Parties, parties: Last week I had so many industry events on my calendar that there was no way to make it to them all. The ones that were not downtown, Metalwaorks Studio and Koch, are the ones I passed on. Too bad, I wanted to check out that studio. Ended up at a glitzy Art Gallery function on Yonge Street - didn't know a soul. I used to rate these events as one shrimp, two shrimp...five shrimp for an excellent spread. Hey, I have to amuse myself somehow - I don't hardly drink so I don't get to take advantage of the main attraction of these industry schmoozes. Well this one had lots of shrimp, but they came out after the pastries and they we still not completely thawed. They get a minus one shrimp for that!
The Toronto Blues Society Christmas party was nice - featuring guitarist Debbie Davies. First time I'd seen Debbie - she rocks!. A few remembered her when she was here in Albert Collins band...must have been a while ago. Her Strat has three non-Fender pickups on it, a P90 soapbar, which seemed to be the one she used most, a humbucker in the neck position and a Duncan or Fralin in the middle position.
This week will go down in history for Brian Blain, blues guitarist. After playing almost forty years (on the same guitar), I went and bought myself an effects pedal. This is the first effects pedal I ever bought - I've had many volume pedals, and I even have a Looper pedal, but I never bought a signal processor. I needed something that could duplicate the sound of my Vibrolux Reverb at 10, while maintaining a low volume. I saw Duke Robillard, one of my faves, at the Silver Dollar and noted that the only pedal he used was a Boss SD-1 and I went and bought one of those. I'm still getting used to it - not sure I can use this for recording (which is where I really need it). I can still hear the processing. I guess nothning will ever sound like a loud amp except a loud amp.
Another breakthrough - received the first (try-out) mix from RH. This was one of the older tunes, one that didn't really have a very crisp vocal but he really brought it out. Looks like we might have this album mixed this year. Now I've got to decide which tunes I want to mix!
Also, I called Butch in Germany today and he still thinks we can pull together a tour in the Czech Republic and Germany for the spring. I figured we were going to have to push it back to the fall, but maybe this can still happen...