TOG MARKS FOR EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In reading The opposite of speechless post about 'your own pop culture' I was reminded of a phrase that I came up with the other day.... it has to do with those white window stickers you see on the back windows of vehicles as they pass... have you ever seen a guy driving a car with paw prints or turtles on the back window? Ever wondered if that meant the guy was a little on the fruity side or if he had a girlfreind or wife who may have inspired/requested the stickers. I'm calling those stickers TOG marks because they make you wonder if the guy is taken or gay..... so that has become the new made up thing in our little world, thought I would share it with everyone.

Big Red when He was not so big, and not so red.....

Here is an old picture I love! Can you say pre-determined vocation? I know I can!!!

More Pictures on Flickr

I took some pictures of my friends' band this weekend!! Check them out!
Go to the side bar way down the page and click on the flickr badge!!!

Yay!! Happy Amazon Dance!!

My loving wife very kindly ordered two sound reinforcement books that I have wanted for quite some time, the Yamaha Sound reinforcement Handbook and the Yamaha Guide to Sound Systems for worship. When I was at CHrist United Methodist Church in Salisbury we had a copy of the S-R handbook in the tech booth. This is the best live sound book there is, period. I have and enjoy another book, The Live Sound Manual that I lend out to freinds who are interested in learning or boning up their knowledge of audio, but it is only a minor blip on the radar compared to the Yammie book.. THe S-R handbook has lots of information about pretty much anything you may encounter in the world of audio equipment, it tells you what things do and how to get them to do those things, it even has mathmatical equations (ugh) that are used to determine certain things in the audio world. No other book comes close to this one... I'll be busy reading it any chance I get next week.

The Guide...dor worship is great too, for a different reason, instead of dummying everything down (which may be necessary given the volunteer status of many church 'soundguys') to almost childish, it really explains everything from designing a sound system (or hiring a company to design one) to running and troubleshooting. A good middle ground is Church Sound Systems, a book I picked up to a couple of years ago to help the folks at a different church (who left it in the choir room collecting dust, so I repoed it)...

I'm doing a couple of workshops tomorrow for a church (or three) up the road from Las Vegas who are looking for information on contemporary worship. I'm doing one about Bass Guitar and it's place in a worship band, and one on running sound. I'm super excited, I get to use my training experience, and talk about two things I love!! I've been compiling info and trying to decide what to include (I've got a three page handout that I've put together for the audio workshop)...

For the bass workshop, I'm probably going to go over a few inportant things like: Play what the song needs, not always what you want.....etc... I do have a few advanced books to recommend, Encyclopedia of scales and modes for bass and Walking Jazz Lines for Bass...

I'll post to let you know how it goes!!!

Booking the band

So I've discovered over the last few months that bar managers are not very easy to contact. I mean, you can call them, leave a mesage, but they don't call back.. You can go into their establishment to see about open dates, and they'll inform you that their calendar is in the office somehwere else.. Bars that we have done very well at, even, are hard to get in contact with, and the managers have even told me to call them 'next week' so we can get some more dates inked...

I must say that the manager at one bar in particular is awesome to deal with, he actaully seems to be interested in having entertainment! It's a nice thing to call him and talk business because you don't ever feel like you are a pain in his behind....

Just ranting here as I do another round of call-backs to another (or the same) group of managers who seem to never be around.....

If you are interested in booking us, check out our website our Myspace or comment on this post, it'll get e-mailed to me!

BFT and me... our trip to a movie set!!

SO I like to search on Craigslist (pretty much every day) to look for freelance job opportunities or good deals, and I came across a post looking for musicinas to be extras in a movie... It is a film students thesis film... I responded to the post to inquire about what style of music they need people to mime and some other details... The response I got was 'Elvis style and some modern stuff' so I said 'Great, I'll bring my upright!!' I took BFT to Jerry's Nugget, a small locals casino on Las Vegas BLVD in North Las Vegas.... THe setting was the lounge, I was wearing black slacks and a white button-up shirt, they gave me a red bow-tie to wear and popped on the song, a boppin' birthday song in the style of Elvis (obvious licensing issues with using a real Elvis song) and it was really easy to learn (not that we needed to play the actual song, I'm just a bit of a perfectionist, I guess. Everybody was impressed with BFT, said that it was just what the shot needed and also that it was just pretty cool in general, so that is a good indicator of the general public's reaction (I leave BFT propped up in the middle of the stage when we are done playing, so anyone coming to the venue will see it and maybe they'll be interested enough to check us out that night...) so we played the song a bunch of times, about 4 different camera angles, multiple takes, but it was cool. then we got on our normal clothes for the other song, a modern singer-songwriter tune.... it goes along with the storyline somehow.. and jammed along with that track a bunch of times. It was a fun experience!

I also had the opportunity to talk to the lounge manager about my band, Nasty habits... I 'just happened' to have a packet with me and I approached her with it after I was done all of the shots the band was in... We went right back into her office and she popped the CD in, I wento over sets and song lists with her, so hopefully we can get some work out of that contact! It is a neat little lounge, very 'Old Vegas' style! We'll see!!!!