5th Fret On Facebook

There comes a time when we, the people, must stand up and take notice of our surroundings. What better example is there than Facebook? Everyone's on it (well, maybe bands are still clinging to MySpace which is understandable. MySpace offers a band a lot) including your coworkers, friends, old significant others, companies, podcasts and blogs like this one.

Juststrings.com has a Facebook page where they give away strings as well as post pictures of lustful gear and add a bit of musical history or questions to your daily news feed. Favored Nations is hosting a giveaway of the new Steve Vai floral JEM but it's ONLY applicable if you're on Facebook.

Everyone's on it.

And now we are too. Becoming a fan of the blog is a snap. Just look to your right (--->) and click the Facebook link and on your status updates page where all of your friends are posting about their days, you can see links to the latest blogs, including a preview (in case you don't want to read it, but I still hope you do) AND you'll even see previews of reviews to come, questions to the fans and more. And you can help the blog by suggesting to your friends that they need to check out the 5th Fret if they like music. I've been told that the content of this page isn't "really guitar related" which would seem to make this site even more accessible to the music fan, guitar player or no.

So sign up for Facebook if you haven't already and become a fan of the blog. I doubt you'll regret it.

-Pappy

Gretsch Chet Atkins Strings

I received a set of Gretsch Chet Atkins strings (eleven gauge with a wound third) and immediately knew what I wanted to put them on.

My Telecaster.

It makes sense to me not only because FMIC is now handling so much of the Gretsch distribution and marketing but because I do not think any company's strings should be associated strictly with a matching brand of guitars. They need to be able to stand on their own and not just rely on the brand name or the famous guitarist's name attached.

Now, the story goes like this: Paul Yendell used to play with Chet Atkins - played with him for QUITE some time - and is reputed to know Chet's gear equally or better than Chet himself which I believe. To this day Paul is helping Gretsch nail down details for the more detailed Chet Atkins models (the 6120 is a fine guitar but it was the one with the least amount of input from Chet compared to his other models) like the Country Gentleman or the CGP model.

D'Addario sent Mr. Yendell a ton of strings and basically asked him which ones Chet would have liked.

I'm here to say I have no idea if Mr. Yendell got it right. It's not REALLY important though because in the end it doesn't matter who would have approved what but what the end result was and in this case, they're awesome. I will say that they feel VERY thick and a little cumbersome at first but there's also a strong feeling of... authority to it. There's a big feeling to it and thick, powerful tone. It's great for thrashing around - something Mr. Atkins probably wouldn't have done, but hey, I'm not Mr. Atkins. They're also a little tough to bend to get the notes where you want them, but in the end, I think this was a result of poor choice on my part. Not because of the guitar choice, but the scale associated with the guitar. If I had strung up my Les Paul with these strings instead of my Tele, I probably would have had less issues with bends but the sheer tone I was getting from the Tele was worth it.

In the end, much like how Gretsch guitars aren't JUST limited to finger style or rockabilly, these strings are not JUST limited to Gretsch guitars. Give them a chance and check them out. I don't think they're as good as Curt Mangan strings, but they're still pretty good and worth checking out.

-Pappy

Selling Out

Being a fan of punk and metal since the very beginnings of my musical life, the topic of selling out has ALWAYS interested me. You always hear about bands like Green Day, Blink 182, Metallica, those are usual suspects and in my opinion these bands are usually assaulted by fans for doing nothing more than growing up and marketing themselves better, changing musical styles or perhaps just getting more fans.

I remember back when I was a young teen, I was a huge fan of Korn and I thought it was pretty cool that no one else paid any attention to them at my school. No one liked them. They were too angry or loud or emotional or inaccessible, but in the end, it was just me and my favorite band. Then they released Follow the Leader and Freak On A Leash came out to huge commercial success and all of a sudden EVERYONE liked them. Every stereotypical group you could think of: the stoners, the jocks, the misfits, the troubled, all had a new favorite band and I couldn't help but think Korn sold out.

Of course, looking back, I know that's probably not true. They just blew up. It was their time to shine and I should have been happy that a band that I really liked was enjoying success.

I think this is a good lesson to share with everyone. Just because everyone picks up on your band that used to be your little secret doesn't mean the BAND sold out.

Anyway, once i realized this so many instances where people say a band sold out seemed ridiculous to me.

