The Tones of our Forefathers

Surrounding yourself with great guitar players has a lot of advantages. It only has one disadvantage; it can make you look like a jackass if you're not careful.

"The first thing is to get the tone right, then you can worry about what to play..." Rich Chorne.

I never paid much attention to the actual sound of my rig until I realized those words were true. It used to be all you had to worry about was being heard above whatever else was going on. In the 80's and 90's, when I had a guitar, but no guidance, things were just that simple. No one played a tube amp. They were expensive, fragile, temperamental, and what they offered in return was useless to us. What we wanted was crunchy, distorted rhythm, and all the piercing treble and artificial sustain you could dial up. The more effects you had, the better.

When I left my metal band in the 90's, I sold my crate half-stack and Hamer explorer-cut black, James Hetfield-looking guitar to a music shop and bought my first decent acoustic guitar. It wasn't until about 2003 that I even owned an electric again. Still a Hamer, (the bass player in my old band swore by them. I think he still uses Hamer in his band, Walls of Jericho.) but a more traditional cut and feel. I bought a small Crate solid state and left it at that. I had no skills that transferred easily from the 90's, nor from years of playing acoustic. It was like starting over.

I slowly began to develop some chops, but nothing compared to the guys I was playing with. I would sit in with a lot of bands, and on the "sit-in" circuit, you generally just grab the guitar of whomever asked you to sit in. Bringing your own stuff is too presumptuous. It wasn't long before I realized that everybody's guitar rig sounded better than mine, and thereby made me play better when I used it. The search was on.

"I figure if I can't play without all that stuff, I'm not worth a crap." Tim McCasland on the subject of guitar effects pedals.

After calling on some "mentor" types to help me find the right guitar and amplifier, I settled on a Fender blues deluxe amp, and a somewhat indulgent collection of Fender, Gibson, Hamer and Epiphone guitars. I also picked up a Blues Jr. for small gigs. Every weekend I would slap my pedal board in front of me with six or seven various effects, a wireless system, an eq, etc, and grab a guitar from my collection. I was so busy screwing with all that junk, and trying to figure out the nuances of the particular guitar I had chosen that I never got it right. If for some reason the right tone did come out, I was so shocked I tried to pack all the notes I could into that particular solo. Before long I was back to my Clapton Stratocaster, Fender amp and a tuner. Less buttons and knobs = more focus on the notes, bottom line.

"You can try all that silly shit at home. On stage, play what you know." Jay Boy Adams

Jay Boy used his connections at Fender to get my Clapton Strat for me. When it was delivered, I played it and liked it immediately, but I had also just gotten a Les Paul, which is the guitar I always thought I was born to play. I'm not sure why either, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with Jimmy Page, Slash, or both. It wasn't until months later the Jay came up to Ruidoso for a gig and showed me something on that strat that I was too busy goofing around to figure out. He plugged it in to my amp, put the pickup switch between the bridge and middle position and started to play a rhythm. When he went to play a bit of lead, he just rolled the lower tone knob (it would be a lower tone knob on a regular strat anyway.) and the thing lit up. I assume the extra 25 decibels of boost that that knob lends the guitar is why most people buy it. No pedals, just a real simple overdrive that sings. He played me some simple leads for another twenty minutes while I listened and watched, noticing the true potential of what I had for the first time.

"The Better you get, the harder you work." Albert King, speaking to Stevie Ray Vaughan about Stevie's development as a young blues player.

The hardest thing for me is to slow down. That goes for anything. In guitar playing, however, it means everything. The less notes I play, the better they sound. I know that, but when you're surrounded by guys like Tim, that can do ANYTHING on a guitar, your natural instinct is to compete. To focus on what's happening right now isn't my style. I'm always worried about what's next. The next note. The next fifteen notes.

Tonight, I'm going to find a sweet spot on that strat and let a note ring out until it dies of natural causes.

Separation Anxiety

For those of you who didn't know already, the ARL band is in a bit of a transitional period at the moment. Our acoustic guitar player, and front man for our opening band "Los Mustangs" is retiring from the band. P. Blake Martin, P. Diddy, Bootsy Collins' long lost brother, whatever you want to call him, if you know him, you know he's got the funk.

P. has been my partner, musically speaking, for years now, and the bottom line is that it's not going to be the same without him. The best times I've ever had on stage have been right next to him, and the most miserable gigs on the planet have been tolerable because of him.

You can't blame a guy for wanting to spend more time with his family though. As he said, this band is a dream fulfilled, just 20 years too late. I shudder to think of the trouble he and I would have gotten into had we met back when we had no responsibilities. Scary.

For more than one reason, he won't be replaced. The most important is that he can't be replaced. We could get another guy with a guitar up there, but it wouldn't be what it was.

-ARL

Road Rash

It seems natural to follow up my last blog with a reflection on the ARL band's little "Tour of Texas". It was a blast, I must say, and it was great to get even the tiniest taste of what life must be like as a professional musician. I guess it's just like anything else, but I suppose the highs are much higher, and the lows are much lower than say, an office job.

