music

Here’s To Tradition

Well we did our annual remembrance of Doug Adams on Tuesday night, with a few minor changes. Now the tradition is to setup six pint glasses and fill them all, then you drink them all. Not much to the drinking part. You can slug them if you want, or you can savor them. Either way is fine, because in the book, Ford Prefect slammed his and Arthur Dent sort of just sipped on it. Hell, he didn’t even finish his three before his house got knocked down.

Well we’ve got some new blood in our crew now. Stout and I have been practicing this ritual since the year after Douglas passed away. Well now we have Two-Step and Siege in the group. Two-Step sort of has to be there since she’s my wife and all, and I really sort of don’t like doing anything without her these days. The whole “existing” part of existence gets pretty shitty when she’s not around. And Siege, my newest partner in crime, has decided to become a member of the Brotherhood. Well, that is after we invited him to. Not just anyone can decide to get in, you see. Anyway, yeah, so there you have it. Our two newest members of the group.

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  • Reading time:4 mins read

Back to Our Roots

Happy Cinco de Mayo, friends! This year, it happened to fall on May 5th, which happens to be a hump day. Couldn’t have asked for better timing! And you can’t ask for a better topic than what I have for you today: music. I like music. In fact, some have said that I even “like it a lot”. I listen to all types of music, and don’t really tie myself down to one genre. Heck, I’m not even one of those guys who says, “I listen to everything except rap,” or “country”. I listen to it all – as long as it doesn’t sound like a bunch of untalented bullsh. There are some rap and even some R&B songs that I dig quite well. I’m very open-minded. Now one thing I cannot stand is that assy sounding crap where the R&B singer just holds out a syllable and tries to hit every note in the scale. You know what I’m talking about? Listen to the Fugees’ Killing Me Softly cover if you’re not sure. That crap makes me want to murder music in the face.

But other than that, yeah, I think I’ve made my point. I like music quite well. But here’s what this column is about: sometimes I like to break into a certain style reminiscent of times gone by. You know. Something like that. And here’s how I really explain it: I am not one who takes a radio with me when I go camping – even though I love and live and breathe music. I go camping to get away from techmology. I don’t want to be bothered by radio waves. But there is a growing list of music I would be okay with hearing while I sit round a campfire drinking Cold Ones and enjoying the sights and sounds of nature. Let me show you this list.

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SpaceBrew Review: John Mayer live

John MayerFriday night was John Mayer night. If you recall, I was commenting from my brand new iPhone will sitting in the lawn, waiting for him to take the stage. Some guy with a very unattractive voice started things off. His music was all right. Then came Colbie Caillat. She’s pretty bubbly. She has a great voice though, and her show wasn’t bad at all. Then, at 9:53, the lights went out.

Presently, a shirtless John Mayer came out on stage, saying, “What’s up Dallas?” He played his entire set without his shirt on. And let me tell you, he can play in whatever attire he feels is fitting. He’s good enough to warrant playing in a woman’s thong and a purple boa. John Mayer rocked the house.

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  • Reading time:4 mins read

The Incredible Shrinking Medium

I’m always amazed at how far we’ve come in the last hundred years with technology. It’s crazy that only a hundred years ago we had just invented the telephone, and now we have cellular shit, that doesn’t physically connect to anything, that can send pictures and texts and porn instantly to anyone else with a cell phone. Through the air. I still have trouble understanding how an analog phone worked, transferring voices across a wire. But here we’re sending that stuff through the air. And it’s digital. What?

But I really came to talk about media formats today. Well, cameras would be one qualifier: we used to use photo plates in our cameras. And film. Remember film? Ha! Now we use memory sticks and whatnot. And the idea is apparently to make them as small as possible. Seriously, give it a rest, people. My phone has a one-gig micro SD card in it. It’s smaller than my pinky fingernail. But it holds a gig worth of pictures and music. And porn. What the helling hell.

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Copperwound Chronicles Vol. 3

Here in the last week, my band has spent fifteen hours in the studio, recording cuts from our second album. We’re really knocking them out, too. We’ve recorded three complete tracks for the album in that relatively short amount of time. We also recorded a fourth song, which won’t be on the album. It’s a promotional thing for an event planning company. So technically, we’ve recorded four complete songs in fifteen hours. But let me tell you a little bit about what goes on in the studio.

