Awwwwwww.....

Shucks! Bad news, fiddle lovers. Our new fiddle player is now our former fiddle player. John is starting a masters program and the new, Fall semester has kicked into gear and something had to give and it wasn't going to be doing the coursework. Too bad; he is really good and a very nice guy. Seems we weren't quite the style of band he was looking for, either, which probably made the band-versus-Masters-degree thing WAY easier to figure out. Our best wishes, hopes and inspiration to John, may you come back and play with us from time to time.

Gigs Coming Up

Late Summer and early Fall are getting to be our busy times of year and we have lots coming up. Let me just put them out as a calendar, starting with THIS SATURDAY
8/21 4-8 pm Unitarian Universalist Church Bluegrass Festival 1911 Cliff Valley Way Northeast Atlanta, GA 30329
8/29 Old Tucker Fountain 5pm 2329 Main Street Tucker Ga (A former soda fountain, now a wonderful barbecue restaurant, so eat, drink, listen to Hicks, then join in some jamming)
10/2 Emory Presbyterian Bluegrass Festival
10/3 Oakland Cemetery Festival
10/10 Decatur Presbyterian
10/17 Bluegrass Sunday service Rock Spring Presbyterian Church 11:00 a.m. All the music for the regular Sunday worship service is done in bluegrass. Sing along.
10/30 Bluegrass Festival at Rock Spring Presbyterian Church. First-ever, so too soon to call "annual." Free admission, will sell food.

A Bluegrass Festival

Huge news, bluegrass fans; We are going to have a bluegrass festival at Rock Spring Presbyterian Church. It's scheduled for October 30th. Since we are hosting it, I'd say there's a darned good chance Hicks With Picks will get to play in it. After that, we are starting to look for other bluegrass bands. The requirements are: good bands that will play for free. Actually, "free" may be a little harsh. We'll provide dinner and beverages (we're breaking out the grill for this event!). None of us at RSPC has ever put on a music festival before, but Beth-the-bass-player has been instrumental in staging one, and we already have a sound system, so how much more could there be to it?! Right; we'll get working.
Before then, we will be playing in the music festival at Beth's Universalist Unitarian church on August 21; at the Emory Presbyterian Church bluegrass festival October 2nd, and at a neighborhood function August 3rd. What fun!
Y'all come out now, hear?

...And Not Just ANY Fiddler!

We have a fiddle player, and not just ANY fiddle player, but a really GOOD fiddle player. John Hunsinger joined us Wednesday night for band practice and just blew us away with his ability to jump in on songs and improvise accompaniments and leads. He even took leads on songs we KNOW he'd never heard before because they were songs I wrote so NO ONE has heard them...except the elite few who have bought the CD. He plays with an authentic bluegrass style and ear.
For a bluegrass band, having a fiddler is like a barbecue rib joint having beer; you can have one without it, but it sure is better with. After playing music for an hour and a half, we all enthusiastically said he passed the audition (tried to say it in a Beatles accent; failed) and then waited expectantly to hear whether we had passed his. He said yes. We gave him one of our CDs. And you know we don't hand those babies out to just ANYONE!
Welcome John!

Big News

We may get a fiddle player! Actually, we may get ANOTHER fiddle player. Mike Nugent has been expanding his talents from mastering the mandolin to fiddling with the fiddle and played it in church on Bluegrass Sunday. He's doing great! But it turns out a long-accomplished fiddle player from Beth's previous band is looking to get back into some regular music-making since their band broke up. When we have rehearsal this week he is going to joint us and we're all going to play songs and see if we are a good match. Beth has wonderful things to say about him personally and about his music-making and Mike talked with him on the phone and they hit it off. So we'll see. We did this with Beth and are thrilled with the way it worked out and so have high hopes for John, too.
How do you make a bluegrass fiddle player fiddle slower? Put sheet music in front of him. How do you make him play WAY slower? Put notes on it.

Big Mistake

I had a little while to kill before band practice last week and stopped to buy new banjo strings at Guitar Center, then went into the acoustic instruments room to play with guitars. I was looking at moderately priced guitars and then the sales guy said "try this. It's the standard for bluegrass." It was a Martin D-28. The sound was so huge, so ringing, so loud, with such enormous bass, clear mid-range and balanced highs, all I could do was hand it back to him and say "thanks for ruining me for anything I could afford!" It really was a wonderful guitar. Their price was high; but then Guitar Center is open to bargaining. Even with bargaining, though, this one would be a stretch. Ah, well, when the book sells a million copies and Nashville gets in a bidding war for my songs, maybe then.

One Down, One To Go

We played in the installation ceremony for Karen and it seemed like a success on several fronts; first, we played in the same service with the choir and the organ and piano (but not at the same time) for the first time and the combination didn't seem to make anyone's head spin and erupt pea soup. Second, we thought we did pretty well, and at the end when the new pastor and the visiting preacher were walking down the aisle to exit we rocked out with "Easter Song" and the visiting preacher danced all the way out of the church.
Also, we came up with a new and much better way to do our sound system. We had been setting up our whole set of gig gear with a huge amp, giant speakers, six or more mikes and tons of cables. That involves taking out some of the walls in the choir area, which is a real pain. But this time, with the choir using their area, we just put two condenser mikes--a high one for voices and a low one for instruments-- on one stand and ran cables into the house audio system and all formed a circle around those two mikes...and it worked great! Not only was it less work for us to set up, people said it was the best and clearest audio we've ever done. We did also set up a separate amp for the bass, though. So we have retired the gig setup from Bluegrass Sundays!
Speaking of which, the next one is this coming Sunday, June 6. Beth can't attend--out of town commitment--and Haddon says he is officially and irrevocably retired. Mike has lined up a really good bass player, though, who has been a master at playing standup bass in country bands for a long time, so we feel lucky to have him pitch in, and also feel lucky we'll have Beth back for the long run.
Allison sent an email to band members suggesting they check out the blog, so I figured I ought to write something. So there! Thanks, Allison.