying the show, though. We negotiated back and forth for a bit, and in the end determined that shirts would only need to go up high enough to see nipples. OK…sure…why not. I lifted my Lynn Swann Pittsburgh Steelers jersey, flexed my arms, and said, “There…are you happy now?” She went away with a smile, so I guess she was. I should probably be offended that they were only interested in seeing my body, but, hey…I’m a guy. Besides, at my age, I really just don’t care.

At the end of the night, we broke down the stage, packed up our stuff, got paid (my full amount, no less), and wandered off to our respective homes. We had only received a couple of inches of snow, so the driving wasn’t too bad. My new truck has all-wheel drive, so even the slippery hills of old-town St. Charles were no problem. I did see quite a few accidents on the highway, though. Judging by the way many people were driving, that came as no surprise to me at all. One word of advice…if you drive a rear-wheel drive Mustang on I-270 with freshly packed snow and slush, don’t be so surprised when you end up smashing the front end of it into the concrete median, and don’t blame it on anyone but yourself. Most of the rest of us were doing just fine. The roads got remarkably better once I got into Illinois…which was odd, as it is usually the other way around. I drove on wet pavement from the river to St. Jacob. Even IL-4 was clean.

Unfortunately, as I write this on a Tuesday evening, I am preparing to drive Wednesday morning to the Chicago area to clean and repair an organ. I’m told they’ve had a bit of snow up there this week. Great. I guess it can’t be any worse than the 10°F it will be here in St. Louis tonight, with a wind chill well below 0°F. Thank goodness for global warming, eh?

For the Benefit of Mr. Kite...er...Newman

2007-01-16T23:22:00.000-06:00

Sunday, 14 January 2007
If it seems like it’s been awhile again since I’ve written one of these, your perception is correct. However, this time I actually haven’t been playing anywhere during that absence. BenWahBob has had some holes in the schedule of late, the biggest being this December and January. That was fine by me, though. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of “time off” now and again.

There was suppose to be a benefit show at Eddie’s in Granite City, IL involving a reunion of the original – and only – Knucklehead lineup. That was postponed due to some scheduling issues and the monster ice storm that blanketed the St. Louis area. It was rescheduled for 14 January, and so it remained. The idea was to have a benefit to help raise money for Jeff “Carson” Newman, a STL area soundman who has been twisting the knobs for many area bands since the early 1980s. Jeff has been battling cancer recently, and had a few surgeries on his face to eradicate the problem. Unfortunately, he also didn’t have any health insurance, so the bills were understandably piling up quickly. Musicians to the rescue…or at least to the assistance anyway. What better place to have a benefit than the benefit capital of the world…Eddie’s Bar & Grill in Granite City, IL.

There were about a half dozen or so bands scheduled to contribute their time for the cause. Everyone would play about a 45 minute set, giving it that “bands all day” kind of appeal. Deron Boyd, guitar player extraordinaire for Röck Böttöm, sent out the word that he would like to get the surviving members of Knucklehead (which is all four of us) back together again to do a set that day. Everyone seemed immediately interested, including me. I really enjoyed the time I played with those guys, and looked forward to feeling that magic again. Deron also mentioned that he would like to try to get Mike Ramsey, drummer for the local Rush tribute band Thunderhead, to come out and play a set of Rush with us. I was certainly all for that. The last time Rammer sat in with us in Knucklehead was a magnificent experience. We played several songs, including La Villa Strangiato. It was during that song that I was overwhelmed with goose bumps. I have played Rush songs with quite a few drummers over the years, and all of them were pretty good. But, Mike was different. He knew these songs inside and out…like you would expect from someone in a tribute band. There was a moment when I almost forgot myself as a part of the band. Realizing that I was indeed not in my living room playing along with the CD, but rather on stage playing it live with Deron and Mike gave me chills…it was that good! So, naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to participate in that as well. It was a done deal.

As the weekend rolled along, the weather took a turn for the worse. The week leading up to it had actually been unseasonably mild (an overused weatherman euphemism). Of course, it would have to turn nasty the one weekend in the last month that I would be playing. We got kind of lucky, though, in that the bulk of the bad stuff missed us by a few miles, and all we got was a steady, cold rain…that, I can handle.

I had been informed a few days earlier that Knucklehead and the Rush thing would be going on sometime after 18:00 (that’s 6pm for those of you in Rio Linda), and I planned accordingly. I was figuring on getting there a little earlier to take in some of the other bands, but wasn’t in the mood to spend all day in what is traditionally a very smokey bar. I had been fighting a tough cold for about a week and a half, and my throat was still quite sore. I had also gotten word that Wes Stillman, singer for Ivory Tiger, was having some issues with his throat, too, and would not be performing. Wes was going to be one of the guest singers during the Rush set, as well as singing with his own band, so this changed the plans a bit. As I rolled out of the shower, my phone rang. It was Deron. Apparently his bass player Chuck Mann was having some issues with his bass rig, and Deron asked that I bring something with me…which I had planned to do anyway. I had hoped to just play on someone’s “community bass rig” in an effort to minimize what I had to move. I figured it would have been Chuck’s. Then I thought that he might need to leave early, as I know he has family obligations, and so decided to bring my small 210 combo.

As I arrived around I-know-not-what-time-but-sometime-after-18:00, Rebel Train was just getting ready to take the stage. I hadn’t seen these guys in a long time. I worked for many years with guitarist Steve Kyle, but hadn’t seen much of him since St. Louis Music shut down the STL plant. The new owners finally closed the Service center, so now Steve was working elsewhere, too. His band rocked, as usual. When they played a Skynard song, all of the rest of us standing around talking just shook our heads in defeat. How does one follow that in Granite City? They had clearly already won some nonexistent competition.

The next band up was the aforementioned Röck Böttöm. I threw my little Ampeg up on the stage for Chuck, and away they went. They pelted the crowd with the likes of Poison and Bon Jovi, hoping to sway the crowd to their dark side. It seemed to work, as the dance floor was pretty much packed the whole time they were on the stage. It was a quite effective set. They even played Krokus’ Screamin’ in the Night, which explained why that wasn’t suggested for the Knucklehead set. For about the last half of their set, I was standing against the wall directly in front of Deron’s amp…and it was screaming. He had a really nice tone happening that night. Vacuum tubes…you’ve really got to go out of your way to screw up that sound, and even Crate hadn’t accomplished that. That old Blue Voodoo was glowing…both literally and figuratively.

Next came the Rush tribute set. I jumped into setting up my keyboards and tuning my basses. I had actually brought out the old black Rickenbacker for this one. I figured, “what the heck…if we’re going to play a bunch of Rush, it should be on the Ric, eh?” I hadn’t actually used my entire keyboard setup since the last gig with Knucklehead about a year and a half earlier. Deron had informed me that they now played tuned down a half step, and asked if it would be much trouble to adjust the keyboards, as it would be much better than dealing with the issues tuning up would cause with his guitars. Not a problem, I told him. When I played with Those1Guys (who?) a few years back, we tuned down, too. So, I adjusted the tunings on Saturday when I set everything up in my living room to run through some of the songs. What I hadn’t expected was that the transpose function has only a “local” affect – it adjusts the onboard keyboard, but not any other MIDI devices connected to it…like my foot pedal controller. I didn’t have the pedals with T1G, so I had no idea. I had to go into the internal setup and adjust the master tuning. Again, not a problem.

We started out with The Spirit of Radio…naturally. As I stomped the first note on the pedals for the strings in the background, I noticed immediately that they were, oh, about a half-step too high. @#$&!!! The damned thing had reset itself to A=440 when it was turned off. NOW I remembered why I used to use the Transpose function button instead of the internal master tuning. So, I had to muddle through most of that song without those keyboard parts. We stopped briefly after that, I re-adjusted the tuning, and we were off again. The next song was Freewill, and Steve Hall, who sang Spirit, asked me if I wanted to sing it. I did, in fact, and had expressed such interest when the potential song list was circulated. Unfortunately, considering the condition of my throat that day, I didn’t want to risk it, so I asked him to please continue the fine job he was already doing. That song came off great…another one of those moments that just painted a smile across my face. We also exercised ourselves with YYZ, which is always fun, but even more so with Mike and Deron, as we pretty much nailed that one, too. These guys brought their A-game, and I was digging it. As time was running a bit short, we finished out the set with Fly By Night and Tom Sawyer…perennial crowd favorites. The reaction of those in attendance was really quite pleasing. It was quite a boost for the notoriously fragile egos that we musicians traditionally carry on our sleeves.

After that, Steve Wenos came up and joined us on drums for the much acclaimed Knucklehead reunion. We belted out The Rooster in typical KH fashion. Steve and Deron always sounded great on those harmonies, and this night was no different. Two Minutes To Midnight was always another KH favorite, and it came across with unfaded luster. It was starting to appear that we hadn’t lost that proverbial “touch,” in spite of not having played these songs together in over a year. We played Triumph’s Fight The Good Fight, and I absolutely mangled the keyboard intro (sorry, Leigh). The rest of it came off well, though. Time was running short again, and we ended up not playing several of the really cool songs that were Knucklehead hallmarks…most notably Mr. Crowley. I honestly can’t remember everything we played, but I do remember ending the set with Zebra’s Tell Me What You Want. I thought we would end with Led Zeppelin’s What Is And What Should Never Be in Jeff’s honor, as he used to sing in a Zeppelin tribute band back in the early 1980s. Alas, we did not…hazard of flying without a flight plan, I guess.

