Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Dead Oak track, and other stuff.

Check this out.

Few months back I did a bass recording session with the band Dead Oak with J Yeunger of White Zombie fame engineering. Fun stuff, good to get back to some of my stoner rock roots.

Here's "Wizard Sleeve"



Forgot to post, got rough mixes awhile back and been so busy I've barely had time to listen to them. Pretty darn cool sounding \m/,

Also check this out, poster I made for Eric Tessmer's birthday show this weekend:



I'm pretty proud of it, heh

In other news, did the ETB Monday residency last night at Friends. No noise ordinance problems, but the closed windows did make for a smaller crowd. Go figure.

Right before we started I saw a movement on one of the EV's in my bass cab. It was a huge cockroach. It then crawled into the vent in the cab. Boy is that thing in for a ride. I'm thinking it survived, as those fuckers can survive anything. I never did see it. If still in there, I hope it doesn't crawl out into my van.

In other news, I'm putting together my birthday shindig at Headhunters next month. Talking IRONCLAD reunion so that's cool! Also asked Adrian and the Sickness, waiting to hear back. Keep y'all posted.

"The Music Lesson" by Victor Wooten



If you are a musician, get this book. If you love music, get this book. If you love to read, get this book.

Music is Life.

Just, wow.

I feel like a different person after reading this recently. There are many Music lessons as well as Life lessons in this book. I was able to apply many of them to my Life and Music immediately. Others will work themselves in over the course of my Life.

I already want to read it again, but we gave our copy to our good friend Ric Furley for his birthday. We will buy another, read it, and pass it along to someone else. Buy another copy, read it, repeat.

Busy week last week.

Still resting up from that one even tho it is now well into this week.

4 gigs. 2 noise ordinance warnings. 1 house party.

ETB did our Monday residency at Friends. Good crowd. 3/4 thru along came APD with a noise meter. The wondows were closed, which has been negatively affecting our crowds. I saw the cops and signaled to Rob to bring the level down. So we all "tucked in" and got really quiet, heh. No dice. Friends was still popped with a warning. Fucking hell.

Tuesday night ETB did a weird not-very-private-but-in-fact-totally-open-to-the-public party at BD Riley's, a weird night for us there. Decent night so far. Windows are open allowing foot traffic to hear us from across the street, which greatly increases our crowd. Sure enough, I'm out smoking a cigarette during a walk-around jam (wireless units are awesome, I highly recommend them), I look over and see APD with a noise meter. I run over to Rob and get his attention, and I signal to tuck it in and lower stage volume. We do this. Venue still got a warning. Windows were then closed. Son of a bitch.

Friday ETB played our good friend Lisa's house warming party, setting up in her living room. Good times, intimate gathering (most of guests in the kitchen behind us... maybe the cops are right and we are too loud, heh!). Either way it was a good set and it sounded pretty darn good in there to boot. High ceiling helped.

Video and photos courtesy of DaveTV, ETB performing "Smokestack" by Doyle Bramhall II







After our noise ordinance violation warning-less set in a fucking tightly packed neighborhood, Trin and I loaded up my gear to catch a rare Hognose set at the Triple Crown in San Marcos, 30 miles away. We barely made it, and glad we came out.

Hognose are good friends of mine, have been hanging out with them and playing shows with them since the Southern Gun Culture days in the early 2000's. We were even labelmates briefly. So I haven't seen Hognose in I don't know how many years, but I have seen the Hognose guys several times as their alter-egos The Beaumonts. Trin had never seen Hognose, and loved them. She commented how weird it was to not see them in character as The Beaumonts. HA! Awesome.

Again, pics to come.

Without Regrets Benefit, etc

Time Warp again.

The Without Regrets benefit at Threadgill's on July 28 was an overwhelming success. What an amazing show for such a great cause. Great sets by The Soldier Thread, Vallejo and Friends, and ETB blew up the stage for a blistering hour + set.

The event raised more than $7000. Awesome! Triniti talked to the benefit sponsors, donated a Reiki session as a raffle prize, and talked about Concerts 4 Cures and Without Regrets joining forces for a future benefit event. At the end of the night she won 2 weekend passes to Austin City Limits Fest from her single raffle ticket. Amazing! Now to submit my essay on why I should be her date ;)



Photos courtesy of DaveTV







Photos courtesy Triniti Young





And this was the first show I played since reading "The Music Lesson" by Victor Wooten. Which will be a post unto itself.

Other things that happened since this amazing event...

The following Friday (Aug 3) I dusted off my Marshall JCM800 full stack for the first time since IRONCLAD several years ago to join Thunderosa onstage at the Dirty Dog! That was a blast. I didn't know all the songs but Mike the bassist was instrumental in cuing me for things I couldn't slop my way through, heh. Good times and good-time loud rock n roll. Hopefully more guest lead guitar slots with them to come. Pics of the night coming soon.