Almost Travel Time

On this Monday morning, I'm thinking back to the past few days and looking ahead to what's in store.  At the tail-end of last week, Julie and I had a garage sale.  Since we bought the house and moved in, we've been trying to turn it into a "home" and part of that is to first, purge the crap!  So on Thurs/ Fri/ Sat we opened up our garage to neighbors and strangers alike and offered them the relics of our past for a dollar or two.  I would say in total, it was a disappointment.  Julie and I made $102...hardly worth the time spent getting it ready and vacation time taken from work in order to man it.  But, at the same time, that probably equates to about 100 less items in our house, so in that respect, it's good to at least get some of the crap gone out of our lives.  Mom, being the g-sale pro that she is, has offered to just pack up what we have remaining and take it all to her house for storage through the winter.  Then, in June or so, she'll have another g-sale at her place and see if we can't get rid of the rest of that stuff.  My momma treats me so good!

On the first day, Ruby had her lemonade stand set up, which is always a little bit of a draw for the neighbors.  Nothing cuter than meeting the little girl across the street to buy some lemonade.  It was cute in the days leading up to it, because we had talked about it ahead of time.  She said to my mom with a furrowed brow, "I'm excited for my lemonade stand, Gramma...but I don't really know how the dollars work."  After a little clarifying, Gramma figured out what she was worried about was making change for poeple...haha!  My little lovie!  Needless to say, she did just fine.  How come we don't see more kids with lemonade stands anymore these days?

After the garage sale was done on the last day, I was ready for a drink!  One of Julie's longtime friends, Jolene, was in town for the weekend, so that worked as a good excuse to go out and blow off some steam.  Jolene  now lives in Chicago with her husband and was just back for a short family visit.  We all met up at the Empress and proceeded to "get it on"!  Julie and I got there about 8:30pm and didn't leave until after the 2am close....a full night.  I remember that we told Jolene how rad her name is and that if we ever have a daughter together, that's what we're going to name her.  Everybody was quite excited about that.  Promises, promises....

Now, we're 4 sleeps away from leaving for the Gorge to see the Dave Matthews Band.  Right now, that's all I can think about!  I've been to the Gorge twice before; once for DMB and another time to see Phish.  Julie's gonna love it there.  I've always been lucky with the weather there, never having anything other than extreme sunshine, so I hope it works out that way again.  As it sits right now, I have zero idea where we're going to stay once we get there.  I tried calling around to the campgrounds and hotels when I bought the tickets back in May, but they were all booked up already.  Mind you, I didn't have a place booked in advance the last time I went down, so I'm hoping everything works out  again for us.  I'm confident it will.

One thing I'm sure everyone can agree on with seeing DMB are the expectations laid on the set-lists.  Being a jam band and prolific performers, they keep their shows different every single time out.  You have to think of the set-lists as kind of like collecting hockey cards; what are they gonna play?  Are they going to bust out any rarities?  New stuff vs. old stuff?  Standards and cool covers....the set-list is an important reason as to why you have to see bands like this as often as you can.  Speaking of which, I've seen DMB six times so far....with these two Gorge shows we're about to catch, that'll bring my total to eight.  Here are some links to the set-lists I have so far in my collection of DMB experiences:
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453055783&tid=12&where=2002
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453055997&tid=72&where=2003
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453056306&tid=87&where=2006
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453056305&tid=87&where=2006
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453056307&tid=87&where=2006
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453056628&tid=104&where=2009

The opening band for DMB will be Ben Harper, who I'm pretty stoked about.  I mean, let's face it, he's a headliner in his own right.  We saw Ben with Relentless 7 at the New Orleans Jazz Festival in 2009 and I thought he killed it.  When Ben was here in Edmonton for the Folk Festival a couple of weeks ago (which I was unable to atttend) he played an acoustic set and said it was due to a serious illness with one of the band members in Relentless 7, so I'm curious to see what happens at the Gorge show.  Either way, I know I'll enjoy it.  So, the countdown to the Gorge is on!  Awesome way to close out summer...I can't wait!