The last event of the evening was to be a Danger Kitty reunion with all of the original members (it was reunion day all around, as there was also a Jägertÿme reunion earlier in the day). Unfortunately, Chuck had indeed left early, as had every other bass player. This left, uh, let’s see…that would be me, and, uhhhh, well…me. So, why not, eh? They launched into Pour Some Sugar On Me, which I played on keyboards, then jumped into Nothin’ But A Good Time. After that, knowing full well my great disdain for all things Poison, there was an on-stage discussion concerning what other Poison songs we could do (you guys really are too good to me). We settled instead on a couple of Twisted Sister songs…as if that was any better. And on that note, the show came to a close.

It worked out to be considerably later than I had hoped to stay out on a “school night,” but I wouldn’t have missed that for the world. Besides the obvious primary motivation to help a long-time associate in need, I got to spend some time with some people that I don’t see much any more. It was a very good time, too. I also had the increasingly rare privilege to play with some of the finest musicians that the St. Louis area has to offer. That was special all by itself. My hat (or do-rag) is off to Derrick, Tom, Rob, Floyd, Steve K, Nathan, Craig, Chuck, Mike, Deron, Steve H, Steve W, Jimmy, and Rick for the great time and great music provided for all to enjoy.

Oh…and the sound and lights for the event were provided by…yes, Jeff Newman. The man is battling cancer, and still worked all weekend for Röck Böttöm, and all day Sunday, too. What a guy. I certainly can’t complain about being tired at work on Monday after a feat like that, now can I.

The drive back to St. Jacob was much shorter than I thought it would be. I stopped at McDonald’s and grabbed a burger before leaving Granite City, as I realized that I had not eaten since lunch Sunday and it was now approaching 01:30 Monday morning. I have lately been listening mostly to streaming audio at home via the internet, most notably from ProgRockRadio.com. As a result, I haven’t really been buying any new music. So, I just popped Dream Theater’s Images and Words CD into my CD player for the ride home. That’s still a great album, even 15 years later.

Root of Evil

2006-12-18T00:21:00.000-06:00

Saturday, 11 November 2006
BenWahBob seems to be whittling the schedule down to one gig a month lately. The winner of this month’s lottery was Rusty’s in Edwardsville, IL. I normally wouldn’t complain about this at all. In fact, I still won’t…even now that I have a car payment (have I mentioned that?).

Money, money, money…what a terrible concept. No one ever seems to have enough, and some have even less than that. Most of us have plenty, really, we just spend it unwisely. I am frequently guilty of that myself. I didn’t really need that Cessna 152 for my MS Flight Simulator… I didn’t really need to spend as much as I did on a new vehicle (although it almost seems impossible to spend less on anything halfway decent)… We can always seem to find ways to justify these expenditures, though.

Even Dawna feels the crunch every once in a while. She is normally very frugal about her spending. Not unlike many, however, she is very generous when it comes to helping others in need. She did, in fact, help some friends in need on several occasions about a year ago. Unfortunately, her generosity was rewarded with what basically amounts to contempt and deceit. I referred to them as “friends”; but true friends do not make promises that they have no intentions of keeping, nor do they just flat out lie to you and turn their backs on their debts. A sad result of this is the loss of what she thought was a good friendship. She has also been forced to sell her convertible – the car she was going to give to her son next year when he turns 16 – to help pay off the debts that were soundly ignored by those who were responsible for them. I’ll not mention any names here, as these people know who they are.

Sorry for ranting about that, but it’s been a sore point for about six months now. This has little or nothing to do with the Rusty’s gig. In fact, it’s been so long since then as I write this blog, that I can really remember nothing of any significance regarding that gig. One note of interest was the lack of any bass players sitting in for try-outs in the matter of my replacement. Apparently several were contacted, but none bothered to show.

Saturday, 09 December 2006
Last gig of the year, and it was, of course, at Baha Rock Club in St. Charles, MO. Yet another relatively uneventful gig…with the same exception…no bass player applicants. When this came up in a conversation with Carlos & Bobby, Bobby admitted that he had not yet actually placed the ad in whatever publication. Hmmm…that was a bit disappointing. I suppose I should be patient through the process, as I am aware of how difficult it can be at times to find a replacement. However, it has been six months now since I informed them that I needed to be replaced. Knucklehead made no effort to replace me when I left that band, but they also stopped scheduling gigs. BWB now has gigs scheduled well into 2007. At some point, I suppose I may have to come up with a cut-off date. But for now, we’ll just see how it goes.

We did finally do that Purple Haze/Green Acres thing, though. Just before launching into Immigrant Song, Carlos started into Purple Haze. I sang the first two verses from the Green Acres theme, then the last verse of Purple Haze. Mike Mathews was out to see us and just stood there grinning and shaking his head. I took that as a sign of our success. I must admit that it was difficult to pull off without laughing, but my professionalism willed itself through. I did snicker a few times, though.

We also had the same trouble with set times again. We seem to play right through to the end of the printed set lists with absolutely no regard for the time…even thought there is a clock on the wall right next to the stage. Then, we took the same 20 minute breaks as usual, which just kept pushing us further off schedule. I seemed to be the only one who noticed that the club personnel were visibly irritated by this. WATCH THE CLOCK ON THE WALL, DALE! That’s why it’s there…right next to the printed time schedule for sets and breaks! I guess next time I’ll mark near the bottom of each set in bold red letters, “WHAT TIME IS IT?” (not that time, Derrick)

******************************************************

I did a bit of traveling again this past week. Unfortunately, it was for work. Chris Soer (from the Voicing Department) and I drove to West Dundee, IL (Chicago area) on Sunday afternoon to finish an installation of a Wicks Royal Classic digital organ. This was the fourth trip made to this church. The building was unfinished when it was delivered and installed, but they insisted that we do Tonal Finishing anyway, as they had some event at which they planned to show off the instrument. After finding some problems, another trip was made. Now, Chris and I arrived on Monday morning to find that three large widows between the foyer and the sanctuary were still not in place, and the acoustical treatments they had planned for the back wall were also still not in place. In addition to all of this, there where still workers in the foyer laying the tiles…nothing like trying to voice an organ over the sound of tile saws. We had to install an additional subwoofer, and move some of the main speaker cabinets to new locations. Chris and I had to muscle the 167 lb sub up a ladder to the second floor level. Did I mention that Chris only weighs 135 lbs? It made for an interesting day, to be sure.

We eventually succeeded, and Chris did his best to rough in the voicing…again…in the mostly completed room. It was obvious that he would be making yet another trip to finish it…which will be his fourth time there.

We drove back on Tuesday, and arrived in Highland around 14:30. We both went into the office to pee on a couple of fires, then left for the rest of the day. We had put in long hours at the church, and decided that comp time was in order.

Another reason for the early departure on Tuesday was the early flight out to California on Wednesday morning. We met at the St. Louis airport around 04:45 to get through all of the security stuff for a flight that left at 06:15. We stopped over in Dallas (DFW), then flew on to Orange County/John Wayne International/Santa Ana/insert any other name here. We rented a car and drove to the church in Chino where we were installing yet another Royal Classic digital organ. This time, though, there was one rank of pipes going in, too. Two guys from the Shop had driven the stuff out there over the weekend and were already well into the installation when Chris and I arrived on Wednesday afternoon. We worked late enough into the evening that most of the restaurants were closed when we finished for the day. Chris and I ended up at the drive-through of a local Burger King for dinner.

Thursday turned into another marathon work day. We did break for lunch sometime just after noon, since we seemed to come up short on Speakon© connectors for the speakers. We made a trip over to Ontario to the Sam Ash Music store, then had lunch at – of all places – Chevy’s. It seemed a bit odd to travel all the way to California and eat at a place we could eat at in St. Louis, but there we were nonetheless. We returned after lunch and worked late again. Bill and Bobby went back to their hotel reasonably early, but Chris and I worked until well after midnight. Our efforts seemed to pay off, as the digital portion of the instrument was playing and the voicing was mostly finished when we left. The biggest challenge had been speaker placement. This church is really more of a huge auditorium than a traditional-style church. It seats somewhere in the vicinity of 2000 people. All of the speakers were installed in the ceiling, with the exception of two of the four subwoofers that were located under the stage. Getting the other two subwoofers up in the allotted space was difficult at best, even with a lift. We found a way, but it required us to “alter” the building a bit…like cutting out sections of the metal wall studs.

One unfortunate side of this installation was the strong opposition to it by the church’s music director. They moved to a more contemporary worship when they built the new building, complete with light shows and dual rear-projection video screens. This guy did not want an organ in the proverbial picture, and was not shy about saying so. Every opportunity he got to take a jab at it was willingly seized. It’s obvious that this instrument will not get much use at this church, even though at least half of the congregation seems to be in favor of it. Whatever. A wealthy donor wanted to give us money to install an organ in his church, and so we did. It is theirs to deal with internally now. As my own little jab back at them, and with Chris prodding me, I did give a run through the opening of Mr. Crowley. I sometimes feel a bit guilty playing Ozzy Osbourne in a church, but not this time.

