Rattlebrained

Although around here November is often wet & cold, not really the kind of weather one usually associates with the Blues, there were enough scorching hot guitar solos at the 5th Vully Blues Festival to make a steam bath of the local swimming pool! And I believe it can be said that the festival has found its public since when I was there Friday night all the wine cellars of Praz were well packed and grooving.

Wine cellars? The Vully is a small wine making area in Switzerland along the northwest side of the Lake of Murten/Morat and its local Blues Club had the good idea of taking advantage of the areas topography in organizing its Blues Festival. 2 days, 8 wine cellars & 13 blues bands is how it was presented this year! The wine cellars are situated throughout the village

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Cedell Big G Davis – Slide Blues in Boston 1983

Back in the days you actually went to a store to buy music, probably as much as 20% of my favorite LPs & CDs came from the bargain bin. 1993’s “Feel like doin’ something wrong” by Cedell Davis was one of those, an incredible album if you tune in to it which, BTW, you can still get over at Fat Possum Records!

Cedell’s guitar sound is raw and some might say

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Another great video by Johnmcnair, a cigar box guitar maker. To get a glimpse of his work and philosophy browse over to Red Dog Guitars! I write “another” because

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A little Swamp Train update.

We’ve been practicing new songs. Although in the long term the plan is to be playing a majority of our own tunes with the Blues you have to know the classics so we’ve been working on both.

We finished mixing the album last month and since then I’ve been working on the cover art. And a hard trip it has been to satisfy all the band members, myself included. Fortunately it is coming together nicely now and the end is in sight…

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Congratulations to Marco Marchi & The Mojo Workers, winner of the 1st Swiss Blues Challenge! (above picture)

Besides fighting Geneva’s rush hour traffic to be on time for the sound check

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Spent the last week working on a website for Swamp Train (now deleted) which is one reason this blog has slowed down – it’s not finished but is presentable (I hope), please leave a message if things look weird in your browser – so it was a nice break to join friend Blaise for a gig at the 2nd Festival Blues de Giez. Giez is a small village at the foot of the Swiss Jura mountains not far from Grandson and the festival take place in the village’s ridding school. An old wood building with straw bales, sawdust and a huge “is my back straight” mirror along one of the sides the ring was filled with tables for the pizza and other more local style foods that us blues fan could indulge with while listening to the various bands that played. Blaze and I opened the festivities followed by our friends from Geneva: Floyd Beaumont and the Arkadelphians and then our own (Swamp Train’s) guitarist Mr. CutFinger ; so as you can see we were among family.

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Rattlebrained Designs has been asked to make/rework some logos for various venues which is great but the extra work, unfortunately, has eaten up the time I usually spend blogging; sorry. No way I’ll manage to catch up on all the main events…

That said, one of those was going to the Blues Rules Festival #2 that took place in Crissier near Lausanne a couple of week ago. It was a two day event but since we (Swamp Train) were playing a the Café Omega that Saturday night I was only able to go Friday and for a regrettably short evening at that.
A couple of weeks earlier when we played in Halten, I had guests over the evening before, a party that lasted far longer that anticipated. Can you fall asleep while playing the drums & washboard?…

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