But there ARE instances where bands definitely DO seem to sell out or trade their artistic integrity for more money or a record deal and when this happens, I can't help but feel a little bummed and more than a little ripped off. Like I could have gotten a better product with more honesty and less of a watered-down taste.

A band that will remain nameless released a demo CD that was awesome. It was heavy and filled with a depressed kind of angst. Kind of like a slower, southern Metallica. There were songs that most definitely dealt with dark topics and there was rarely a song where the word "die" wasn't involved. And not single acoustic guitar was among the mixes (though there's nothing wrong with an acoustic guitar). Then they got a record deal and their debut album came out and a lot of the songs had the same bones but now acoustic guitars were plentiful and every "die" was replaced with "fly." That's what I mean by watered down. How likely is it that the band that penned the songs had a sudden revelation and decided that yes, they like the dark stuff, but maybe not THAT dark, maybe a friendly kind of dark like Labyrinth or something. You can look at the successes of heavier, darker, more depressing bands and know that success is possible, so why change the words and make everything more radio friendly if not for more ears and in turn more money?

THAT is selling out to me and a great thing about when bands sell out like that is how many people honestly heard the demo CD and know that the band sold out? I can't imagine more than five hundred of this particular demo CD and now they've sold millions of albums so how many people know that this happened? To be sure, this is the only band that I'M aware of though I'm sure a ton of you have similar stories.

And sometimes it seems like a band or artist sells out as a way to get the opportunity to do what they WANT with a larger audience. take John Mayer for instance: famous for pop songs but he just used his pop material to get the money and audience to do what he REALLY wanted to do which was blues. A lot of people call foul on the fact that dues were not paid in sweaty night clubs with the stench of stale beer in the air, but come on. How many people actually come out of that status? I don't blame him at all for using the system as a means to an end.

In the end, for me "selling out" as everyone uses the term now is nothing more than sour grapes on the fan's part to me. Selling out does exist though and that's when an artist is willing to change what they meant to do for financial gain which seems to fly in the face of "artistic integrity" and THAT seems more like selling out than when a band changes little if anything and the world all of a sudden catches on.

Still, I can't be too upset that the band in question sold out. They had the opportunity to see the world and leave the lives that might have been for a life that had a pretty good chance of being successful and now they are. They're making a ton of money PLAYING instruments and making other people happy with their music. If someone told me that if I just changed a few words and added acoustic guitars to appeal to the more sensitive crowd and in exchange I had an infinitely better chance of having success doing what most people only dream about, I would be inclined to go with it.

So perhaps selling out isn't really a big deal at all. Maybe the world should cut bands a little more slack and instead of complaining about bands that sell out, focus on supporting the bands you think aren't selling out MORE.

-Pappy

Untapped Potential

iPhone app "iPractice" features scrolling TAB and allows you to change the tempo for a variety of lessons to learn be it chords, scales, arpeggios, etc. Great app to get if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch.

And lately we've been seeing some apps that focus on band-specific music but the untapped potential here is for music book publishers to create an app where individuals can buy songs, albums or a band's entire catalog in TAB. For the most part, they're already being made for paper books. How hard would it be to break it down bar by bar in a similar way that iPractice breaks down their tabs?

I know that there will never be a day when all music publishers can agree to use the same thing. There will never be ONE label, there will never be all music books coming from the same publishers that are tabbed out by the same people. Because of this I honestly can't expect or even recommend that there be ONE application that all labels will push their band's catalogs so by all means, release multiple apps from each label/publishing house. By allowing someone to buy one song in TAB, you'll probably make more money than you would with an entire printed music book and for a couple of reasons:

1) The music would move on the iPod/iPhone. You can play by sight and never have to turn a page. no more putting something heavy in the middle of the book to hold it down.

2) If you only want to learn one song, why would you buy a whole album's expensive music book?

So get on it, publishers! Apple allows companies to have apps where there are in-app purchases so you could release the app for free and wait for the single sales and then the album sales and then maybe the whole band's catalog sales to come in. There is NO sense charging someone to LOOK at your merchandise. After all, no one charges someone to walk into a store, right?

If Barnes & Noble and Amazon can release ebook readers for the iPhone/iPod Touch, you can release a TAB reader.

I would download it.