I had to fly back Friday morning, but the other guys stayed to tidy things up and finish with the pipes…a polished copper Trumpet en Chamáde that seems terribly out of place there. Chris was suppose to return with me, but opted to stay behind as well and catch a later flight. I called him when I got to Dallas, and they were voicing the pipes already. Very cool.

I didn’t listen to much music at all during these trips, other than the bits that Chris and I played at the churches. The one in Chino had a really nice Yamaha 6’ grand piano on the stage that we gave some considerable use, including an interesting duet with him on the piano and me on the organ playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D. It was a good-sounding, good-playing instrument that was killed by the dead acoustics of the room. Too bad, really. That place has a lot of potential that they will never realize.

Life Gets in the Way

2006-10-31T21:07:00.000-06:00

Yes, I know…it has been awhile.
Frankly, I’ve just been too busy to sit down and write this bilge. I’ve been swamped at work (a good problem to have, actually), swamped at home, swamped at Dawna’s (another good problem to have), and my mother was in the hospital. I haven’t let it derail the song writing/composing too much, but everything definitely slowed down.

I suppose there is some catching up to do here.

BenWahBob played at Baha Rock Club in St. Charles, MO on Saturday, 23 September. It was a fairly normal gig, with one notable exception: everyone in the band was in a really good mood. We were having a blast on stage, virtually oblivious to the crowd for most of the night. Not only were we picking on Dale (as usual), but he was taking it unusually well all night. He even picked on himself on a few occasions, depriving us of the privilege. It was one of the most fun evenings of playing I’ve had in a long time.

Two weeks later, we played in Wentzville, MO at a wedding reception for some BWB fans. This night was the complete antithesis of the previous Baha gig. I’ve never been a big fan of these gigs to begin with, and this one only served to reinforce that notion. The room was big and wooden, and the acoustics in there were just plain awful. My bass was non-existent. As soon as we started playing, the bride’s mother complained almost immediately that we were too loud. There was no picking on Dale that night either, as he had made it abundantly clear that he was not in the mood for joviality…he took everything as a personal attack. There was a proverbial dark cloud over the whole affair for us. The event seemed to go off very well for the wedding party, but I personally couldn’t wait to finish and leave. On the bright side, we only had to play from 18:00 – 22:00, so the night ended early. We learned a couple of new songs at the groom’s request. Eric Clapton’s Tears from Heaven was practically a train wreck…and it was the “first dance” for the bride and groom. John Mellencamp’s Authority Song was OK, but it’s the same bass line over and over through the whole song. We used a small PA, so load-out was quick and relatively painless.

In the intervening weeks, I had the wonderful fortune of having to replace the starter on my minivan (*sniff*sniff*…one can almost smell the sarcasm). The suspension was almost shot from hauling heavy music equipment, there was an increasingly pungent oil leak from I-don’t-know-where, the windshield had a full-length crack that had started as a rock ding, it was in desperate need of new tires,...I could go on and on. At 216,000+ miles, it was becoming painfully obvious that it would soon need to be replaced. It had been a pretty good vehicle over the five years I drove it, and I put a lot of miles on it. But, I finally bit the proverbial bullet and traded it in for something considerably newer. I had been eying a white 2005 Chevrolet Equinox at a St. Louis County dealership. When I went back to talk seriously about it, though, it was already sold. They had another 2005 with only 12,XXX miles that I actually liked better. I was able to get it for the same price as the white one with 26,XXX miles, and some extra service package stuff thrown in to boot. Oh…and it’s gray! (go figure) Of course, now I have a car payment. I hate car payments.

I also had yet another opportunity to acquire a pipe organ for my home. A small Presbyterian church in St. John, MO was getting rid of an old 3-rank Wicks Fuga model from around 1938 in order to get a new Hammond (?) for their more modern approach to worship. I was told about this by our Service manager, made them a suitable offer, and they accepted. I made an appointment with the minister to see the instrument one night after work, but he never arrived. I tried for several more weeks to contact him with no luck. When I finally did get to talk to him again, he informed me that the organ was no longer available. Whatever. It was probably going to take up half of my living room anyway. Thanks for stringing me along, though. Jerk.

I guess that’s everything worth discussing. Now, you’re all caught up.

Saturday, 28 October 2006
Another BWB gig at Baha Rock Club was the order of the day. We had some apprehension about the potential turnout for several reasons; it was the day after the Cardinals won their 10th World Series Championship, it was just a few days before Halloween, and the weather was absolutely perfect all day. As it happened, attendance was quite brisk all night. I would estimate that nearly half of the people there were in some sort of costume. Some were pretty good, but most were quite lame.

Everyone in the band was in a pretty good mood again on this night. As a result, we had quite a bit of fun again. Dale had lost some of his percussion toys in the past few months, and we had teased him accordingly ever since. Carlos arrived bearing gifts for him; a stuff shelf that he can mount on a stand for his stuff, and a new set of claves. The claves were the best part. He only uses them for one song – Free’s All Right Now – but we had grown so accustomed to hearing them that their absence left a powerful void. He tried other substitutes in the interim, but that only solicited more jabs from us. Bobby tried them, and promptly told Dale that he couldn’t use them…they were in the wrong key. Dale actually thought about this for a moment before making some sarcastic comment back. It was on now! When the song came up in the set and Dale began using them, Bobby shouted at him from behind his drum set, “DALE…WRONG KEY!!!” We thoroughly enjoyed that. As there is no bass part during the verses of this song, I reached over and picked up my tuner, walked over to Dale, put the tuner up to the claves and shook my head, turned the one in his bottom hand about ¼ of a turn clockwise, put the tuner back up to them, nodded and gave Dale the “thumbs-up.” I think Carlos and Bobby may have both actually wet themselves. The rest of the song went off completely in tune. Then Bobby broke his snare drum head (serves us right?) and we had to stop early to repair it. The bar had their costume competition, so that worked out well anyway.

At the close of the night, we dedicated Black Sabbath’s Paranoid and War Pigs to the manager, Jim, who was celebrating a birthday. As part of his celebration, he was promptly punched in the nose. A fight broke out just inside the door, and Jim was into the middle of it immediately, as were several of his quite large bouncers. As we watched from the stage, not breaking our stride (or breaking into Breaking the Law either), I saw the main instigator throw a punch and Jim’s head snap back. The look on his face told everyone that this was a big mistake, and Jim literally beat the guy out into the street. All of this was very entertaining (and very Granite City-like) until I realized that my new truck, which I’ve had for a mere seven days at this point, was parked directly outside the door. Figures. I get a new truck, get that rare “Rock Star Parking” at the front door, and now I might have drunk idiots bouncing off of it or putting their heads through the windows. Fortunately, none of these scenarios came to fruition, and my truck made it through the fight unscathed. When I related this to Jim afterwards, he laughed at me and said, “You should know better than to park there by now!” When I asked him how his face felt, he told me it takes more than that to ruffle him. He then said, “Besides…beating some punk’s @$$ is way better than blowing out a bunch of candles!”

I couldn’t agree more, Jim. Happy Birthday, old man.

We loaded out fairly quickly and hit the road home. I had been listening to the first Infectious Grooves CD during the drive there, but opted for a more traditional soundtrack for the drive home and put in a disc of J.S. Bach cello concerti. After the melee at the end of the night, it made for a very relaxing trip.

Sweet Sauce

2006-09-23T18:13:00.000-05:00

Friday, 15 September 2006
There was not a whole lot of eventfulness in the week leading up to this weekend, unless you count me getting sick. Apparently, Dawna was successful in transferring to me whatever illness had been plaguing her for the previous two weeks. My bout with it wasn’t nearly as rough as hers, though, as I don’t have allergies piling on top of it. Irregardless, that was the most excitement my week had to offer.

BenWahBob played our last Friday night of the season at the Fairmount Park “Budweiser Party at the Park.” I arrived around 17:30-ish, loaded in my equipment, and took in some of the very entertaining stories Carlos had from his two weeks in Vietnam. Imagine a 6’5” long-hair with a Mexican name in a land of tiny Asians… Better yet, imagine that same guy having to fly coach across the Pacific Ocean. We grazed through the buffet just before they opened the doors to the public (job perk), sat by the windows, and enjoyed the narrative.

Too soon, it was time to make the proverbial doughnuts. We launched in with our usual non-reckless abandon…cautious abandon, one might say. Carlos would have been busy most of the first set trying to get his “legs” back, except that he mentioned he had actually played guitar over there more than he does when he’s at home. Go figure.

Everything seemed to go along swimmingly for most of the night. We bounced right through the 20 minute sets. When we reached the “disco” set, though, the wheels fell off of the cart. During Play That Funky Music, Dale had one of his more severe coughing fits. I jumped up to the mic to sing the rest of it about the same time Bobby apparently got his mic swung around in front of him. We fumbled through to the next chorus until Dale got himself together again. After that set, while watching the next race, our soundman Randy approached me and asked if Dale was OK. I assured him that this was a fairly normal occurrence, despite that one being a bit more severe. He said he thought Dale was dying or something, because his face was turning all kinds of different colors. I chuckled, and said I was sorry I missed that. We then watched a guy sitting behind the sound board pack his cigarettes about every two or three minutes. Randy didn’t know what the guy was even doing until I explained it to him. He said he just might have to kill the guy if he keeps doing it all night. I hoped I wouldn’t miss that, too.

