Live Music Report: Billy Strings at Etess Arena Hard Rock Casino 02/16/23

It’s always great to see a performer who you really admire play live after listening to their music for a couple of years. On Thursday, February 16, we ventured down to the Hard Rock Casino in Atlantic City NJ to see Billy Strings and his band at Etess Arena. I’ve been following Billy String’s rise in the bluegrass world for the last couple of years. It parallels my growing interest in Americana, Bluegrass and Country music over this same period. After listening to album cuts and watching videos of live performances, one thing kept coming through: you have to see him live. So when I saw he was playing in Atlantic City for three nights my lovely wife said here’s our chance, let’s get tickets before they sell out. We decided to go on the first night of three shows, figuring Thursday would give us the best chance of getting tickets and we could stay at the casino hotel that night. The venue was pretty cool. The sound was great and they have a really elaborate light show system as well as visual screens on the sides and above the stage. The floor was general admission, but we sat on the side of the venue in assigned seating (when you’re not tall, general admission is hit or miss for getting good visuals).

Let’s talk about the show. It was one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. Billy Strings is simply an amazing guitarist. Seeing him play is worth the price of admission by itself. I’m not a top line player, but having played guitar since I was ten I can tell you the amazing amount of skill it takes to play guitar at his level. He’s an out and out flat picking genius. Fast, clean runs within the structure of tight chord patterns. All this is done while keeping the timing spot on – the band has no drummer to follow for timing. It’s all played on acoustic guitar, which is much less forgiving than playing an electric. His playing style doesn’t stick strictly to bluegrass. He also will use a vast array of pedals to alter the basic guitar sound and easily transitions to rock chords and leads. You have to give tremendous credit to his band: Billy Failing on banjo; Jarrod Walker on mandolin; Royal Masat on bass and Alex Hargreaves on fiddle. The entire band can stay with him and everyone takes turns in the spotlight when they go in to an extended jam – which they did frequently. In many ways it felt like a ‘jam band’ show – there are jam bands from almost every style of music. It’s a really appropriate form of playing in the bluegrass genre. Bluegrass started with people getting together on someone’s porch and just playing traditional songs. Everyone took a turn at playing the leads or holding down the background. A very communal feel that you could see at this show. Strings also has a great voice, especially suited for bluegrass style. The other band members vocals were strong and blended perfectly.

Here’s a few photos from the show (note – my photo technique is pretty good with my camera, not so much with my phone – I’ve never bothered to learn how to manual focus etc with the phone, which would of helped here with the distance, low lighting and (ahem) smoke in the arena).

On top of the high level of playing, the band in concert is an endurance-fest. They started at 8:15 and played until 11:45 with a 15 minute mid show break. That’s 3 hours and 15 minutes of playing without a let down in performance! And the level of technique never dropped during the show. The energy remained on full throttle the entire time. My left hand would have fallen off after 30 minutes. Some of the instrumental jams were incredibly long. Not many musicians could pull that off. Here’s some videos from the show to give you a flavor of the event. A lot of String’s performances are documented on line. First we have a long jam session covering two songs where you hear the guitar run from clean through several different effects pedals.

A shorter clip of the song ‘Slow Train’

A great cover of Jackson Browne’s ‘Running On Empty’

I would encourage you to look at some of the other clips on line. All these clips were from the show we attended.

Finally, I don’t think you can talk about a Billy Strings show without talking about the audience. Everyone there was welcoming and friendly. A lot of the audience would be seeing all three nights at the venue and would follow the band to different venues around the country. The best parallel I could make would be to the family of Deadheads that used to follow the Grateful Dead. The people we talked to were happy to bring us first timers in to the fold, eager to talk about the band and the shows, which have different set lists every night, as well as songs being played differently from show to show (special thanks to Danny if he reads this post). Talking to people who were so enthusiastic about the band and the ‘gathering of the tribes’ at the show added a lot to the experience and made the power that can be found in music feel real and immediate. I certainly hope we have the opportunity to see Billy Strings again and be part of that experience.

