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Posted: Sat May 24, 2008 10:02 pm
by WildcatOne
Thanks, BP...there's been some fun going on for sure...last night we played at T-Bone Tom's in Kemah to a packed house. There were probably close to 500 people there, and they were a partying crowd. Debby showed up with some friends and they had dinner and got a table. She said we sounded great out front, we're running everything through Pee Wee's new mixer now and it's a very balanced sound, also not as loud as before. Right after Debby and her friends left towards the end of the night, this pretty lady who had been dancing all night got up in front of Pee Wee during "Bo Diddley" and she was shaking and swerving...she just went, ah, what the heck...and she lifted up her dress to show us that she wasn't wearing anything underneath it...Yikes! We lost the rhythym of the song and it fell apart on us. That threw us off...we started it up again and finished it, but she had us by the ... ahem ... for a moment there. She was a beautiful lady, doubtless a little tipsy, and I would guess she doesn't remember doing that, but whoa, Andy...that stood out...it's hot here, well into the 90s every day now, with high humidity, and a lot of our gigs are outside. It's hard to play in a steam bath like that, much less dance, but folks have been doing it for as long as this region has been populated, so we deal with it. Our gigs at Club 21 in Galveston have been my favorite, even though it doesn't pay much. The reason I like it so much there is because they appreciate us so much there. The crowd is mostly women and the dance and dance and dance and then they dance some more. They dance with each other, they dance with us, they dance by themselves, they come up to us and do it. I'm happily married and I bring my wife there, she gets asked to dance all the time by guys who hang out there and she dances with 'em and I'm cool with that. She's a great dancer and she's beautiful...can't say's I blame those guys for trying...I dance with her on breaks...but back to the Night Shift...today I drove to Galveston and presented the Pansy Bockelman Drama Award at O'Connell High School's graduation ceremony. This is the 21st year the award has been in existence and I'm proud to go there and do it for my late Mother. Yes, her name was Pansy. She had 3 sisters, too. Fern, Violet and Rosebud. It was a wonderful party. My Mom wrote plays. She produced and directed them as well. They were comedies, using a lot of Vaudeville, costumes, props, live music, dance routines, and singing. All of her dialogues rhymed. The plays were performed by our school, and they were all smash hits. She was the first of her sisters to go. They're all gone now but their memory lives on with all of us. Tomorrow we're playing at the Haak Winery in Santa Fe, and I expect a few of my cousins to be there. Roberta and Robert (Fern), Phyllis Ann (Rosebud) and me (Pansy). Debby will be in Austin visiting her sister Lisa, who will be there for a few days. Lisa lives in Santiago, Chile where she has a wine company. The Haak Winery gig will be from 6-8:30, so it's not going to run all night...but the last time we played there on Memorial Day, the crowd was huge...close to a thousand people...we're off next weekend, but the following Thursday night we're playing at the Rice Hotel downtown for a private party, then the next day we're playing in Beaumont at a wedding, then that Saturday we're back in Pasadena at the Lone Star, the nightclub that used to be a supermarket. It's like riding a merry-go-round, but as Sylvester said last night (we carpool to the gigs...he lives right down the street from me, I drive and he carries my stuff and pays my Beltway fee...great guy...he doesn't have to do any of that) there are musicians lined up in this town that would give ANYTHING to be in this band. We're very fortunate to have this gig. Not just because we play these high-profile gigs for thousands of people a month, but because Pee Wee Bowen is a good man with a big heart and he takes care of us. We're all equal in that band under him, and he bends over backwards to make it good and keep working to make it better. As a team, this band is the best, and last night we played solidly as a team. It's all good. Cheers, WC1
http://www.haakwine.com/winery_events.htm

Posted: Sat May 24, 2008 10:24 pm
by pro70z28
8) 8) 8) 8) Cool deal WC 8) 8) 8) 8)
Sounds like you guys are very busy.

Posted: Sat May 24, 2008 10:53 pm
by Rapid Randy Baker
Wow, the life of a big time rock star WC!! Very cool 8)

Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 7:20 am
by jim sanders
8) Great read this morning WC!! The Night Shift Rules !!

Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 3:55 pm
by draglist
I always love this column. Thanks, WC1. bp

Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 11:13 am
by WildcatOne
Yesterday we played the annual Memorial Day concert at the Haak Winery in Santa Fe. Santa Fe's a small town South-Southeast of Houston, it's basically one of a series of whistle-stops between Houston and Galveston on one of 3 highways that converge just before the causeway that connects Galveston to the mainland. It used to have the name Alta Loma ("High Ground") before they incorporated it into a city in the 1960s. Around a thousand people showed up and we threw a party. I'd been having some trouble with my amp over the last week or so, couldn't get the reverb to work on it...I fiddled around with it yesterday morning and I found that by unplugging the reverb input from the pedal that the reverb worked...it was set "on" in the amp, and with the pedal plugged in, it cancelled out the signal by overriding it as being turned off and not being able to go back on again...so by thinking outside the box for a minute :idea: it came back on by unplugging the RCA jack from the pedal. That's the easiest way I can explain that situation, but it worked, and I went with it...the gig itself was wonderful. We had the whole place jumping from the first note we played to the last. My cousins showed up just like I said they would, and we hung out and had some laughs...at one point I found these 2 people standing right there in front of me, and I realized it was a couple of great folks I haven't seen in 2 years...not since the funeral of a mutual friend (Richard Kessler, who "Four Lifetimes" is dedicated to) and I stopped playing, reached over and the 3 of us stood there in a hug for a moment. Then of course I had to start playing again. We all smiled. They went back into the crowd and I didn't see them again after that. We ended the double set with "American Trilogy" by Elvis, and the whole place rose to its feet, sang along, and swayed with the song...it was a great American moment. Pee Wee was in top form and the band was razor-sharp...after the gig, me and Sylvester (trombone) and Jeff (bass) hung out in the parking lot until all the lights were out, talking about everything. We're off next weekend, then we've got a flurry of gigs all over the place. Should be a fun summer. Thanks for the good words, folks. It's nice to have an extra day off! Cheers, WC1

Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 9:54 pm
by Billy Mac
Are you answering the phone tonight??

Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 10:03 pm
by pro70z28
8) 8) 8) Cool Weekend Sounds Like 8) 8) 8)

Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 10:19 pm
by jim sanders
8) Another great read Cat !!

Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:23 pm
by WildcatOne
Yesterday I drove up to Lufkin in George and played a recording session at Push Play Studio. I played keyboards for Steve Bounds and Don Barnett, 2 buddies of mine up there who have me come up every so often to play gigs with them and their band, The Stumblers. They're about as good as you're going to find in those parts, and they wrote a song called "The Devil's Wife", it's a Blues/Rock song and it features their expertise on guitar and bass, with Steve adding a raunchy, gritty vocal line with lyrics that melt off the CD. They had me play the honky-tonk saloon-style boogie piano that I use in this type of material, augmented by organ chords in the mix. They have a great studio and a very good recording system in there; Don built it and it's perfect for a recording project like this. George zipped right up there (120 miles one-way) and I got there on time. Round-trip (240 miles), I used a tank and a quarter of gas and drove the speed limit (70) coming and going. The trip to Lufkin is right at 2 1/2 hours one-way from my house. They covered my expenses and threw in a few bucks for a cafe latte' at Starbucks for the trip home afterward. I did a 4-hour session an laid down 3 tracks. I did my first track using basic piano in the key of D, just put a baseline track down playing the first-position chords to the song so I would have a framework underneath the organ and lead piano tracks I added later. Success. The song is 4:30 long...my honest opinion is it needs to be shortened by about a minute...I didn't tell them that, but I will. I also told them I believe they need a live drummer (they used a digital drum track, which served as a metronome for the tune), which brings me to part II of this post...they have a great drum room there with a full set and a lot of mics on it, etc...I offered to bring Nick up there to do it; he is looking to branch out...the band Nick plays in, Blastula, will be playing their last show today at Fitzgerald's in Houston. They are in the finals of Gorilla Productions' Battle of the Bands. They are by far the best band in the contest, but like I said earlier, the bands are judged by how loud the crowd will cheer when they call out their name after the whole deal is over...the band that came in first place last time sucked, but they had more people there and they screamed the loudest, so they won. What a bunch of crap! Anyway, Debby went all-out. She made Blastula t-shirts for the band (Nick won't wear his, because he has an issue with wearing his own band's t-shirt...to each his own...), they will open their set with a soundtrack of airplanes flying over and bombs coming down, their banner will be behind them when the curtain opens, and their material is primed and ready. Debby's going to film the whole deal. It'll be on a DVD. This will be their last show, because Roland and Micah will be moving to Florida next week with their familly. The band will reform, it will change, but this will be the very last performance of one of the greatest hardcore bands I ever heard. I hope they win...I know they're the best band in the contest...but like I say, crowd loudness at the end determines who gets the recording deal. I'll post the results tomorrow. Cheers, WC1