We bumped our way through the rest of the night relatively uneventfully. Greg chimed up and told us that we would be quitting after the 8th race instead of the 9th this night. No arguments issued forth from us. We played two more songs for that set, shut it down, and packed it up. Nice.

We did talk a bit after loading out the gear. I stayed just long enough to not be too anti-social, as I had Dawna waiting for me at my house. I jumped onto the highway for the short trip home, listening to Uli Jon Roth’s Metamorphosis CD. This is the one on which he performs Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons on electric guitar with an orchestra. As this has long been one of my favorite pieces of music, I am still stunned to hear it played note-for-note perfect on a guitar. He even had a special guitar made for it so he would have the same range as a violin. His technical proficiency is nothing short of phenomenal. He makes Yngwie almost sound sloppy by comparison. Unfortunately, guys like him are usually only known by other musicians, and most of them probably haven’t actually heard him play (other than with the Scorpions for awhile). So it seems to go with the truly talented ones.

Whatever.

Saturday, 16 September 2006
Most of the day Saturday was nearly a total loss for me. Still feeling under the weather, I spent most of it in bed drifting in and out of sleep. I did get up eventually when Dawna started hinting about breakfast. I fixed some biscuits & gravy, cheesy eggs, and sausage to fill the voids in our bellies. After we ate, she headed for home…and I headed back to bed. I think she called me later in the day and awoke me. It’s all a bit hazy frankly. I did get up for good after that. A long shower later, and I was starting to feel human again.

BWB was booked at Rusty’s this night. Since it’s a PA gig (albeit for Bobby now), I decided to get there early enough to eat before everyone else was to show up at 20:00 to load in the equipment. I arrived around 19:30, pulled the handle off of the back door, walked around front to let myself in, and finished with my own brief load-in. I walked over to a table near the bar to peruse a menu. There were a few patrons at the bar and a couple more at tables, but nothing earth-shattering. They did have a large banquet of elderly folks in the banquet room celebrating some sort of anniversary, but they had their own wait staff for that. The girl who was servicing the bar area looked at me and smiled as she passed me on her way back to the waitress station. I put the menu back on the table and walked over behind her. She then proceeded to ignore me for about the next 10 minutes. Finally, one of the other waitresses from the banquet passed by and asked if I wanted anything. I told her that I simply wanted to order some food. Blondie number one then turned and acted surprised to see me there. She took my order and asked why I didn’t say anything sooner. I told her it was because I wasn’t working for tips that night. She made some nervous small talk about the band while she entered my order. I have no idea how it ended because I walked away somewhere in the middle of it.

Amazingly, my wait for food was minimal, and the service I received for the rest of the night was nothing short of incredible. Go figure. The food, as always at Rusty’s, was fantastic.

There was one oddity, though. The sweet & sour sauce that came with my crab Rangoon was nothing even approaching sour…it was just sweet sauce. The moment I tasted it, I almost choked in laughter. I was instantly transported back to the story Dawna had related to me over breakfast that morning. She had attended her son’s high school football game Friday night. After the game, while heading back to her truck (it’s not an SUV, or any other silly acronym, it’s a freakin’ truck), a car-load of teenage boys started whooping at her. One of them called her “sweet sauce.” She gets this sort of treatment just about everywhere because…well…she’s a damned good-looking woman. I think I almost choked on breakfast too when she told me. I’m sure she immediately regretted telling me, as I promised to never let her live that down. So, I smiled as I finished my meal, enjoying both the food and the sauce.

The rest of the band started to trickle in shortly after 20:00. Bobby arrived first, and the two of us nearly had the trailer unloaded when Dale and Carlos got there. Carlos had been working at his shop all day, and Dale…well, Dale’s a singer. We got the stage set up and a quick level check done by around 21:30, then relaxed until 22:00. The clock started rolling, and so did we. The place seemed to be filling in nicely as the night progressed. Always a good sign.

We ended the first set a bit later than normal. I think we also took a bit longer of a break. By the time we ended the second set, we were way off schedule. During the first break, Dale was approached by couple who had been there most of the evening. They talked the entire break. Just before the second break, I saw the guy come walking back in carrying a soft violin case similar to the one Dawna uses. I remember looking at Dale and thinking, “What have you done?” The guy comes up to the stage, opens his case, pulls out a rosin-caked violin and a cable, and asks where he should plug in his fiddle. Fiddle?! Dale then explains that he is going to sit in with us on the David Alan Coe song Call Me By My Name. Huh? Uhhh…OK…whatever. We got him connected, and he played a bit for a level check. He actually seemed pretty talented…for a fiddle player. We sat down at their table and started chatting. It turns out he’s a classically-trained violinist who’s been playing since the age of 4, and plays in rock and country bands to rebel against his uptight parents…who apparently hate the very idea of him playing that stuff. He and his wife are both attorneys, and he just plays on the side for fun now.

We started the third set – way late – and were back on our way. This guy came up for the second song, grabbed his instrument (I can’t bring myself to keep calling it a fiddle), and asked what song we were playing. When Dale told him, he said he didn’t know that one. I remember looking hard at Dale and barking “He doesn’t even know the damned song, Dale!” I told him it was a typical country song in C, and to just play along whatever he feels like playing. Once we started the song, it actually went off pretty well. He didn’t overplay, he just inserted little interludes between the vocal lines, and when it was over, he didn’t ask, “What next?” He just put down his instrument and walked back over to his table with his wife. The only bad residual was that he left his instrument in its open case on the stage right behind me. I was painfully aware of it the rest of the night.

At the end of the third set, Dale started to walk off the stage. I had already looked at my watch (I always seem to be the Time Nazi in bands), and knew it was already 01:20. I asked Dale where he thought he was going, and told him what time it was. Not much point taking a break with only 40 minutes until quitting time. He started back to the stage and Carlos mentioned something about some Rush. Uhhh…OK. I’ve been sick for several days, and my right ear is clogged with god-knows-what, but why not, eh? We launched into What You’re Doing. Surprisingly, the vocals came out just fine. During one of the descending-scale unison parts, my ear suddenly popped open and I could hear.

Halleluiah!
Praise be to Geddy Lee!
I was cured by Rush!

I made mention of this at the conclusion of the song, to which Carlos replied, “OK…then we’ll do this, too!” He launched into In The Mood. My intuition told me this might not be a very good idea. I had warbled out Throat Scratch Fever early in the evening, Immigrant Song somewhere in the middle of the current set, and now two Rush tunes back-to-back…while sick. My intuition turned out to be correct. It was all I could do to make it through that song. My throat felt like I was trying to sing the entire first Zebra album or something. No blood spewed forth from my gullet, and my neck didn’t collapse, so I guess there was no harm done.

We finished out the marathon Knucklehead-length set promptly at 02:00, tore down the system, packed it away in Bobby’s trailer, and headed for our respective homes once again. Since I still had that Uli Jon Roth CD in my player, that’s what I listened to for the drive home. Unfortunately, home was considerably emptier this night, as Dawna had her oldest son for the rest of the weekend. Oh, well. You can’t win them all.

Killer Gigs...Psych!

2006-09-08T22:47:00.000-05:00

Friday, 08 September 2006
Well, well…where to begin?
Oh, I know…how about at the beginning?
Naaa…that would be entirely too long a story, and might encroach on Deron’s domain of epic bookstabbings.
(Bummer about Violet’s neck, Dude.)

There’s really been no news worthy to distribute since the last blog. It’s been a pretty quiet month on that front. BenWahBob was supposed to play in Lesterville, MO, as is tradition, on Labor Day weekend. Unfortunately, we had to cancel that gig, as Carlos was going to be in Vietnam for a couple of weeks for the first production run of one of his amp designs. I can’t say that I’m overwhelmingly disappointed with that outcome. I got to actually spend a three-day holiday weekend at home. Dawna and I had dinner Friday night at a nice Italian restaurant (Bella Milano) in Edwardsville to celebrate our third year back together. We got to sleep in late Saturday morning, then spent the rest of the day at the Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden. We even ran into Deron’s mother and children; they were waiting in line in a futile attempt to gain access to the ever-popular Tea Ceremony (I’ve never been able to get a ticket for that either, Vicky). Just shortly after we started walking into the Garden, we also encountered Heather Frost – Deron’s former-step-daughter-now-second-cousin-once-removed…or something like that. She was there strolling around with her new baby. We stopped and talked a bit, and Dawna was holding the baby. I must have given her that “don’t-even-think-about-it” look, because she immediately assured me that that was not in the proverbial cards. I spent much of the rest of the weekend either working on various music projects or hanging out with Dawna at her farm.

The ensuing week seemed to just evaporate before my very eyes (not to be confused with my mildly eyes). A function of getting old, I guess, is the seemingly quickened passage of time. When we’re young, there seems to be no limit on the time we have. It’s endless because we’re immortal. Now, there never seems to be enough time for anything of substance. One of the great twists of life, eh?

Another pipe organ offer made its way to me, too. It was another old Wicks Fuga model from 1937 that a college in western Iowa was looking to unload for “very little money.” Tempting as it was, I resisted the urge to drive a rented truck up there that day, rescue it, and install it in my living room. I have other things on which I should be spending my increasingly limited cash reserves; like replacing my tired old minivan, replacing my tired old dead motorcycle, the acquisition of a Chapman Grand Stick, the replication of my CD when it’s finished, and – oh, yeah – that particular piece of women’s jewelry for which I seem to be in the market. Wow. Now that I’ve spelled it out, I think I need another job.

