LA

I spent the last couple of weeks in Los Angeles for work and will be headed back out for a few days again tomorrow. On the trip out I saw Morgan Rose the drummer of Sevendust on my plane. I'm pretty sure it was him, it looked like he had freshly dyed black hair. Didn't get to talk to him, so I'll have to catch him on the next flight out :-)

I flew Jacki out for the first weekend I was in LA. This was her first time out so she was pretty excited. Minutes of being in town we checked into the hotel The Orlando. Then it was off to see our good friend Dean Truitt play at the world famous Viper Room on Sunset Strip. He was playing with Jason Falkner, and this was the new band's debut performance with Jason. Jason long ago played lead guitar for Jellyfish. It was a great show. Before the show Jacki and I went to the Rainbow with Dean and I had my second close encounter with David Spade. Turns out he was at the table we were seated at just before we got there.

Friday we went and found the Duran Duran and KISS stars on Hollywood Blvd. Saturday and Sunday we spent checking out different areas, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, W. Hollywood, Bel-Air, and Culver City. There is an extremely good chance we will be relocated out to the Los Angeles in a few months so we wanted to get an idea of how far or should I say how little our money will go out there. We've pretty much determined it will be very hard to buy in these areas but renting is probably a good option. We just have to make sure we get Darian into a good school. We saw Dean a couple of times over the weekend and had a nice dinner with him Sunday night.

LA was a comfortable 68 degrees most of the weekend. The ongoing joke was when it was 67 it was cold and when it reached 69 it was hot. Ironically Jacki's fair skin got a little burnt when we ate some Mexican food on the patio of a restaurant in Santa Monica.

Jacki flew out Monday, and it turned out I had meetings in Kansas City Tuesday so we ended up flying out about the same time. Back to LA Tuesday night and work work work.

I saw Dean again Thursday night and flew back home on Friday.

Studio Day 34/35/36/37

Yes, I haven't been great at keeping the days in the studio up to date. Over the past 6 weeks the band hasn't spent much time together as an entire unit. We also haven't progressed much since mid April. Some of the recent happenings include Mike V working on guitar parts for all of the tracks. This past Tuesday I spent some time working with him on guitars for Lonely One.

Last night was the first night in probably 4 weeks or more where the entire band was in the studio to work on recording. Katie worked on vocals for All About You. It took the better part of 3 hours, but Mike V had some great feedback and we are hopeful that on listen back we have a vocal track the entire band is pleased with.

We continue to progress, albeit slowly.

Vocals and guitars are primarly what is left. We will need to touch up a few other things including bass on one track, and maybe some drums and percussive effects.

A little drum upgrade

The time has come to do a little repair and upgrading on my drum kit. About 2 months ago I noticed my Tama Iron Cobra double pedal had been starting to slip a little. The left foot pedal, the extended pedal, connecting piece had actually wore down to a rounded shaft. Originally it was square and you screwed it in to hold the fitting, but now since it was round the screws wouldn't hold.

I took it into Guitar Center and quickly found out that not only was this a farily common problem with the Iron Cobra but the demo units in the store actually showed the same signs of wear. One of the sales guys of course recommeded that I upgrade to the latest and greatest DW 9000 series double pedals. I found out the price he thought he could give me and told him I needed to think about it.

I went back today and decided to go ahead and make the purchase as well as get some new drum heads. I decided to go with the Evans G2 coated for the toms and the sales guy recommended an Evans Double Ply Dry Coated Dry Head for the snare so I thought I'd try that out as well. They were out of the 14" G2 so I'll have to go back and get it later in the week. My $500 purchase gave me the DW 9002 pedals, 14" snare head, and 16", 12", and 10" tom heads.

I went to the studio tonight to try out the pedals. A huge difference over the Iron Cobras. Much smoother, better balance, and easier to play faster, which is always fun. I also put on the 10" and 12" heads. My drums sound brand new again and truly show off the DW sound. I'll probably pick up the 14" head from the other Guitar Center this week.

Practice this week should be fun with the band.

Drums

My band has our first gig in nearly 6 months tomorrow. Over the past couple of weeks we've had a handful of rehearsals and it has been nice to get back into the groove of playing.

Mike V made a comment when I was talking about my playing that made a lot sense. I commented that I was playing better than I thought and I almost had the ability to play whatever I could think of playing.

