Variety
Busy busy busy...just the way I like it.
Had a great show with the Basics over the weekend and played with Mark Williams last night in Raleigh for a fund raiser. The Basics record is almost done with mastering, so that should be out soon. This is a great record and a great band, and I'm real proud of the tracks I played on and how everything sounds. Wade did an incredible job of mixing and engineering (and writing and singing - along with Kelly). It's just a great sounding record, all around.
Rob Seals new record is out (I believe) or at least my copy is coming in the mail...another great record with some killer songs. Wade received his copy yesterday and we listened to it on our way to the Mark Williams gig last night (Wade played guitar last night).
This last week just sort of incapsulates what I like about all the groups and people I get to play with from time to time...creative variety! For instance, The Basics show was a full band situation, yet there were some volume concerns (regarding the size of the room, etc) so I opted to go with a Hybrid set-up of some of my hand drums and my little Silver Sparkle Premier "club kit" And then I used these cool "broom" like brushes instead of sticks. I felt like I was able to cover all the bases I needed to, without feeling like I was having to "underplay." The show I did last night was a straight up "acoustic" show, so all I played was my large Djembe and used brushes to simulate hi/hat parts or the feel of a shaker.
The recordings I mentioned above utilized different parts of my skills as well...for the Basics, I pretty much played drumset, and a little bit of Percussion. However for Rob's stuff, with him, we've ususally recorded everything "piece meal" as Percussion (even though I may be laying down a snare part and a kick part, it's all done separately, one instrument at a time).
And there's a bunch of stuff on the horizon as well...I've got some major web design updates to perform to my site as well as implementing a new site for Durham Drum Lessons which is the "umbrella" I'll be teaching drum lessons under. Other than that, I'm in the midst of putting together a loop CD, specifically for a producer out in LA...I may end up releasing it at some point through my Cafe Press store, but we'll see how that goes and how it turns out. Hopefully I'll be recording with Bill West again soon and it looks like I may play on a Brent Lambert production here in the near future.
So yeah, for now things are busy, varied and creative. Never the same thing twice. Or at least it feels that way.
Well, that's it for now. Stay tuned.
Cheers,
dale
