December 2013 - Really?

Just a quick update: Life has been a major storm the last couple of years.
2012 - My darling wife diagnosed with Bi-polar II - what a whirlwind and on top of that we had a major home remodeling project going on at the same time. Add again I had to change jobs in late 2011 and learning and adapting to a new job was twisted into that mess.  Now to think of it I should be a total wreck but wait...
2013 - In late 2012 just as the bi-polar/remodeling storm was subsiding, my job stress was cranking up and my boss began writing me up for some ambiguous things. The first I took in stride and said we could both work better on communication and that now that I know certain meetings were a priority, I would make them just that. I thought things were good until I got written up again, this time for not getting a couple of different projects done in time although they never had a priority or date to complete set, we made them then and I proceed to meet the objectives. I was in a bit of shock as I told them I had never been put under these PIPs (performance improvement plans) before in my career but I would work harder and do better which i did. I had the feeling I should start looking for new work but my goal was to accept the challenge and see if I could meet and weather the storm. I met and exceed all that was asked of me until one day...
I made a mistake and accidentally disconnected connectivity to the email servers due to troubleshooting. Although my initial testing showed nothing wrong, I didn't 'react in a timely manner' and with a smile on my boss's face he released me. At the same time the 'big' projects that I was brought on for ended and the techs were back in-house working in my environment without talking to me, one of my guys moved to a new position and I wasn't brought in until the day he moved, so the the writing was on the proverbial wall months before I was let go. They just picked a weird way to go about it which sucked but here I am 10 months later still with no job but somehow making it through life.
I'll write more later on my experience as a 56 year old job hunter.

Battle of The Blues Bands 2011

Last February my band was invited to take part in a local Battle of the Blues Bands. Winners get to play the big stage at the downtown Blues Fest. My expectations were not high at all, I was just glad to get the opportunity to play at a great venue that we were trying to get into. The first gig on March 6th was us and another three bands. Two bands would go onto the semi-finals. I kind of expected us going one and done as we were pretty raw and assumed the other bands would be pretty tight but we had a 50/50 shot. So we took advantage of that night and hired a photographer to snap some photos and set up a video camera to capture our performance. We drew number four so we were going to go on last. It seemed like a really long wait and the other bands were really good.

When our turn finally came, it went awesome, we were well received by the audience and even got a standing ovation for our last tune. Wow! We were going onto the semi-finals! How sweet I thought, another chance to play this venue but we will probably be eliminated then. Competition will be tougher plus we only had one week to prepare.

March 13th, again we were pitted against two other good bands plus one of the bands we won with. This time we drew number 1 and would go on first. Yikes! even if we did well I didn't think the judges would remember us after hearing the other three bands. We didn't hold back and kicked it in high gear getting a great audience response. We watched the other three bands perform and the one group was a band of seasoned vets and did some pretty tasty stuff, the band that came with us played third and brought some new tunes and added a sax. The last band was a group of kids with a horn line and they really played well. Part of the scoring was based on audience response and participation and besides the band that won with us, I thought we had really lit the audience up. If it went on band quality, I thought the kids were probably the most prolific that night. Well anyway, two more winners were announced to go onto the finals and the first band called was the band that we won the previous week with. We made friends with these guys and were glad for them. Then we won! Yes! Yes! We were going to the Finals!!! This time we had 3 weeks to prepare.

April 10th - This time we drew number two. Number one was a kid phenom guitar player fresh out of high school who hired musicians to back him up. Vocals were not that great but guitar playing and dynamics were very good. The great thing about him on first is it fired up Al to light up his guitar leads so when we went on, he was on fire! We had a great set. The other two bands were good as well and our friends pulled in a new song for this gig. So the winners get called and we came in third place. The kid came in second and our new friends came in first. We were excited for them but thought their performance was a bit off and sound was harsh so we were surprised they won. I thought we had a good shot at winning and so did a number of unsolicited people who stopped me to give me their opinion so we were disappointed but I was still really happy we made it that far. After reflecting on it overnight I realized it was more about best potential for drawing people to the blues fest. The number one and two winners had a thousand followers on Facebook compared to our two hundred. The guys that came in fourth only had fifty. Anyway it was a really fun experience and special to see my friends come and support me. That was so cool and unexpected.

So move ahead to June and we get a call wondering if we available at this same venue to open for Savoy Brown. Well of course we were! This time was very different as we didn't have enough time to drum up followers to come see us and were going to perform in front of people waiting to see Savoy Brown. This could get ugly if they didn't like us. I am happy to say it actually went really well and the crowd gave us some great applause. No one danced, they were all listeners so to me that tells me we must have a pretty decent sound.