-Pappy

Sweetwater Music Update

I wrote a blog a while back about Sweetwater Music and their seemingly amazing service. I also said that if I ever ordered from them that I would write about my experience in case anyone was curious.

I woke up extra early one morning and ordered a Blue Microphone (the Snowball to be specific) and later went to work. I received a call from a number I had never seen before and when I answered it was a person named Andy from Sweetwater who was just calling to let me know that they received the order (I also received email confirmation) and that it was being put on the truck right now. I should have it within a week he said. Shipping was free so I did not complain about the time at all and it arrived in a well packed (my toddler daughter tested it) box that had a new catalog in it (their catalogs make you wonder how a company like Musician's Friend is still in business. It's way more thorough with a ton more merchandise in it) and a magazine as well as a folder that included my receipt and a request to have the whole process rated for future improvement.

There was also candy.

But the service was really good and the merchandise arrived exactly as promised with nothing broken or in pieces and I was confident enough to order a thinner version of Amplitube Fender that goes for about a hundred bucks and Andy again called and said that this was actually on back order. It should be in tomorrow, he said, and then it will be put on the truck to get out to me. out of curiosity I asked if it was merely a coincidence that I've talked to someone from Sweetwater four times now and every time it's been to him. Was there a shortage of employees? Did no one else want to talk to me? No, nothing like that. I've been assigned to him. He's my guy. I have a guy in the company that's looking to get me good deals. I may be blowing it out of proportion but it feels pretty good knowing that this one guy is going to be calling me and he'll remember that I bought a microphone and ask how it's working out and all that. I appreciate that as a customer.

All that being said, I still prefer to do business with Shanghai Music but if Shanghai doesn't have what I'm looking for, I'll be looking to Sweetwater before any other shop of comparable size.

-Pappy

Squier Owner May Get Lucky

I have a Squier Telecaster. It's been to about a dozen countries in less than four years so far by my side whenever the military wants to send me anywhere. I love it. It's rough and tumble to a wicked extreme. The neck is filled with little nicks and dings on the back of it and (unfortunately) the frets are gouged from what has become lessons learned about guitar packing since it doesn't go anywhere in a case. Much like a Timex, it takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin' and even now with the neck pickup case smashed in at places, the pickup switch bent at an uncomfortable angle and the volume knob missing entirely, it still acts like a champ.

This is one of the main reasons why everyone who travels and is a little rough on their guitars loves the Tele.

It was the build quality that enticed me to the Tele and I picked the most classic looking Telecaster offered which was the Affinity Series in butterscotch. I'm not saying it looks exactly like a classic Tele, but it was the closest. Unfortunately there are a lot of issues ranging from the number of screws in the pickguard, to the bridge and it's the bridge that I wanted to talk about today. There was no classic Tele bridge offered on a Squier at the time but I figured what the heck? I bought it thinking any after market bridge would do only to find out that the measurements are a bit off and it doesn't look like it will work. Not only is the measurement a bit off which I don't REALLY care about (it's a road guitar after all and it looks like it's been loved by an abusive husband) but the fact that most of the barrel saddle bridges are string through body does throw a wrench in the works.

I like the barrel saddles and I like the fewer screws in the bridge. I have twelve screws that adjust string height on my Tele and that's six too many. It doesn't have a classic look, I'm sure the tone isn't being helped and every single time it goes for a flight the springs go way out of whack and there's a ton of buzzing involved until I can get a good amount of time to set everything back up.

Now, Telecaster professionals like those on TDPRI have engineered their own bridges and drilled holes for top-loading into bridges that were designed for through-body operations and that's awesome for those with the skills, know-how or friends that can do that, but I do not fall in to those categories.

But a light shines and I see that Jim Campilongo is getting a signature Telecaster based on his beloved 1959 Telecaster which features a top loading bridge. It also features barrel saddles and an appropriate amount of screws.

I'm excited to see if this bridge will make its way into the public's hand as a separate part for those that perhaps want to try out the looser feel of a top-loader or those that have top-loaders and want something with a little more class to it and a little more stability. I certainly hope so.