February 2023 Grapevine

Welcome to February, the shortest month of the year. I always thought it was a good idea to make the shortest month we have a winter month (not really how it works, but sometimes it’s fun to mess with the reality of life). You would think winter months would be a great time to huddle inside the studio and work on more music. Maybe that works for some people, but I find myself much more energetic and creative when I get to spend more time outdoors. There are people who like to spend a lot of time outdoors in the winter. I used to have a number of friends who skied and were always celebrating when it snowed. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not my thing. I’m much happier hiking in the mountains than flying down them in a controlled slide – although I do have a story about going down a mountain in a controlled slide with no snow involved. Maybe I’ll share that some day. Let’s talk about music instead. We had the 2023 Grammy Awards earlier in the month. I’ve never actually watched the show since I was a kid. I do tend to take a glance at who ‘won’ different awards. Having an awards show for music never made sense to me. As I’ve said many times, music is a subjective art. As such, I’m not really in to the idea of calling any particular piece of music the ‘best’. Maybe ‘most popular’? But I won’t go in the opposite direction either and dislike a piece of music just because it won at the Grammys. Two artists I like, Wet Leg and Molly Tuttle both won awards this year (both of them have been in Grapevine reviews). I’ll stick to my current method of finding new music the old fashioned way – going through record and song reviews and listening to as much as I can.

First Up: Goat – ‘Under No Nation’

We’re going to start with a bit of funk. I’ve listened to a few songs from their most recent album ‘Oh Death’ (I’m always drawn to happy album titles). The songs I’ve listened to reminded me of a lot of the post punk type funk that I came across in the 1980’s. It comes down to establishing a propulsive groove. If you can do that, the song will carry the listener along. If you take the song apart and listen to the separate pieces, each instrument is sitting on a relatively simple riff. Start with the drums. It’s a pretty basic groove. For me, the part that makes the drums interesting is where the snare falls. The main groove is carried by the hi hat. The snare often falls on what could be considered an ‘off’ beat. You can do this and keep a rhythm going, but the key is consistency. If you keep changing the place in the measure where the snare falls, the groove would fall flat. If you off set the drums a bit you have to keep consistency with the other instruments. The bass line is basically two notes an octave apart played on the key note of the chord most of the time. The guitar riff is also pretty consistent throughout the song. Although this keeps the groove in time, every once and a while they’ll drop some different parts in for a change up. Change ups are important. Throwing them in keeps the song from getting boring. There are little ‘clap’ breaks and second guitar parts at different spots for variety. Vocals are added like a bit of spice on a meal. They also are rhythm driven and are mixed at about the same level as the other instruments in the song. At 2:05 they drop in a hugely fuzzed out guitar to carry you to the end of the song.

Next Up: Snarky Puppy – ‘Take It!’

So I thought we’d keep going with the groove and look at another funk based song. This time we’re moving from post punk to a more jazz based feel. There are a lot of cool things to see in this clip. Let’s start with the fact that it’s recorded live in a studio. That would be great to see and hear as an audience member. Notice how everyone in the audience is wearing headphones, so they’re hearing the mix as it’s comes right from the mixing board. That would be an amazing experience with an ensemble this large. You get to see it live, feel the vibrations, yet hear it in a professionally mixed format through headphones where you can pick up all the little nuances of each instrument. Now let’s move in to the instrumentation. Holy crap! That’s a lot of players. Three drum sets. Mucho percussion. Three guitar players. Brass, woodwind. Tons of keyboards. Only one bass player, but a lot of other bass lines are carried by the keyboards. If you want to see the full roster of instruments go to the video on YouTube and scroll down through the description. As a studio engineer I can only imagine what it must of been like setting up all the mics for this. Then add in the amount of precision required to get it mixed right for a live in studio audience. Incredibly impressive! Towards the end of the piece each kit drummer gets to solo. This is a must see both for the quality of instrumentation and playing as well as the technical aspects of the recording. I didn’t feel the need to try to take the song apart instrumentally – just sit back and enjoy.

Finally: Trampled By Turtles – ‘A Lifetime To Find’

It’s been a few years since we’ve had an album release from Trampled By Turtles. I really love so much of their back catalogue and had been wondering when they would release a new album. This song works for me in so many ways. The instrumental pieces are wonderfully played, recorded and mixed. The early parts of the song rely on the guitar to carry the music with the other instruments adding the feel and flavor. The playing of the instruments is subtle. The bass is mixed low but adds a great bottom end to fill out the musical range. The other instruments, banjo, mandolin, fiddle and cello add pieces to put across the feeling of melancholy that carries through the entire song. The musical parts are played and mixed in service to the vocals. It’s a song where the vocals are up front and clear because the lyrics are what the band wants you to concentrate on. I think the lyrics in this song resonate more as you get older. The idea that many people only find and understand what they want from life when they get older. There’s an old saying “youth is wasted on the young”. When you get to certain age and say “I wish I would of……”. The difficulty in song writing is matching the feeling of the lyrics with the perfect musical background. I think Trampled By Turtles has done that with this song.

