Freddie Roulette is in town - some say for the first time - and he's doing a week at Top 'O The Senator. I caught the opening night and was floored by his virtuosity on the lap slide guitar. I haven't seen too many musicians that are in such complete control of their instrument. He had it jumping through hoops, making sound effects and "talking" noises. I've seen Sonny Rhodes do his thing on the lap slide but this was way beyond that - and I got the feeling that he was sticking to the simpler blues tunes because he was working with a pick-up band of local musos. Howard Willett was playing harmonica, Mitch Lewis on guitar and a great rhythm section of Bucky Berger and Dennis Pinhorn. Terry Wilkins dropped in later in the evening and he told me he had been working with Mitch all day, so if they did any rehearsing it must have been at the sound check. I guess they just had to learn the material from the CD's and that's fine as long as the artist still does the tune the way he did it when he recorded it.
I wouldn't want a back up band learning my stuff from CDs because songs have changed so much since I recorded them. I swore after that first CD that the next time I make a CD I will put together the band first, work up the new material in front of an audience and *then* record. Oh well, once again the pressure was on to get the project happeing, so I did the next best thing, call in a rhythm section that had worked a lot with me, but still it was all new material.
We had a nice little BBQ on Tuesday and I had a chance to socialize with some of the players outside the stress of the recording situation. Still some overdubs to do and perhaps a couple of vocals. when will this end?