The Friday Five

All right, everyone....it's time for the second installment of the Friday Five!  Let's see what my little shuffle button has in sotre for us today:

Gypsy Rose - Ben Kweller, Changing Horses

Okay, well I just bought this album like, two weeks ago.  And suffice to say, I like it.  I've only listened to it a couple of times through, but it's really pretty good.  I find him to sound a little Dylan-ish, but fresher.  I first heard his name when I read about The Bens.  A few years ago, he got together with Ben Lee and Ben Folds (who I really like) and did a short tour together.  I always kind of kept my eye open for one of his albums ever since which, as I mentioned, I finally just picked up at Blackbyrd Myoozik.  Anyway, his talent for songwriting is evident...this song is the first song on the album, which sets a tone for what you're in store for.



Guyute - Phish, The Story of the Ghost
This album is largely improvisational, which is different for a studio album.  I think it would also be considered one of Phish's "funkier" albums.  This song would qualify as an epitomic Phish tune.  Very operatic and winding.  Love it!  The opening line, "Guyute was the ugly pig..." acts as a call to action for fans at a live show to "dance a jig".  This is a song that will typically induce long improv jams during a live show as well, due to the ever changing tones, time signatures and pace in it's original album format.

Time Tough - Toots & the Maytals feat. Ryan Adams, True Love

Well, Toots is a legend on the reggae scene and this album from 2004 was entirely done in duets with a different artist on every track.  Time Tough, features Ryan Adams, who has a pretty good solo career going on right now, after a great many albums with Whiskeytown.  This album with it's duets really demonstrates the diversity of reggae, as it matches with any other genre of musician.  Others to take part in songs on this album include Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, Ben Harper, Bootsy Collins, Keith Richards and of course, Trey Anastasio.  Adam's Americana vocal drawl fits right in!

Eat Your Heart - Micachu, Jewellery

Probably considered one of the weirder albums I have in my collection...but I like that kinda thing.  Micachu is the stage name of Mica Levi.  Together with her band, The Shapes they prodcue largely experimental music, mostly featuring her playing an acoustic half-guitar in alternate tunings, a ton of distortion and using noise from everyday found objects.  It's awesome!  Apparantly she's also known for often making homemade instruments.  Sounds to me like the kind of person I would like to see live!

Ramblin' Man - The Allman Brothers Band, Best of the Allman Brothers

What can you say about a classic song like this from such a classic band?  Everyone knows this one and has to be on everybody's playlist when they take a highway trip.  This band, with Gregg & Duane Allman are the stuff legends are made of.  Duane died in a motorcycle accident early in the band's career, but they decided to carry on.  Dickey Betts filled into Duane's spot and definitely made his own footprint on this band.  They're still playing and touring today with another couple of legendary guitarists; Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks.  Being a guitar fan, this band always made it's mark with that instrument and continues to do so. 


Okay...I gotta run!  Happy Friday everyone!

The best part about festivals....

With the Austin City Limits music festival approaching, I came across a listing of all the "after party shows".  This is rad!  As I'm now learning about the larger music festivals, it seems a lot of musical acts play side-gigs in bars around town.  What an unbelievable way to see some of your favorite bands! 

The first time I experienced this was at the New Orleans Jazz Festival that Julie and I attended in Spring, 2009.  There were so many of those type of gigs, often running concurrently, that we had to make some hard choices between who we might get to go see.  The saving grace, of course, is that when one act sells out, there's ususally another one to go see the same night anyway...disappointment averted!

