And Day 1 Departs

Had an excellent afternoon and evening over at Byron Beh's. For a "first" run through things went really well. He's gonna keep me on my toes, that's for sure!

We ran about eight tunes - the covers - and made progress with all of them. Byron had the same idea for one of them as I did. No drums or bass - just Graham and I sitting and playing through "The Last Fair Deal Gone Down" (Robert Johnson). I suggested Byron put a solo in in the middle though - a guitar solo. That'll give folks a chance to see just how talented the bloke is. I'm thinking about doing the same thing with Red House (Hendrix) in the second set, with Byron playing the main guitar and me just comping along and mebbe putting in a slide solo or something. We'll probably keep the bass in on this one though. Should break the set up nicely in both cases.

We also started work on a few originals: Mr H - which will be a tribute to Jimi (Byron and Phill), Slow Pony (Phill)- an old jazzy twelve in the style of "Nobody Knows You"; Siren's Call (Hethers) - a bit of Bo Diddley with some excellent twists; Small World (Hethers) - a Stonesy song with some great changes; Turn To Rain (Hethers) - a bluesy ballad featuring Gm tuned slide; and Mungo Blues (Pops) - a twisting blues with excellent changes.

Pops has also foisted a country tune on us which I really like but can't remember the title of. I figure it'll work if I can lay up some Lowell George slide under it. It'll be a bit of comic relief in the middle of the set too - possibly opening the way for a short diversion into rockabilly - something like Come On Every Body by Eddie Cochrane - or the medley we used to do with Markout - Nervous Breakdown - Come On Every Body - Summertime Blues. Sheesh - I'm gonna have to rework the Stones Medley too - just for fun - Brown Sugar - Jumping Jack and Gimme Shelter... though I might swap Shelter into Hony Tonk. We are going to have bloody tunes an possibilities coming out of our ears.

Walked out of Byron's feeling fantastic... totally over the systems crash detailed in Soma's Blog. Cruised home with the tunes running through my head -

All in all an excellent day... and I look forward to many more of them.

We are back at work Tuesday... laying down the BED tracks for a demo.