“It takes a lifetime to find a life like the life you had in mind”

Retro: Crosby Stills & Nash: ‘Helplessly Hoping’

I wanted to put this in as sort of a companion piece to the Trampled By Turtles song. Simple acoustic guitar is the companion to the wonderful vocal harmonies. I think this song also shows the importance of the song melody. Would the lyrics carry as much weight without the melody line of the song? Putting these lyrics to a blues rock beat just wouldn’t be the same. The band said they viewed their harmonies as tying together as one voice. The lyrics are are bit more intricate than a lot of songs you’ll hear. But even if you don’t catch all the words, the melody line says so much.

“They are one person, They are two alone, They are three together, They are for each other”

New Music And Video From Steaming Mulch: ‘Some Gorgeous Who Way Produce’

We have some new music from Steaming Mulch. The band got together in the studio to put together a new song. As usual with Steaming Mulch they came in with a baseline idea for the tune – and another strange song title. In this case it started out with three basic riffs. We put together a spare electronic drum track (that’s usually my responsibility) and then they jammed on the three parts to come up with the main ideas for the song. Working with Steaming Mulch is ‘guerilla’ recording at it’s finest. Sometimes the coolest sounds are happy accidents that happen in the studio. Vocals were added last. The vocals are more about rhythm and sonics – you don’t always pick up lyrics. Vocals are in reality another instrument available to a song writer and can be used in many ways to enhance or change a song. The final step is editing then mixing. When the instruments are ‘jamming’, editing is vital to creating dynamics. The final step was putting together a video. The video is really meant to be ‘eye candy’ to meditate on while listening to the song. Hope everyone enjoys the new tune.

January 2023 Grapevine

We’re a few weeks in to the new year. It’s usually at time to look back at what was accomplished in the past year and set goals for the coming year. New Year resolutions have always seemed like a losing proposition to me. They often contain lofty and enormous goals that are doomed because they’re not whittled down to manageable pieces. I think this is a good time to ponder the difference between goals that are more ‘physical’ and goals that are ‘creative’. For me, the ‘physical’ type of goals are much easier to attain. Eating better and working out to become healthier. Finishing a improvement project. Tracking your spending to reduce purchasing things you don’t really need. House and property cleanup. A person can push through these types of goals by sheer will. For me, these kinds of goals can be accomplished even if I don’t feel like doing them. I think the difficult part is accomplishing goals that deal with the creative process. You can want to work on your creative projects. You can set the time aside to work on them. You can have a vision of the end result. In the end if your not in a proper frame of mind to work on these goals, none of this helps. Try sitting down with an instrument and say “I’m going to write a song today”. You may get something written, but chances are it’s not going to be something that meets your desired goal. I’ve been experiencing this for the last couple of months. Lots of ideas with a great deal of difficulty in turning them in to reality. So how do you get around this? I believe you have to apply the same principles that you apply to you goals that are not ‘creative’. Put in the time. Expect that some of the time you put in will not produce your desired results. I’ll admit that this advice does not always work. I’ve certainly had trouble following this course lately. But you will eventually revive your creative spark if you just keep trying. Knowing the difficulty involved in creation of music gives me even more respect for the artists we review in the Grapevine. Let’s discuss the songs that caught my ear this month.

First Up: Bonny Light Horseman – ‘Cold Rain And Snow’

The best songs convey a feeling that is able to be translated by the listener. This song certainly has that quality. It flows through both the music and the vocals. Let’s discuss the instruments first. This song is a great example of the importance of the arrangement and production of the song. You have to listen very closely to hear and separate the foundation instruments. You can pick them up the best during the instrumental parts of the song. There’s an acoustic guitar part that the other instruments work around. It may be more than one guitar playing the part to add depth – I can hear some single note guitar lines in the left channel.. The percussion is interesting. I hear the basic beat held down by a snare drum that they’ve given more of a ‘jangle’ to then a ‘pop’. I can pick out a high hat, but if there’s a kick it’s buried pretty deeply. There’s a subdued organ in the background of the right channel. There’s also a bass line following the chord changes. All these parts are mixed at about the same level, acting as the foundation to the parts the band wants to highlight. In this case the highlight is on the beautiful harmony vocals. The vocals are mixed together at a relatively even level and spread across the center of the mix, some in the center and the others placed slightly left and right in the channels. This allows you to hear the vocals as somewhat separate pieces even though they are relatively even in volume. The other important part of the vocals is having the lyrics match the general feeling of the vocal melody. The final piece is the guitar that acts as a counterpoint melody when there are no vocals. I like the decision to make this guitar line electric with some distortion added. It helps put it up front and puts more power in the melody line it’s playing. The great arrangement and vocal harmonies accomplish the goal of any song – make the listener feel something.

