Another Saturday and it's band practice - after a week of being up at 5.15 every day and lucky if I am home for 6.30 every evening, Thursday was horrendous. The motorway had been shut at a key point where two motorways merged and guess where I was. It took me three and a half hours to drive the 52 miles home from our offices.
But, other good hings have happened within our family, my wife, Helen has secured a new job at a practice in the area after putting with dreadful treatment from the hus
Another Saturday and it's band practice - after a week of being up at 5.15 every day and lucky if I am home for 6.30 every evening, Thursday was horrendous. The motorway had been shut at a key point where two motorways merged and guess where I was. It took me three and a half hours to drive the 52 miles home from our offices.
But, other good hings have happened within our family, my wife, Helen has secured a new job at a practice in the area after putting with dreadful treatment from the hus
There are several pointy bits. The starting bit, the couple of bits before the middle bit and several bits toward the end bit.
I havnt made it to the end bit yet.
I still have 9 gizmos with strings on them not including the mandolin or ukes.
It doesnt matter how I stack them all they collectively take up about 1.135sqm or 12.21sqf with amps and cab included when all clumped together. I have this clump of stuff stacked in a corner. Its quite a dull lump, just a corner of boring looking stuff.
What a week it's been, the hottest week of the year so far, but when we get heat in England it can also get very muggy and can drain you and make you very tired.
Last Friday a friend I have known for thirty five years or so invited me to go and watch his band as they were playing in the local pub in our village. I was very pleased to meet another of my friends who was also at the gig. Pete, owner of the yellow telecaster had come back from his place in the south of France for a week or so a
Well,guys...I don't believe it !I finally hit 70 years of age recently.The cards arrived.I thought they were for my dad ! I looked in the mirror...I am my dad !! How did I get here so quickly ?
I started playing guitar in 1957.I'd been shipped off to a private school by my dad.It was like 'Tom Brown's School Days' .( An English book about private schools ) What was I going to do ? The answer revealed itself when I went into a small common room,used by the boys at the school.There was a roaring
There is a saying that go's "While the cat's away, the mice will play".
Now I am not saying Mrs 555 is a cat, that would not be nice! But she and our youngest daughter went to Liverpool on Friday and got home at Midnight on Saturday, and I like having the house to myself! Friday night I watched what I wanted on TV and found that a Billy Joel concert from back in 87 in Moscow was being shown, and it was very good, so after that i climbed into bed and read for half an hour.
Normally on a S
It's been a busy day. Usually on a Saturday morning I treat myself to a lie in bed and get up when I want to and not when the alarm go's off. However, this morning I had to be at church to take my turn with some other guys to clean the building. It's quite a large church building with two wings away from the Chapel area and also the hall, when those two area's are opened it will seat 800 people very easily. So it was a very busy morning and with the early start I was tired before I went to band
It is time for Rolling Thunder again (tomorrow). Kinda like the Superbowl of motorcycles for the Washington DC area. This is where half a million motorcycles from around this country, Canada and other countries as well descend upon our nation's capital for "The Ride to the Wall". Meaning we ride as an organized group to the Vietnam Veteran's memorial in Washington DC.
The event is a protest, a demonstration with the point being that we remember those who served our country during a time of w
SRV is said to have used some REALLY fat strings and legend has it that those fat strings contributed to the tone he got out of his guitar. Zakk Wylde signature strings are so fat that they are practically bass guitar strings and the nut of the guitar needs to be re-cut so that they will fit. (been there, done that.) Dave Mustaine, Alex Skolnick... the list goes on; the names of guys who are said to be playing some REALLY fat strings on their electric guitars.
But are the benefits of fat str
After our first gig when we really fought the sound gremlins, we decided that we would devote our next practice to sorting out the problem of sound so that we are ready next time. So meeting up at our rehearsal venue, instead of our usual rehearsal positions facing the drummer and each other, we lined up and started playing as if we were on a stage, we even allowed ourselves only a small space to play from to replicate smaller stages.
How ironic though that on this day when we wanted to sort
Ive recently sold a lot of gear including PA's, guitars, amps and cabs, pedals, recording gear, pick ups and anything that resembled an unused or unnecessary piece of gear.