He made the comment that kind of suggested I was floating or flying over the instrument. It was a pretty cool concept and one I hadn't tried to verbalize before. As you improve your playing and mastery of the instrument you'll begin to float on top of the instrument and that kind of frees you up to play some extremely creative and interesting things. I've only had this feeling a few times but now have a feeling I can assoicate and strive toward again as a play.

crowes vid and pics

Here are some rough shots from the two crowes taken through a treo 650
using binoculars as a zoom lens. No joke.

The first is a video of Chris on stage the first night in Atlanta. Turn the sound down!
chrisvid.3g2

Jealous Again

We made it to the Black Crowes one more time on their four night stand in Atlanta. This time it was a family affair with Darian, Jacki and myself. We got to the venue early so we wouldn't be in the nose bleed seats. Once the doors opened Darian darted for the front of the stage and Jacki and I went to the second level. We settled in about 4 rows up from the front of the balcony close to the middle but off to the right side. The only downfall from our position is we couldn't see Ed at all, and viewing in between shoulders and over heads got tiresome.

The show had a very different vibe than the Thursday show. The show at times felt a little mellower although the set wasn't mellow by any means. A few more obscure tunes were played and the jams lasted a little longer. Highlights for me once again were No Speak, No Slave and My Morning Song. Jacki wanted to hear She Talks To Angels and I noticed they hadn't played the song in about a week so she had her hopes up. Sure enough she got her wish during the encore.

Chris was as animated as he was on Thursday and it seemed Rich was having more fun, grinning more than Thursday and jamming a little bit more with the rest of the band. During Jealous Again, Rich takes vocals on a couple lines in the song but actually nodded over to Sven to take the vocal on the second line. They also got in a few songs from the 3 Snakes album.

Here is Sunday's setlist.

Don't Do It
Stare It Cold
Go Tell The Congregation
Jealous Again
Seeing Things
My Morning Song
Girl From A Pawnshop
Space Captain
High Head Blues
Wiser Time
How Much For Your Wings?
Young Man, Old Man
Twice As Hard
No Speak No Slave
-encore-
She Talks To Angels
Shake Your Moneymaker

Darian got herself a Rich Robinson guitar pick and had a good time at the show. On our way home we asked if we had made her a Black Crowes fan and she said yes. Mission accomplished.

We picked up the Instant Live Recording and got home right around midnight.

Welcome back Steve

Steve Gorman is back with the Black Crowes and Jacki and I witnessed it first hand. I got home and went to the Black Crowes website and saw they issued a press release announcing the return of Steve. I had told Jacki before the show they had a different drummer and then I was confused when I saw Steve on the drums. I had gotten a couple of bootlegs from early on the tour and found the shows difficult to listen to becaure the drum parts and the grooves weren't quite the same.

Probably as a result of Steve's return and first show back with the band this ended up being the best Crowes show I've ever seen. Chris was so animated, dancing and having fun the entire night. Jacki and I were talking about how different a show was compared to Chris' set we saw at Bonnaroo last year. The was the first time I'd ever seen the Crowes perform and actually look happy. It was a great night.

Virtue And Vice
Sting Me
Jam -> Black Moon Creeping
Cosmic Friend
Ballad In Urgency -> Wiser Time
Jam -> Thorn In My Pride
Sometimes Salvation
Peace Anyway
Soul Singing -> Jam
Jealous Again
Remedy
No Speak No Slave
-encore-
Willin'
Hard To Handle -> Jam

Chris' shirt said
"Don't buy weed from speeddealers"
Marc's shirt said
"Genuine Mustache Rides 5 cents"
and Ed was sporting a great FZ shirt.

I'll post some pictures I took with my Treo tomorrow. I even got a quick dancing video of Chris. We picked up a shirt for Jacki and a poster for me and now I'm going to listen to my instant live cds of the show!

at the black crowes

Here is the opening band, Rose Hill Drive.

Mudvayne

Last night Darian and I went ot Mudvayne at EarthLink Live. The show was sold out, but one of the benefits of working at EarthLink paid off. EarthLink corporate gets a handful of free tickets to every show at EarthLive so I did a little research and was able to get a couple of complimentary tickets for the show.

Darian and I got to the show about 7:00pm. Pretty much the scheduled start time. One of the bands, American Head Charge, had their bus break down so the show started a little later to accomodate the missing set.

