Another Beautiful Spring Evening in the Enclosed Patio of Java Monkey

Does that sound a little weird?  It is a bit odd to play in the most perfect weather on a patio that is enclosed by old sheet plastic.  It's like we're cut off from the society at large.  At no point during the night did we have anybody sitting down inside and watching us.  That's a little sad in itself.  I think we should hope for the removal of the plastic for next time.  Also, the lighting was very strange.  Perhaps a total of 3 lights above us and nothing else!  It was never explained but the new lights were installed as we were starting up at around 8 or so.

We were fortunate to have Rob Dama on trumpet, as Jason couldn't make it - playing for George Lopez' party up at Cafe 290.  Rob has a nice, laid back vibe that seemed to fit with us particularly well.  We did some cool jams, plus some lesser played standards including Wayne Shorter's Yes or No and that Jerome Kern ballad Yesterdays all funked up and with the change of

| Dm    B half-dim | Em7b5    A7 alt. | nicely simplified to

| Dm    | Eb7     |

I played upright again.  It sounded ok.  My solos were a meandering mess in all honesty.  I don't work at it and it shows.  I guess I need to devote some time to really transcribing some stuff to get it under my fingers.  I need to have some decent vocabulary or it's just going to become too depressing.

My special cart loading method: inverted sheet music stand supported by amp
to cradle upright bass neck on journey down the streets of Decatur.

The patio is alive, but we're sequestered behind dingy plastic wrap.

A light challenged Rob Dama.

Sweetwater Junction Makes a Demo

It's finally come around to doing the demo for our EPK.  Cool.  We tracked on Sunday at the offices of Party Central, home of Party On the Moon.  There was a bit of an issue with the chosen engineer and the studio equipment.  I think it all worked itself out, but I cannot verify that everybody was happy.  I wrongly assumed we would just track "live" and get 'er done in quick fashion.  It was subsequently decided that we would only be tracking the drums and bass on this day.  I wish I had used a different setup.  My bass sounded big and fat, running through a nice GK MB115 combo.  The playbacks I heard were a bit sterile and clicky.  Ugh!  The engineer could have mentioned something.  He didn't hardly say anything, come to think of it.  We laid a lot down in the time we had.  We had our discussions about tempo, arrangements, and such.  It all went very well. I still don't understand why we didn't just all track together.  We're good enough, I think.  Time is an issue and the studio is going to get busy in the next few weeks.  I hope we aren't too late.

Mark Letalien, my rhythm buddy on this Junction Journey,
getting set up for an afternoon of tracking in a new studio.

"Now cut that out!"

"Yeah John, what he said!!"

"Okay, I can learn to relax for this session."

Brian and Walt were not cutting their tracks on this day,
but they still gave it their all.

Chris Gunther did as well.  We sounded great live in the studio.

Mirror image.

Agent at large.  Actually a good thing.

Back to The Biltmore: The Return of Platinum to One of The Most Reverbererent Rooms in Atlanta

This night we were a 7-piece, as Virginia selflessly took herself out of the financial puzzle.  We did great as a 7-piece, with Lexxi taking on more songs.  She shined on (You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman.  We have started playing I'll Be, that ditty by Edwin McCain.  I play acoustic guitar and Glen plays my bass on that one song only.  I finally got the guitar jack fixed (the nut was just a bit too large ie Metric vs. American), but now if the cable is pushed in too far (?), then the signal shorts out.  Ugh.  I pull it out a bit and it's okay.  It's always something with that guitar.  It sounded good, so you never know.  I wanted to try having both cabinets powered up, so I brought them!  A nice big tower of bass.  Nobody commented on my gear, probably because they are so used to me bringing a lot of stuff (relatively).  I also brought some Green Tobasco sauce for the dinner - Anton's suggestion!  Ha!  I actually didn't have any - I liked the Big mac-ish sauce they had for our bandwiches.

I brought the Stick out once again (2nd time) for some of the easier groove (hip-hop) tunes.  Fun to do 2-handed bass parts on those.  It sounded better than the last time, as I simply reached down and cranked the compressor and the low end on my pedalboard.  My low strings were fretting out around the 1st and 2nd frets, and the 10th string was virtually unplayable.  Need to raise the action a smidge.  A little disappointing, considering I just got this from Emmett's careful setup facility.  Oh well, I was thinking of raising the nut side a bit anyways, to get a more pronounced low C# and the like.  I played well in general, so I'm glad for the fact that I don't have any nightmare bum notes to report.

Don't laugh - the Hot Sauce was a big hit at dinner!
Note the guitar - played on the opening song only - Glen played bass!

Springtime In The ATL aka Pollen Made Me Crackers: A Celebration of Light Rock, Deep Blues, and Melodic Jazz at Capital City Club with The Billy Batts Ensemble

My black car is green.  Well, it's always a bit dirty.  Don't keep your car too clean.  Then it looks like you have money to keep it clean, thus, you might have something valuable inside, like that nifty iPad or perhaps a bass guitar...  Just sayin'.  Um, don't you just hate when people say "Just sayin'?"

