Austin Again & Again

Last Wednesday Televators played with three other bands at Red Eyed Fly in downtown Austin.
Hooka Hey from Paris France was really good. (Their video is NSFW, in case you look it up)


We played well, and debuted our new song 'Sonetto' which features acoustic guitar, a more melodic bassline than usual, and Led Zep-ish vocals and drums.


My favorite moment was when we finished our set with the driving 'My Paradigm'. After the thunderous ending there was 3 seconds of silence, then a member of another band on the bill yelled "How the hell do you follow THAT?!?!"
Exactly how it should be done, my friend. Take no prisoners--go out and kill.
We cracked up.


Still deeply in love with my new-ish Ibanez Iceman bass and Peavey MAX tube pramp. Great tone inspires me to play better.


Just two days later we were back in the State Capital to return to Wire Recording studio and get down to work mixing the 3 unfinished songs recorded last April.



Our producer Lee Popa spent too much time and called-in all his favors mixing 'Milk Run' on his own, delivering a fine final product. Then he dropped the rest of the project, violating our contract and exposing himself to a nice lawsuit, but instead we chalked it up to lessons learned and we're still going to attach his name to the final results since that's all we have left of any value.


We used Wire engineer Joey B for mixing last Friday, in a marathon 7pm to 7am session.
Joey really knows his way around the studio, and is a cool relaxed cat to hang with.


It's interesting that we get to combine the convenience and speed of recording digitally with ProTools, but get to enhance and warm up the sound with piles and piles of vintage tube audio gear culled from famous studios world-wide. My bass might get run through a compressor used by The WHO while Bex's vocals are catching a vibe from something that the Beatles or Stones once used.


The rest of the band went back to re-do vocals and stuff on Sunday, but I missed that trip.


Not to fear, because I just went back up to Austin for the third time in a week for more mixing this Wednesday.
10pm-7am this time, and we finished 'The Visitor', our next release. The other two should be done in a few days, hopefully without my help.


Mixing is a tedious and exacting process, and we found the perfect engineer for us. Joey and Televators plan to work together from now on. But man, after hearing the same song again and again and again all night long, I'm so burned out on it that listening to the results is the last thing I want to do.
No wonder many artists never listen to their own recordings.


Some of you might wonder why I didn't mix it myself, given my 25 years of experience mixing live shows.
Well, the studio is a totally different animal and the results will be heard for years on all different kinds of sound systems from iPods to car stereos, home theaters to REAL theaters (SHHH--it's a secret for now).
I just don't have the gear or experience to do it justice, and that's cool.
Besides, live sound is more like playing an instrument.
It can be creative, spontaneous, and fun.
Plus, if you make a mistake people often blame it on the band and forget about it two seconds later.


Once 'The Visitor' gets mastered (yet another engineer performs final tweaks to make it fully compatible with all playback environments and CD pressing) I will post links so y'all can hear it for free (before you buy it on iTunes).
Once the final two songs are mixed and mastered, we'll be approaching record labels to try for a recording contract as well as looking for opening slots on major tours.

Again I ask: "Why didn't all this happen when I was younger?"
But hell, if bands that I grew up listening to can still do it...

Guitar Nostalgia

First thing this morning I stumbled across this post on Facebook:
What a totally unexpected gift to see this great picture of one of my favorite guitars from way back when.

Bob mostly played rhythm guitar in Dirty Art, but only because I was really into the kind of metal popular in the early '80s. When we played Stones songs and other bluesier fare, he was the man on lead.
A few years older than I was, he went on to have a solid career and I'll always appreciate what he taught me.

I had completely forgotten about his being the only other person to play my doubleneck onstage, but the memory came right back when I saw this--I'm just astonished that he had a photo of the moment.
That guitar was amazing and got me a lot of attention.
I miss it dearly but now that the rest of the world knows what I knew way back then about 1970s Ibanez guitars, they are priced out of my reach. Last one I saw on Craigslist was priced at $1100, which is fair but too much for nostalgia's sake.

On the other hand...
Because it only saw limited use the 6-side got new strings every other week and the 12 once a month. My main guitars and basses have always gotten new strings weekly (or more often) when playing live or recording.
On those days when I had to change eighteen strings, it was a major blow to my wallet and spare time--don't miss that at all!


I have a set of new GHS Boomers for my bass, to be installed this coming Tuesday night:

After playing in Ft. Worth and Houston this year, Austin seems like a local gig.
Hooka Hey is a really cool band from Paris France, and the other acts on the bill are probably flattering non-specific comment because I haven't done my research.

Heavy Metal

TELEVATORS played our 2nd out-of-town show in the last two weeks.

This time we hooked up with WINTOUR 2013 presented by Exposed Music Festival.
Buc-ee's was a great place to stop on our way to BFE in Houston Friday afternoon, and pretty soon we were checked-in with the promoter and killing time until the show. Me and Jaime bought books at a little shop nearby, and admired our passes:

The Host and MC was Big Brother contestant and famous metal bassist Jennifer "JennCity" Arroyo, who spent our entire set right in front of me. If you know who she is, you know she must have been digging our music and not yours truly.
She couldn't have been nicer (without losing her metal edge) and I only wish we didn't have to head home so fast 'cuz she would have been fun to hang with.
At least I got a pic:

Our set was short and sweet.
Not to slag other bands--mucho respect to anyone trying to make it with original music--but it turned into a completely different scene when Televators hit the stage.
Everything got serious and very professional.