Now tomorrow night we are back again for a "Best of the Battle of the Blues Bands" along with our friends who won it all and another band. It should be a great time.

So there is a recap since January. I'll try to post up in a couple weeks after we go through a few more gigs. Right now I am keeping the venues and bands anonymous. If you recognize the picture, then you'll know the details.

Groove Hawks ~*~

Some years ago I signed up for Bandmix.com to keep options open of possibly jamming with someone or joining a band. Last year about this time I got an email from a bass player "TripleD" who does not live far away trying to get a blues band together for a summer gig. He had also got a hold of another guitar player "Face Melter" who lived south of the river and we got together at his house and jammed a bit. It was fun. Talked about music and explored some things. It went well but we needed a drummer so TripleD reached out to someone "Skull Cracker" who he knew that was a rock drummer but interested in trying something new and the next thing we knew we had the Groove Hawks!

We had a few gigs over the last several months and lots of possibilities now for 2011. Check us out. www.groovehawks.com Our mantra is we rock the blues.

I recommend one of these for everyone

This Talk Box thingy is a blast so if you're feeling blue, just plug in, stick the hose in your mouth and become one with your guitar.

I get to play with this this coming weekend on 2 different tunes and since I am only doing lead guitar, the way this system works, I won't need a guitar amp so I get to pack somewhat light.

The topic this weekend is "Myth - God Wants Me To Be Rich" so we are going to do a jam on the Pink Floyd - Money progression to open the service and then for the song before the message we are doing Weezer's Beverly Hills. Now I just need to figure out how to fit this into every tune I do. :-P

I did learn something about these. Apparently the old ones used to have a bypass on the guitar amp so the amp would switch between using it's speaker or blowing noise through the tube. Apparently this switching back and forth was kind of risky for the amp so this Rocktron Banshee model has its own built-in amp and speaker system. When you hit the switch it bypasses it completely and goes straight to your amp in the same way a Boss Tuner works.

By the way, if you want to play my Talk Box, bring your own hose. I'm not into swapping spit unless it's with my wife.

Guitar Talkbox

So we're doing a song at church that gave the excuse and I had a little extra cash from some things I've sold so I bought me a guitar toy that I've always wanted for fun since the 70's. Besides Frampton, Jeff Beck, Bon Jovi, and Stevie Wonder have made this famous and now you can hear it alot using keyboards with some hip hop tunes.

Introducing Presonus Inspire

A few weeks back while I was in Kansas City attending a family wedding, my son and I stopped into the Guitar Center there. I thought I would check out recording equipment and I ran into a sales guy who actually seemed to know his stuff pretty good. He was able to explain the pros and cons of the different systems that could do basically what I wanted which was turn my computer into a mini-recording studio. So for bang for the buck, he showed the Presonus Inspire GT. The GT was a labelling package that Guitar Center had put together just for them, otherwise this unit is known by Inspire 1394.

So the pros? It has the ability to record 2 channels at one time in either 1/4 inch or XLR connections. It came with a miriad of software which most of it I am not sure I will ever use. The system came with a CD (that I could read) with Cubase LE and tutorial videos to get quick started. It was fairly simple to set up although a bit involved but the biggest plus I got all this at a pretty decent price comparative to the other options and features.

And the cons? The "bonus" DVD with the software can't be read (could be damaged, not sure). I need to get myself over to Gtr Ctr here and see if they can do me some justice. My first recordings played back hiss and static which I couldn't figure out where or why it was doing that although I cured it with a firmware upgrade. Our sound man at church one Sunday happened to be using a 16 track mixer and his iBook with Cubase and I was able to pick his brain a bit and he was the one who told me to try the firmware upgrade. bingo! Thanks James.

So after fumbling a round off and on for a week or three, I finally am doing some simple recording. This is one of those things you can easily get lost in and 2 or 3 hours can fly by in an instant. The hard part now is finding the time and energy to devote a few hours to focus on this as the days continue to go by. I am hoping as time goes on, it will just get easier and become an easy tool to use.

1 Year Later

So I decided to dust off this idea again and try to figure out how I could easily record song ideas I have and think I have something new and somewhat inexpensive to try. The M-Audio Fast Track USB may be the ticket.

I've heard the 'lite' audio engineering software that comes with it will do exactly what I need which is basically let me record a vocal melody line and my guitar playing a chord progression good enough to make an mp3 I can share with my fellow bandmates.

I know there are even more 'suped' up versions of this but I'll worry about that once I take a baby step.