To give you an example of a low, we showed up at our first gig to find a dance floor full of 70-year-olds sipping on coffee and straight whiskey. The house music was Gene Autrey and Hank Williams, occasionally becoming so modern as a 90's Garth Brooks tune. No sweat for Los Mustangs, who saved our butts by giving them pretty close to what they wanted, although a bit louder than they wanted it. It would have been difficult to stay within the volume requirements of these senior citizens, and they let us know pretty consistently throughout the first two sets. At some point though, as if by divine intervention, the old folks cleared out, and a slightly younger audience trickled in.

The night ended up just fine. I stuck to my internal commitment to play my original songs come hell or high water, and the new crowd responded well. By the time we left, I was doing Allman brothers covers and even signed a CD for an enthusiastic, somewhat boozed up fan. A huge contrast from Tim telling me "You're gonna need chicken wire, boy" at the beginning of the show.

The last show of the tour was at a place called "Crossroads" in Fredericksburg. Talk about a high. We ate great food, they loved Los Mustangs and the place was packed when I went on, filling up even more throughout the night. Then a bachelorette party and a bridal party showed up, and things got borderline out of hand. We ended up playing an extra hour and a half to a standing room only crowd. If that were what being a road musician was like all the time, I could do it for life.

At the end of it all, I can't say I would have changed anything. To have a perfect experience would have given me doubts about my choices in life. To have had all miserable gigs would have been, well, miserable. I got a good taste of both sides, and a renewed faith that I haven't wasted my life away by working.

Sarah and I spent the Sunday we should have been driving home at what has become one of my favorite places on earth, my buddy's ranch in the hill country. We drank cold beer, floated in the Guadalupe river, and listened to some good friends talk about their days as road musicians when things weren't quite so......calm.

Texas Tour 2010

I'm glad I am the way that I am, or I would never have done anything with my life. I get an idea and run like hell with it, and it's only just before it's about to all come together that I start having any doubts at all. By then it's too late to back out, and everything seems to work out fine.

That's where I'm at with next weeks ARL Band tour through Texas; the doubt part.

It's nothing legitimate. It's just the idea of taking my band, which is essentially a big fish in a tiny pond, into one of the most competitive music markets in the united states. We're not really competing for anything, other than being invited back, and hopefully to more and bigger places. It's just that you always want to be more ready for that kind of thing than you are. You wish you could have practiced one more time.

I'm not nervous. I don't really get nervous. Since I can't really open my eyes while I sing, it doesn't matter one gig to the next where I'm playing, or who is there. The only time I've ever really been nervous playing was doing a live radio thing. That scared the hell out of me. My eye closing technique didn't work, because it was already completely up to my imagination who was listening.

We kick off at what I understand to be a true Texas Honkey-Tonk. A dream for my buddy Blake Martin and the Los Mustangs Band who opens every show for me. For a kid from Detroit, I'm not sure I'd use the word dream. Then again, I have no idea what word to use, because I've never done it. Next is outdoors on Congress street in Downtown Austin. I should be scared, but I'm not. What really gets me is the last gig of the week. A brand new, VERY high dollar music-specific venue in Fredericksburg.

Fortunately, my band is amazing before I ever open my mouth. Seasoned professionals who have paid their dues, and a lot of those dues were paid in Texas.

Hopefully this is the first of many. Cross your fingers for me, and if you're in the Texas hill country, come on out and see the show. Dates are up on musicofARL.com.

Memorial Day Weekend with Jay Boy Adams

It is a great honor to be opening for a long time friend of mine, Jay Boy Adams. Friday and Saturday, May 28 and 29, he'll be coming from Comfort, Texas to play at Casa Blanca Restaurant and Bar. With a music career too long and loaded to cover here, let just say he's been everywhere, and seen everything. He, and my Bass player, Rich Chorne' opened for ZZ Top for seven years as the Jay Boy Adams band, and I imagine you see a lot in Seven years on the road with those guys.

I met Jay about ten years ago, in the same place we'll be playing next Friday, at Casa Blanca. He was a long time friend of the former owner of Casa, and had been hired to play New Years Eve, like he used to do each year long before I'd come along. Jay's show was amazing to me. I'd never seen such a practiced group of musicians playing live before. Their show was TIGHT. It forever changed my idea of what a professional musician was, and it showed me that I was not one.

When you sit down to talk to Jay, he'll let you go on indefinitely, until you run out of steam, and then he'll say "You know what you need to do.......", and then he'll tell you in the most frank, honest terms what his vast experience tells him you should do. Word for word, this is some of the most valuable conversation I've ever had, musically speaking. He's helped me find the guitar/amp combination I've been searching for for years, despite my stubborn self (I thought I hated Fender stuff my whole life), simplified my songwriting process, and given me pointers on guitar set-up that I don't go a single show without using.

As long as I've known him, this will be the first time we've done a show together. Come see this guy do his thing. His songs are heartfelt and beautifully written, and he knows exactly how to make them come across. He is a rare find in the music business, and an even rarer find as a friend.

http://jayboyadams.com/