In NOLA, one act that I was dying to go see was Tim Reynolds.  He's more commonly known as one of Dave Matthews' colleagues.  They've released two live albums together, "Live at Luther College" and "Live at Radio City Music Hall".  Tim now plays and tours with DMB full-time.  He is an absolutely ridculous guitar player.  We caught him at a bar called Tipitina's.  Maybe 250 people there or so...up close and personal.  I think the tickets were $12.00.  And he did not disappoint.  I remember he started the gig with a Led Zeppelin cover and finished the show with a Led Zeppelin cover.  Bookends, as it were.  Naturally, a lot of people at the gig were anticipating a guest spot by Dave and Tim played with us on that.  In the middle of the show, this guy dressed up in a Winnie the Pooh costume danced out onto the stage (wearing a gas mask, no less) and bopped around for a couple of songs. 

At first everyone assumed it was Dave, and although the life-sized Pooh bear never revealed his face, I think everyone eventually realized the joke was on us.  But let me tell you, the effect of it all was so much fun!  That was a terrific show.

Another special one that we saw was Death Cab for Cutie.  They played in the underground unloading dock at the New Orleans Art Gallery, so picture going into an underground parkade, all cement and very spacious.  The crowd was maybe around 500 people, all standing and dancing, packed together.  Tickets for that one were $20.  It actually still stands up as one of the best shows I've ever been to.  I wasn't even a monster fan.  But after seeing them play live, especially in that kind of intimate setting, I was hooked.  Ben Gibbard was almost made for that kind of gig....he portrays an intimate kind of personality and I was lucky to have seen it. 

Other highlight gigs we saw included Susan Tedeschi at the House of Blues and one of Julie's favorites, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, also at the House of Blues.  Julie got her picture taken with the five foot nuthin' Ms. Jones and afterwards, while walking back towards Bourbon Street, we met up with a couple of the Dap Kings on a street corner while waiting for the light to change.  We walked with them and talked for a couple of blocks and were totally blown away by how accessible and friendly these guys were.

Anyway, for ACL the list of bar gigs include Thursday night shows by First Aid Kit (a Swedish pair of girls we've recently discovered) and Spoon, who we saw play at the NOLA Jazz Fest.  Friday night, the highlight gig will be the Black Keys, playing at a place called Stubb's. But the best of them all....the one that we can hardly believe, is Sonic Youth, playing on the Saturday night at a bar called La Zona Rosa.  As mentioned before, this is Julie's all time favorite band.  She's never seen them play live and to be sure, they are the main reason she's so excited to go to ACL.  Now to find out that not only are they playing at the festival, but also in a bar while we're there...it's almost too much for my poor girl to take!  It promises to be a helluva gig. 

The energy for these kinds of experiences are fantastic.  For bands that have reached the "big time" and are  playing stadiums for 70,000 people all over the world, it's got to be a thrill of sorts to get back to where they all started; playing bar gigs.  And for the fans to be so up close and intimate with their heroes...well, even though I'm not as big of a fan of Sonic Youth as Julie, let's just say I have my own reasons for wanting to see Kim Gordon, et al up close.  ------------------>

*wink, wink*

Now, if we could only convince Phish that they should play in a pub....

The Friday Five

It's a take on one of our favorite social networking games, where you do any variation of things to do with reporting the results of hitting shuffle on your iPod.  I see some of the people I follow on Twitter often do a Song of the Day, so this kind of blends the two together.  Hence:  The Friday Five.

I'll hit the shuffle for five songs and write a little blurb about each.  Today, I'm using my iPhone for the task which has a limited number of songs on it compared to my iPod at home.  So, we're only going to be able to sample from 2327 tracks today.....

1. Icky Thump (Live) - The White Stripes, Under Great White Northern Lights
This is a terrific live album, taken exclusively from their famed Canadian tour in which they played every province and territory.  I remember vividly how excited I was to see them play at the Shaw Conference Centre, which hosts a small crowd of maybe 2000 ppl. or so.  I was super pumped!  Then I got the news that I was obliged to go with my wife and in-laws on a trip to a wedding in Hudson Hope, B.C. for one of my sister-in-law's friends.  Are you frickin' kidding me?  Now I'm divorced and even more bitter that I had to miss the show!

