We Are Hex, Man At Arms, Charles The Osprey & Ozenza played at The Pyramid Scheme last Saturday. Fantastic show other than the fact that I completely missed CTO's set. That being said, I obviously didn't get any snapshots of them, but it was indeed a rock solid night of music. I had never seen We Are Hex or Man At Arms before and both were extremely high energy and entertaining acts. It was a little tough to maneuver around the stage for shots as the crowd was gathered in close, but still got me a few:
Shores played a sweet set last Thursday at Jukes. Heavier Than Air Flying Machines were supposed to play the show as well, but unfortunately, Jeremy had to be out of town due to work. Snapped a few pictures with my phone as usual. I also included a few shots of Fields Of Industry. Chance Jones played with them at The Pyramid Scheme on Friday and we all had a great time.
Wow, have I gotten lazy on this. Anyway, Grand Rapids has gained a superb mid-sized music venue called The Pyramid Scheme. There's a separate front bar lounge with pinball, a jukebox and a good amount of seating. The back venue area can be summed up in one sentence; Not a bad seat in the house. The entire place is aesthetically pleasing and there are fair prices on beverages for those who may wish to partake. All the way around, this place hit the nail on the head and I can only imagine what lies in store for Grand Rapids' music fans.
Bars Of Gold at The Pyramid Scheme
Paucity at The Pyramid Scheme
A view from the stage of the Pyramid Scheme's live room after the first night's show featuring Charles The Osprey and Chance Jones.
Expunk played a show called Trip The Light at the Wealthy Theater along with some fantastic musical acts and superb dancers. The dancers performed choreographed works to local musicians' works and it couldn't have gone any better. There were no cameras allowed as it was dubbed "Trip The Light Ephemeral." You had to be there to see it and I think that made the event that much more special. I did nab a picture or two of Ghost Heart during the previous weekend's rehearsal, but that's about it. What a night! In other expunk related news, we will be going in to Cold War Studios with Rick Johnson sometime this summer to record our next effort in the wonderful world of noise.
Ghost Heart rehearsing for "Trip The Light Ephemeral" at the Wealthy Theater
Heavier Than Air Flying Machines have a new album finished and it sounds great! We're really excited about its release especially since we have officially been picked up by Friction Records! We have a couple of shows coming up before the album release show(which will be at The Pyramid Scheme), and the artwork and everything is coming along great. The album release show will be in the beginning of August.
Another group that I play in by the name of Trophy will begin recording in early June for an EP. We are planning on doing everything live much like in the good ol' days. What you hear is what you get. This will probably be done over at Cold War Studios as well.
Chance Jones has been getting the scratch drum tracks down for our next record which will be titled "Us." I'm really eager to get working on this album as it'll be full of some great tunes.
That should be it for now. I will be doing my best to keep up with this here local journal much better than I have been. Life is good!
This will be epic. As a movement started by the one and only Chance Jones, the quest for a commemorative Al Green statue has begun. I created a Facebook page for it here and to whoever is reading this, please check it out and spread the word! We are seeking out an artist to make a statue. We are beginning the process of brainstorming ideas to raise funds. No corporations. No big names. Solely brought to fruition by the people of Grand Rapids, Michigan. This will be by word of mouth, benefit concerts, fliers and anything we can think of to gather enough money to make this happen! Not sure what else to write as of now, but I'll toss out some info whenever available.
So I realize I've been lazy posting this year. Moving on...
I'm looking forward to some good Chance Jones shows coming up. I saw an Apostles show which also showcased Mean Mother. Apostles were great as always and so was Mean Mother. You should check those guys out. On the tip of national acts, I was able to see Motorhead, Clutch and Valiant Thor at the Orbit Room the other week and they all were phenomenal! The lead singer of Valiant Thor has to be one of the most entertaining and hilarious front men I've ever had the fortune to see. Check them out as well.
I have been thoroughly pleased with my pedals built from General Guitar Gadgets. Both the Alembic Stratoblaster(Clean Boost pedal) and the BSIAB II (Cranked Marshall modeled distortion pedal) are both fantastic and are constantly used in my current pedalboard setup as seen below:
The boost pedal is the smaller silver box to the left of the white Boss Chromatic Tuner. The BSIAB II distortion is the light blue pedal with creme knobs next to the Digitech Whammy.
