OCCURENCES OF 2021
5.24.21
Normally, I’d start off with an apology for my lack of updates this year, but I’ll refrain. My musical heroes in the 70s and 80s kept me largely in the dark until an album just popped up in Harmony Hut, and I was fine with it. I’ve totally changed my plans for the year, as listed in the last update. Instead of monthly singles throughout the year and a big album at Thanksgiving, I’ll release a big album in June or July. Reason be, although I spent February and March trying to record new singles, nothing in the sounds I was making—using the new Guest custom bass—was thrilling me at all. I had a passel of swell, new songs ready, but…bleh.
And much to my astonishment, for it’s not at all my way, I was really longing to play live. I’d been feeling it was really time for a show, but I could see no way to that goal without wowing audiences at open mikes with my full sound: drums, organ, bass and guitars. And I could further see no way to make that happen without wheeling in my Johnny Five Tower of Terror, which would be just way unfeasible to hook up for 2 or 3 songs in an open mike.
I was feeling woebegone, but then the angels spoke and suggested I create a smaller version of Johnny Five. Something to fit in a small case. I immediately began sketching and long-missing puzzle pieces fell into place. A micro mixer. Mini acoustic and distortion effects pedals. A drum module triggered by piezos to tap with my strumming hand. No need for the bass octave, since my sound tends to be rather bass-heavy even without it. I was at a loss as to what kind of drum I could tap with my foot when I remembered a long-held, seldom used piece of equipment in my studio: the Porchboard. (A Porchboard is piece of metal one puts on the stage and plugs directly into the PA—bass jacked up—to make a thump-along sound like a loose board on somebody’s porch.) I wondered: is there a piezo in the Porchboard that could also trigger a drum module…? Indeed there was and it worked a treat.
A couple hundred dollars and lots of zip ties later, on March 7th, I had fashioned together in a Gator Bag the new, portable rig. The multiple outputs from my bass (using only 4 of the 5), would be pre-plugged into the bag, bound together like a cable snake. The process was only slightly more involved than walking up with a normie guitar at the open mike and plugging in. I merely had to preplug and unzip the bag, set it down, plug into an outlet, and put the PA’s quarter inch into the bag’s micromixer. Set the drum kit and organ effect and rock out.
The virgin voyage of Johnny 5 Junior was on the 25th of April at the Keller Tavern, in Keller, Texas, the next town over. My pal, singersongwriter Nathan Waller texted me out of the blue about how good the Tavern’s open mike on Sunday was, so I showed up to test the new rig. I played three songs from the upcoming album (“A Little Music,” “Ditches,” and “2nd 3rd 34th”) to tremendous effect, I thought. Nobody had never. And I knew it. It was a dream come true for me, actually.
One imagines the jaw-dropping effect upon audiences first hearing Hendrix or the Beatles or Dylan, as those geniuses laid something on the ears and sensibilities never before seen. Shrink them down by about 500% and that’s what I experienced. In the movies, people are so stunned, they forget how to applaud. In real life—my case anyway—There’s a brief turn of the head, a vacant momentary stare, and an uneasy shrug. Some players raved about the sound, however, after I got off stage and it couldn’t have been more miraculous to me. To get a slight double-take in such a jaded pursuit is awesome.
Reinvigorated by the success of Johnny Five Junior onstage, it occurred to me that I was to use it to equal effect in recording the new album. For recording, however, I used all five inputs—which meant including the neglected humbucker—and the bass octave pedal again. Last year’s “Record of the Year 2020” made the most of different drum sounds and guitar treatments, but I resolved on this album to be very straightforward: same stereo mixes, same vocal effects, same guitar effects, song by song. Over the first 2 weeks of April I recorded all the instrumentals, and I’ve been finishing the vocals here and there ever since. However, I’ve also been steadily playing open mikes, and that means lots of practicing, which has impinged mightily on recording time.
ITEM. One event that arrived out of nowhere was a call from Scott Kimes—producer of the Music Masters reality series I took part in back in January. He’s got his own band—a hair metal extravaganza called “KIMES”—and he was prepping for a huge concert at my beloved Haltom Theater in mid May. He wanted me to act as a stuffy music teacher dismissive of Rock N Roll™ in a kind of Twister Sister video turn, to play on the screen of the live show, prefacing their song “Hey Teacher Man.” You can see my thespian tendencies on display, here. (Cut to 2:24. It’s rather long.) I taped my segment on April 1st, and also agreed to reprise my roll onstage, live at the upcoming show.