People all the time ask if they can come hang out with us while we’re recording. Somewhere remote in their minds, I think people associate music studios with cocaine and strippers. It’s a helluva good time, all of us hanging out, snorting off their bellies and popping champagne into the air, confetti everywhere, a big wild orgy. It’s off the hook! But yeah, no, yeah, it’s really not like that. (more…)

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Promotional Ideas

A friend and I went to see G. Love & Special Sauce at the House of Blues this weekend. Tristan Prettyman opened for them. She is, by the way, very pretty, man. I know, I’m sorry. You saw that coming and I said it anyway. You should know me by now though. Anyway, we were packed in there like fresh little sardines (maybe that’s not the best analogy because they don’t smell very good – but wait, never mind, maybe that’s why I chose it), all bouncing together and all the normal audience reaction you get sucked into. G. Love totally owned the place. Well, after Bob Dylan got through with it. We had to wait outside for quite a long time because Bob ran over. He’s obviously forgiven for it, though I’ll probably have a word with him about not at least inviting my friend and me in to hang out.

Anyway, a good time was had by all. We stood in an inch of beer and sweat – quite literally. Girls’ purses were soaking wet. The cuffs of my jeans were soaked. Pretty nasty stuff. I’m of the opinion that places like that with standing room should have gratings on the floor. Or make the entire floor from a grate. That would be grate. Oh God, I’m sorry.

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  • Reading time:5 mins read

Take the Mall by Voice

In my never-ending quest to find and archive things I’ve written, I’ve come across a little gem here about a friend of mine we all know. And rather than posting it with the date I wrote it, I’ll just post it as current and tell you when it happened, because I remember when it happened. But not when I wrote it. This was back in July of 2002. This story is about Katy 80. Sweet little Katy Fanning, who almost never writes here, but always has something to say. Or in this case, to sing. She had just turned fifteen.

I work at a web hosting company, building the web servers. I often go into work at midnight or later and grab my stack of server build sheets and stay until five or so knocking them all out. My boss doesn’t care when I come in or leave, so long as I get them all built by their due date. And I work better at night. This frees up most of my days to do more important things like baseball games, beer drinking and, well, whatever I want. I live in Flower Mound, but work in Las Colinas. My friend Kim and her sister live in Coppell, and we often have lunch together when Katy has decided to skip school or is off for a teacher’s work day. Oh the glorious Teacher’s Work Day. Yes, that should be capitalized. I think she told her big sister she was out for TWDs a lot more often than they really were. On Friday of last week though, we were all off. It was the day after Independence Day, so everyone was off. And most of the world was at the Vista Ridge Mall. Which is, for whatever reason, where we decided we should head for lunch.

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There Are No Dogs… Finally

After a year in the studio, our band finally finished recording our first album. We're pretty excited about it. Well, at least I am. Why am I speaking in group talk? So anyway, Tuesday evening we spent seven hours in the studio making the final finishing touches on seven of the songs. We got out of there around one in the morning. But we were done. So this weekend we're going to celebrate by drinking a few cold ones and listening to some kick ass music. Still trying to decide what we're going to listen to. Go check it out at copperwound.com. You can buy the album online, or wait 'til it goes to press at the end of this month.

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  • Reading time:1 mins read

SpaceBrew Review: Patrice Pike

I’ve seen Patrice live five or six times now in some form or another – mostly with Black Box Rebellion. For some reason I’ve never gotten my picture taken with her though. What am I, an idiot? I’ve been a big fan since the first time I saw her perform. She’s amazing. Her stage presence is ridiculously awesome, and her talent is excessively phenomenal. So this show was really no different.

But hey she’s got a new band now. Wayne Sutton is still with her – at least he was Saturday night – but the rest are new. She has a keyboard player now, and an amazing female bass player. That bassist is something else. Full of charisma, constantly smiling, and just wildly talented. She really plays the part well, and there’s no doubt she belongs on stage with Patrice. The drummer is the same story. There are those drummers who pretty much just sit there, all resevered, and play their shows… (Like mine.) Then there are rockstars. This guy was just into it. Watching him, you really believe what he’s saying with his sticks. Hands in the air, head moving with the music, just owning the crowd with his licks. Didn’t get much from the keys. Wayne is mostly reserved too, but his talent speaks for itself.

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Treasure in the Woods: Part 1

Sup, peeps? I don’t know what the hell happened to my other column. I guess it’s gone. Oh well. Some quick hits: We found a drummer. Bud from the Transcenders is going to roll with us for a while. We got together Sunday and played with him. That was the fact.

The Space BarThe Space Bar is almost ready to open for business. Just a few small details, and we’ll be serving White Russians with Buttery Nipples. This image is an artist’s conception of the finished product.

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  • Reading time:3 mins read