Rattlebrained

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.

The main event of the week is that Blaise’s friend “Cut Finger” Alain, who has played with us a couple of time this last summer has now become part of the band adding wailing blues rock guitar box guitar solos and freeing Blaise to play more blues harp.

We toped off the week with a gig at one of the local bistros which didn’t go too bad I was told, although with the week’s accumulated fatigue and the amount of new material to remember I have to admit I felt it was all pretty sketchy. The highlight for me was two songs with just Blaise singing and/or playing guitar or harmonica and yours truly on rhythm bones. These really captivated a crowd that otherwise was not that responsive; a noisy Saturday night social drinking gathering where clapping can sometimes be an afterthought…
;-)