-Pappy

New Nocturne Brain Seltzer Colors

I interviewed Tavo Vega a while back when he came out of the woodwork and announced his genius pre amp pedal, the Nocturne Brain Seltzer, which is made to emulate the sound of the pre amp inside the Roland 301 Space Echo which (thanks to Brian Setzer) is probably among the most famous delays in the world. They're pricey though and who wants to replace TAPES? And who's to say you even WANT a delay? Some people just want that delicious distortion that comes from the Roland's Space Echo.

So he invented his pedal that perfectly recreates that sound and REALLY beefs up your guitar's signal and released it onto the world.

And it is AWESOME. You can find find videos of me using it with different guitars on my YouTube page (see the link on the right).

I highly recommend to anyone that they pick one of these pedals up. You'll like it.

Anyway, Tavo Vega is a bit of an art fan who loves color and has just released a couple more limited edition colors like this one which he happened to decide to make after I recommended to him that it would look cool.

Check it out:

Isn't that awesome?!

And while I think everyone should definitely get one of these for their own pedal boards, this site is not sponsored by Tavo Vega, so anything I say about this pedal is straight from the heart. It happens to be on sale for this week too, in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

How about that?

Now, you can pick up one of these super sweet and VERY limited green pedals for $155.00.

You can pick any of Tavo's current pedals (because colors have changed quite a bit since he came out with his first series) from his blog located here: http://thenocturnebrainseltzer.blogspot.com/. Check it out. He's got a ton of videos on his site, and great pictures of the pedals (like the one above).

Check it out and get back to me. I'd love to hear YOUR opinions on it.

-Pappy

Six String Bliss Gets New Co-Host

Yeah, it's bragging a little, but I was recently asked to join Six String Bliss as the new co-host and I am STOKED. There was a perfect storm of reasons to start the 5th Fret and Six String Bliss played a big part. My wife said that I was writing a lot of music stuff on my personal blog and she didn't really dig reading them, and I was listening to old episodes of Six String Bliss thinking that I would respond like THIS or like THAT to whatever topic they are talking about at the time.

It didn't help that there's no one around locally that I can just talk guitar with. The shops are closed or far away and they don't really like to talk gear or guitar news so what was I supposed to do?

So I sent some emails to some friends and said I'm starting a blog and if they ever wanted to contribute, they are more than welcome to and now I'm a co-host on my favorite podcast!

SO, if you HAVEN'T been listening to Six String Bliss (you can download or stream the shows from sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, iTunes, and of course their site at http://www.sixstringbliss.com), you should. Especially now, if you're a fan of the blog.

AND, if you wouldn't mind once you check out the show, if you're listening to it from iTunes, be sure to leave a review of the show. As of right now, there are six reviews for the US iTunes stores and that's pretty low.

I look forward to working with the guys on 6SB and I'll still be posting here with as much effort as possible like I do already. Nothing's going to change here, but if you feel like the blog isn't enough to satisfy your guitar/music talk lust and you happen to want to LISTEN to it, check out Six String Bliss.

-Pappy

News Below the Fold: New Address

You can access with 5th Fret and remember the URL much more easily because I decided to pony up the dough and buy the domain name so now instead of numeral five, th, hyphen fret dot blogspot dot com, you can now just go to fifthfret.org.

No need to update your bookmarks though as 5th-fret.blogspot.com will still bring you to the site.

-Pappy

Pink Floyd Validates Mediocrity At Best

EMI and Pink Floyd have been in a legal battle for a while. Much like how Seinfeld wasn't released on DVD for quite some time until royalties based on DVD sales, a concept that wasn't even considered when the original contracts were signed, Pink Floyd and EMI had no idea that there would be a thing called the Internet or that Apple would come out with a wickedly successful MP3 store that offered single tracks for purchase.

Pink Floyd's position was that every one of their albums was meant to be listened to in its entirety and NOT a track here, a track there, a track from this album, a track from that album, none of that. Start to finish and one album at a time.

Fair enough.

I understand that a band would want to take that position for a variety of reasons and yes, among them is the desire to tell a complete story with their album. But I have another motive for you to chew on if you like:

Some bands suck but have one good song. That's harsh, but let's just roll with it for just a bit, OK? Imagine a band that had one good song, one song that really gets your toes tapping and you can't get it out of your head and because of it's catchiness or sonic value, the radio is playing it and (suspiciously) nothing else from the album. iTunes enabled you to buy that one song and if you were feeling particularly adventurous you could buy two or three more songs and if they're bad, hey, you're only out three or four bucks instead of fifteen.