It was another round of blues, jazz, and soft rock in the hallowed halls of the Capital City Club downtown.  The Billy Batts Ensemble has enjoyed a fairly long tenure there (knock on wood).  I recently found out that they hire a band to play every Friday night.  We share time with the likes of Joe Gransden, so we must be doing something right.  This time out, we tried a few of the ones that Walt had suggested.  He has wanted to do Edith and the Kingpin (Joni Mitchell), Your Gold Teeth II (Steely Dan), and that old pop gem Hello It's Me (Todd Rundgren).  Surprise, surprise, I volunteered to handle vocals on the Todd tune.  It's high for me to sing, but the high notes are falsetto anyways.  I have 4 versions of Todd doing it: Nazz (in the original key of Dm), the Something/Anything? "hit" version (Gm), the live album Back to the Bars (Fm), and the Latin/Bossa reworked album With a Twist (back to Dm).  We went for the S/A version.  I never knew there was a bar of 3 in it (twice)!  I also never knew that the 2nd verse is "reharmonized" to the relative major (ie Bb).  Wow!  As many times as I've heard it, I just tuned out and listened to the vocals, I guess.  I knew the Brecker Brothers played on it, as well as Peter Frampton's drummer John Siomos.  Well, great live-in-the-studio recording.  I did okay.  It will take some more practicing to nail those vocals.  The Joni tune was a bust in a way.  It took me a while to get with the chart I had, as Walt somehow learned it up a whole step in Dm instead of Cm.  We never did try the SD tune - too bad.  I made some chord charts.  Wish I had time to sit down and make a real Finale-created chart for all of these.  We also did Brian's blues number, that I had inadvertently played the Stormy Monday changes to - in the key of A.  I don't really know if that's what he wanted, but we've done it that way twice now, so I guess it'll work.  Got some nice compliments afterwards, like, did we record the show?  This from one of the managers!

St. Patrick's Day Brings a Lucky 4 Leaf Clover of Gigs

Four gigs in one day!  I mean from sun up 'til sun down.  I don't think I can ever top that, or repeat it necessarily.  Or want to...  It wasn't that bad of a schedule.  Funny how things like that can work out, while other conflicts just make me reach for the Advil.  Being that St. Patrick's Day fell on a Saturday this year, the celebrations were bound to be prominent.  Our little U2 tribute band, some say the greatest U2 tribute band in Atlanta, Running With Desire was hired for 3 events - all during the daytime hours.  My 4th job with with Platinum in the evening.
I met up with J.T., The MartaY, and the latest addition to Atlanta's AC/DC tribute act Back In Black, Mark Rudd (not his real name).  Mark may not be available much in the future - those guys are crazy busy.  So we rode together in J.T.'s van down to Underground for our first show of the day at Kenny's Alley.  Booking a band to play at Underground from noon till 1, during the start of the St. Patrick's Day Parade, was not the smartest move on the promoter's part.  There was virtually nobody there, and we certainly knew that going in.  Who comes up with these things?  The sound crew were just getting power, tweaking their system, checking the keyboard (? - not for us, mind you), smoking cigarettes.  They were nice enough, but their lack of preparedness cost us to scratch a couple of songs from our set.  This was a day where we had to stay on schedule.  My rig, consisting of a GK 1001 head with an 810 cabinet, was a dream machine of headroom coupled with pant leg billowing volume, and juicy tube-neo-infused tone that oozed with balls & heft.  It was meant to be loud. I did my best to oblige, although I did turn down for the sake of our ears and J.T.'s monitor woes.  We rocked to a faithful few.  J.T.'s photographer friend showed up and snapped some decent shots.  Might have been a smart move - it would the best we looked all day.

Updates made on March 28, 2012 mid-afternoon

Bonus pictures taken at the Kenny's Alley performance:

Alright, those pics were pretty good.  Taken with our old Sony camera.  Not too bad.  Now, here are some great shots, all taken by a real photographer, Ms. Carolyn Davies.  She has taken pics of several rock bands and is a wonderful artist in the medium.  With her blessings, I am re-posting her shots here to give some better ideas of the good times we were guilty of keeping to ourselves in Kenny's Alley that early afternoon.

March 28, 2012 10:00 p.m.

Even better - Carolyn generously sent me hi-res-foto-files to post on this little blog!  Carolyn has been nothing but nice about honoring my request for utilizing her expert lens craftings for my own self-promotion! That brings me to this fine point: the key word is request.  It is always the right thing to ask somebody's permission before you go and help yourself to their photos, music, documents, intellectual property, whatever the bounty in question may be...  Chances are, the person who owns the property will be gracious to lend their property.  It is good to know that I can post these fine pics of us mugging for the camera in good consciousness.  That should always be the case.  They are also available on the official Running With Desire "facebook" page, as well as Carolyn Davies' own "facebook" page.  Check 'em out!

Thanks again Carolyn!  When we saw you come up to the stage, it definitely kicked up our enthusiasm to "Zooropa" levels!  You made that show a memorable event, for sure.  You rock!!!

