Been a good coupla days

Gettin lots done and been seeing some great music.



Wednesday had practices with Arcana Mundi and Thunderosa both fall through. So spent the day rewiring and fixing things.

Got my stricken tricked out Crybaby working again. Swapped out a faulty switch probably a year and a half ago and been dead ever since. Thought it was gone for good so was going to harvest parts to trick out the new one I just got from AJ (Thunderosa). But checked switch wiring and I'll be damned. Bonehead-wired it. No woinder it seemed dead. Had that remedied soon as the soldering iron heated up.

Also for shits and giggles added an IC socket to my Marshall Lead 12, so I could swap out op-amps and dial the tone to taste. Really digging it, and sounds much better now that I'm not using fucked up instrument cables with it, heh. Used it for Arcana Mundi's inaugural warm up gig and it did great even tho I was using it more as an acoustic amp. Bought it from South Austin Music a few weeks back.



But the power strip on my pedal board died shortly before set time so that was next on my list. Replaced old (ground connector broke off months ago) with a new one. However no room for my wah pedal on the smaller pedal board I use, and also noticed my already iffy daisy chain power cable was getting iffier. Well crap.

Also looked into tweaky pickup selector switch on Paul Stanley Iceman. Might just have to rewire it again, or just totally rewire the whole guitar, as over the years that thing has had more surgery than Joan Rivers' face. For another day.

Had the night off Thursday, as ETB gig was cancelled for a private party at Friends. So went with Trin to see The Beaumonts and The Hickoids at Hole in the Wall. Good times! The Beaumonts are old friends from the Southern Gun Culture days, they used to play heavy rock as Hognose and did some albums with Arclight Records. As that wound down they for fun started a parody of an outlaw country band, singing some of the most offensive and hilarious country lyrics ever conceived by the human mind.

Then it started to take off. They've since opened for the likes of David Allan Coe, and Ray Wylie Hubbard loves them. Hell yeah, good for them and good to see them as well, been awhile. Their drummer Gary also drums for Shandon Sahm.



Caught a good portion of The Hickoids set but spent much of it catching up with all of our friends there, as I was too rapt and laughing my ass off during The Beaumonts set to make the rounds earlier. Good stuff, good times, good people and great music!

Last night we went downtown to Lucky Lounge to see our good friend Ric Furley play drums for our other friend, singer Deann Renee. More good times with good people playing great music. Deann has an amazing set of pipes, and Ric owns it as always. Towards end of the set got an invite from the Forever Town boys to head to Beauty Ballroom for a showcase of some of producer Frenchie Smith's bands. Sweet! And to think we were contemplating heading home early, heh.

Decided best course of action was to get me a slice of pizza, as I'd forgone dinner in order to get to Lucky Lounge earlier to catch more of the Deann Renee set. But change of plans, and I was getting a headache from lack of fuel. Found a meter at 7th and Trinity, perfect! Hoboken Pie on the way to the venue. Didn't help my headache but at least some something to keep me going. But then it dawned on us... Beauty Bar (which we were walking to) had closed. Where the hell was Beauty Ballroom?!?

So we mapquested it, shit. Off Riverside, 2 miles away. So we abandoned out parking spot and headed south over the river. Very nice place, never been there before. Burning Avalanche onstage when we got there. There was an old hippie doing the old school overhead projector oil/light show. Oh my God was it fucking cool to see that in action by someone who obviously knew exactly what the hell he was doing.

Caught up with Frenchie and Danny and Jayson from Forever Town. Wanted to stay all night or at least catch part of Scorpion Child. But my damn headache prevented either. Well shit. Big show the next evening and dont want to overdo it and get sick.

Tonight is the big Without Regrets benefit at Threadgill's South. We close the night out after The Soldier Thread and Vallejo. Hosted by our good friend B-Doe from KLBJ-FM.