This weekend was supposed to see BWB playing on the front stage at UMB Pavilion before the Styx/Foreigner concert on Saturday night. Our drummer knows some people there for whom he does some printing jobs, and was able to sweet-talk us into the gig. Very nice. Since Carlos would only just be returning from ‘Nam on Saturday, he arranged for Obeid Khan to fill in for him. I worked with Obeid for the 10 years I was at St. Louis Music. Besides being one of the best tube amp designers in the world, he also happens to be a fantastic guitar player. I was looking forward to the opportunity to play on stage with him.

Circumstance once again had its way with our plans. The details of our compensation for this gig were shrouded in a fog of mystery until just a couple of days before the gig. When they started being more forthcoming with the information, it was beginning to look like an extremely sweet package; more bottled water and beer than we could drink, and more tickets than we could give away. The monetary aspect wasn’t revealed until Friday…and it was a joke. It would essentially cover our gas expenses, strings and sticks, and a healthy appetite at White Castle…and that was it. Bobby was incensed, to say the least. He called one of his buddies at the Pavilion and reminded him of our minimum pay requirements, telling him that they must at least meet that or we wouldn’t waste our time. We never heard back from them.

While Bobby’s position was pretty hard-lined, I had mixed emotions about the whole matter. The money, to me was the least important part of the arrangement. This was about mass exposure on a scale that most cover bands never see. I felt it would have been an excellent foot in the door for future seasons. I can understand Bobby’s principle, though.

I must also admit that my stance is more than a bit self-serving. I was looking forward to networking with the powers-that-be at the Pavilion, making myself known to them for my own personal gain. I have designs on that place (amongst others) for showcasing my original music. Oh, well…I’ll just have to exploit other avenues into there. On the bright side, I get another weekend off to work on the various projects without having to spend all afternoon and evening in the Riverport area. (“Always look on the briiiiiiiight side of life…”)

On the new music front, I acquired the first two CDs from a band from Spain called Adagio. Their guitarist was described by Ken Golden at The Laser’s Edge as being Spain’s answer to Symphony X’s Michael Romeo. I didn’t see it that way once I heard them. This guy was obviously an Yngwie Malmsteen clone, who he admitted in the liner notes as being his biggest influence. The singer even sounds like Jeff Scott Soto. The only real difference is that this guy writes better songs (sorry, Wingnut). For some reason, though, it just didn’t click with me. Perhaps my aging ears are growing tired of the flurry-of-notes style that these guys represent. It’s not that it isn’t impressive, because it is. Maybe it’s just not as impressive anymore now that every kid with a guitar can play like that.

I can’t play like that. Then again, I’m no kid anymore either.

Start Your Engines...or not

2006-08-23T23:29:00.000-05:00

19 August 2006
The week leading up to this gig saw a milestone for me: my 40th birthday. Several of my close friends reached this point in the preceding weeks, and now it was my turn. It came and went with little hoopla, though, just as I prefer. I’ve never been one to make a big ordeal of my birthdays. They’re just another day to me. I’m a day older than I was yesterday. Dawna BBQ’d Sunday afternoon to celebrate both mine and her oldest son Derek’s birthdays. She got me some nice keyboard covers for my synthesizers and the sheet music for Chopsticks, which has become something of an inside joke between us. She’s awesome like that. Derek scored some cool new stuff for his guitars and a boat-load of cash, so he did pretty well, too.

Saturday night was back at Baha Rock Club in St. Charles, MO. This is a special gig, as it is the weekend of Festival of the Little Hills. If you’ve never been to one of these, you must plan for it nest year. It’s like Fair St. Louis, but without all the bilge. I used to never miss it. However, the past couple of years have changed that. I never seem to find the time to get there anymore. One of my favorite Chapman Stick players, Bob Culbertson, plays there every year. He sets up a booth on Main Street to sell his CDs and videos, and plays all day long through the whole weekend.

At any rate…the streets are usually packed with people. This year saw exceptionally good weather, and the crowd swelled accordingly. When we started playing, there were still lines of people in the street as far as I could see.

But, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Saturday went away with a quickness, and before long it was time to start heading toward St. Chuck. As I loaded my stuff and prepared for departure, my van decided it was happier just sitting in the driveway. I turned the key in the ignition and heard only the click of a relay…again, and again, and again with the same result. It had done this to me Thursday morning before work, but started after a couple of tries. Odd. The battery seemed to have plenty of power, as did the starter when it finally started turning. The battery terminals seemed to be tight and corrosion-free. Probably the solenoid. Great. Just what I needed. My neighbor came over to look at it, and then it started as he was walking back to his garage for his tool box. Go figure.

I had little choice but to risk getting stuck in St. Chuck, so I drove it there anyway. I arrived a little after 20:00 and loaded in my stuff with the van still running in the middle of the street. With half a dozen law enforcement personnel less than 50 feet away, I figured this was a fairly safe bet. When I drove it around the block and parked in the Municipal garage, I made sure to back into the space…just in case.

Carlos arrived right behind me, and we were set up in no time. Bobby’s drums were already there, and I assumed that he had wondered off to skim the Festival in its closing hours. We started doing a sound check almost immediately. After the front of the stage was done, only Bobby’s drums were left. “Hey,” I think, “I can play drums…I’ll do the drum check.” This was all well and good until the level check was done and John asked me to play the whole kit. One thing about Bobby’s kit…he’s a left-handed drummer. Trying to coordinate your left foot for the kick drum, right foot for the hi-hats, and everything arranged opposite of what your used to is challenging at the very least. Bobby came in about this time, and I told him a double bass drum pedal would have made that less painful to hear, as it would have provided a pedal for my correct foot. He just chuckled, mentioned something about knowing how he feels when asked to sit in on a right-handed kit, and told me he’s got a new DW7000 on order.

We jumped into the sets with our usual not-so-reckless abandon, and were off and running. We did seem to have a pretty good flow for most of the night. Dale had mixed up the songs a bit from the usual order, which was both strange and nice. Again, like the previous weekend, we didn’t seem to be making too much early progress toward flattening the dance floor. By the end of the second set, though, that was beginning to change, and the dancers were flowing more freely…probably in direct proportion to the amount of adult beverages they had consumed by that point. Irregardless of the motivation, more dancers beget even more dancers. Soon the floor was covered with them. You couldn’t have swung a dead skunk in any direction without hitting at least a couple of them.

Dale’s rearrangement of the sets was not without its pitfalls, though. Time was apparently not a grave consideration in the formulation process, as was evidenced by the excess number of tunes left over when set time was over. He had Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song at the end of the 3rd set, with Rush’s What You’re Doing to start the 4th. Since the 3rd set was about three songs too long, we decided to start the 4th with the Zeppelin, then straight into the Rush. That was fine with me. I got to sing two of my favorite songs back to back. The Rush seems to have caught on with our crowd, too. I saw many people bobbing their heads along with it, and more than a few even singing along. Very cool.

Dale inserted War Pigs into the middle of the last set, citing the complaints of many who don’t stick around until the end of the night and always miss it. OK…whatever. We ended up turning it into about a 15 minute In-a-Gadda-da-Vida kind of thing anyway. After that, we had enough time left to play about two more songs and we were done for the night. We packed up and got out of there pretty quickly. (We’re trained professionals, kids…don’t try this at home.)

Dale didn’t leave the banner on the floor this time either. Bobby had printed a new one that is so big it covers the entire wall behind us with some of the website info not even visible. It’ll look great at the Lesterville gigs next year.

I went to the garage to retrieve my van. When I got in and turned the key…click. The second time, it started right away. I hate these things, necessary as they are. Aren’t we supposed to be traveling by teleporter by now?

For the drive home this night, I opted against silence. I instead slid the Circus Maximus CD The First Chapter into the CD player. Rumor has it they are in the studio finishing their second album even as you read this. I, for one, can’t wait to hear it. I’ve even put my favorite song from their first album on my new MySpace page (http://www.myspace.com/pauljsmith). I had order a couple of new discs from The Laser’s Edge, and they had actually arrived on Saturday. Unfortunately for me, the St. Jacob Post Office keeps odd hours and I was unable to get them. I did go to lunch early the following Tuesday and retrieve them. They are Uli Jon Roth’s Metamorphosis (on which he performs Vivaldi’s Four Seasons arranged for electric guitar and orchestra…with Don Airey on harpsichord, kids!) and Arjen Lucassen’s “Ayreon” double CD The Final Experiment. Both are excellent acquisitions.

Blind & Wingless

2006-08-23T23:26:00.000-05:00

11 August 2006
One of the nice benefits of my salaried position at Wicks Organ Company is the ability to slip out a few minutes early when necessity requires such action. A Friday night gig with BenWahBob at Fairmount Park seemed like a fine opportunity to exercise that option. As I have done my fair share of extra duty from time to time, I had no guilt about this whatsoever.

I rushed home, changed into some comfortable jeans and a goofy T-shirt, loaded my equipment into the van, and was on my way. I arrived at the track around 05:30, loaded in, and headed for the buffet. I was quite disappointed to find no hot wings, my usual Fairmount fare. I instead settled for some other banal choices to fill the void. Carlos and I sat at a table near the windows, eating and catching up on all the things we used to talk about on a regular basis when we worked together.