Next up, I ordered parts to mod out my Russian Big Muff pedal. I replaced a few resistors with others of different values as I did with a few of the capacitors as well. I then took out one resistor and wired in another potentiometer so there is a separate Bass and Treble knob instead of one Tone knob. I also replaced the red LED with a yellow one. All replacement parts were ordered from Pedal Parts Plus. Now I just need to test it out tonight to make sure I didn't mess anything up...
Heavier Than Air Flying Machines are going into the studio tonight to record the last two songs to go on the untitled as of yet album due out this summer. This record is going to be great. All of the songs we have recorded and mixed pre-mastering sound fantastic already. We will be shooting a video with our friend Joel coming up soon as well. It will be shot in Super 8 format which is very exciting. So much to do, so little time...
I've been keeping busy. Very very busy. So busy that I seemed to have halted posting on here for a bit. Several fantastic shows have happened in the last month. So many cool shows that I feel overwhelmed to write about them all. Total Blam Blams, Apostles, Ozenza, Shores, HTAFM, The Brave Youth, Moto, etc. The list goes on. You can find all of those cats in the links in this blog.
Gear time. Picked up a Morley ABY box and I'm now running a two amp setup for tonal options. Sounds megasweet. I also ordered a distortion pedal from General Guitar Gadgets that is called the BSIAB II (Brown sound in a box version 2.) This is based on the sound of a cranked Marshall amp. I got the enclosure all painted a metal flake blue. Also, I shopped around for replacement knobs and a white LED for fun. The result was a pretty decent looking pedal cosmetically, which is great. What isn't great is that after building it, there was no sound coming out of it. Let's keep in mind that I am very much new to this building pedals thing. Oops. Not sure of where the gremlin is inside the box making it screw up(and no multimeter to my name at this time), I decided to bring it into Eric's audio repair so he can dig into it and let me know what I did wrong specifically. This is a learning experience I suppose, but it is rather disheartening to spend that much time on a project and have it not function upon completion. I am eager to hear what I messed up. More importantly I am very eager to play the thing. Here's some pictures of parts of the process(Taken by my new phone to boot!):
Well, look what came in the mail...
Enclosure to be painted
Optimus primer.
Blue metal flake light layer #1.
A few more coats finished it off.
Beginning to populate the PCB.
Solder of fortune.(Note the finished enclosure with new knobbies on the right)
Once I get it up and running, I'll be rearranging the pedal board again to accommodate both the new pedal and the aforementioned ABY box.
Next up, Expunk started the process of doing a video shoot! Fun, fun, fun. We did the first "taping" a couple of weeks ago in the live music venue in Mulligans. Walt Lodes III is shooting for us and did a stellar job lighting the whole thing along with Joe(our drummer) and got some amazing footage. We'll be going back there next week to finish up shots including Phil on bass as he couldn't make it the other week. Here are a few shots from the great time we had:
Heavier Than Air Flying Machines have been working on the new album and practicing for a couple of upcoming shows. We actually wrote a new song last week which comes few and far between, so there is a possibility of a few more tunes ending up on the new album. Here's a few videos I put up on youtube of practice space clips(Turns out my phone records video in 720p. Sweetness):
The turn of the new year brings a busy time for me. Chance Jones was asked to fill an opening slot for Rusted Root at the Orbit Room tomorrow night. That should be a good show with a decent turn out I believe. New Years Eve is Chance Jones, AB! & Coconut Brown, and Cabildo at Founders. I was asked by Josh from AB! to sit in on trumpet for one of their tunes, so I'm really excited for that. New Years Day is Chance Jones playing at Mittenfest in Ypsilanti along with Ghost Heart and numerous other fantastic groups. January 4th brings the Expunk show and we're playing with the Apostles which is always a great thing. January 6th is HTAFM opening for Lenin/McCarthy at Jukes. Lenin/McCarthy is a band that Rick Johnson(the dude at the helm of the HTAFM album) plays in. Very excited for that show! I think the next one coming up will be the Ghost Heart album release at Founders with HTAFM opening for them. They have recently asked if I would see about writing a couple of trumpet parts for songs, so I'm thrilled to give it a whirl. It will be the first time I have written complete horn arrangements for another group other than one of my own.
Finally.... I got a new axe. I didn't necessarily need one, but I had to have it. It's basically the lowest budget guitar that LTD manufactures, but over time it will see a number of modifications including a Floyd Rose tremolo. $50 on craigslist. How could I NOT buy this thing?! Sidenote: upon playing on it through an amp I quickly discovered that it is a certifiable "Squealy Machine." This means that the pinch harmonics have sustain for miles. Miles, I say. Here she is:
