May 2010
Friday Evening At The Red Turtle
3 May 2010, 18:39
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…
Bulldog Blues @ The Red Turtle
10 May 2010, 22:10
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…
Jam Vully 2010
17 May 2010, 08:36
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…
Do It Yourself @ The MEN
17 May 2010, 20:41
In preparation for the “Night of the museums”, a yearly event when many European museums stay open on a specific Saturday evening until the early hours of dawn, I spent last Friday afternoon at the Musée d'Ethnologie de Neuchâtel with friends Bill, Thomas & Jacques preparing a make your own "La Sonorie" instrument workshop that was to take place the following day.
For this event the different museums rival in offering entertainment of all kinds, in our case we where sharing a space with a “make your own electronic instrument” workshop organized by the diy makaway group from Zurich.Three instruments were to be proposed: Bongoboites, Pailleasax (see picture) & Tonatems; which you regular readers already are familiar with I’m sure. And since each instrument was to be made from scratch in accordance to the participant’s fancy, we had a lot of raw materials to carry and set up in an convenient way: boxes filled with different sizes of plastic tubing, cans, coat hangers, broom & bamboo sticks, curtain rods, styrofoam, liquid laundry detergent jugs and other containers of various kinds.
Swamp Train's First Venue
19 May 2010, 09:39
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…I've Been Treated Wrong!
20 May 2010, 09:32
A great video of the Washboard Chaz Blues Trio playing "I've Been Treated Wrong" at the French Quarter Festival in New Orleans, from PatPeeve416’s channel (lot’s more fine music to check out over there…
Do It Yourself @ The MEN Part 2
21 May 2010, 10:59
The museum was packed with folks when we got there at around 17h00 to finish setting up and all and by 18h30 there was a line of people waiting for the workshops to begin.At 18h45 we were swamped in the crowd…
I had inherited the Tonatem table, being a “specialist” of this instrument since I’ve made quite a few of them helping Bill on various projects these last years. He had surprised me earlier by telling us that he thought two participants at a time was enough, I had imagined more like 4 to 6 but it’s a fact that after considering the workspace and tools at disposition it seemed that three was probably a good number of instrument builders to begin with.
How it worked out for my colleagues at the other tables is anyone’s guess, the first ten minutes were shear pandemonium, crowded by the mass of folks trying to see the different going ons, it was almost impossible to move and so the next two hours just went by step by step, drill two holes, screw this piece there, choose a piece of styrofoam, watchout! that wire can be pretty nasty…Sonny Terry's Washboard Band (With Bones!)
22 May 2010, 11:27
There I am trying to find information on the web for Washboard Doc, see my Doc, Flash, Lucky & Red - Pretty Woman post, and re-reading the *Early Morning Blues* record credits the following stands out: "His first recording was with bluesman Ralph Willis about 1950. About two years later he cut with Sonny Terry for a Folkways LP, playing washboards and spoons". So I whip out my Sonny Terry's Washboard Band CD and once again go through the pdf file wondering if I missed anything…Swamp Train Ties For 3rd!
24 May 2010, 12:58
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!…
Miriam Makeba feat. Vic Pitts, drumsolo
26 May 2010, 09:15
There’s probably something to say about drumming and wearing glasses here but I prefer to just look, listen and enjoy!
:-)Rick Franklin & Mike Baytop / Eastern Market #1 . 22 July 07
27 May 2010, 14:00
A great document from ElvertBarnes's Channel featuring Rick Franklin on resonator guitar & Mike Baytop on rhythm bones.Finding this video this morning was a special moment for me…
Swamp Train - Rollin' & Tumblin' - Little Red Rooster
27 May 2010, 17:44
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…
A Grinning Teeth Tee
29 May 2010, 11:21
Earlier this year a dental problem wiped out all hope of having some extra cash to dispose of for the summer, or whatever, so I guess teeth were on my mind when I started working on a new design a few weeks ago. In fact now I can’t even remember what the original design was supposed to be about. As it happens somewhere along it got sidetracked and turned into something completely different…
