Concert
A Very Windy Evening Of Blues
16 July 2010
It’s been a while since we’ve all played together so it was nice to have what was supposed to be a relaxed informal outdoor lake side café gig to get things going again at the King Du Lac. And it was pretty much that if you remove “relaxed” from the list since there was a storm wind blowing Wednesday evening that threatened gobs of rain which didn’t come – fortunately – but which did make it very hard to set up the sound an actually hear what we were playing. Before you knew it the music was blown away over the waters never to return leaving me, for one, struggling to hear the little that was left. I’ve probably gotten too used to playing in a cellar in which my little drum set is far to loud too; fireworks! Outdoors it’s like a cheap little firecracker, pthiip…, did you hear something? Not sure, can you turn up the guitar?
And then the wind would change and I’d only here the bass or the harmonica, just bizarre… and not the best to all be together now…
I (heart shaped guitar) The Blues
14 July 2010
Don’t forget to join us (The Crawfish Blues Band) tonight down at Neuchâtel’s lakeside for a wild evening of old and new blues tunes! Hopefully we’ll get a few decent recordings of a song or two to replace the dusty and poorly recorded one we have on our band website. As far as promotion’s is concerned this band has a lot to learn… but anyway… what can you expect of a bunch of old geezers. Which got me thinking of just how male/macho the whole blues scene is….
Le Bar King au bord du lac
1 July 2010
In the summer, the Bar King set up an ice cream stand on the lac side in downtown Neuchâtel and invite groups of all different musical horizons to play. For the whole program check out the Le Bar King au bord du lac website.
And for those folks interested in the Blues, please take not that the Crawfish Blues Band concert has been moved to July 14th 2010.
Swamp Train - Rollin' & Tumblin' - Little Red Rooster
27 May 2010
Well, here it is: Swamp Train as seen last Saturday night @ the Blues Club Fribourg! Sorry the sound isn’t any better but it’s what you get with today’s automatic level technology…
Swamp Train Ties For 3rd!
24 May 2010
The contest started earlier than announced on the poster, irritating since G. was coming with his girlfriend and hadn’t arrived yet and wasn’t the only one. But Bonny B. had someone pull paper slips from his hand for the starting order so we were ready to roll and guess who was first in line…
There are advantages in playing first, the obvious one being you’re the leading reference the jury gets so if you do good, all the better. Especially when, as it was the case here, the jury had 5 criteria to judge by putting notes from 0 to 10. Stage presence, originality, sound, energy and nuance. I didn’t look at the scores so don’t really know but I can imagine we did well on sound and energy and possibly originality although that’s kind of a far fetched notion in today’s blues… I would have preferred: Fun!
Either way it’s all pretty subjective and depends on what music you like to hear. As this blog’s regulars have certainly already figured out my heart goes to acoustic, roots, country, folk, ragtime, good time & lonesome blues and if it has to be electric: I need energy, lots of it!…
Swamp Train's First Venue
19 May 2010
Before continuing with the museum night story I wanted to announce the first public venue of Swamp Train, the group formed this last winter with friends Blaise and Dominik and myself. Sure enough, next Saturday we will be participating in a Blues contest organized by Bonny B.
So what started as “just for fun” has turned into something “serious” and wow! we even have a logo, wonder where that came from…
Jam Vully 2010
17 May 2010
Sunday a week ago while picking up our gear at the Red Turtle I made one of those unfortunate movements which instantaneously blocks your back, which to state the obvious is somewhat of a pain… And although a visit to the bone shrink helped straighten me up, the sting of the strain remained loud enough that although I went to Blaise’s Thursday night Vully Blues Club jam, I did my best to avoid excess action and left before midnight.
In a sense this was just as well since…
Bulldog Blues @ The Red Turtle
10 May 2010
As I’ve probably already written here, I’m finally comfortable with my washboard playing enough to begin working on my nonexistent drum technique. Plus having a snare drum these last two months has also put more pressure on getting some decent bass drum action. So it’s been practice, practice and practice some more which may have been okay if I hadn’t overdone it; but I did; Thursday an unexpected pain in the knee added a high octane dose of anxiety to my stage fright. Still there is never much choice, if you can get out of bed than there it is…
Friday Evening At The Red Turtle
3 May 2010
Next Friday Dave & I will be playing at the Red Turtle Club here in town. It’s a bar that recently reopened and that actually has a real stage, not very deep but quite wide, that has already seen a good amount of musicians in the first three/four months the place has been opened. We stopped by a couple of days ago to confirm the gig, I had sent a picture for the flyer but had not heard from the organizer.
I asked about the bar’s name since “Turtle” is pretty hard for french speakers to pronounce and was wondering if there was a story behind it and sure enough…
Back To Borneo
27 April 2010
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