Next Up: The Bug Club – ‘Only In Love’

Our second selection of the month shows how simplicity in a song can be the right choice. There’s something relatable to most people when you hear a good garage rock song. I think that part of it is the simplicity. It’s all right there for you. The drumming is simple and straight forward. Snare, kick and cymbals. Not a lot of complicated patterns or fills. It makes a great anchor point to build the rest of the song on. The guitar is a simple strum pattern. This works partly because of the sonics chosen for the guitar sound. Lots of fuzzy distortion on a guitar sound that stays in the crisp top end of the instrument. The bass part is interesting. It’s not given a lot of prominence in the mix. If you listen carefully you can hear the bass part walking around the scale notes of the chord rather than just sitting on the chord’s key note. The vocals maintain the song’s garage based feel. The melody lines are simple and straight forward. There’s not a lot of reverb added to the vocals which makes them easy to hear in the mix and keeps them the focal point of the song. At the :53 mark they go in to the break section of the song. The change in the guitar chord and drumming patterns sets up the last part of the song and keeps it from becoming too simplistic. When they come out of the break change, they go back in to the basic pattern of the song. But the end run of the song feels like they’ve picked up the pace. This is accomplished by keeping the same feel from the beginning of the song but modulating the chords and vocals in to a higher key. At 1:39 the song is short, but for the style and feel of the song the length of time is perfect.

Finally: Alela Diane – ‘Howling Wind’

‘Howling Wind’ is a great lesson on how to build a song using dynamics and arrangement. The song is built around the piano part and the vocals. These two instruments carry through the entire song and provide the basis for it’s lyric story and feel. The song is a comment on how times used to feel compared to the constant anxiety and crisis that are part of our world today. Around these two foundation pieces a variety of other instruments are added to the mix as the song builds. In the beginning before the vocals a harmonica mirrors the coming vocal line. You can also hear a shaker in the deep background adding some steady rhythm. At the 1:20 mark some pedal steel comes in followed by the introduction of drums. By the time the 2:00 mark the song adds guitar and the harmonica makes another appearance. These instruments are added to the edges of the song, being panned more heavily to the left and right channels to keep them from stepping on the main concentration of the song, the piano and vocals. As the song continues more guitar and keyboard pieces are added. This song could be played all the way through with just the piano and vocals. I think the message would still come across powerfully. But the addition of the other instruments gives a feeling of lift to the song. It’s the audio version of climbing to the top of a mountain. You have certain feelings working your way up, but upon reaching the top you look around and feel like the world has been revealed to you. The choices made in slowly adding instrumentation and building dynamics has added extras in texture and emotion that you feel without even realizing it is happening.

Retro: Rare Earth – ‘I Just Want To Celebrate’

This song was released by Rare Earth in 1971. I think a lot of people may recognize the song without remembering the band who recorded it. I’ve always enjoyed the drive and groove of funk rock songs from that era. If bands like Sly and The Family Stone, Parliament/Funkadelic and James Brown don’t make you want to move, your feet are probably cemented to the floor. These are the early songs that made me want to play bass guitar. The drums and bass establish the groove, but the guitar sonics closely imitate 1970’s hard rock. The guitar parts are as much about the beat laid down with the right hand as the notes played with the left hand. You could, in fact, play a pretty decent break in a song like this dead stringing the notes with your left hand and playing a great groove with your right hand and a wah wah pedal (you’ll definitely hear that pedal in this song). Even the vocals are built for the groove. The timing of the vocals are just as important as the melody line. Some highlights are the vocal count in at the beginning, the short and funky guitar solos and the hand percussion you can pick up in the background if you listen closely. You also need to leave some open space in the arrangement. Filling every bit of open space with guitars or keyboards actually waters down the beat and turns a good groove in to mush. If you want to know how to start a great groove, listen to the song at 2:22 where everything drops out except the drums. This is where everything that moves this song along begins.

From The Vault 12 – Conduit Plays ‘Reptilian Mind’ Live

As a new year rolls in we’re going back in to the Vault to take a listen to another track from Velvet Wrinkle Wreckerds artist Conduit. ‘Reptilian Mind’ is another track originally recorded for the album ‘Superior Olive’. This version is from a live session the band did at the studio. We always liked to do live recordings to test out how the song would sound without the ability to do the overdubs that are used in the studio recording. The live recordings include just the basics: vocals, one guitar, bass and drums. These recordings also allowed us to decide which amps, settings, FX pedals, etc are the best options when playing in a live environment. When we record in the studio we’ll often use amps on a much quieter setting because we’re concerned about a clean sound rather than projecting more volume to a live audience. On the other hand we may use amps with much smaller wattage and push them harder (maybe go to 11?) to get an overdriven sound. The studio takes give us a preview of any playing changes we need to make for the sound to be cohesive live.