Which I did. It was good fun, as far as that goes, and went a long way—I hope—in paying off karma I’ve incurred over the years, dragooning innocent third parties into my artistic projects and paying them with nothing but the thrill of being a part of it all.
ITEM. During a the first week in May, I went crazy mad and played 4 open mikes in the span of five days. One of them was at the Healthy Hippie Cafe and Bar, here in my home town of Watauga. Much to my delight, the next day the owner emailed me, inviting me to play a show there. Boom. There it is. My first show in Texas. The first official Question Beggar show. AND the first show I’ve played since November 2015. June 12 is the date, from 6 to 9. Please come if you can’t attend, and wear your best clothes if you haven’t any. You will be treated to 3 big sets (27 songs!!) of Heavy Skiffle™ which nobody can deny.
-QB
7.26.21
Glad tidings! The new Question Beggar album, Guest, will be released August 4th, 2021. It was a difficult delivery, with 2 false labors, but finally contractions started and, before long, it was crowning. And what an auspicious birthday it will be: on the same day, I’m playing another singer songwriter showcase at Six Springs Tavern in Richardson, Texas. Not an “album release party” at all, but I will be playing songs off the new album that have never before received a public airing.
Being the eighth album-child I’ve birthed, I’m a bit lessez-faire about it. I’m sure this new one will be a wonderful, unique, lovable work all its own, but I just haven’t bonded yet with it. Reason be: every song was recorded using the new custom bass—known to me as “The Grumbleduke”—and that instrument has a rather unexpected sound. To me it does, anyhow. It’s a trifle ugly somehow. (I know. This is supposed to be promotional. But who are you that I should have to lie about how I feel?) There’s an inner producer of the Old School™ inside me that frowns at the punk rebellion of the playing on this one. Being almost sixty now, surely this is a case of my sonic mutton dressed as lamb?
Irrelevant. I gotta make the album that’s in me, and here it is. Really, the songs have never been finer, I guess I’m just not used to working that hard to get an album to “final.” I recorded one version. Thought it was brilliant. Listened to it again: awful. I recorded the second version. Same result. On the winning version I went through it all over again. Brilliant…Awful. And I was just about to record it again, when my brother offered me free plane fare to Florida to see Mom. “Are you up for a weekend in Sarasota?” he texts me.
I’m all, sure why not. And I thought, I should do a quick mix of this latest failure of an album, just to see how all the songs sit together, in album form. I love having a new album of my own to listen to on a plane flight, so I rushed to put it together.
The day before the flight, I listened to it and I realized that it was not awful, it was actually perfect, as is. So I rushed to get it into the release queue, in case the plane crashed. The next day, at the airport, I found out that my flight wasn’t until August. Turns out I never looked at the tickets’ dates. I just assumed it was for the coming weekend.
A lamentable mishap, but one that was fated to force the delivery of this album, and so I’m grateful for it. Many classic songs that I’ve played live for years and resisted recording have finally found their way to permanence: “!Chíngale!”, “Ditches,” “Take a Naked Walk,” and “Operation Lonestar Bait.” Already I’ve completed the first two official music videos, to be released one each per month. “A Little Music” will be the first video, to drop on August 4th with the album and the show.
In other news, one of the benefits of the last showcase I played at Six Springs was meeting singer songwriter Jeff Hewitt. He had—besides remarkable songs and talent—a remarkable microphone that was of vintage design and glowed as if radioactive. Turns out he makes them, so I engaged his services to make one for me, from my ill-fated Shure 55Sw Elvis mike.
You don’t know the saga of that mike. It was 2002 and I was living in Portland when I found this used vintage Elvis mic at Portland Music. It was an original. Still had that old style connector, not XLR. To even be able to use it, I had to put it into an electronics repair shop to have the old connector updated. I put it into the shop in May and by August nothing had been done. (Portland work ethic, am I right?)
Taking them to task, I compromised and had them make a cable with the old connector on one end and XLR on the other. I used the mic for rehearsing no problem, but on the night of one of my biggest shows ever, the mic malfunctioned, cutting out and causing horrendous static charges. The drummer—quite a good one—laughed out loud at my plight and poked fun at me, on stage, for having such a shit microphone. I was slain, but pretended otherwise, while secretly putting him on my Enemies List™.
A year later, I bought a Nady fake Elvis mike and mentioned it to this Drummer’s wife—with whom I worked. I told her the whole story of his rudeness during the show, thinking it was all by the way now. She was quite offended by my impudence. I lost them both as friends, and, more importantly, him as a drummer. With this negativity attached to the vintage, defective Elvis mike, I packed it away, never to be used again, but too authentic to get rid of.