Jason Hilliard was sitting in on drums with us this night, as Bobby was in Ohio for the weekend visiting relatives. Carlos had prepared a plate for him as well, but he didn’t get a chance to eat until after the first set as he and a friend were too busy finishing the set-up of his drum kit. Jason, for those who don’t know by now, is blind. Not “blind as a bat,” though, as a bat actually has eyes and can see. Jason had his eyes removed a couple years ago and has glass implants that he likes to take out to mess with people. He’s a great guy, and an even better drummer…definitely one of the most talented with whom I’ve ever played. Of course, this can occasionally present its own problems, like trying to communicate during a song. With most drummers, you can simply use visual cues, or talk “big” so they can read your lips. Not so with Jason. As I was given the task of feeding songs to him from the setlist, I was also trying my best to let him know when to end certain songs that can potentially drag on forever. It was a challenge, to say the least.

Overall, though, the night went off pretty well. Dale screwed up some pretty simple lyrics, and we all made fun of him. When Carlos or I did the same with our parts, we were treated to an equal amount of ribbing from the others. We all seemed to have a pretty good time.

The crowd this night was a bit less than we are accustomed to seeing on a Friday night. This was attributed to the incredibly nice weather. Apparently, there was a pretty good crowd outside not willing to surrender the opportunity to be outside. They might have known that there were no hot wings. Greg told me that they had counted somewhere in the neighborhood of about 1000 people mid-way through the evening. Not bad, but, again, about 2/3 of what we’re used to seeing. They were pretty sedate for most of the night, until a few attractive ladies stepped up and started dancing to their favorite songs. After that, the party was in full swing. We even had one dark-tressed dancer in “I Dream of Genie” type attire shaking her attributes around to the amusement of all.

Since I waited over a week and a half to write this, the fog of time and distance has shrouded much of what I’m sure were very amusing little episodes in the evening’s festivities. For that delay, I apologize. This is just one more reason you should attend these things in person, rather than relying on the retelling of their highlights by a musician, of all people…and a bass player at that!

Load out went quickly at the end of the night. Even Jason was done quickly, as his friend had stayed the whole night and helped him tear down his kit. This is usually a problem for him. He can almost always find someone to take him to a gig, but they never seem to stick around to make sure he has a ride home (Duh!?!). We have in the past taken turns getting him home, but that was not necessary this time.

On the short trip home, I opted for a rare situation: no music. I just turned off the CD player and drove back to my little burg in relative silence. It was kind of odd, as there is almost always some kind of music playing in my life. But, not on this night. The tires spinning against the pavement and the air bending around the minivan were my only music.

Distant Admiration

2006-07-22T23:59:00.000-05:00

15 July 2006
BenWahBob found ourselves back at Baha Rock Club in St. Charles, MO for the standard once-about-every-six-weeks gig. I rolled up a bit earlier than normal – which was actually on time for a change, as opposed to running in the door at the last minute and setting up just in time to start playing. I actually got “Rock Star” parking – right at the front door. Sweet. Set up was a breeze, as usual, and I had time to chat a bit with the fellas before we played.

The sets were pretty much the standard fare BWB sets. The crowd was a bit sparse at the beginning of the night, but began to pick up as time wore on. By eleven o’clock or so, there was actually a pretty good crowd in attendance. One table off to the right of the stage was populated by a bachelorette party, who seemed to be letting nothing interfere with their good time. It seemed to be infectious. Any time you have a bunch of attractive young women running to the dance floor all night long, it will tend to have that sort of effect. Everyone seemed to be having a pretty good time, so I guess that’s all that really matters.

When I have time, I usually try to sneak outside in-between sets to call Dawna. She was at home with Samuel only this time, as Derek was with his father all weekend. We had gone to his fortieth birthday party Friday night, and Derek elected to stay with him for most of the weekend to visit with a cousin he doesn’t often see. Anyway…as I was stepping out to make the call, I overheard a group of people arguing just outside the club. I was walking away to get some quiet when I started to get the gist of the conversation. It was a guy – probably in his late 20s or early 30s – yelling at a group of four or five women. I stopped and turned in my tracks when I heard him threaten to beat the (insert expletive here) out of all of them…right there on the spot.

Huh?

Now, if there is one thing I could never tolerate, it is exactly this; a man bullying and threatening violence against women. Naturally, I strolled right back and into the middle of this little party to offer my services. I told the goon that whatever the problem was, he needed to take it somewhere else. Well, alcohol being the fuel of idiocy that it is, he got immediately into my face and started casting expletives toward me. I tried to explain to him that he didn’t appear to understand the situation into which he was now hurling himself, and all he needed to do was to calm down and quietly go away. He continued with his verbal onslaught, citing some garbage about “all his boys” as he pointed to the club door. I was starting to loose my normally demur composure. I actually found myself with my finger in his face, ranting something about “his boys” picking him up at the hospital if he didn’t run like a scared little girl. Fortunately for all involved, Jim came storming out the door and interjected himself into our little budding fracas. Cooler heads eventually prevailed, and I agreed not to hurt him as he agreed to go away and stop threatening women. Jim told me later that the guy was a regular at the club, and had once before been barred for a year because he is an angry drunk. He was also amazed, as he had never seen me so mad about anything. Well…if anything gets me going, that’s it. I am glad, though, that I didn’t have to go to jail over that insignificant slug.

So, I went back inside and finished the night like nothing had happened. That’s one of the beauties of Zen; when it’s over, it’s over. On to the new moment.

At the end of the night, we tore down as usual, got paid as usual, and Dale disappeared as usual. He had taken down the banner, laid in out on the dance floor to roll up, and then left it there while he went to the bar to pay his tab or something. When he finally returned, he found it still on the floor, but now mangled and torn in several places. Ouch! Bobby didn’t appear to be too happy about this, citing the fact that it was a $400 banner and that he must be just made of money. Dale was beside himself. He had left the banner on the floor and it had gotten destroyed. Bummer.

It wasn’t all dark memories from the weekend, though. I discovered I have a secret admirer. Someone sent an email through the BWB website alluding to such affect. Carlos forwarded it to me, and razzed me about it quite a bit. I told Dawna, and she was bordering in being a bit catty about it. I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not, though she claims it was all in jest. Hmmm. Perhaps. I have had plenty of experience with that, unfortunately. Most girlfriends/wives say they can handle the female attention showered upon us, but when it happens they loose their minds over it. My ex-wife used to nip at my heels for weeks over some other woman even talking to me. Virtually every girlfriend has done pretty much the same. I think Dawna knows I would never cheat on her, but I guess only time will really tell how well she handles it.

I thought it was kind of neat (how corny does that sound?). I never really took advantage of the status thrust upon local entertainment celebrities which seems to allow women to cast themselves at us with reckless abandon, so this is kind of new to me. I recalled back in the late 80’s handing out cards for people to fill out for Nassty’s mailing list, and receiving a modest share of female compliments. There were also a few directed through Those1Guys’ website a few years ago. But, for the most part, I seem to have a tendency to scare women off. Everyone seems to think that I look mean and mad all the time, when in reality I’m probably the happiest person you’ll ever meet. I mean, come on…I get paid for music! I get to build pipe organs during the day, and build rock music at night. How much happier could a life possibly be? Anyway…this didn’t seem like one of those band-tart situations, just someone expressing her gratitude for what I do. And I truly appreciate that, Laura.

The drive back to St. Jacob that night was filled with the sounds of the Spock’s Beard CD Day for Night, which is replete with harmony vocals and great songwriting. What a truly great band.

Another Chapter

2006-07-13T22:21:00.000-05:00

Yes…I am leaving BenWahBob. Rumors of this have apparently been running rampant for some time now, not unlike the time leading up to my departure from Knucklehead last Fall. I guess it really wasn’t a great secret. I’ve certainly made no attempt to conceal the fact that I would be spending more time pursuing the myriad original music projects on my extensive collection of back burners. In fact, it was spelled out pretty clearly in the blog explaining my departure from Knucklehead. I notified the other members of the band about a week ago, and the search for a replacement is underway.

They took it pretty much in stride. Not surprising, really, as over their 12 or so year history there have been more bass players in BWB than drummers in Spinal Tap (sorry Deron, had to use that one). Carlos said he was surprised I stayed as long as I did, and Bobby said he knew I was leaving for some time (thanks, Tom). At least there are no animosities over the departure. These guys are way too professional for that kind of baby stuff. I’ve seen many bands over the years lose members in a hail of verbal garbage. That was not the case with Knucklehead, and does not appear to be the case with BWB. It has been a great pleasure and honor to work with true professionals all these years; great musicians and great people.

The book is not closed on my music career, though; quite the contrary, in fact. The past 24 years of playing in smoky bars for drunks has been but a primer for things to come. I will now commit every fiber of my being to composing, recording, and performing all of the music I’ve had swirling around inside my head for all these years. So, visit the website for updates on the progress and availability of the various projects and/or send me an email to get on my email list so I can notify you when things become available.