After our set, finished out to the applause of the following band, we loaded up the waiting golf carts to take our gear to 200 Peachtree Street.  How surreal to be zipping through the crowded downtown streets on these carts while the parade was taking place!  People everywhere, looking at us as we are hanging onto our gear and trying to not tumble off the back of these makeshift band limos.  It was a memorable trek.

Yeah, J.T. made a good point.  It was a true Spinal Tap moment: getting to the loading dock entrance on these golf carts only to find a locked gate.  Then having to wait for close to 15 minutes while the man with the keys is located and finally gets us in the building.  "Which way to the stage?"

And we're off to the 2nd job - 4 golf carts, 4 musicians.
How rock 'n roll to get to the venue in separate vehicles - with our own drivers!

Taken before I fully realized I need to hold on for dear life!

Storm Trooper on his way to the parade.

It was a bumpy ride, as you can see from this distorted image of GSU's Rialto Theatre and surroundings.

The 2nd gig was inside, where a makeshift festival was assembled.  The band before us was deep into a long Irish-themed dance number with the leader out front on accordion.  They were killing it, but after a while, his nimble-fingered soloing wore on me.  Once again, I had a GK 1001 amp, this time coupled with 2 410's.  It just didn't have that zing that I enjoyed at the previous venue.  We had a much better crowd this time!  Sabina brought the boys down, so it was great to see them out there.  They didn't stay long enough - our best songs are closer to the end of the set.  Took a small break and MartaY scored some chicken tenders that didn't stand a chance.  The 2nd set filtered in some Van Halen so that MartaY could emit his Eruption juice all over the excited crowd of gawkers.  Here was the gist of our sets:

Where the Streets Have No Name
A Sort of Homecoming
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
Bullet the Blue Sky
Get On Your Boots
New Years Day
With or Without You
Desire
Sunday Bloody Sunday
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Pride (In the Name of Love)
Gloria
I Will Follow
Vertigo

Alternates:
Ain't Talkin' ' Bout Love
Panama
Ice Cream Man
Eruption --> You Really Got Me

As luck would have it, we never really got around to #2, 8, or 11.  Actually, #2 was my idea and the others simply have never listened to it.  I would like to dive into some of these deeper cuts at some point, as there are other U2 tribute acts in Atlanta.  We could distinguish ourselves by being a bit more adventurous in our repertoire.  Certainly, the Van Halen tunes go over well - even those are the tried and true well worn hits that don't quite hint at the more intricate songwriting that Eddie and the boys would eventually warm up to.

Our only full group shot.
There is a reason we finally ditched this Sony camera as our family cam!

Eruption 1

Eruption 2

Two well-received sets and we were off - late as we were for our next one at Tavern 99.  First, we had to get back to Underground to get the van (and Mark's truck, as he only played the first 2 events with us -Shane is on the next one - that's not weird, is it?).  The parade was over, so traffic permitted a truck, which our friend, one of the golf cart drivers, provided.  It took a minute, as you could expect.  Before too long, we were in Buckhead where the Feeling Lucky? Festival was taking place.  Nice big stage for us and the weather was just perfect.

We were certainly warmed up.  Shane wasn't.  Not his fault, but we had built up this energy and adrenaline with Mark and were ready to nail it.  I don't think Shane was in the same mindset, but he wears many hats on events such as this one.  It was still a great performance, perhaps our best ever in this configuration, and a fine way to end our mini-tour.  My rig this time was an Ampeg mini SVT setup - nice fat semi-distorted tones, rather scooped in the mids, not loud enough for this venue but probably better for the soundman.  At least the soundman was out front this time!  I never see that anymore.  How do you mix from the side or the rear of the stage?  I used my wireless, as the stage was big and I could make my way over to MartaY for some jamming.  It was a rock star scene.  Check out the crowd, certainly loving the rock.  Ah, these kids!

After all of that, I loaded out my pedalboard and such and met up to get paid.  Then I changed clothes (in the parking lot - so classy) for my Platinum hit at Stone Mountain's Marriott Evergreen Conference Resort.  This was Platinum II, not Platinum Soul, as we were a 7-piece: Dianna, Glen, Derek, Anton, Gus, myself, and special guest Tracey Wolf, on loan from Atlanta Beat.  Tracey fit in so well, seemingly taking over any part as if she had been fronting us for years.  She worked really well with Dianna too.  We sounded good and perhaps, due to all of my playing during the day, I didn't flub too many notes!  Yay!  My P-bass, which I used all day, just doesn't have the right vibe for Platinum.  It may well have been because I brought my Genz-Benz kickback combo and I'm used to having a 15 with some power.  Plus, I did have all of those wonderful loud rigs during the day.  My tone was rather limp...  We played through The Emotions' Best of My Love as a precursor to Got To Be Real.  I learned it in my car before we started, as I had missed the soundcheck.  Must mention Anton's little Korg keyboard.  He sounded great on it!  It was a tough crowd, but these corporate gatherings can be like that sometimes.  All told, a fine day of entertaining the masses.  My thanks to J.T. for putting this all together and keeping me in the loop.  Also a big thank you to Virginia & Dianna (they really do work well together) for allowing me to do my thing past the soundcheck that we normally do have.