I had more fun onstage than ever, but suddenly it was over and time to strike the stage.
By the time ZYNC started their set we were already loaded into our trucks and saying our goodbyes, which took longer than expected because it seemed like every guitard and bassist on the bill wanted details on my new preamp and Iceman bass, or just kiss all of our butts and beg to be FB friends.
Guess we're on the right track...


Today's news is that we've just been included in a very cool compilation of new progressive rock over at ProgSphere.
Haven't listened to all 31 tracks yet, but found quite a few already that are killer.
If you like RUSH, YES, Dream Theater, ELP, King Krimson, etc, you might want to check this stuff out.
Especially like how you get to name your price, should you decide to buy any of our music.



Speaking of heavy metal, on Saturday I spotted the biggest pickup truck in the world in front of Northern Tools:

Google "International MXT".
To give you an idea of the size, I had to jump pretty high just to see that there was a fancy retractable deal covering the bed.
Makes Hummers look Tonka.

Fruits Of My Labors

Been working at my new day job for 6 weeks. My hours have more than tripled and I just got a 25% raise, so it looks like the boss is happy with my performance. May have to quit the bands someday if this trend continues. Finally had enough cushion in the bank to splurge a little, so I just bought this:

Hated borrowing a different bass amp for every show, and found this Peavey Mark III Bass amp head at Krazy Kat's for the right price. Made in USA in the early 1980s--the golden age of Peaveys for me, although plenty of their newer stuff is even better. Their amps are THE toughest and most reliable ever made by anyone anywhere so even though it's 30+ years old, after I open it up for cleaning and inspection it will have my complete confidence. Sounds just like I expected, too. Works well with my PV speaker cabinet it's sitting on, though I'm going to get another because more = more. It's been decades since I celebrated a New Amp Day, and it feels great. In semi-related news, a product photo I made for my company's listings was quickly promoted to become THE master photo for that item all across Amazon. Lucky or good I don't know, but it's pretty cool. Should have snuck a small ©kak onto it and added my name and this blog's URL into the jpg's exif data. Does anyone know how to make paragraph breaks in the new Blogger interface???

Trailers And Amps

Ever have one of those weeks when it seems like everything is a little off?

TRAILERS

Coming home from a show in Kerrville in the wee hours of last Saturday morning, everything was fine.
Just two band brothers yapping about The Spurs and music and such while dragging a heavy trailer up those damned hills on IH10.
I pulled up in front of our house, unloaded my personal gear, and bid my boss good night.
Some time later he called with the news that the trailer's axle had parted company with the suspension in a most catastrophic fashion and asked my advice on what he might do about it:
Being late, I was tired and a bit in my cups, so I wasn't particularly helpful.
He was only a mile from his house, but had to call a tow truck to get the trailer the rest of the way.


The tire grabbed the fender and folded it up rather well while also shredding.



Somehow, the other fender sustained damage as well.
I'm just glad it didn't happen while I was driving in the middle of Nowhere, Texas.
We had to split the gear between our pickups for the next gig, which luckily was a private party that didn't require all of it.

He bought a new (used) trailer today that's a bit bigger in every dimension but height (to fit his garage) so the good news is more space for more stuff.
Bad news is I'm still going to hit my head at least twice a week for the next few years.


AMPS

By my count I have used at least six different amp/speaker combinations since I started playing bass a couple years ago, first with Loud Nine and now for Televators. It gets old pretty fast, borrowing stuff and never getting the chance to settle on ONE amp rig that you can get used-to and fine-tune over time.
If I wasn't a sound expert I think I would have gone insane, but luckily it's fairly easy for me to get wildly different products to do what I need them to do.
Doesn't mean I like this situation--it really blows and I hate it.

A big step forward was buying a Peavey bass speaker cabinet from my friend Buz.
It was part of the rig I used with great success in the studio two months ago.
Still need to pay him for it...

While working up amp situation #7 this week I took a peek in the rear port of the cabinet and spotted this:
WTF???
Never seen such a thing--a bottle of something was neatly wedged between the frame and cone of a speaker.


Mickey Mouse Shampoo & Conditioner.
The kind you find in your hotel room at Epcot Center or Disneyland I suppose.
Buz had zero idea where it came from or how it got there.
And yes, it's location will have an effect on the sound but with the other 3 speakers involved it would be hard to notice, even for an "expert" like myself.


It took a while for me to take a hard look at the bass amp that's been sitting in Bex Televator's practice room, rather than treating it like a carpet-covered nuisance that's only good for banging my knees and holding up my soda and camera bag. When I finally had no choice but to use the thing there were issues with random volume drops, so I brought the sucker home and took it apart.
As I suspected there were some cracked solder joints on the input jack, and a couple more on one of the power transistors.
Fixed in mere minutes thanks to the best invention in recent years--the cordless drill/screwdriver. (Mine is a 24-volt Black & Decker we got at Target for a mere $36 with many accessories).

As it turns out, for a basic "practice" combo amp it has WAY more features than usual.
In fact, it's preamp section is a near clone of the one Buz let me use in the studio minus the tube section--it's all solid-state circuitry. Good thing I have a tube preamp/direct box to put in front of it for some old-school tone through the amp and also sent to the PA system.
I did a bunch of stuff to the 4x10" cabinet, including the addition of a big metal 1970's vintage Peavey logo and removing the casters so it'll stack nicely. Not done yet, but getting close.

Used this rig at practice tonight and we all agreed is sounded fine.
I'll be using it for the next Televator's show, June 23rd at Charlie Brown's on Starcrest. Hope to see some of you there.

This doesn't change anything. I still NEED a complete bass amp system of my own.
I've selected the specific items I want, and it's going to sound way better than rigs costing 3x as much.