We got inside and got a nice seat about 5 rows off of the floor. Darian wanted to live the concert so she went down to the floor, and I was quite content sitting back in my chair and watching and listening to the show.

Before the first band went on I checked out the merch booth and found out Mudvayne was doing an aftershow autograph of their new disc if you bought it. Since Darian is no longer a kid I ended up buying to copies, not to mention I already owned it so now we've got three copies of the disc.

First band was Bloodsimple. Out of New York and along the lines of the new metal scene. More hard core than progressive, more power than dynamics. Singer's voice was a little too cookie monster for me, but the music was good and the band was tight.

Second band was Life Of Agony. Also out of New York, and a band with some history. Vocalist Whitfield Crane from Ugly Kid Joe joined them briefly in the late 90s'. This was a reunited lineup from the early 90s and the music went over well. Darian commented that they were a little more commercial sounding than the first band.

Mudvayne came out and played a great set. I saw them previously on September 10,2001 the day before the dreaded 9-11. Ironically the night I saw them, absolute esacpe-ism. The band were decked out in full makeup, actually with bullet holes to their head just like they were to the MTV VMAs that year, actually just a few days prior. They played an outdoor venue which is always odd to me for this type of metal show. It happened to be at the end of the first tour so Chad's (at that time Kud's) vocals were pretty shot, and the band didn't really have as strong a catalog to pull from. Putting together an hour plus show for an album that was only 50 minutes without the interludes between songs prooved tough. I really enjoyed that show but was pleased to see how far they've come since. Ironically 9-11 was about the time they took off the makeup for good. I don't know if it was simply coincidence or not but the escapism is now less about the theatrics and more about the music.

Now back to the show in Atlanta. Fantastic set. Unlike the Austin show in 2001 they now have 3 great albums and for me their debut LD 50 is the weakest of the three. They opened the set with Determined and proceeded to run through a farily even set incorporating songs off the three major label releases.

In no particular order here is the set list I was able to cobble together.
Determined
Silenced
Internal Primates Forever
Happy?
Death Blooms
IMN
-1
Nothing To Gein
Mercy, Severity
World So Cold
Not Falling
Dig

Highlights for me were Determined, Happy?, and World So Cold. Chad's voice sounded fantastic on the melodic parts and the screaming never disappointed. I remember when World So Cold came out as a single about 18 months back, they were promoting it on tv and also released a live bootleg. I was disappointed with the performances, the band looked exhausted, and the music and vocals weren't up to the standard I was hoping. Last night World So Cold blew away any previous disappointments. Chad did a little let's hear it for our troops speech right before the song, with the main message being just because stuff isn't in your backyard doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Dig closed the night and although that was the song that gave 90% of the crowd their first exposure to Mudvayne it almost seems like it doesn't stand up to the newer material. I'm hoping Happy? takes this band from bringing in gold records to finally crossing into the platinum.

The aftershow was non-eventful. No pictures and you could only get one item signed. I asked Matt what drum pedals he uses and he said Pearl. No longer the Tama iron cobras, that I still play to this day. Ryan was extremely nice to Darian. As Darian had her cd signed she said "Thank you so very much" to which his reply was "You're welcome so very much". She defintely got a kick out of this. Gregg signed looked at me I said thanks and he didn't really say anything. And then Chad at the end actually reached out and waited for me to shake his hand. He was a true class act.

I'll post some pics from the show, and scans of the autographs and aftershow pass shortly.

It had been too long since I had been to a great metal show. Different than the 80s and 90s but a great experience nonetheless.

Direct from Portland Mr. Brown

The family got to hang with long time friend I originally met in Austin at pcOrder. Corregan has been on a heavy consulting gig living everywhere but home for the last 9 months. We joked about getting the original "Band" back together from Austin, renting a studio in some far-off land and spend a week recording an album.

Could be fun. And my chops aren't too far from being ready for a project like that. Just don't know if any of the other guys still play. Maybe I'll trickle out the emails in the next week and see if anyone is interested.

Studio Day 32 / 33

Tuesday we worked on the Kiss Me Goodbye bass part. Fairly non eventful and went pretty quickly. We wrapped up in a little under two hours.

