Absence

So busy, everything happening at once.  To my readership of 4; please forgive my inattention.

Running Recording Update

Recording guitars and keys now, trying to finish by end of week.

I worked on What Happened to You? last night and it is sounding freakin’ epic.  Seriously, the last chorus is ridiculous, complete with harmonized guitar leads and a Big Rock Finish!

Adrenalin, now in song form!

Demo/EP Progress

Got bass recorded on Saturday.  Nothing of note happened except for one amusing little thing.  I got Rehan all set up and I couldn’t get any signal.  I had tested all my cables and connections the night before so it’s not that I wasn’t prepared.  So I retested all the cables, still no signal.  Rehan says “I can see signal on my stuff.”  Checked my patch bay, fine but still no signal.  Rehan says “I can still see signal on my stuff.”  So I pulled out the rack and started tracing connections, all fine, still no signal.  Rehan says “I’m still seeing signal on my stuff.”  I check my software connections, all good.  Rehan says “I can see signal on my stuff, oh wait, I have my tuner on and that bypasses the output.”

All told, the troubleshooting took about 45 minutes…  Sigh.

Mojo Recording

We just finished tracking drums for four songs:

Rhythm of the Tides

Falling Apart

Kingdom Come

What Happened to You?

We’ll lay down bass sometime next week. Atom took some photos, I’ll get them up as soon as I can. We decided to go for a rougher, more spontaneous feel instead of a produced sound. The music we’re doing kind of calls for that approach in my opinion. So in that spirit I used a three mic technique on the drums with a lot of room sound. Very much an old-school late 60’s technique. One mic in the kick (AKG D112) and a pair of condensers (AKG C451B’s) in an XY pattern (as well as some of my own special sauce) to mitigate phase errors . It sounds very Muscle Shoals. We had Reh and Atom playing along to further contribute to the more “live” feel.

My front room is an incredible sounding room and I usually record drums there, right in front of the rock fireplace. But instead of recording there like I did for Gina French and James Woods I packed up a mobile version of my studio and we recorded in our practice room. I’m really liking the idea of doing more down-and-dirty style recordings, it feels a lot more casual. Plus it would be fun to pack up the studio and record in some nice old church or something. Make recording more of a fun get-together, rather than a stressful event.

Photos:  Atom Holiday

Shots From Mojo Show

Photos:  Juan Manuel Morales

What did you get for Valentine’s Day?

done

Post Gig Thoughts

We were a little nervous, but we still rocked.  We drew pretty well for being an unknown band playing on a Wednesday.  I think we even got paid!  We took some video and got some pics.  If there is anything worth seeing, I’ll post it for everyone’s amusement and ridicule.  It was great to see some long-time friends at the show and I hope that I didn’t embarrass them too badly with my rock-n-roll affectations.  I didn’t get into a fight or take my shirt off, so I’ll chalk it up as a win!

Here is our set list from the show:

We ended up skipping Falling Apart due to time constraints.

Tonight’s the Night…

We are ready to rock tonight @ The Urban Lounge.  Nobody knows who we are, no one has heard our stuff with vocals, we have an opening slot usually reserved for unknown’s, we are playing for a very short amount of time, and we’ve been out of the scene for eight years; we are the archetypal dark horse.  Our set list has a wide variety without being schizophrenic (I hope).  We have another 7 songs that are in various states of completion, but I think the chosen 7 are strong.

I’m excited we are finally getting Mojo Philter off the ground.  Hopefully I can avoid the mistakes I made with Honest Engine.  I figure since I’m just the guitarist this time around instead of the lead-singer/lyricist/guitarist/front-man/band-leader/publicist/engineer/producer/graphic artist/etc. it’ll be a bit easier!

What Does Mojo Philter Mean?

To announce our upcoming gig I sent out a group e-mail to a whole mess of friends.  Apparently our name has been met with some confusion.  Our name isn’t gibberish, it actually does mean something:

mojo \moh-joh\ –noun:

1. the art or practice of casting magic spells; magic; voodoo.

2. an object, as an amulet or charm, that is believed to carry a magic spell

philter \FIL-tur\ –noun:

1. A potion or charm supposed to cause the person taking it to fall in love.
2. A potion or charm believed to have magic power.

transitive verb:
1. To enchant or bewitch with or as if with a magic potion or charm.