Its been a rewarding experience. I havnt finished the purge and still have stuff to get rid of. It will happen.
There have been a few things that happened that I didnt really think about when I first started selling my gear.
One of those things is space. Room to move. No clutter.
Another is time. I dont have projects
There is where I try to think of something which does not qualify as material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise violative of any law.
Dear Heritage team,
I am writing you because I'm quite unhappy about a guitar that I bought not so long ago. Indeed, I bought this year a H535 model that sounds amazing and has beautiful back and sides but the job on the binding and black dots on the edge is just disgraceful for the price I paid. I bought it new on eBay from Route 7 Music. I have a 1993 Heritage H575 Custom that looks and sounds amazing and I'm sad to be disappointed by this new one.
From a sound point of view, I have noth
After only being together for about four weeks, we were playing our first gig. We all looked forward to it, having rehearsed as much as we could. We had arranged to meet at the venue at 5pm because that would be the only time we could set up and get a sound check (more of the sound check later).
On the way to the venue, I decided to stop into a guitar dealer in Leeds and pick up a couple of guitar stands for the gig as I don't have any, and I bought a new mic clip to take my mic as the one o
Today was our final practice before our first gig. Thankfully the gig is a friendly environment for us, which is good. We got next weeks gig when we had only been together two weeks and only had eight songs in the bag. So, we have done our best to get as many songs as we can together. The gig will be good for us because we can treat it as a shakedown gig and see what reaction we will get. Our bass players brother got us the gig and actually invited us, we didn't go looking for it. The audience w
We finally gave our band a name! We have opted for "Route 62" which is a spoof on Route 66. The M62 motorway runs from the east coast to the west coast and passes just north of my home town by about three miles or so. It is actually Englands busiest motorway. So, as we travel along it on a regular basis, we thought why not? the last band Shaun and I were is was given this name but it didn't get off the ground.
I think (and this is only my personal opinion) that so many bands start rehearsing
Another four songs in the bag today, once again rehearsed to gigging standard. We practice every Saturday afternoon, meeting up at 12.30 and after setting up we work until 4pm. And in a good rehearsal session, it really is work, getting all the mistakes ironed out until it is right. Last week it was my fingers and brain which were not connecting, this week, Terry the drummer was having a difficult time by his standards. All I can say is that if that was a bad day, he must be incredible on a good
Spring is here and I'm once again looking for new ways to stir up creativity.
This spring I'm challenging myself into writing and recording with more frequency and less self-scrutiny. Bottom line is that practice makes perfect if I ever want to grow as a musician and as a songwriter.
I've been leaning on newer music for inspiration lately and so far, so good! I've once again turned my music room into a unkept mess of cables.
Thank you Modern Music.
http://www.heritageownersclu
Just an up date on the band and how things are progressing. One thing I did during the week was to buy myself a new mic lead. Thankfully that was all that was needed and not anther microphone. I like decent equipment and just right now I don't have a lot of spare cash for band equipment. We bought a 600 watt Peavy pa amp a few weeks back, that proved a good investment. It's old but good and kicks out the power nicely. A bit like a big V8 engine, gets you there nicely without putting your foot do
OK, the line up is complete and there are no more auditions to be held. We made our choice and we are sticking to our guns. And, a good choice it has turned out to be. This evening I wanted to call Simon, the guy who came last week, but I can not for the life in me find his telephone number, and looking back it seems that all the communication we had prior to the audition was through a site for musicians looking to find bands etc. So, as much as I would have preferred to have spoken to Simon per
Today our auditions came to a close for a further guitar player to compliment the line up. Earlier this week we organised today's sessions with three different guys coming at intervals of one hour and fifteen minutes so each one could have fifty minutes with us. Well, that was the intention. Earlier on this week I had an e mail from one guy who said he had gone down with a really nasty cold and was getting worse, he would let me know on Friday if he was able to come. I don't know if he was reall
After last Weeks session in purgatory, this week we auditioned some one who could actually play. We were going to audition two guitar players, but one of them decided to cancel on us because he liked half our song ideas but didn't get on with the other half. Well, at least he was up front about it and saved us the time. We are still recovering from last week when we had all lost the will to live.
So, any way, Dave turned up on time, coming up from the South Yorkshire town of Wath Upon Dearne
