Category Archives: Music

music

More on quitting a band.

I just realized this weekend that I missed something in Friday's post. So, if you haven't already, take a look at the dates, and allow me to prepare a meditation on why November seems to be such a drag for touring bands...
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At 31, on being a professional musician

We played in Toronto last night. It was our first Canadian gig and it went well. The club wasn't much to speak of, but that's to be expected from our first time in a new market. The promoter was pleased with the turnout, though earlier in the day there was a bit of handwringing over the lack of presold tickets. According to him people don't want to pay the TicketMaster surcharge, which adds up to well over half the base ticket price. This is from the mouth of the Live Nation promoter - "people don't want to pay the ridiculous TicketMaster surcharge".
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Rust / Kansas

It feels like ages since my last post, even though I've tried to keep it up with some links to some good dorkery. Today is spent in the bus, driving the 735 miles from Denver to Columbia, MO. We left at 9 this morning and have made a small dent in Kansas, but we'll most likely be rolling in around midnight or so tonight. So here goes... Yesterday was spent at the Mile High Music Festival in Denver, one of our hometowns. It was kind of a strange lineup - us, Ani, Ben Harper, Tool, Panic, Black Keys, India Arie. Sort of like a festival we do all the time, but not exactly.
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bluegrassintelligencer.com

It's about time somebody told me about this site. bluegrassintelligencer.com.
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On Wakarusa

'Twas an interesting time. Some backstory: The Wakarusa festival has been going on for 5 years now (or something like that).  They experienced great success at the previous site of the festival in Lawrence, Kansas.  The only problem with the site was that it was held at a state park there, which gave local AND federal law enforcement free reign to be a real pain in the ass.  Lots of people got busted pretty much every year.  It was kind of a bad scene in amidst all the fun and great bands and good beer and 20k or so people that came.
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A Site About Something / Richard Geller

Okay, I'm not a fan of Flash.  I'm not sure why except that I think it's kinda like the B3 organ for me.  It's great when someone uses it tastefully, but I've heard so many bands/albums misusing the B3 that it's kinda ruined for me. This guy's got the right idea, however.  If my whole aesthetic weren't about clean and direct these days, I'd want to do something like this. A Site About Something / Richard Geller.
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ibD Manifesto

Disclaimer(s) : I will me using the terms "we" and "us" and "our" to refer alternately to my band Railroad Earth, and to my colleagues in the jamband scene without differentiating every time which I'm talking about. You'll just have to figure it out. Hope it's not too confusing.

This began as an email to a Rails developer that I'd been conversing with. He brought up the Digg Trent Reznor interview. After the first bit my response became more like a blog post. So I'm posting.

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On Miles

I was always more of a Miles Davis man.  I guess what I'm comparing it to is perhaps if someone were a Coltrane man.  I'm not sure why you need to pick one or the other, hell you could like them both as much as you want, it's just that Miles' style always spoke to me so much more.  His was so understated whereas the style that Coltrane made famous was one that seems to be embraced and expounded upon by many many legions of jambands, rock bands, jazz fusion bands, etc.  Anyone that really liked a long jam with sheets and sheets of notes from the soloist.
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Album of the Week

Ahmad Jamal - The Awakening The only version of Oliver Nelson's "Stolen Moments" that might actually be better than the original. Several other outstanding renditions of great standards on there as well. A. Jobim's "Wave" and H. Hancock's "Dolphin Dance" are two of them. This is one of the first jazz albums I picked up in college, before I started playing jazz. When I took the jazz history class at ASU, I wrote a paper about it. I couldn't figure out why none of these tunes follow the AABA form.
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file.under=>RandomMemory

I went to school in Boone, North Carolina at Appalachian State University. When I picture heaven in my head, it looks more or less like what I remember the drive from Banner Elk to Boone along 105 looking like - Grandfather Mountain, the old Gold Mine tourist joint in Foscoe, Hawk's Nest ski area where I used to be a lift operator, that sandwich place on the corner of the turn to Valle Cruces, the leaves in the fall, the walk up Howard's Knob, hiking up Table Rock in the middle of the night to see the most beautiful sunrise a few hours later.
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