Tuesday, October 28, 2008

chicken....

chicken w goat cheese & sundried
Chicken breast cooked on grill pan on mixed greens with goat cheese, sundried tomatoes and homemade vinagrette.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Last weekend UpState

Last weekend i took the band (for this weekend Kenny Soule and Rod Hohl) up to Andes, NY for
a gig at the Andes Hotel. We had a good time
there basking in the relaxation of no cell phone service whatsoever. I played with the Disciples of
Agriculture and TANDY and I was lucky
enough to have Rich from Fourteen Feet loan
me his fabulous Dr Z MAZ 18 Jr 2 x 10"
combo amp to play with all the bands. On Friday afternoon I put together a new pedalboard based around
the Pedaltrain Jr. I love my little home made Don & Dewey Model but it was gettin' pretty ragged.

Here's a look at my Pedaltrain Jr. Version

Pedaltrain Jr
from R to L top row first.....Peterson Strobo-Stomp true bypass strobe tuner, Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay This delay simply sounds fantastic and is handmade by tone fanatics in Finland, The Aramat Tubular Tremolo was built by a lovely guy named Keith how recently lost his battle with brain cancer. It is a terrific sounding trem, the Danelectro Black Licorice is a whacky, crazy fuzz that goes an octave down,
the Frantone Brooklyn Overdrive has been one of my favorites for a long time. can't beat it with a class A amp , I recently got this Option 5 Destonation Rotation Single that does a really convincing Leslie rotating speaker sound complete with adjustable ramp up/down speed controls and the Fulltone Choral/Flange gives me a stereo out option and a luxurious wiggle. So good they are not making it anymore of course.

I tried to take my time and do a good job on the instal.
Here's a look at the bottom with the Voodoo Labs Pedal Power rig in there.

PT Jr Back

So on the way back we were on Rt 28 someplace and we stopped at a sort of country store/gas station. We ordered a bunch of food and I got the Chili. The guy said "Sit down, I'll bring it to you"
A few minutes later he showed up with this basket which looked pretty festive for a gas station. Had to check out the new
iPhone camera for its first food pic.

rt 28 chili

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

some more stuff-Politics, Keith & Ronnie

Here is some Important BREAKING POLITICAL NEWS!!!

Here is Keith Christopher's Myspace

And here is a picture of Ronnie Wood's 20 year old girlfriend who has Ronnie demandin more money and has the rest of the Faces "worried about his focus" on their Possible Reunion Tour.

ron wood's girlfriend

Political Hate-stream.....anydamnway

The Political Hate-stream is wearing me down. I think it is wearing all of us down. So in the decidedly
off topic column.........

TV coverage of this years Beijing Olympics pretty much sucked if you wanted to see anything except
volleyball or gymnastics. But one morning I was lucky enough to have NBC's Today Show on while
going through my coffee routine and I saw a short segment with US Olympic
Track Cyclist Michael Blatchford taking Today
Show Host Matt Lauer out for some laps on the Laoshan Velodrome. Lauer handled himself really well
on the bike and asked some really good questions. I've never been able to find the video on Youtube
but here's a pic.


Matt Lauer & Michael Blatchford
Blatchford giving Lauer a few pointers on riding the boards.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Whole lotta Rock @ Suma

So on another of my outta town producing trips I ended up in a little town east of Cleveland last weekend called Painesville, Ohio.
I was there to record the tracks for my friend Bobby's band the Jack Fords.
I had looked all over the net for a studio that could do live tracks on a 5 pc band w keys. I'd found a few places through some recommendations but the guys in the band steered me to Suma Recording. I'd link to their site but they don't have one. When I looked into the history of the place I had a feeling it would be good.

Half a mile off the road sits this big old house...
Suma door

In that house is most of the gear and the history from the Cleveland Recording Co. where Ken Hamann and his crew recorded great albums by Grand Funk, The James Gang, Wild Cherry, Pere Ubu and the Outsiders. As far as I could tell the only thing newer than 1980 was the coffee, some magazines and their Pro Tools Rig.

Suma

Paul Hamann, his dad and his brother built the console from scratch in 1972 for the old Cleveland Recording. It may be the first example ever of a console with dynamics (Limiter/gates) on each input channel. Transformers in and out. Pretty fantastic.

Suma Console

I had a great time working with the band. The room at Suma really sounded terrific. I was able to have everybody and their amps out in the room (except for Brent The Singer and the bass amp) I was able to balance the volume of the guitar amps with the fabulous Dr Z Airbrake attenuator designed by the late great Ken Fischer of Trainwreck. (roscoe kicks himself for not getting a trainwreck when the Hound offered to introduce him years ago...) The room was some sort of "great room" for some Cleveland fat cat's summer house that was built out of 160 year old barn wood. It sounded great.

Suma live room

Band worked real hard on the tracks. As I talked with Paul I found that a bunch of people I knew had been there recently including the Black Keys and Don Dixon producing Chris Allen with my good buddy Will Rigby playing drums.
Paul wanted me to say hello to Tony Maimone which I did while driving back to NYC in my GMC Suburban (full of gear and a bike sucking down petrol to beat the band) with the masters to 12 rocking tunes on my portable hard drive (to be mixed soon at Cowboy Technical Services Recording Rig in Brooklyn.

.....Little more Ohio....
You know I love the Dr Z Amps which are built nearby in Maple Heights. Bobby had a great rig with the Dr Z Route 66 and the Z-Best cabinet.

Bobby's Z rig

You can't see it in that pic but Bobby also has a great tele that was made for him by ace tele fanatic Phil Maneri at 5th Ave Fretshop in Columbus, OH.

Thanks to all for a crazy good weekend.


************oh I forgot.
check out this 16 track machine.

Photobucket