My theory is that SURELY someone noticed that the album is awful be it some members of the band or management and words were exchanged and they say something like "no one will buy the whole album unless we pitch it as a story where you NEED the whole album to get the whole story. Otherwise kids will be buying one song guaranteed and three or four songs if they're feeling particularly adventurous instead of shelling out the greenbacks for the whole shebang!"

And then they can say just that: it's a concept album, a sonic story book and hope that people buy it (the lie and the album). It was a bit of a gamble though because iTunes still sold tracks independently. With Pink Floyd winning this case these awful bands can actually say that they REFUSE to let the label or iTunes or any other musical distribution centers sell their tracks one by one.

And they'll get away with it too.

A lot of people think Led Zeppelin was smart (I even heard "mysterious") for releasing just albums and not singles but I think it was just a good bit of business smarts. Why let a consumer spend five bucks on a single and a couple of songs when you can actually force them to buy the whole album?

Of course, I'm not talking about quality here, Led Zeppelin is a freaking amazing band, but you can't argue with the shrewd business tactics.

Anyway, Pink Floyd has made it possible for bands to try that method again but I don't think it will work.

At all.

Why? Because people have friends. Friends that have music and friends that will tell you only one song on the album is good and they'll feel ripped off enough to burn you the one song you want for free and all to give the proverbial finger to a band that would try to rip them off so much.

I also think you'll see a lot more illegal downloading of those particular albums or songs.

AND I don't think that bands that try this method of getting the most money from the consumer for a product that lacks in quality will stick around very long. "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me," is what everyone will be saying to themselves as they look at the band's sophomore album.

But I'm not worried about horrible bands. I'm not concerned with them at all, I just thought I would throw that out there for everyone to think about because I'm sure everyone has bought an album that was a stinker save for one song.

I'm more concerned with Pink Floyd. When I read about this first, a commenter on the blog that reported on it (their name escapes me right now and I feel awful about it) said that if this was such a problem for Pink Floyd then they shouldn't have let the radio play single songs from albums from the release until now. That rings true to me! I'm not a huge fan of Pink Floyd. I would be the guy who buys one song (Hey You) but if I can't buy that one song I'm strongly inclined to reconsider the purchase entirely. This doesn't swing both ways for me based on the quality of the song. If a band wants to put me in a position where they're saying "it's all or nothing," it'll be nothing at all and I'll walk away. I'll go through my day and the whole event will probably be forgotten by dinner. You can't expect to bully someone into buying whole albums from a band that is so very hit or miss with a new generation. Everyone knows the classics (that were played on the radio one at a time without the surrounding album attached) but are those known songs enough to make most people want to shell out way bigger bucks so the band can feel like their story is told correctly?

I know there are practical points of comparison where I can be proven wrong in my logic. I can't buy books chapter by chapter only reading the good parts, I can't watch only the middle of a movie, etc. etc. but books and movies are not split up in ways that are so convenient to separate them with. We are used to pulling out tracks because individual tracks have ALWAYS been pulled out! Not just with radio but look at concerts! Bruce Springsteen played Born To Run in it's entirety, Slayer played Reign In Blood in it's entirety etc etc but these are the exceptions! People don't go to a Metallica show wanting to hear Fade to Black and the rest of Ride the Lightning around it. They want to hear One, Four Horsemen, The Memory Remains and yes, even Enter Sandman.

So do I think Pink Floyd is in the wrong? You bet. I can see their point as an artist but trying to strong-arm the consumer is NOT the way to go about getting your message across. You need to focus on putting it out there in other ways like on your website or send the whole album to bloggers who will say "this one song is good, but check out what's around it too. It gets deep fast," or something like that. Trying to force someone like me to choose between buying a whole album so I can "get the whole story" and you can "get all of your profit" will get you absolutely nothing from me.

-Pappy

Build Your Own Jazzmaster/Jaguar

If you go back to January of last year (or go here: http://5th-fret.blogspot.com/2009/01/make-your-own-les-paul.html) you'll see that we had a good time and got good response and seriously great looking Les Paul designs and I've recently come across this site dedicated to all things offset:

http://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/

Offset guitars include Mustangs, Jaguars, Jazzmasters, Jagstangs, and Jagmasters (there's probably a few more in there I forgot). They've always been wicked cool but only recently have negun picking up steam among the common population with bands like Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth and Elvis Costello all getting their own signature Jazzmasters. Kurt Cobain assembled his Jagstang by clipping out pictures of things he liked on different guitars and approaching Fender saying "build THIS for me."