Well, now it’s back and completely refurbished in radioactive Question Beggar Orange and you’ll see it firsthand if you show up for the show on the 4th. Or imagine you hear it as you download the new album. Which you won’t, because it wasn’t used in the recording. But pretend anyway.
-QB
9.12.21
The Horse Latitudes. The place in the year where the winds stop, the tides fail and the seaweed holds your ship fast. You’re going nowhere.
I feel like I’m there, currently. Guest is out and I have no interest in promoting it. The woods around me are full of open mike nights and I have no interest in playing them. I’ve got lots of new songs to record, but I don’t feel ready to go back to the tapedeck yet. I’m the laziest artist out there, and yet: I’m burnt.
Not that I’m terribly worried about being burnt. Like everything, artist endeavor has its high and low tides. I’m a captive to art, but I’m not a slave. When the time is right to get busy again, inspiration will lift me up and out of the swamp in good time.
This is probably good timing as another period of Mercury in Retrograde sidles up to put us all in time out again. I’m not terribly into astrology, but I’ll use any excuse to fuck off for a little while and re-convene.
My Gold Tone resonator bass is currently in the shop for an upgrade: adding a piezo drum trigger for the tapping, and a pickup for the high string. These additions will let me use the current live rig I’ve set up and produce a new, striking sound, bolder and simpler than the one I get from the Grumbleduke. With this new upgrade, I’m hoping to record a new album with the resonator exclusively, the first since Western Man from Back East.
We’ll see how it does live at the open mikes, as well. In 2019, I opted away from the resonator because I got better audience feedback using the Danelectro Longhorn bass, with its zing-y high set of strings. It’s possible, however, that at the time—lacking experience—I mistook people’s interest and preference for the Dano as accurate and sincere. These days I understand that people just say anything at an open mike, and the expression of preference to this or that song or sound is highly suspect.
Which goes along with another observation—and hopefully it’s not just an opinion—of mine, that original rock-n-roll/singersongwriterism is for now, rather dead. Tribute bands are going great guns, but that’s only more proof of Rock’s demise, where more feet find their way to the museum than the gallery. It seems that these open mikes are like the quaint little art fairs and First Thursdays and such that dot the land. They let everyone know that craftsmen are still crafting. Quilters still quilting. Watercolorists still painting. And isn’t that nice for them. People can walk by their booths—at a safe, non-interacting distance—and nod approvingly, unmoved as they keep moving. Likewise, the buzz and bellow of the minstrel at the open mike let’s a nearby patron know that little poets are still plunking along. In our approval seeking and self-absorption and derivativity, it’s probably all that we singersongwriters deserve.
And this is me, in the Horse Latitudes. My take is a rather a glum one, currently. Despite that, I’ll carry on. I’ve said for decades now, if I could quit the music making, I would. But the sad fact is, all in all, I still dig it. There’s a teenager in my that just WILL not be exorcised.
-QB
9.18.21
Two—two!—Occurances posts in one month?? Big happenings must be afoot. Alas, nothing afoot is at hand. I just posted another Shed Studio vid and thought I'd update the site promptly, like a good DIY artist should.
Both of my fans will be glad to know that I'm feeling much improved from the Horse Latitudes state of mind I wrote about below. Why, I daresay I'm even feeling somewhat cheery. Feeling cheery in an artist is usually indicative of having some idea about a new project, and so it is with me.
I've got two future albums in mind, and a throwaway Bandcamp.com EP in the offing. While the world at large may seem to be falling apart—wars seeming to loom, republics seeming to crumble, scamdemics threatening to cage and enslave us all—I'm keeping my priorities straight and continuing to crank out music As If™.
As If™ I were a major rockstar under contract. As If™ I had a million fans. As If™ rock n roll were not dying on the vine before my very eyes. As If™ I were a millionaire with a secure future to keep me well as I age. As If™ I were still a teenager. As If™ the public wants a new sound or new song from anyone, much less from me.
Julia Cameron—author of The Artist's Way, an artist recovery course from the 90s I recommend to any struggling artist—says that God likes artists. How do we know? Because God likes art. He could have efficiently made one kind of flower. One kind of bird. One kind of butterfly. Instead, he made millions of varieties. Who but an art lover would do this? And if God is an art lover, then God likes artists, and God likes artists, it's okay for me to mindlessly continue making my art. I get the blues when I forget this.