07 July 2006
I waited entirely too long this week to write this account of the past weekend. Unfortunately, many of the funny/silly/obnoxious things that occurred have probably slipped my mind. We played at the Budweiser “Party at the Park” at Fairmount Park Friday night. I slipped out of work a few minutes early to avoid having to rush to get there on time. It worked out perfectly, and I arrived about 17:45. As I rolled my equipment into the building and up to the stage area, Dale’s lovely wife Chris came walking up to me, threw her arms around me and cried, “Don’t quit!” Wow. “Uhh…OK, I’ll stay…” I think I stammered. As she grinned and started to walk away with her food, I stated that I was quitting again. She ran right back over and we repeated the whole scene. I told the guys that I should have quit this band years ago. They seemed to enjoy that as much as I did…well, almost.

Once we got past all the hugging and crying, and ate some excellent nosh, the doors were opened and the crowd surged through uninhibited. Well, not exactly all that, but they did stream in at a fairly steady rate. Friday nights there are usually pretty well attended. This one, though, was a little less than capacity. I’m told there were about 1500 people in the Park, but they must have opted to stay outside and enjoy the nice weather, as it never really got too crowded in the Black Stallion Room where we play.

Carlos had mentioned that he had a bit of butterflies going on as a result of his not being able to go over some of the songs in the days leading up to the gig. I didn’t really think too much of it until we got well into the first set. He was dropping stuff left and right; notes, chords, phrases…you know, heavy stuff. Wow. It was pretty neat watching him come apart right before my eyes like that. He probably didn’t think so, but I enjoyed it. Of course, it’s not like I didn’t have my share of stuff dropped as well. Frankly, we were just awful that set. Even our sound man Randy was looking at us like he was wondering who we were. It must have been quite a sight.

We got it together shortly after that, and the rest of the night went pretty smooth. I did get to see someone with whom I went to high school, Troy Moore, and the rest of his family. I don’t think I’ve talked to him since, oh, probably May 1984 at graduation. Since he’s been living in Florida, I guess that kind of makes sense.

Tear-down went pretty quickly, and I was off to my solitude in St. Jacob. I listened to Nicolo Paganini’s first violin concerto for the drive home. I know it’s not prog rock, but it was pretty progressive for its time. That’s got to count for something. And actually it wasn’t really solitude to which I arrived at home, as Dawna was there waiting for me; lying in my bed, reading a book I had just finished earlier that week.

Sweeeeet.

08 July 2006
I left home for Rusty’s in Edwardsville, IL with plenty of time to get there at the prescribed time of 20:00. We were to be using Bobby’s system, as well as his new light rig. Excellent. I didn’t have to cart out my lights either this time; just a bass amp and a bass. I stopped at McDelay’s in Troy, IL for a quick burger to scarf on the way. The newbie at the window screwed up my order something awful – a #2 with a Dr. Pepper…not terribly difficult, and certainly not worth $8.32. She finally got it straightened out after a couple of attempts; I got my food and went on my way. Now things would be running a little tighter than I would prefer. As I exited from I-270 onto IL-159, I got behind a line of cars with a gray minivan in the lead. This particular pace car driver decided that the idle speed if 20-25 MPH would be more than sufficient for the duration of the distance to downtown Edwardsville. Now, I am a rather vocal proponent of driving within the limits established by law. One would be hard-pressed to find me exceeding any posted speed limit. It’s just the way I am. This, however, was grating me to no end. I came once again to an all too familiar conclusion: I should be allowed to legally kill certain people. Thin the population. Cull the herd. But, no…my weapons yet sit idle. I’m working on it, though.

Everyone else was running late, too, so I didn’t feel too bad getting there at 20:30. Bobby was just getting his drums set up, and Carlos and Dale arrived shortly after me. Load-in and set-up went pretty smooth. The manager approached us during load-in and commented about how he hoped we were better luck than the previous night (played by a band called “Run Forest Run”), as no one was there all night. Great…another paid practice.

It started out pretty slow, and was looking like a repeat of the previous night for them. Bummer. He had two barmaids and a waitress doing basically nothing. It did start to pick up a bit as the night wore on, though, but never really was jumping. There were a couple of nearly-blue-hairs at a table directly in front of the band who stayed for most of the night. Dale dedicated Last Kiss to them, which seemed to make them just giddy. There were quite a few college-age kids coming and going throughout the night, but no one seemed to stay too long.

During one of the later breaks, as we were sitting at a table talking amongst ourselves, a thirty-something woman walked up to the table, introduced herself to all of us, grabbed Carlos’ hand, and pulled him out to the dance floor. As he was looking back to us for help, we just grinned and waved. She was trying her best to get him to dance with her, being all serious and everything, and all he was doing was silly-dancing. After a few attempts to get him to dance seriously with her, she finally took the hint and walked back to her table. We are such asses sometimes.

The rest of the night was fairly vanilla. We did play a Rush tune, though, so that was all good. We packed up the equipment in pretty good time, and headed to our respective abodes. Mine was actually quiet this time, with no Hottie in my bed. Bummer.

I had been listening to more Paganini on the way there, but opted instead for the Circus Maximus CD The First Chapter for the drive home this night.

Pipe Dreams

2006-06-20T22:26:00.000-05:00

Saturday, 17 June 2006
Once again, the story starts earlier in the week. A long running dream of mine has been to win the lottery and spend the rest of my life just making music. I would build a small castle in the middle of nowhere, and in the middle of that castle would be a great music hall with perfect acoustics. At the back of the stage would stand a magnificant pipe organ. Ahh...to sleep, perchance to dream...

Having an organ in my home would be shear ecstasy for me (& a harpsichord as well, while I'm at it). The church in Granite City I attended in my youth (yes, I've actually been to church other than for weddings and funerals) has a rather nice organ, so I was bitten by that bug at an early age. This past week, I took a giant leap toward that goal...and very nearly attained it.

My job with Wicks Organ Company has allowed me opportunities I could not have fathomed just a few short years ago. A recent visitor to our website inquired about the logistics and cost of removing a small organ from the balcony of his church in Russelton, PA -- just north of Pittsburgh. The Shop Superintendent redirected the inquiry to me for the pricing aspect, but mentioned that I might want to first inquire about it personally, as he knew I was casually looking about for a home organ. So, I exchanged a few emails with the gentleman, asked some questions about it, and told him I might be willing to drive to Pennsylvania and remove the instrument myself if the price was right. It was a Wicks "Fuga" model from 1935, with three ranks (219) of pipes, a 2-manual console built into the casework, and stood only 8'5" tall -- my living room ceiling is 8'9". When he told me to make him a fair offer, I asked him for some pictures and some more details. People all around me at work started offering me advice on how best to remove it, and even their services to help with everything from moving it to tonal regulating it once in my home.

Thursday morning around 08:30, an email arrived from this guy. He explained that apparently the organ didn't want to be sold, for as he was preparing to go take pictures of it that morning, he received a phone call informing him that the church was on fire. He said he drove over there and stood in the street watching it burn, and could even see the organ burning through a window that use to be a stained glass representation of the Transfiguration...which was the name of the church.

I was literally within hours of owning my own pipe organ.

I surfed a few news websites Monday from the Pittsburgh area and found several stories and photos of the fire, which took 75 firefighters to extinguish. One even had several minutes of video from their news helicopter flying over the scene. The 91-year-old church was a total loss, as was the organ in the balcony.

I was literally within hours of owning my own pipe organ!

Oh, well...c'est la vie.

At a completely different point in the musical spectrum, BenWahBob was booked for a return engagement at The Crazy Horse Saloon in Wentzville, MO on Saturday. They had played a freebie the previous Saturday afternoon at a biker benefit in Moscow Mills while I was in Michigan...which reminds me...thanks to Mike Hirsch for sitting in for me again. That was the maiden voyage of Bobby's new PA rig. But this was the first indoor gig, for which it was intended. It seems he's pieced himself together a rather nice little system. I arrived at the bar just as Bobby and Carlos were about to unload the system from Bobby's trailer -- also a nice new addition. We got it in and set up in almost no time at all. They had spent several hours configuring it to be quick and painless, and they succeeded. All of the electronics are in an SKB GigRig, the Carvin subs have large casters on back, and the mains and monitors are all manageable by one person. With everything pre-wired, we just plug in the speakers, plug in the mic cables, power it up, and go. K-I-S-S.

I popped out front for the first couple of songs to check levels, and everything sounded great. I boosted the vocal levels a bit to get them more out-front, flattened out the bass channel EQ (Hirschie plays one of those damned Steinberger basses -- a bowling ball with strings), and left it alone for the rest of the night. Carlos said he preferred to have the PA rack on my side of the stage to avoid the temptation he would surely have to tweak it all night. Good call.

We rolled into the first set with virtually no one in the place. Oh, well...paid practice. Too bad I had to drive 65 miles for this. As the night wore on, though, things started to pick up and more people made there way to the bar. The first set was fairly vanilla, and went without any real glaring hitches. as we turned the page to browse the second set, though, a great opportunity presented itself. Bobby noticed immediately that Dale had written the Romantics song What I Like About You twice back-to-back. He asked me which one we should play, to which I responded, "The first one...it's longer!" -- and so it did extend farther across the page. Bobby suggested we play it twice, just as written. When we presented the idea to Carlos, he whole-heartedly agreed. It was a done-deal. Dale was going to think we were nuts or something.

Unfortunately, he ruined it for us by noticing his error and correcting it just a few songs before the debut of our Romantics medley. Curses! Foiled again! ...and we would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling kids! We did have more fun with him later in the evening, trying our level best to throw him off during songs we know he struggles with rhythmically. He was unflappable, though, on this night. Carlos and I even tried to throw off Bobby while he was singing the beginning of that acursed Georgia Sattelites song, only to be denied once again.