Thursday it was time to move back to acoustic guitars. I had a confernce call for work that ended up lasting until about 9:40pm or so. As a result I didn't get to the studio until about 10pm. The band had been recording acoustic parts for Mr. Knowitall. They had tried several different iterations of setting up mics, first a 57, then a condensor, both had their pros and cons. Since the focus was on sound more than performance the acoustic performance wasn't up to the standard we had set. On listen back we also heard some things we wanted to change about the part. When Mike and Katie get back from their trip to Wyoming we will pick up where we left off.

The bad news of the night was on listen back the bass part to Mr. Knowitall ends up being too laid back. So we will probably have to retrack that part as well.

1 step forward and 2 steps back.

Studio Day 30 / 31

This past week the band made it into the studio twice. The first in some time. Tuesday we tackled the last drum track for Kiss Me Goodbye...kind of. After running through a rough take we went back and listened to the drum track from the demo we did last August. We agreed that it would be impossible to get a better performance. At the time we playing a few shows a month, and I was at the peak of my playing. The performance on that recording I feel is one of the best I've had. So, I spend about an hour figuring out how to lift that performance from the original demo and putting it into the protools template for the EP we are now working on. Success. I'll need to re-eq and re-mix the drums but the performance is complete. Now all of my drum tracks are done. That is unless I go back and re-record All About You. I'm not 100% comfortable with that performance and think I should go back and re-record. It will probably take 2-3 hours on a weekend to knock out, maybe next weekend.

Thursday we shifted gears to work on the final bass tracks. Mike G worked on Mr. Knowitall. We ran through the song a few times, at times Mike was right on top of the beat, at times he was just behind it. We decided we liked the feel of him playing right behind the beat. We stitched together parts to reconstruct the verse and chorus and had Mike re-perform the final minute of the song. We've got a bass part we are all happy with. One more bass part to go.

Studio Day 29

Mr. Knowitall drums are complete. I went in on a Sunday and cut the tracks without the band. Being bummed about last Thursday I decided I could go in and finish up the track. It only took about two hours. I had Terry, my brother in law who was in town for the Steve Vai concert, man the protools system. He handled starting and stopping of the recording.

Studio Day 28

Mr. Knowitall

Started working on drums around 8:20 or so. Got some good drum sounds and spent about 45 minutes working with Mike V on composing the perfect part. So far so good.

Time to cut the track. 2 hours later still didn't have a track I was completely satisfied with. I'll try to cut the track again next time.

Not a great night.

Studio Day 27

I made it back to the studio last night. We moved recording to Wednesday this week instead of Tuesday because Mike and Katie had a songwriting class.

I had a long conference call with the SK team last night so we got started just a little before 9pm. Ran through what they had recorded over the last two weeks and some great sounding acoustic parts as well as some cool bass lines on Lonely One. I could tell Mike G probably spent a good bit of time coming up with that new part.

Since my travel schedule doesn't appear to be letting up anytime soon they wanted to get me on drums to finish my last two tracks. Considering it had been nearly 4 weeks since I picked up sticks I knew there wasn't much hope for cutting a track. We started on Mr. Knowitall and realized the scratch guitar track didn't have the arrangement we wanted so first thing was to recut the scratch. Next, our time was spent on getting the mics set back on the drums and letting me run through a few takes. Tonight I hope to cut the track.

Goals tonight, spend about an hour working on sounds, and then spend 2 hours working on recording. Mike V had some good ideas on how to make the drum part both more tasteful and more interesting so that will probably take some time to work through. Fortunately this is one of the easiest tracks for me to play to so I'm hopeful we can get a keeper tonight.

Studio Day 25/26

Last week Katie sent a couple of more very quick updates.

So bass is done on Lonely and All About You and acoustic is done on Lonely One. It took us a couple days to get an acoustic sound. All About You won't take long to get the Acoustic done....so Tuesday should be a productive night assuming you can be here....if you won't to take a break from your travels we can start Wednesday.

And we even had an exchange about Mike G missing me :-)

Katie > Mike G said you sux!!!
Me > what is that about? Mike G sux!
Katie > I guess that is his way of saying he misses you!!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha

Studio Day 25/26

Last week Katie sent a couple of more very quick updates.

So bass is done on Lonely and All About You and acoustic is done on Lonely One. It took us a couple days to get an acoustic sound. All About You won't take long to get the Acoustic done....so Tuesday should be a productive night assuming you can be here....if you won't to take a break from your travels we can start Wednesday.