On an unrelated note, many of you have written me to ask about my stance on the so-called Covid vaccine. (And by "many of you have," I mean "not a single soul has.") If my video single from last year—"Ain't No Rona"—doesn't give you some clue, I'll spell it out clearly.
By no means will I be taking that death jab. Not no way, not no how. Feel free to avail yourselves if you want, but I've poisoned myself enough with the processed foods and products of today. Extra credit experimentals, I don't need.
-QB
2.9.21
ITEM. Two months in already and I haven’t updated since mid December. I plead malpractice. As a new year’s resolution, I pledge to drop the phony 3rd person press release stylistics of all preceding occurrances and just write in the first person. Pleased to meet you. I’m Claxton Kent, a.k.a Question Beggar.
Although I admit to a legendary superego, still, bragging does not come easy to me, and the pressure of regular press releases—especially given the absence of a “press”—I find withering. Many have heard me say, “the Lord helps those who hype themselves,” but I don’t practice it well. What’s the point? Impressing people I don’t know? No. The point, I suppose, is to tell my story so that anyone curious might have a way to hear it. Another point might be to make as many people as possible curious about my story, by telling my story, which gets very circular, doesn’t it?
So, in a serious effort to be more Cap’n Keep It Real™, I’ll just write something here every month or so and let you know what’s going on in my artistic world. I might include details of my personal life if said details cross up sufficiently with my artistic world, but don’t count on it. Like you, I like my privacy just fine as it is. Keep guessing.
January of this year found me busy living up to the demands of the reality series I hinted at in the December 2020 Occurrances post. I was indeed accepted as a contestant on the pilot for a series called “Music Masters®.” It’s like one of those cooking competition shows where chefs compete against each other to see who can bake the best pastry on the spot, except that it’s songwriters and songs getting baked on the spot. A wheel was spun, a random word was picked, and we all had 24 hours to write a song centered around that word. Our songs were recorded. Music videos of our songs were made. Judges picked the best one. And I can say no more, by contract. When and where and if the series is ever made available to view, I will let you all know when I know. Right now, the producers are editing the episodes together to sell them to the networks to either buy or buy options thereof. There’s a tremendous demand out there for content, so there may be hope for this project to grow legs.
I can say that I’m quite glad I got to be a part of the series. It’s been very affirming to put my art out there like this and have such a positive response. I’m both a terrible judge and a terribly lenient judge of my own work. I love my art unconditionally but I’m also unconditionally dismissive of it, too. But on the other side of Music Masters®, I’m feeling a lot less dismissive. That’s a great thing. I’ve realized I don’t need to be so defensive over my music. I can be proud. I’m not a huckster. I’ve got real, artistically sound things to say, and I do them in a terribly original way. I can put my message out there, straight up. No irony. No self-parody. I’m all right.
So that’s January gone. Here’s February. I want to continue releasing monthly singles and videos. Especially since it looks like the live performance scene is still under the thumb of the scamdemic. This year will see another album released at Thanksgiving, made of this year’s singles and however many extra tracks. I’ve got twelve new songs ready and I’ll tell you they’re all extra-excellent. The first single should drop on March 1st, if the stars all align properly.
Which they haven’t. (I’m looking at you, Mercury-in-retrograde.) A couple days ago, I gave my first shot at recording the first single, called “A Little Music.” This new album will be the debut of my new custom bass, built by Jerry Guest. Although, I dashed out a quickie recording using the Guest bass—which I’ve christened “The Grumbleduke”—for my Music Masters® song, this week was my first chance to really focus in on producing the new sound. To my horror, the new bass has a nasty string buzz every time I strike it with any touch but the mildest. So close, and yet, so far. So it’s in the shop for a fix. Again. Hopefully, raising the action will get me where I want to be—buzz free—but with still sufficiently low enough action to ease the pain of chording a bass.
In any case, the new single has to be recorded, mixed and submitted by next weekend to meet the release date. I should also get the April single out the following weekend to get a jump on the year. (It seriously helps to be one single ahead of every release.)
In other possibilities, I’m more committed than ever to getting my live shows going this year. My appearance on Music Masters® should help me there, though that won’t be viewable until at least May, they tell me. In the meantime, I’ve also committed to re-writing the content on this site to make it more affirming and less disabusive of myself. I’m friggin’ 57 years old and still doing original, compelling music. That’s not a story of failure, so I can let the self-deprecation go. Anybody can be a rock star in their teens and twenties. It’s almost a requirement. Keep that shit going in your fifties, and see how you do then, eh? I’m doing it. Proudly.