2. The Righteous & The Wicked - Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik

A couple of summers ago I went on one of the most fun little vacations of my life; my pal, Lorezo and I went for a boys trip to the Okanagan for 10 days.  We took his boat, pitched our tent in a campground across the street from the marina in Penticton and lived like kings.  We would drop the boat in the lake at 8am every day, dive in for our morning cleanse, then float, drift and drive our little yellow speedboat around the lake until about 6:30pm when we got out, got dressed and went for dinner at Salty's for some killer cuisine.  It was 30 degrees every day and we were just completely living "beached out" the whole time.  Whether boating around in Skaha Lake or just laying there in the sun, this Chili Peppers album was one of only about 5 CD's that we had in the boat and rotated through constantly. Whenever I hear this band, all I can think of is the summer I spent on the lake in the boat with Lar.

3. Wedge - Phish, Rift
Back in the mid 90's, a buddy was telling me about Phish and trying to get me into them.  Although I always thought they were okay, I never really sat down and gave them the good, hard listen they deserved until many years later.  Now, I list Phish as probably my favorite band.  Anyway, "Rift" is the album my friend had lent me back then, so the first album I've ever heard of theirs.  This particular song was the easiest one to recognize later in life when I became a fan and tried to remember what album it was I had heard before.  I remember that line being so catchy; Take the highway through the Great Divide.....

4. Seek Up - Dave Matthews Band, Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95
This album was actually the first live release from DMB...a trend that became their bread and butter.  To date, the band has released 15 live albums, compared to 7 studio albums.  But that's the appeal of this band, seeing them live.  As I mentioned in a previous posting, I'm going to see them in just a couple of weeks at the Gorge in Washington.  "Seek Up" is the first song on disc number one of this album and is one of my favorites.  This particular version is a smoker that clocks in at 13:29...the longest track on the album.

5. An Echo, A Stain - Bjork, Vespertine

I love Bjork!  God, everything about her; her musical artistry, her visual artistry...just the way she sees and interprets the world.  Not to mention she's definitely on my top list of gorgeous women!  We should all be so lucky as to open up and enjoy who is one of most rare kind of people amongst out current pop culture...just a true artist.  This album was defined by it's "microbeats".  She created soundscapes from an array of sampled objects and is considered an intimate album.  A quote from Bjork, "I was bored of big beats.  This is more electronic folk music, music for the home. It's corny to make a soundtrack for making a sandwich, but I quite like it. For so long I wanted to whisper. It was a watercolour as opposed to an oil."  An Echo, A Stain is a quiet song that builds to a strong finish.

                                 

Reverb The Noun

I've been back to jamming more lately and sometimes, like now, all I can think about is playing that guitar.  Lately it's all been about the Telecaster.  It's got a real nice twang that I like; sometimes, I describe it as sounding like a rusted out, broken down ol' pickup truck that's laying in an overgrown field behind greyed-out wooden fence posts.

Anyway, I've been in this real kind of alt-country/ Americana kind of music mood lately...and I gotta say, it's workin' for me.  So many great bands and musicians are really turning me on.  The big ones at the moment include Wilco, Lucinda Williams or anything Jack White touches.  Last few nights I've been playing some Wilco tunes from their album, "Sky Blue Sky" and have two down pat and comfortable: "You Are My Face" and "What Light".  Ruby and I often sing the latter in the car together...she loves the chorus.  Anyway, it's nice to get a few more songs down for my eventual track list of my fantasy album. 

I would like to believe, however, that the fantasy really isn't all the hard to achieve.  Fact is, I would love to find one or two guys to jam with and lay down some tracks.  It ain't that hard.  I know a lot of guys probably aren't that interested in doing covers, but I don't care.  There's a lot of great stuff out there and everybody get influence from someone.  So, until I learn how to write some original material, I'll just have to keep playing other people's songs!  So far, I do have a bit of a track listing, although I'm always learning and changing.  To be perfectly frank, one of my ambitions is to record a little CD at home to give to friends and family for Christmas.  One format I've thought about is to pick and "assign" a specific song for people in my life and use those on the gift CD.  As an example, I would do "Good To Be King" for Lorenzo; "No One's Gonna Love You" for Julie; etc.