And we even had an exchange about Mike G missing me :-)

Katie > Mike G said you sux!!!
Me > what is that about? Mike G sux!
Katie > I guess that is his way of saying he misses you!!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha

I'm back

I got back in the States last night. It's good to be back. Sleeping has always been a problem when I return to the US although last night I slept until about 6am. Realizing I normally wake up at 8:30am or so this wasn't too bad. However I took a 3 hour nap today which I'm sure will screw things up.

This next weekend Terry and Buffy are coming into town and Terry and I will be heading to the Steve Vai show with the EVO experience and meet and greet. I was planning to see Kings Of Leon Friday night but it looks like they've already sold out. I'll have to watch for tickets to open up or maybe catch them on their next tour.

Speaking of meet and greets and platinum experiences, when I was in Korea I ordered a couple of tickets to the Motley Crue show in Atlanta. I ordered the platinum tickets through their fan club and are guaranteed seats in the first two rows with a photo and meet and greet after the show. Just like the KISS ticket I had back in 2003. The funny thing is the price for 2 tickets with all original members to the Crue is less than 1 ticket to KISS with 2 original members. I guess Paul and Gene can still demand more than the Crue.

Norah Jones in Seoul

After working a few days in Seoul I glanced onto Pollstar's Site to see if there was any interesting shows in Seoul while I'm here. Norah Jones was listed so after spending one night trying to read Korean web sites, and then working two days with the concierge I finally managed to get tickets.

Turns out they don't seem to have a 24 hour ticketmaster type site so the first night I went to the hotel concierge they just stated that the box office was closed and to try again the next day. I came back a couple of nights later and finally got the concierge to get some information. Once again the box office was closed but the concierge managed to call the production company and reserved two tickets under my name.

Picking up will call tickets always makes me nervous, much less doing this in a foreign country but we had no problems getting them. Since we had VIP seats we were able to go to a pre party and post party event for free drinks. Nothing too exciting, and it turned out Chivas was the only thing served but at least it was free. We get inside the venue and it turns out we have 2nd row center tickets and no one ended up sitting on the front row so we had a great view the entire night.

Concert was great, the band was great and the the show was well mixed. The hall had quite a bit of echo which lent itself well for some of the tunes. Toward the end of the show Norah played Creepin' In a song that she did a duet with Dolly Parton on her cd. The crowd had been extremely calm, no talking, clapping immediately after a song then absolute silence. When she was introducing the song she mentioned that with the large space in front of the stage between the front row that people could use the space to dance. And then things got out of control. You had probably a hundred people on both sides of the venue crowd up on the edge of the front row trying to dance. It was an extremely bizarre sight, and Seoul security seemed in over their head.

The show lasted about two hours and covered many of my favorites including Nightingale.

Studio Day 23/24 update from Katie

And progress in the studio continues...

Here is an update from Katie on the studio activities this week.

Hey David,
If you wanted to keep your blog going for the studio days here is an
update.
Tuesday March 1st we worked on Bass for Lonely One. Mike G got his amp
fixed so he played through his amp for a couple run throughs, but listening
back to the bass through the Peavy sounded so much better. So, the Mike's
set up the bass in the hall with the Peavy and got a good sound. Mike G
played bass all night....I fell asleep and woke up at 10:30 finding that
the bass part had been changed and it sounded really cool. I left about
10:30 and the Mike's stayed punching in parts and had a late night....think
they ended up heading out abut midnight with a bass part that they were
happy with.

Tonight March 3rd will be the guitars!!!!!
I will be playing my acoustic on both Lonely One and All About You, guess
we will pick one and see how long it takes!!!! Then I have my rhythm
electric and Mike V has his lead parts.....hopefully we will be done with
all the guitars for both by the time you get back!!!!!!

If we finish before you get back I told Mike V that I am interested in
putting a very simple all acoustic song on the CD...it shouldn't take
long....but I thought it would show a little diversity and it's a song that
I personally really like and would like to hear it recorded. Just me
singing and my acoustic guitar.....we can toy with other instrument
ideas...but i don't want an electric sound....maybe a snare, shakers,
etc.....this will be a good test too for if we ever wanted to play acoustic
live.....The song is called "I didn't come here for this". I think we ran
through it one time in rehearsal, but that was it.......
Talk to ya later!