-QB
ITEM. Some of you have seen the quickie live video I posted on YouTube a few weeks back, “Mary B. Human.” This was a zero-fucks-given affair recorded entirely on my iPhone, written and posted in one day. Here’s the backstory…
I subscribe to Mary Spender’s YouTube channel. It’s a love/dismay thing for me. I think she’s tremendously talented, probably, as a singer songwriter. I think. See, I don’t watch the videos where she’s making her music. I watch the videos where she gives performance tips or rates new instruments or devices. Now I KNOW she’s very talented at hosting a YT channel and getting clicks, and good for her. Looks like she’s put a lot of hard/smart work in. She’s got like a zillion subscribers. Do any of them like her music?
I’m not being snide, I’m honestly wondering. Because I think there’s something that operates—in me, at least, if in no one else—like “dysmorphic transference.” In psychiatry, transference is the tendency for patients to fall in love with their shrinks. In my theory of Dysmorphic Transference™, successful speakers on YouTube cause an unconscious disinterest in their actual art on the part of their subscribers. In Mary’s case, because she puts out such good informational videos, my interest in her art is non-existent.
If this phenomenon is real at all—and widespread—then it’s at odds with the common wisdom of today’s music marketeers, who tout universally the notion that getting more attention by providing useful info online will translate into sales for art by those fans of the info. The marketing mavens say things like, “Put out a video about how you get the best sound out of your amp and grateful viewers will in turn check out your music and become fans.” This has never remotely worked on me as a consumer. I’d be surprised if it worked for anybody. It’s pitiful. One imagines the early Beatles offering free car washes for anybody who’ll show up for their night at the Cavern Club.
This kind of marketing advice is directly descended from the advice that flimflammed artists before the internet. Ways and means to trick innocent bystanders into liking your art, it’s sad. It’s a divestment in artistry and an investment in approval seeking. But I digress.
Mary posted this video a while back and it…dismayed me. Her earnest desire to purge the sounds of string noise and string slapping from her guitar playing dismayed me. Those sounds are the very sounds I treasure as proof positive that a human made the resulting music on an actual guitar. The Chuck Berry-esque title “Mary B. Human” popped into my head and I immediately dashed off the lyrics, then picked up my bass to write the tune.
So pleased was I with the song that I resolved to quickly do a live video of it to post in the comments on her video. Which got zero response, but…eh. Labor of love. Give it a listen. It’s kind of screed-y, but it has its charms. Nice to take the old Gold Tone Resonator out for a spin, too.
-QB
ITEM. A week or so after posting “Mary B. Human,” I posted another live-in-the-studio vid, “Then Came Miracle Freedom.” It’s a cover medley of several compatible early 70s hits, of which I’m still so enamored. I took the Spinners’ “Then Came You,” added on Barry Manilow’s “Miracle,” and topped it off with Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom.” Originally, this was posted on Facebook last April. Being a little lax on my YT uploads since “Song of Last” dropped, I thought a re-release of this one was warranted. I’ve got a couple more from last year’s FB that can be posted as well.
It’s all kind of making me long for a return to 2017’s “Saturday Night Shed Set,” where I would post live songs every Saturday night. That might be a bit much to do, but maybe a “Mid Monday Medley” on the middle Monday of every month—where I post a new medley. (I’ve got quite a lot in the bag, waiting patiently.)
-QB
6.15.21
Momentum continues to build on the playing live front, much to my surfeit, with a second big event for the month of June going down at my beloved venue, Six Springs Tavern. Six Springs, in Richardson, TX, has the first stage upon which I ever performed in the Lonestar State, where I regularly played their open mic and made many friends. So it is with great alacrity that I announce a singersongwriter showcase I'll be a part of, The Rambler Radio Show Kick Off Live. Things start off at 7pm at Six Springs (147 N. Plano Rd., Richardson, TX) with an open mic til 8:30, then the featured players—which includes me—til ten. Me, I go on about 9 so plan your airfare accordingly, you who are jetting in. The show will be recorded for later broadcast on the Renaissance Radio Network, so I'll keep you posted, you who miss this one somehow.
-QB
However, by early September, I had already gone to Carolina in my mind, so to speak, and decided on the next sound for a new album. Going back to the future, I dusted off my Gold Tone resonator bass, last heard on a few songs on 07Q, and fully featured on Western Man from Back East. I likewise dusted off my TC Electronics Flashback delay pedal, hooking it up to the bass string pickup, which I haven’t done since Whole Other Day (and have never done with the Gold Tone.)