If you go to Offset's website shown above and click "dressing room" you'll be taken to a different window where you can make your own guitar based on either the Jaguar or the Jazzmaster. I'd love to see everyone's favorite creations that they made because it's wicked cool to see other people's ideas AND it's an excellent way to kill ten to twenty minutes.

In order to save the picture, once you're done with your creation and you're using a PC (Macs are new to me so I don't know how to do this yet) click "Prt Scr" usually located near the F12 button and then open up Paint. Once Paint is open hold "Ctrl" and press "v"

This should bring up a picture of what your whole screen looked like when you pressed print screen and after that it's merely a matter of saving as an image, cropping the image down to a reasonable size (like just the guitar) and saving it again.

It should look something like this in size:


Then all you have to do is send me an email with it attached to rhythmandboos@gmail.com and I will put it in a future blog post that is currently scheduled to be posted on the 1st of April, 2010. The deadline to participate is 10:00 PM EST on March 30th, 2010. Also, please include the name you would like attached to the picture in the email.

I'm looking forward to the submissions! Thanks for playing and have a great day!

-Pappy

Mark Stuart And The Bastard Sons at the 23 Club, Brisbane, CA. 03-05-10

A Cool Coincidence: Mark Stuart And The Bastard Sons, the 23 Club and a G6120WTV

A few months ago I was in the market for a Gretsch 6120. A good friend sent me an EBay listing for an unusual one, a G6120WTV. This was a small run of guitars that are an odd mix of the features of a ’55 6120, TV Jones Classic pickups, and is painted a stunning Firebird Red. I exchanged a few emails with the seller, and then bought it outright. It turned out that the seller works frequently with Mark Stuart and the guitar was used on a few tracks on the albums “Mile Markers” and “Bend In The Road”. I thought that was cooler n’ hell, since I got a fantastic guitar and I happen to be a fan of the group since the “Distance Between” album. Another pleasant surprise was that the band was going to be playing at the 23 Club in Brisbane, a few minutes from San Francisco while I was in town for a conference. The whole thing was the coolest of coincidences.

Downtown Brisbane, ten minutes from San Francisco seems to have frozen time in some ways. It is a small downtown, surrounded by homes carved out of the green hills, with homemade signs advertising spaghetti dinners and a vacancy for a Little League umpire, three or four groceries, and a few restaurants and bars. It has a rough and checkered past, once known as blue collar town with plenty of available sin inhabiting the bars lining Vistacion Avenue. One of them, the 23 Club, is a quiet legend, with a history studded with American music giants. It is also setting for the bittersweet story of Jimmie Rivers, a guitar genius who was only widely recognized as he was dying towards the end of the century. This is where Jimmie Rivers and the Cherokees sole album “Brisbane Bop” was recorded, almost by accident, on a portable tape machine.



My wife and I got there very early, but the staff was cordial and the bar was busy with the locals, who were pretty friendly too. There is a bar area, pool table, a modest dance floor, stage, and a dining area that looks like it hasn’t been used much lately. Everyone we talked to knew about the long history of the bar, and we heard some great stories. One we heard was there used to be a big net suspended from the ceiling, and when the crowds got too rowdy, the barkeep would release it, trapping the patrons until they cooled down or were hauled off by the sparse local law enforcement. There is a Wall Of Fame, paying tribute to the many great artists who played there. Buffalo heads, wagon wheels, and art in the style of the Mexican muralist Orozco cover the walls, with a few well-placed shrines to Jimmie Rivers and the Cherokees.

It was in this setting that we saw Mark Stuart And The Bastard Sons (formerly The Bastard Sons Of Johnny Cash). Mark Stuart and The Bastard Sons are an Austin based band, touring in support of their fifth full-length album, "A Bend In The Road". The album is a collection of mostly up-tempo songs with well arranged fiddle, mandolin, and steel guitar expertly weaved into a country-rock fabric. Stuart's lyrics and music have a contemporary punch that still manages to be true to its country, blues and folk roots. That alone puts his songs a few cuts above what is typically being played on country music stations today.



