Category: music

Well, Herring and the boys put on a fine show last Friday night. Rodgers reprised his Codetalkers role as the twangy-voiced banjo picker, Herring blazed through his usual set of chromatic runs and intervallic melodies, Sipe served up an amazing drum solo, and Fountain rounded out the group, hefting a six string bass to sub-1kHz heights. I will admit to nearly falling asleep during some of the more wordy songs, especially the one about unicorns and rainbows, but the odd reference to guts splattered on walls reeled me back in. I wouldn’t mind seeing JH let loose a bit more, but of course I’m biased.

In other guitar hero news, I have an audition tonight. This will actually be the third band I’ve auditioned with post-SD, to no avail so far. We’ll see how it goes.

Wondering what to do this weekend? Well here you go: Herring, Rodgers, Sipe, and Fountain are playing at the State’s late show on Saturday. Yup, that’s Jimmy Herring (ARU, ProjectZ, Dragonflies, Jazz is Dead, Codetalkers), the best unknown guitarist alive today. Rodgers (Codetalkers) is no slouch himself. The other guys I have no idea, but I do know this will be a kick ass show. 10pm.

I was feeling craft-y today so I made fridge magnets out of guitar picks. The Derek Trucks Band one came from a Derek Trucks Band merch stand, though.

I am a bit late in getting to the requisite blog entries. Partly that is because my Dell laptop is sucking now. After only having the thing for two years, the power connector has broken internally such that batteries can no longer be charged; this appears to have happened to many many other Dell laptop owners. Great work, guys. So I take back any good things I said about Dell, especailly after half the desktops at work showed up with bad RAM.

Anyway, the Shinedown/Trapt show at Ram’s Head was great. Trapt led off, lead singer Chris Brown causing the womenfolk to swoon at his sensitive yet profanity-laden lyrics, punctuated with his ever-unnecessarily-flexed biceps. Brent Smith of Shinedown won the most acrobatic award, doing a nice half gainer off of the balcony early in the set, along with a jump from the top of the ridiculously high drum riser that left the audience wondering if he sprained an ankle. Of course both bands pulled out all of the hits, Shinedown with SAVE ME and I DARE YOU, and Trapt with HEADSTRONG, STILL FRAME. Shinedown performed a cover of Skynyrd’s SIMPLE MAN with the help of the audience, then raged against the record industry and gave us advice on making it through our teenage years. In fact, teen angst seemed to be the big social message here and we got an earful from both bands about all of the people “putting us down” and how we could turn that into “positive energy” and whatever else the fuck. Back in my day, this would never have flown, but the mostly college-aged crowd didn’t seem to mind so much. Anyway the main thing is the music and both bands pulled it off, never eliciting my usual reaction to radio bands which is “wow they really suck live!” In fact Smith, though nearly hoarse at the end, was still hitting all of the high notes in the double encore. Both guitarists were energetic, and while there was nothing particularly exciting in the solos, they carried off everything effortlessly. Shinedown’s bass player had a nice solo groove in there at one point.

In all, definitely going to be a highlight of this concert season. Looking forward, we’ve got Al Di at the Birchmere coming up again, Chili Cookoff (maybe)… and uh that’s all I have so far.

As soon as I discovered that it wasn’t Chris Cornell behind a certain song from the point of view of the overmedicated, I’ve been enjoying Shinedown. So next Monday night, AC and I are going to see if their stage show holds up to the CD. Also on the ticket is Trapt, whose song Still Frame was once played by my old band, and two bands with whom I’m unfamiliar. See you there at Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore, doors open at 7pm.

I’ve been scanning the local venues and home pages of a few favored artists to find good shows to attend this summer. Who would have guessed that Stanley Jordan, two-handed tapping jazz guitarist extraordinaire, would be a full-on nerd? Of course, I mean that in the most complimentary sense. Watch as he schools usenet entities on his APL and C=64 FORTH hackery. Neat.

I suppose I should say a word or two about the latest Derek Trucks showing, and compare it to the other 6(?) times I’ve seen them, but what is there to say except that DTB was good as always and the 9:30 Club was really smokey. Kofi was probably super high as he was more animated than I’d ever seen him, standing up in the middle of a solo and banging out the bass chords with his fist, bellowing “I have a Wah-Wah pedal” during a particularly wokka-wokka keyboard part, and acting the preacher during their gospel number, testifying that “one man saved his life” — nope, not Jesus, but Derek Trucks! I picked up their new album Songlines which is interesting in that each song flows into the next, much like at their shows. On the whole it’s worth the $15 and it’s nice to hear Mattison on a studio release, but unfortunately it fails to live up to past glory like Soul Serenade when all the songs were brand new. There are definitely a lot more people at shows compared with
6 years ago so the word is getting out.

This weekend is shaping up to be a full one. Six points music festival is going on, but my money is going to the 9:30 Club to see DTB again. I hear they have a whole new setlist and a new CD, so that should be a good change of pace. On top of that: apartment shopping, batting practice, guitar lesson, baking, yardwork, etc. w00t.

It’s about time I got back on the road again. The Herndon circuit. Crossroads, will you ever let me go? So, I’m auditioning for a new band next Tuesday. If all turns out well, I’ll be back where I belong this summer: playing cheesy 80s pop songs to drunk people who don’t care what day it is much less that there’s a band playing. Before I get there though, I have to pass the audition, and before that, I have to learn forty songs this weekend. I heard you had a big mp3 collection…