In a lark of a conversation, started at the Empress one night with a couple friends, the idea was formed that led to the name of a band that we would start, "Reverb The Noun".  So far, I'm the only member of this band, but what the hell.  So I bring to you, my fantasy reading public, the first glimpse into the tracklist of the forthcoming album by

Reverb The Noun:

1. Hotel Yorba,  by the White Stripes

2. Pineola, by Lucinda Williams

3. You Are My Face, by Wilco

4. Good To Be King, by Tom Petty

5. Rain & Snow, by The Be Good Tanyas

6. Creep, by Radiohead

7. Real Live Bleeding Fingers & Broken Guitar Strings, by Lucinda Williams

8. Down By The River, by Neil Young

9. What Light, by Wilco

10.I Will Follow You Into The Dark, by Death Cab for Cutie

11. Wanna Be The Boy That Warms Your Mother's Heart, by the White Stripes

12. Hide Your Love Away, by the Beatles

New music? Yes, please!

One thing I find kind of neat about the music industry getting more internet and social media savvy, are the contests that continually pop up from time to time.  So far, I've been pretty lucky.  I mean, these are small things, it's not like the lottery or something.  But still...

There was one instance on Twitter where a music industry guy put up one of those, "Retweet this for a chance to win..." kind of things.  I did, and I won a copy of Jay Farrar's latest CD, which was promptly delivered to my home by the mailman.  There was another one a couple of weeks later from Phish.  Same deal, "retweet this..." and I won again.  A week later I received a girftcard in my mailbox entitling me to a free live show download from their website.  Rad!

Then, a couple of days ago there was a similar contest on Facebook.  Guess what?  Any day now I should receive my autographed copy of Frazey Ford's new CD.  I'm on a streak like a dagger straight into the heart of a dragon!  I'm actually kind of excited to receive this latest prize.  For those that don't know, Frazey Ford is a member of the Be Good Tanyas, mainstay on the Vancouver music scene.

 I love those girls.  Her new album sounds like it'll be terrific.  Here's a Pitchfork review of what I can expect:
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14445-obadiah/

In that same vein, there's a show coming up at the Haven Social Club on August 26th that I would really like to go see.  The band is called Oh My Darling, and although I have never heard a stitch of one of their songs, I can tell by what I've read that it's gonna be a dynamite show. 
http://www.myspace.com/ohmydarlingmusic

Austin City Limits

Okay, well....I'm a big music guy, see.  Especially live music.  My girlfriend and I are lucky enough to share this passion and, even more luckily, push each other into different genres and tastes to expand those ever elusive musical horizons.  Sometimes this works well, sometimes it doesn't. 

I'm taking her to see Dave Matthews at the Gorge in a few weeks and about this, she is not excited.  She keeps suggesting I take someone else, someone that might get more enjoyment out of the show than her.  But, I will NOT!  See, it's not that she hates DMB necessarily; she just thinks they're okay.  But the venue, The Gorge...she has to see this.

On the other hand, the big one to look forward to is Austin City Limits in October.  At this 3-day festival, it just so happens that both of our very favorite bands are headliners!  That would be Phish (for me) and Sonic Youth (for her).  What more could we ask for?  Before you answer that, have a looky at the line-up:
http://2010.aclfestival.com/?sort=by_day

I am so looking forward to that, not to mention just the experience of going to Austin, TX.  From what I understand, it's a pretty rad city.

Just so I have something on here...

I wasn't sure about the relevancy of blogs...especially as it applies to my life.  But I do love social networking.  So, here I am on Facebook and Twitter, giving people snippets of my life in 140 characters or less...photos of my good times, etc.  But it didn't really lend itself to expressing expanded thoughts, opinions or stories.  Enter:  The Blog.  I don't know if this is gonna work for me, but why not give it a go, hey?