For the tour, the band distills the multi-instrumental textures of "Bend In The Road" into to a lean and solid rocking live set. There can be no doubt – this is a touring band, playing over 200 dates a year, and it shows. Bass and drums were tight and punchy, the electric guitar work was nimble, varied, but not overly flashy, a perfect complement to Stuart's baritone vocals and acoustic guitar, which could easily stand on their own merits.

The band opened with the Billy Joe Shaver's "I'm Just An Old Chunk Of Coal", setting the tone for an upbeat, no depression set. The band gave us about two hours of songs from the latest album, some great selections from the three or four previous records, and a few well chosen covers. Some standouts: Power Of A Woman, Gone Like A Raven, Fireflies, Austin Night, Restless, Rambin' Man, California Sky, Trains Gonna Roll, Everything’s Going My Way, and Seven Miles From Memphis. It was a great show, the band was clearly having fun, and audience was too. There were moments, in the din of the music and voices of the crowd, I thought of Jimmie Rivers, playing his heart out in that place. And as Mark Stuart and the Bastard Sons finished their show, I couldn't help feeling the old honky-tonk’s spirits approved.

- Fieldhdj

Sitting Pretty

Chairs are a huge pain in the neck for playing guitar. You have normal wooden chairs like you would find in most dining rooms that eventually become uncomfortable, you have office chairs that usually have arms that get in the way, you have couches that you sink too far back into, or sit so far on the edge that it isn't comfortable that way either, you have the classic stool, and you have the ridiculously expensive chairs that are "made for musicians" and feature music stands that are attached to the seat, cup holders and a hefty price tag.

Overall, sitting down is pain in the butt (pun intended).

I accidentally stumbled upon the solution though. My daughter insisted that I hang out in her bedroom and spend time with her. I'm inclined to oblige most times but I really wanted to get some playing in (this was months ago) so I pulled up her average sized pink beanbag and tried to position myself comfortably on it. Any adult will tell you that the normal sized bean bags aren't the best for bigger bodies like people over the age of twelve tend to have and I certainly would have appreciated more real estate but once I was situated I realized that this was the answer to long durations of playing. My body was pleasantly supported and I had access to the guitar in all the right ways. The neck wasn't awkwardly positioned, the body wasn't jutting out or tucked in at an unreasonable angle. I felt amazingly comfortable and I also felt like I could sit there and play for hours.

Looking around, there are a lot of gamers that talk about bean bags from a company called Sumo and looking at their offerings, you'll see that "bean bag" is an understatement since they offer full fledged bean COUCHES, but still, it seems to be the best place for adult-sized bean bags.

Obviously bean bags are out in terms of recording, they're inherently noisy, but they still offer something pretty valuable to those of us that like to noodle at home watching TV with our loved ones only now we'll be much more comfortable when we do it.

I think it's an awesome idea, but Sumo's stuff is a bit pricey. I don't have one so I can't comment personally on their quality but if it works for the guys from Sarcastic Gamer and Dueling Analogs say they stand up and vouch for them, I believe it.

There is always the possibility that a bean bag regardless of size would be looked down on as home decor, but speaking as a parent and an owner of razor-equipped cats who LOVE our couches, decor is no longer super important to me and I could probably even justify this as something for the kids to bounce on when I'm not home or using it.

In the end as it was time to move the party outside to the nearest park I looked back to that pink bean bag and thought the answer was so simple it was ridiculous.

-Pappy

Cloud Cover

I love clouds.

Yeah, that sounds a little weird, I guess. I mean, who just up and says "I love clouds?"

I do.

They make sunglasses a nicety, not a necessity, they keep the blasted sun from beating down on you and they make the world a much more enjoyable hue. It's a welcome change from the ordinary wicked bright world that I'm used to.

Ah, but the best part about clouds is flying through them - especially thick ones. You descend into the almost bed-like clouds from the sunny world on top of them, then slip into them, deeper and deeper and then it starts to fade away, the ground starts to become visible and there it is: home.

It's nice to be home too. And now that I'm home I'll be able to get back up to my usual speed, hopefully. There looks to be big things on the horizon of the 5th Fret and I'm glad you're checking in and reading.

It'll only get better from here.

-Pappy