Rattlebrained

Seems like Dominik, Swamp Trains bassist, has been out hustling to find gigs because we have a few lined up now which is cool. The next one being a trip back to Bellwald to inaugurate the Bellagio Lounge & Bar on December 18th, a new place for the local fauna and a good one if you consider their choice for the band! ;-)

He asked me to translate the bands bio into English for the flier he’s sending around which I did this morning. However I must admit here that I had found what had originally been posted on our MySpace page a bit dull so I decided to spice it up, hopefully this one is better:

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Next Saturday I’ll be seconding Bill Holden for a “Trash Speaker” workshop in this year’s TSKZ festival. Meaning we will be helping people put old recuperated speakers in to “boxes” made out of recuperated materials. The picture is of one I made with an yogurt container, more pictures can be found on Bill’s La Sonorie website==.

This is because there will also be a “make your own Drawdio” workshop. Drawdio: A Pencil that Lets You Draw Music. And what use is a Drawdio without a speaker? Just follow the link to find out more!

So if you’re in Swissland’s city of La Chaux-de-Fonds this weekend and have nothing to do…

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Last Saturday Swamp Train played at the Vully Blues Festival, our first “serious” gig, starting at 19h00, 4 sets, over three hours of playing. The above video of use playing Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful” is from the beginning of the first set and if the crowd seems a tad scarce it’s because folks were still arriving, by the second the place was packed.

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Regular reader may remember last year’s post about The Stripey Brothers, who came busking down in Neuchâtel.

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Got back Sunday night from a week of 10 hour a day practice with Swamp Train and am still a bit numb…

We recorded a few tracks that still need to be mixed and didn’t leave the chalet except for getting bread and stuff at the nearby village. Fortunately the weather was mostly dreary removing the temptation to take advantage of the beautiful alpine surroundings. Listening to the “raw recordings” this morning really gives me hope for the band’s future, compared to just three months ago the improvement is obvious. Hopefully we’ll be able to get a few tunes ready to be posted soon since what we have up on our myspace page at the moment is pretty awful, it will also be nice to present the songs we’re working on that aren’t old blues covers…

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Nothing like a cheap cell phone camera to make delicious pizza look totally unappetizing! Oh well, too late now…

I make a mean pizza, a claim many have doubted until they tasted it, but would add that good pizza isn’t that hard to make so it’s not like it’s that big a claim to make. As with many things the secret is balancing the ingredients and giving yourself time to do it properly. And there you have it, time, the one thing you usually don’t have enough of. With pizza the most important factor is making a good crust, doesn’t take much: water, flour, olive oil, salt and yeast, plus eventually a small pinch of sugar to help start the yeast. And then the hard part: let it raise an hour or so, punch it down, let it raise again; all in all a three hours is a good reference..

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I received some thimbles made out of maple from Bone Dry Music== last month and think they are pretty neat, especially for softer acoustic music in situations where you would like your washboard to be a tad more laid back and mellow.

The wood has a softer contact with the washboard’s surface which removes the bright “metal to metal attack” and accentuates the board’s lower frequencies. This makes a drastic difference on both my Columbus zinc and stainless steel washboards and a less obvious and more subtle difference on my brass boards and Zinc Kings. This is most likely due to the relative softness of brass and the fact that the Zinc King’s metal rubbing surface is in contact with it’s wood backing and also that mine have been repaired with two composite epoxy glue which already gave them a thicker sound…

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