Some things you can feel coming. You don’t fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. When you feel that need, you have to watch your step; like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus.
– Umberto Eco

So, a Mojo Philter is a love potion, love talisman, or love spell.  It is also one of the lines in the Beatles song Come Together:

He roller-coaster he got early warning
He got muddy water he want mojo philter
He say “One and one and one is three”
Got to be good-looking ’cause he’s so hard to see
Come together right now over me

The idea is that our music is a mojo philter.  You’ll fall in love, maybe a little against your will; but love isn’t about control anyway, is it?

First Mojo Philter Gig

Well, we have our first gig.

We are playing at the Urban Lounge Wednesday February the 11th.  We hit the stage @ 9:30.  We will be playing for a half-hour, that translates into about 7 songs.  That is if we hit the stage and bang-’em out no-nonsense style.  This should be a blast, especially since we don’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before.  I think we are going to surprise a few people.

We The Armed

The We The Armed forum has moved to a new faster server.  Performance should be noticeably better.

Happy New (Fab) Gear!

My wife got me a new amp for Xmas.  Well, to be more accurate, I got a new amp and told her it was my Xmas present.  I also got it way early and have been using it with the band for a while  (I mention getting the Vox a couple posts ago).  So, she never actually even saw the amp that she got me, she’s just been hearing about how great it is and how she has excellent taste in amplifiers.

So that means the Fender is no longer my main amplifier, I’m officially a Vox man.  Seriously, I never want to play a different amp, this thing is the shit.  This is the Vox AC30 Custom Classic amp, basically an updated version of the same amp the Beatles used.  ”Updated” is normally code for “suckified” but thankfully not in this case.

Volokh Speaks

Eugene Volokh held a lecture at the University of Utah last night. It was titled Constitutional Originalism and Heller v. D.C.. It was an informal lecture that mostly stayed in layman terms, but occasionally strayed into legal territory. IMO it was fantastic and fascinating.  He mostly stuck to the topic and explained how originalism informed both sides of the decision. While that seems contradictory, he was able to easily show the reasoning and thought process behind both the majority and minority opinions.

One of the most interesting points was that this type of originalism wasn’t even possible 10, 20, 30 years ago. The advent of the internet and then the subsequent (slow) uploading of thousands of period documents enabled quick and relatively easy searches for supporting documents, and contextual/temporal phraseology. This decision has the most supporting documents by nearly 3-1 over any other SCOTUS decision in history. Absolutely groundbreaking.

Volokh went through the major points of each side of the decision and broke the arguments down and discussed period supporting documents. He also gave several admonishments about getting too confident in this decision or the recent trend towards originalism. Originalism can be a bit of a cul-de-sac, and care must taken balancing between understanding the drafters and ratifiers intent, but also not “being led by a dead hand.” According to Volokh he will be releasing the lecture to the public, probably on his website.

I highly recommend seeing his lecture if he comes through your area. It will both energize and frighten you a little.

We can’t get complacent.

Out with the old, in with the “older.”

I’ve been using the same amplification setup for years and years.  Digitech 2101 into an all tube Peavey 120/120 into two custom 2×12’s.  I found what works for me and stuck with it.  I’m not the only guitarist like that, surprisingly we axe-slingers can be a conservative lot.  Recently on a whim I tried a Seymour Duncan Twin Tube at the local guitar mecca, Guitar Czar, and everything changed.  This pedal is [insert fave over-the-top-descriptor]!  

 

This one pedal changed my entire setup.  No longer am I using a rack system.  I went back to my old ‘68 silver-face AB763 Fender Bandmaster and pedals.  That worked great for a few practices but then I tried a friend’s Vox AC30 and more changes followed.  I’m now using a Vox AC30 with an extension cab and pedals only.  About as traditional and as purist as can be.  I’m basically back to a system similar to what I used when I started playing guitar:  Combo amp and pedals.  This is all due to one pedal; amazing.  I’m also using the cool Voodoo Labs pedal switching system as well, I can’t give enough praise to Seymour Duncan and Voodoo Labs, they have literally changed my musical life.  Here are photos of my interim setup before I went to the Vox.

The Twin Tube and friends

 

 

'68 Bandmaster and Custom 2x12's

I Got Quoted

By worldnetdaily.com over the ACLU argle-bargle (I’m SuperNaut btw).  Apparently my anger at the ACLU is shared by quite a few other people.  I was just angry enough to put my money where my mouth is.