We had one of those "I used to be somebody" moments in the middle of the evening, too. Some biker-looking chick wearing a leather vest, do-rag, and pig-tails approached Dale during one break and asked him if she could come up and sing the Guns-n-Roses song Sweet Child of Mine. He hemmed and hawed, and siezed the opportunity to drag Bobby and me into it. When she asked us, we both shrugged our shoulders and said that we knew it. This wasn't the support that Dale was seeking. She launched into that old, tired, far-to-familiar sob story about how she used to be a singer, and sang on many people's CDs, but then got throat cancer and had to quit singing professionally. Uhh-huh...yah...sssure you did. I'll bet you played a Rickenbacker, too, right? If I had a dollar for every time I've heard some lame-ass version of that story as a pretense to get up on stage and suck the life right out of the place... She tried for about another 15 or 20 minutes, then got mad and gave up after we convinced her that Carlos really didn't know the song. Where's Deron when you need him?

We managed our way through the rest of the night, occassionally messing things up on purpose toward the end of trying to trying to throw off Dale. Still no luck. At the end of the festivities, tear-down of the new system went pretty quick. We could do better, though. We did stop and chat a bit here and there. I had a nice conversation with Dale's lovely wife Chris about long drives after gigs and playing at the Lake of the Ozarks. I couldn't remember the name of that bar on the lake to save my life (it was The Filling Station & Backwater Jack's, Chris). It's hell getting old.

During load-out, we were stuffing equipment back into Bobby's trailer when I burned the dickens out of my left hand. Bobby and I were lifting the PA rack into the trailer from the sides as Carlos was pushing from behind. As I got the front edge onto the trailer and reached back to steady the top corner, Carlos called out just as I grabbed the cigarette in his hand and mashed it into the rack with the palm of my hand. Ouch! I now have a nice little spot between my first and second fingers that's about the size of a cigarette (Did I STUTTER?). Oh, well...it'll be a nice reminder of my time in Wentzville at The Crazy Horse Saloon.

Yee Haaa!

For the long drive home, I popped in the Enchant CD Tug of War. I had listened to their Juggling 9 or Dropping 10 CD during the drive there, and was thoroughly progified by the time I got home just after 03:30. That kind of made for a mostly-wasted Sunday, but, hey, such is the life of a working musician, eh?

Pipe Organs & Sweet Wine

2006-06-12T23:20:00.000-05:00

Friday, 09 June 2006
One of the nice benefits about playing with BenWahBob is the fact that we don't play every waking moment. Generally, we only book about two gigs a month, with some exceptions during the summer. This past weekend was one of those off weeks. In a stroke of rare opportunity, Dawna didn't have her kids either. As part of the 100th anniversary celebrations at Wicks Organ Company, we had planned a chartered bus to take those interested to Kalamazoo, MI for an organ recital on what has become our premiere instrument at First Congregational Church.

Dawna had taken the day off, and showed up early to get the nickle tour of the pipe organ shop. We boarded the bus in the parking lot at 10:00 and were on our way. We stopped in Effingham, IL for lunch at Ryan's, gorged ourselves at the buffet, then headed up I-57 toward Chicago. We looped around outside of Chicago through some small towns in northern Illinois and Indiana, then back on Interstate Highway to Kalamazoo. An unfortunate occurance left us sitting on the road for about an hour-and-a-half -- a truck had crossed over the median and struck three cars, killing a 7-year-old girl. We called ahead to the church, and they were already aware of the accident and the subsequent traffic nightmare. When we finally started moving again, we were way behind schedule. We had planned on stopping at the hotel in Stevensville, MI to change clothes before going to the church. We were now going straight to the church, as the recital was scheduled to start at 19:30. We arrived about 19:50, and the concert began immediately. It was nice of them to wait for us.

The organist, Colin Howland, did a knock-down job playing a wide variety of music -- some writen for the pipe organ, some transcribed from orchestral music. He played everything from Bach to Mozart to Vierne (the Bach was outstanding), and even tickled us with an encore of a J. P. Sousa march that would have made any Monty Python fan proud. We even joked with him afterwards at the Meet-and-Greet about finding a suitable stop on the instrument for the big fart sound at the end. Everyone was also given the opportunity to crawl around inside the pipe chamber to see what an organ looks like from the inside. Dawna seemed to really enjoy that, as it was her first time inside a large instrument. It is an impressive three-stories tall, and full to the top of pipes and wind lines...including a rather chest-rattling 32' Double Trombone of 12 pipes. It's a nice instrument, to say the least. Wicks' pride in it is aptly justified.

After the concert, we adjourned to The Blue Dolphin, a Greek restaurant just a coupler of blocks from the church, and had dinner...at 22:00. They, too, kept the place open late for us. Very nice. None of us really ate too terribly much, as it was so late, but we did have a great time sitting around picking on each other and sharing "war stories" about Wicks and other places we had worked. We then took the hour-long bus ride back to the hotel in Stevensville. It was nearly 01:00 when we checked in at the front desk.

Saturday, 10 June 2006
Saturday morning rolled around way too soon. I had set the alarm for 07:00. I remember looking over at the clock around 07:04 and wondering why hotel alarm clocks never seem to work. Not that it matters...I can't sleep late even if I want to any more. We got up and showered, and headed down to the lobby for the free continental (as opposed to oceanic, I suppose) breakfast. We indulged in hot waffles and comparisons to other hotels with some of the other friendly travelers. We also found plastered across the front of the morning paper pictures of the gruesome accident from the night before. In a bout of hardcore journalistic sensationalism, I found the writer had not only named the company who owned the trailer (being hauled by another carrier), but had the audacity to even list their website in the story. Trial by media the very next day.

We all borded the bus around 11:00 for the journey home. It was nice to just ride for a change, and be a sightseer. I almost always have to drive when I travel anywhere, which doesn't afford me the opportunity to enjoy the scenery. This time I got to do just that. Dawna and I curled up in our seats and watched the countryside go by as the rest of the crew sat in the back of the bus drinking and laughing. We did occassionaly chortle at some of the stories they were sharing.

Lunch was to be had at a giant red barn known as Amishland, somewhere in the middle of northeastern Illinois. It is an Amish mall, of sorts, with a really good buffet. After we ate, we all went out and browsed the shops that littered the inside of this hug "barn." Once back on the road, we made the final push for home. It was a long ride that I only really remember as a series of naps interupted every so often by the odd outburst of laughter. The bus pulled into the Wicks parking lot sometime late Saturday evening. We all congratulated each other on a fine weekend, said our goodbyes, and headed for our respective homes. Even Dawna and I parted ways, as she said she wanted to sieze the opportunity to practice with her piano and violin. I went home and practiced my cello for awhile, then fell asleep on the couch while watching the lightning from a passing storm.

Sunday, 11 June 2006
Dawna and I rarely get the chance to spend copious amounts of time alone together, so we took full advantage of this weekend. We had decided to spend Sunday taking her convertable out for a spin, and settled on a trip to Mount Pleasant, a winery in Augusta, MO. This is one of those things we have talked about doing in the past, but never found the time to actually do. Of course, it was raining Sunday morning, but we went regardless.

She picked me up around 10:30 and off we went. We stopped for breakfast at the IHOP in North St. Louis County, then continued on to Augusta. During the drive along MO-94 near Defiance, we started to notice a fair amount of storm damage, some of the debris spread across the road at various places. We drove through Augusta admiring the old Missouri town's charm.

The winery was mostly empty when we arrived. There was a wedding reception in one of the far buildings, but little else going on there. I guess the threatening skies had held people back. We bought a bottle of Harvest White and a tray of cheese and sausage, and sat in the back patio area of the "grocery" building looking out over the river valley. There was a group of youngsters at the other end of the patio who kept us readily amused. More people started to filter in as the day wore on, including a group of women having a bachelorette party. They were a hoot, too. There's always good people-watching at these places.

We didn't stay too long for fear of drinking too much wine and having to wind our way back on the two-lane road (neither of us drink much anymore). In fact, we didn't even finish the bottle we bought. I'm enjoying a glass of it even as I write this on Monday night. Dawna stopped at the store in the front on the way out to buy a couple of bottles to take home, and we headed back to the city. She wanted to stop at an antique store we passed on the way there, but it was closed on Sunday. we did end up at an antique mall in Creve Coeur until they closed and threw us out. I resisted the temptation to rescue a couple of instruments I found there -- an old trombone and a nice silver bugle. As it was after 17:00 and dinner was now in order, we stopped at the Olive Garden for some pasta.

To complete our care-free, by-the-seat-of-our-pants Sunday, we decided to go see a movie. We ended up in O'Fallon, IL at their massive theater and went in to watch The daVinci Code. We had both read the book when it came out, and were eager to see the movie version. I must say, for as much as it has been maligned by critics, I thought it was a pretty good movie. It stayed pretty true to the book, and the acting was better than average.

OK...so its not a particularly musical blog. It does, however, point out that even those of us who have devoted our lives to the pursuit of music do occassionally do "normal" things, too. I guess riding a bus to Michigan to listen to a pipe organ is rather peculiar to being a musician, though, so it kind of all comes together around that.

Whatever.

Normal blog coming again next week.