Saturday, August 27, 2011

post muddy roots/deep blues jam session.

so i have been so nervous all day about this first installment of my series at the waterfront in holyoke. on the one hand - i have been promoting this event and hoping for a large turnout to get some good 413 exposure for Henry's Rifle. who, by the way, provided a unbelievable set for all the people who were in attendance! on the other hand my nerves were rooted in the uncertainty of playing host to this open jam with players whom i have never - EVER played music with before. sure, it was loose and sloppy... but that's  ok - because it kind of set the vibe for the room a bit. 

upon arriving i began to set up my kit. once that was in order - and John Pipino from Henry's Rifle had arrived i began to set up the PA and get familiar with it. one issue was that the PA was MIA. Luckily the bar owner was around and made some phone calls to get Benjamin Jon from Stillwork Media on the horn. Ben essentially saved my ass. Not only did he arrive with a full PA - the guy sat in on Bass with us to open up the jam! it was a lot of fun - and a few moments in the short set were especially cool because John jumped up and did some improvisational vocals for us. it was really cool that it all kind of clicked at the right time like it did.

i did get some time to talk with some people about my vision  - it seemed to be very well received. upon packing everything up from the session i had mentioned that i was looking for a second date to line up right away. i'm looking forward to 10/15 for the time being - it all depends on who i can find that is touring in the region to feature for the next session. i really dig the support the waterfront has been giving me with this - very nice to have the backing of a venue like that!

anyway - i'm beat. lots of whiskey early in the night makes for -  a lazy night at home followed by a great nights sleep!!!

later!

Thursday, August 25, 2011

wow - things have completely fallen apart and miraculously come back together again for this Saturday's BCBM Muddy Roots Deep Blues Jam Session. Being the first one, I have no real expectations other than having fun! this is more about learning and applying that knowledge to make the next installment more of a success. I'm really lucky to know some completely awesome people pulling this together in the 11th hour. For starters - John Pipino from Henry's Rifle has been great. After not thinking that this would be able to happen - he was able to stick with it despite everything. I'm really looking forward to his set too - I think it's going to be great!

As for what happened that threw a wrench in the works for this. Essentially, I got kicked out of my band due to musical differences with Damon. This messed up a lot of shit - I knew the band was not on board to play the host band roll for the jam. It was fairly clear that i was going to be scrambling a bit to pull this off. Fortunately, with the help of a bunch of great people it came together.  I got really lucky that Dave LaValley is game to jam with me while I host this thing. Being that we haven't played any music together before - it's gonna be something! I'm looking forward to it though - also looking to play those new hi-hats too damn it!!!

So - what is next on my plate after Damon Reeves & The Love Thieves. Well, primarily I'll be focusing on Black Cat Bone Music events - however - my passion is playing drums. I do have an ad up right now looking to form a punk blues group. As luck would have it a very good and old friend of mine is also interested in putting something along those lines together - so I have something to work with fairly soon and I'm psyched! I'm not going to get too into the details right now. More like just waiting and see what happens in the next few months. One thing that is for sure - it's gonna be good!

That's all I have for tonight. I'm planning on a post session update to go over the details.

Friday, August 5, 2011

what a week it has been!!! i've been so unbelievably busy all week long with a handful of things happening  - the first and biggest is the release of Damon Reeves' debut release "Coming Home"! i've been under the gun trying to get the release together in time for my own 8/2/11 deadline and i made it by the skin of me teeth. in the end we put out a really great sounding product and even have a nice little set-up going so that we aren't investing megabucks into a huge inventory to carry around. since that all came together in time - the next bit of work to do was get the word out about our online sales AND our little celebratory event happening at Theodores' on Saturday (8/6)! I'm holding back from calling it a "CD Release Party" only because we can't afford the upfront cost for CD's for the show at this point - so we won't have them actually available at the party. Still - the party will still be awesome! more than anything we plan on playing the CD live and a bunch of other fun tunes too. There is no cover and without there being any pressure to move units at the party to make up costs - i think it will be a ridiculously fun night!


now, i have set up a little store widget in this blog. it's located just to the right on top of al the other widgets. Basically at this point we have the album available as a digital download OR a CD that you can order. each of the individual tracks are also available as 99 cent downloads too. there are ringtones available - which is awesome if you're into that. we also have a handful of shirts designed as well - they are all new and yes, we had a lot of fun with some of these. hey, this band is a fun band - we want that to come through in the products people buy from us. oh, we will be distributing very soon through many various online music retailers as well. sites like itunes, amazon mp3, last fm, yadda yadda yadda - are all in the process of carrying "Coming Home" - yay!


this is the first time that i have had product available like this - where technology has been at the forefront as the primary method to distribute music and merchandise. i'm working toward getting a small inventory together for live shows. a short run of CD's and some digital download cards are in the very near future. we'll get some shirts to have on hand and some of the smaller promo items - but the large selection will be mainly online as far as merchandise goes. that's not to say we won't offer some live show only "special" stuff however! the feedback so far has been awesome - i'm just hoping to hear from even more people about their thoughts on the release.


we have a slow month lined up for August as far as shows go - that's a good thing though! after saturday's party we have one more event lined up - the BCBM Presents: Paper City's Muddy Roots/Deep Blues Jam Sessions on Saturday 8/27. i'm really looking forward to this as a regular series for BCBM. my goal is to bring in more artists to feature and develop working relationship with larger touring acts. a place where an artist could swing in knowing that this has a good core group of participants and spectators - and feel like it was a good stop to make on their tour. The 27th features Henry's Rifle - and i'm feeling pretty excited about having John on the bill for the kick-off BCBM Sessions!


we'll leave it at that - i do plan on a sunday morning blog entry as i work while half asleep chugging coffee in order to cling to consciousness. ahh - the life of a blue collar musician!