I did all this with a notion that something was amiss with me showing up on stage with a solid body, electric-guitar-looking instrument. It’s a turn off for audiences to see just one guy with what looks like an electric guitar. Maybe their minds tell them they’re gonna hear a sound like they’ve heard in Guitar Center when just one guy is trying out a strat. That is, seen outside the context of a full band, a solid body guitar is perceived as annoying, no matter what sound it produces. I theorize now that if I show up on stage with the acoustic-guitar look of the Gold Tone, the audience expectations will be more positive and then the surprise at the full Question Beggar sound will engender delight and not consternation. I’ll look more like a team player, too, perhaps: playing reindeer games with all the other acoustic guitar players…at first. THENCE WILL MY SCHEMES DAWN ON THE UNMITIGATED FOOLS!! You know. Where they hear one guy sounding like a whole damn band.
Before I could develop this new sound, however, the Gold Tone needed work. It was set up with only two outputs: the original pickups and the low string pickup. To work with the new rig I’d been using, I would need to add a third, high string pickup and a tappable drum trigger pickguard. I went back to my faithful luthier, and set him to work. I waited. And waited. And waited. My formerly speedy luthier was taking forever. It was like three weeks.
Clearly, he was tiring of my business. (To be fair, I ask weird things be done to instruments.) Finally the day came and I went to pick up my bass. And he screwed it up. The tapper was in an unsuitable position. The on/off switches were way high up in the corner. Worst of all, somehow he completely brain farted and set up the third pick up on the middle string, not the high string. This I’ve never done. I requested he fix it, but I got the feeling it would take him another 3 weeks. I was hot to get busy on the new album and sound and so I resolved to just deal with the set up I had.
Turns out, all his screw ups were actually well done. The locations of the on/off switches so far away seemed to make them easier to hit accurately. The placement of the tapper kept it from being unintentionally triggered by my strumming. And the middle string pickup…well, it’s a great innovation. The notes played by the middle string of the chord convey the illusion of a separate instrument much better than the octave strings do.
By late October, I had 14 more excellent songs arranged and ready to record for a new album. The delay worked unbelievably well with the Gold Tone, adding a heavy rhythm that really moves my songs along now. Normally, I record the songs of an album in the order they’ll be on the record, but this time I used my random number generator to pick which would be the first. It came up 8, which was the song “Scientific Superstition.”
By now, it should surprise no one that I’m a flag-waving, wild-eyed patriot and very much give-me-liberty-or-else in mindset. All this sneaking tyranny under the livery of “science” was the inspiration for “Scientific Superstition.” The recording of the song went so well, I opted for releasing it right away as a single, and here we are. Today, December 7th, 2021, it drops.
“Scientific Superstition” isn’t my first protest song. Some of you may recall the July 2020 drop of “Aint No Rona,” although that one was only released on Bandcamp, since it was a live-in-the-shed track. The reception to “Rona” was mixed. We’ll see how “Super” does.
Meanwhile, completed and waiting in the wings for a mid-to-late December drop is the next track from Guest to be released as a music video: “Chickalong.” The another single from the upcoming album, tentatively titled Need a Momenent, in early January. I’ve got 8 songs from the new album done so far, and I’m thinking I’ll drop a single per month until about June, when I’ll release the whole shebang.
I’ll also be working like crazy to play these new songs live, using the new sound. I’m determined to master the skill of switching my pickups off and on to mimic the arrangements heard on the recording, where, like, the string section only comes on in the second half of the chorus, or the delay suddenly stops. I know. That kind of stuff comes easy to a lot of you. Me? I’m…challenged in that arena.
Which may be why I haven’t yet played an arena. Oh well. Happy New Year and Merry Christmas and all that, til next we meet.
-QB
12.7.21
What a year. Was it even here? It shot by so fast I’m not sure now. It all started with that reality show, Music Masters, in January. Then a couple months perfecting the Grumbleduke, redesigning my rig for live play, and arranging new songs for an album. Then lots of open mikes, some gigs, some more open mikes, releasing the album, Guest. And then I ran out of steam for a couple weeks before the Sept. 25 show in Arlington.
I think I was grieving over my realization that the Grumblduke, my new custom bass was something of a failure, a colossal waste of money. It’s beautiful, but the sound of it—at the time—I found disappointing. I’ve since come to be at peace with Guest, which used the Grumbleduke exclusively. I went several weeks without hearing it and re-listened, finding it’s got a unique, bizarro sound, and the songs are really good. My singing, too. It’s a fine album, after all, I must conclude.