A great lineup at a great venue and all for a great cause. #STOKED

'Leap of Faith' album review

Got my first review for 'Leap of Faith' courtesy of TheObelisk.net!

http://theobelisk.net/obelisk/2012/06/25/dannygreview/

Danny G 'Leap of Faith': Pressure and Time

by HP Taskmaster

Leap of Faith is the second full-length from Austin, Texas-based multi-instrumentalist Danny Grochow – aka Danny G. His first outing was 2010’s Ocean of Stars. Like its follow-up, Ocean of Stars was recorded over the course of February’s 28 days with Grochow as a participant in the RPM Challenge to create an album from scratch in a month’s time. No word on whether the extra day he got from 2012 being a leap year gave him a leg up on Leap of Faith, or whether the title is a reference to that, but the fact remains that for being put down on a digital eight-track in a month and for Grochow having played guitar, bass and drums as well as recorded himself and done the full art layout on his own, it’s an impressive feat. That’s not to say it’s perfect, but I don’t think perfection is the idea in the first place, and for what Grochow is playing on Leap of Faith’s six tracks, the kind of self-contained, humble production actually fits really well. Something too overblown wouldn’t work, but the atmosphere on even more active material like “Rare Earth Metals” is intimate, and while the flirtations with psychedelia on opener “Leap of Faith: Symphony in D Standard” don’t really come across with the swirl reaching as far into space as it otherwise might, Grochow is more than able to get his point across, his effectively layered guitar leading the way there and almost at every other point on the entirely instrumental album.

It’s a better headphone listen, as proximity of volume seems to push the songs more to the forefront of consciousness, but part of what makes Leap of Faith work through speakers is the chill factor, that you can put it on and let it zone you out while you listen. That may not be the most in-your-face approach, but the Brant Bjork-style grooves on “Leap of Faith: Symphony in D Standard” or the later “Give us the Key” make it seem like laid back was Grochow’s intent all along, and it’s something these songs have in common with Ocean of Stars. It’s not that the music doesn’t get heavy – “Rare Earth Metals” has more dynamic range on both ends than it might immediately seem following the skillfully played nylon acoustics of “Luna en Sombra” – but that even when it does, the production allows for a consistency of atmosphere. There’s only so far it’s going to go, and indeed, only so far it wants to go. Grochow, whose main gig is playing bass with the blues rocking Eric Tessmer Band, shows a clear love of guitar. Maybe that’s a way for him to shake up his routine, but he’s obviously capable of using the instrument, electrically or acoustic, to set and build ambience. Leap of Faith is solo without being self-indulgent and engaging without losing its underlying lonely sensibility – a surprising balance that deepens the listen. It’s not definitively rock, or heavy rock, but vaguely progressive and an honest-sounding exploration. Somewhere else, some other context, a drumless song like “Krim: The Sound of Kali” might be bedroom-type neo folk.

That song, the closer, reaches nine minutes exactly, and the next closest is the opener at 7:50, but even shorter material like the penultimate “Give us the Key” (4:39) or “Rare Earth Metals” (5:42) has time to breathe and space for some development and progression to take place, and Grochow, though he’s working alone, puts that time to solid use. “Rare Earth Metals” starts out with a chugging riff that serves as the foundation on which the melody is gradually introduced, the drums following suit in straightforward fashion. Curiously for his being a bassist professionally, Leap of Faith isn’t especially heavy on low end, and even its most weighted stretches feel airier than they might were the tones coated in heavy rocking fuzz. Still, there is something heavy underneath all those subdued atmospherics; Grochaw’s minor-key lead in the second half of “Rare Earth Metals” feels like a nod to something more aggressive than bluesy, and I can’t help but think of Slayer’s “Dead Skin Mask” when I hear the ringing tones just about 10 seconds into “Leap of Faith: Symphony in D Standard.” But if he’s working at all with those kinds of influence – and it could just as easily be me reading into it – he’s doing so in restrained fashion, and “Give us the Key”’s rolling groove is about as thunderous as he seems to want to get.

No complaints on that front. The form and the methodology seem to suit Grochow well, and Leap of Faith ultimately benefits from the freshness of its component tracks, all of which were written as well as recorded over the course of that same month earlier this year. Whatever it took Danny G. to get to the point where he went from “zero” to “album” in the span of four weeks, it was a worthwhile excursion, and while I’d wager the more difficult part than the actual recording was writing, mixing, assembling and the rest of what goes into making an album – he seems pretty able to handle his eight-track here, and since it’s not his first time making a record like this, it’s safe to say he has some experience with it – the efforts have still produced endearing results. It isn’t a landmark album, but it wears its humanity on its sleeve, which is rare for a digital self-recording/self-release, and there’s a lot of arguments put to bed quickly by, “Well it was written and recorded in 28 days.” I might be intrigued to hear what Grochow could do with a band behind him, someone either playing bass or guitar and someone on drums in a power trio, since that seems to be what parts of the album are looking to recreate, but I guess that’s a different project altogether. Don’t write it off as impossible, though. We already know Danny G. likes to take on a good challenge every now and then.