Well, after the first three gigs of 2018 were cancelled due to weather and influenza, the long dry-spell
finally came to a musical end this week. It had been two months to the day Thursday night since I'd played a paying gig, but a nice easy sit-down acoustic blues job broke the streak.
Brian Muller and I play in Harwell-Grice Band and New River Bound together, but we got an opportunity to fill up the normally quiet Winter months playing as 2/3rds of an acoustic blues trio at this local craft brewer's unusual venue made from an old milking barn. Unfortunately, due to sub-zero temps and some mixed precipitation both January dates were scrapped, then the third member of the trio came down with the flu and cancelled the first one of February. Still not feeling up to par, he also bailed on this week at the last hour, but Brian and I rolled with it anyway.
This was also the first chance I'd had to try out this custom-built lowpass filter pedal in a live situation. (test subject was my fretless Renaissance 5-string) I'll have to say, while it doesn't have the same 'feel' as Alembic filters do, this pedal is a very effective tool for a specific purpose. I've gotten so spoiled by the intuitive nature of filter-driven electronics that it was getting hard to dial-in what I like to hear without them. Can't say enough good stuff about Josh Broughton either... great guy.
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Then last night, I introduced the Harwell-Grice guys to my fretless Distillate
"Doc" at Hammer & Forge Brewing Co. Note the framed picture in the background with the Pasteur distilling apparatus.
It felt great to play with the boys again... we had a packed full house of hometown fans, which made for a great night.
After a good nights' rest, I'm loaded up again for a reunion show tonight with Acoustic Endeavors. It's supposedly our 25th year playing this show, but that can't be right. No way it's been that many years. No way...
