Have finally bitten the bullet and taken my Taylor 310-CE in for a neck reset, after weathering the Washington, D.C. humidity for a year. The innovative “NT” neck-joint on new Taylors is actually designed to allow neck angle readjustments for just this purpose, and luthier Jim Warwick at Music Technology in Springfield, VA, has done a half-dozen neck resets on Taylors, including one of his own. And since we’re doing a reset, we’re going to try some 12s instead of 13s for string gauge… there’s already tone to spare, I’m going for maximum playability. Jim seems to think we can get down to about 3/64″ string action, that Taylors are designed for just that. And it’s all warranty work… I’m officially excited again.
Our “triumphant” return to the Velvet Lounge last night… and first time on the new stage. Start times being what they are here, it was a very late night for us, as Nefrit El-Or and Chrissy Coughlin took the first and second sets, respectively (great sets by both), and we closed out the night. A small but hearty crowd cheered us on, and my friend Mike Ratel snapped some photos. And the stage — who knew? One of the better sounding stages I’ve played on in recent months. The red (velvet?) curtain behind the stage plays a big part (of all nights to wear a red shirt), as do the excellent 2×12″ speaker monitor wedges up front (which, now that I recall, were once in use at the 9:30 Club around the corner…) Took a few songs to get up to speed (no sound check), but before long it felt real good up there. Soundman Craig did a great job and was most pleasant to work with. The Mesa Boogie blew a fuse just as I powered it up to start, and I didn’t have replacement in the right amperage… so it was back to the single amp rig for the night. Thirteen song set list, including the newly added “Forgiven.. next up, Luna Park, 1/30. Mike Shupp Gig Archive: Velvet Lounge: Tue Jan 13 2004
According to XMFan.com we’re getting continued airplay over at XM Satellite Radio… nice. OK I really need to buy one of those players now. Hmm, I wonder if my Starry Night software plots the positions of XM’s “Rock” and “Roll” geostationary communications satellites…
So… I have finally got all the audio files from the live recording transferred, and have begun the process of listening back, and rough mixing, and can finally write a quick note about the show. Though I was under the impression that we’d be recording straight to Pro Tools®, the on-site studio was in fact only set up to record to (MOTU’s) Digital Performer; a fine platform, but necessitating some extra steps for me. I’d brought with me a 60 GB FireWire drive and a 160 GB USB 2.0/FireWire drive, in hopes of writing directly to one of them, but we couldn’t quite get that to work… however, engineer Bobby McIntyre converted Digital Performer’s raw audio files to .WAV format, and burned them over two (2) DVD-R discs (4.7 GB capacity each—exactly 6.0 GB total of data—85 minute show recorded on 14 channels at 16-bit/44.1 kHz). My good friend Mike Harvey at lent me an external DVD-RW drive which ran flawlessly on my Pro Tools machine (a Dell Dimension 8200), and after quickly setting up a new PT session, importing and synching the audio was a snap.
Slowly working up some rough mixes — here’s a short clip of a rough mix of “What Did You Mean”:…more to come. Performance-wise, it was a tough night for us, as the venue, nice as it is, is really best suited to acoustic performers (even though they actively book rock acts)… the brick wall behind and along the sides of the stage, along with all the rest of the hard surfaces in the room, make it extremely reflective, acoustically… and as soon as you introduce a rock drum kit and some guitar amplifiers, you end up with a situation where it’s very difficult to properly monitor your vocals, no matter how low you try to keep the instruments, and how hard you try to push the monitors.
But the crowd was great, really supportive, and the sound out front was by all accounts excellent, even among one of the better shows we’ve done. That’s the latest, more news and sound clips to follow…!
Have posted some early photos from the show last night… on my way to Actiondale Studios to borrow a DVD reader to transfer the audio files from DVD-R to my hard drive…!
Tomorrow is our live recording at Jammin’ Java… looking forward to seeing the actual studio part of the venue for the first time… pretty smart set-up, actually. I’ll be taking the Pro Tools® session files home with me that night… who knows, can maybe even get a couple rough mixes from the show done, and put them up on the website the next day.
It has been a good year… and I’m liking the looks of 2004 already.
Played Mum’s Pub Friday night, in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, a stone’s throw from Ravens Stadium. Chuck and I debuted the “acoustic duo” format of the band, and it went really well, quite a lot of fun actually. Tried a little bit different type of set list, with some of the more straight ahead stuff up front, and it seemed to go over great. The Shelly Coats had invited us to play, after we shared the stage with them last month at the Baltimore IPO festival; Sarah Pinsker was on the bill as well. Everyone was really nice, especially Brian doing the sound… we just may have to come back.
