New video

 

New Album in process, would like your ears along the way

 Greetings, like many passable artists such as the Indigo Girls, T Swift, Dave Davies (I just put that in there for Dave), Margaret Glassy etc. the meat is the song itself, not the arrangement. So I am working on honing my songwriting and am making acoustic demos, unembellished, to see if they can stand on their own. These songs will be arranged for the band eventually. 

So, come along for the ride, I am going to publish works in progress on this blog, feel free to comment and enjoy :) 

Recorded today: Every time 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K6rDVuiAIIAPcoLayykFnr0_BK0CEkKZ/view?usp=share_link

Michigan and Trumbell

 

Dead show highlight

 Killer album  my friend Graham has it o. Vinyl, wow!!!

Bugger Bucky Book Club: Homicide

 The next book up is David Simon's "Homicide - A Year on the Killing Streets"

D'Addario Pick Holder 360

 

What I have done with my Thursday morning - recorded a track

 I think I'm going to get my band back together, feeling it again. Anyway, turns out I have a lot of songs about things sucking and finding the light, so here's one for you enjoyment

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19r-DuDPAgWF3L0tgDOLXcLWAwlMRtyhe/view?usp=sharing

Get one of these for your favorite guitar players in your life :)

 daddario pick holder 360

Not sure if I shared this in October or not but I designed this, engineered it and patented it, then licensed it to D'Addario...so I get a whopping 0.80 cents or so for everyone sold :). But it really is fun and useful. It's fidget spinner combined with a pick holder.

 I was listening to Tiny Desk concerts one night and listened to Pulp. It struck me as odd because the lead singer was oddly theatrical and reminded me of an old boss.  ...and then I noticed that the keyboard person was a woman in her 60s or 70s.  It turns out that they were a bad pop band in the late 70s early 80s and got back together. I think the current incarnation (same people) is much better.

Bugger Bucky Book Club So Far

Aaron 

• American Tabloid
• The Secret Lives of Trees

Aram

• The Wager
• The British Are Coming

Brian

• Snow Crash
• Nobody's Fool

Chris

• World According to Garp 
• Daring Greatly

Dave

• Station Eleven
• Demon of Unrest

Matt

• Old Man and the Sea
• On the Calculation of Volume 1

Steve

• Ready Player One
• James

Where was this recorded?

 

Without looking, use your ears and see what you hear in the performance

https://music.apple.com/us/album/humpty-dumpty-live/1442964638?i=1442964723

You Guys Like Sting?

It's a rhetorical question. Personally, I am not a tremendous fan of Sting.  But You Guys Like Sting? is the inspiration behind the BBCB.

The site hasn't been updated in a decade, but while it lasted is was a shared music blog that was started by David Staple and/or someone who I am pretty sure is his sister-in-law, but I was never really completely sure.  They invited me to contribute, and we had a good run.  

The Wisconsin Bluegrass Festival

 Last night I saw the 4 band lineup for the Wisconsin Bluegrass Festival at the Sylvee in Madison.  The music far exceeded what I was expecting, so I want to share some of the bands here in case you happen to see them in a festival lineup in your neck of the woods.

The show kicked off with Art Stevenson and High Water, who played solid traditional bluegrass.  They paid homage to Bill Monroe and covered many standards well.  From there things got quite a bit more rambunctious...

Feed the Dog

From this first note they played it was clear that were were in for a treat.  The video above is not from the show I saw (they didn't play Psycho Killer) but its a good taste if what this band can do.  Hold on for the second half of the video, where they go into full jam-band mode.  They covered I know You Rider, which was fantastic, but their original material was outstanding.  It was also the first time I've ever seen a violin played with a wah pedal, and it was eyeopening.

These guys are from Appleton, which blew my mind.  Perhaps you recall Balki Bartokomous from the 80's?  I was unaware of anything cool coming out of Appleton... like ever... I was wrong.

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

These guys are so great that the best brewery in Wisconsin has been making a beer named after them for years (like the band, the beer is excellent).

These guys are less a band than an organism.  I found the above video if them from 2015 at First Ave in Minneapolis, and I can assure you that in the ensuing 10 years they have only gotten better. What really truck me is that they played the whole show in a bunched huddle in the center of the stage moving in and out depending on who's turn is was to go wild at the particular time.  Really fun.

Armchair Boogie

The video above is another performance from First Ave.  Unfortunately we only caught the start of this band.  It was getting old and we're old and tired.  But it was clear from the drop that they were at the top of the bill for a reason.  The guitar player we really impressive and Molly announced halfway through their first song that the banjo player has the Kavorka.

New YouTube channel

 

Marcus King

 

Love this guy

 

Neil

 Fucking great song

Rock and Roll History

Rock and Roll history was made in this nondescript brick building at the corner of Baldwin and East Washington in Madison.  If you're not interested... Nevermind.

Pencil