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| Life in the fast lane: driving to Toccoa Friday evening, singing some high harmonies... |
This weekend was the debut of a new band, a project carefully assembled by my good friend Brent Whiten. The band is an Eagles tribute called New Kid In Town. I have been listening and absorbing this music for close to 2 months now. As the baas player with no defined vocal chores, my part is quite possibly the easiest. I worked on the high harmonies just to be prepared. We met Friday night in the basement of the Elk's Lodge, located in Toccoa, Georgia. I met the other 3 guitarists, Jason, Tim, and Brad, for the first time. My extended musical weekend began after clocking out from work (already a long day that began with a thorough annual physical exam and then a shortened day at work albiet minus a normal lunch). We hashed it out from 9 pm until 2:30 am, fueled by Bud Light (with a twist of lime for me) and tequila (thanks Jason)!
The next morning, after a restless night sharing a rather down-trodden motel room with Jason, I was up early to make my way south to Lake Lanier's Peachtree Pointe Amphitheater. This was the inaugural event of this facility after a lengthy reconstruction of this outdoor venue. A man working security told me he has lived in the area for 4 years and never knew it was here. The band was Running With Desire, our not-nearly-ubiquitous enough U2/Van Halen tribute package. James "JT" Terry, The Martay, and mighty Sam Owens convened on this beautiful afternoon to play through 2 complete sets of Irish and L.A. based rock music. The crowd was understandably thin at this early hour of a full festival day. Thanks to JT, we had a photographer capture many of our best moments. A concise collection of his pics can be found here. Adoring women clawing at your clothes may help, but nothing makes you feel more like a rock star than a professional photographer snapping pics while you cavort around making silly gestures and ugly grimaces. It also helps to have a full Ampeg SVT rig to pummel more low end than is necessary. I actually turned down at one point! A nice rig indeed - perfect for this band at any rate. We had a couple of rough spots, but overall it was one of the best gigs this band has enjoyed. The vocals were decent, many times they are the low point. Mad props to Michael Anthony! He was an early butt of jokes in my high school circle, but he played his arse off on those 6 albums that we draw from. We are finally almost-tight on Beautiful Girls. Sam reinforced the notion that the very first note that Eddie played was the pickup note to the first full bar. The one is the 2nd note! Interesting. Thanks to Tim Delaney, Sam's rhythm section buddy in most everything else he does, I have Van Halen charts at my disposal. Great transcribing Tim! Seriously detail oriented! I mean, wow! Without his handy work, I may never have come this close to getting these tunes down. It was a lot of fun with absolutely perfect weather to boot. We did our full show, complete with costume change. I got a meal before we started, thanks to the promoter. A great afternoon indeed.
After the show, I didn't waste any time. It was back on the road to Toccoa for the evening Eagles tribute show. Jason Bozik assumed the role of Glen Frey, playing acoustic and electric guitars and even taking some key solos on Tequila Sunrise and the intro solo to Victim of Love. Tim Turner played the part the mighty Joe Walsh, evoking his voice and stellar slide parts. Brad Newell had the task of recreating those clever Don Felder parts that add so much to the songs. Brent wore many hats, but on stage he was a clean cut non-fro-wigged Don Henley, ably singing the leads and playing the drums. He also handled keyboard duties, playing piano and singing lead on I Can't Tell You Why and Desperado. Jason moved to drums for those and was rock solid. Awesome versatility guys! Brent had some serious nervous energy - it was a homecoming concert in many respects for the man. His fine wife Renée (whom I couldn't remember until she reminded me, but she did have shorter hair since I saw her last - that's my story and I'm sticking to it!) was the principle videographer and photographer of the evening.
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| Brad Newell as Don Felder |
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| Jason Bozik as Glenn Frey |
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| The elusive Tim Turner as Joe Walsh |
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| John Hancotte as Timothy B. Meisner (or is it Randy Schmidt?) |
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| Brent Whiten as Don Henley, also invoking the keyboard stylings of Glenn Frey and the occasional vocalizations of Timonthy B. Schmidt. |
I tried my best to offer some other tones, using my NS/Stick on the Joe Walsh tunes. I had tried to work out the sample-and-hold ARP Odessey synth from Life's Been Good. Between what Jason and I did, we kept it interesting. I simply engaged the flanger effect for Rocky Mountain Way. I had thought about an octave effect on the right-hand higher-pitched strings, actually a rare use of the "2 0ctave Down" effect as found on the Boss OC-3 (or the older OC-2). Couldn't locate it on the GP-8, which was serving the guitar side. Rats. The lesson, of course, is to not wait until you're at soundcheck to try out new effects. It had been a while since I'd even played with the settings on that unit; it takes a minute to relearn the tweak and save functions.
It was a lot of music. Like I said, these songs have been played to death on classic rock radio for so long. To my credit, I did it all without charts. To my detriment, I still screwed up possibly the song I've played the most over the years, and even with consciously going over it in my head, that being the confounded bridge in Tequila Sunrise. I even corrected Brent on his chart (last chord of the bridge is A7, not D7, before reurning to the verse in G). Somebody once told me that you can go to the tonic from any dominant chord, as long as it's a dominant. I guess the A7 would be considered a V of a V. Just because a chord has a flat 7 in it doesn't mean it's a dominant. Your thoughts are welcome. My mistake was going from the Am to the B7, instead of the D. Yuck. Not really any other blunders I can think of. I'd like to hear the recording. It's hard to get a handle on harmonies when there are so many talented singers in one band.
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