End of the Year

What a year! We lost our wonderful bass player, Haddon, but kept him as a friend and added a wonderful bass player, Beth, AND added her as a friend, so we are definitely in the plus column! After years of work and false starts, we got our CD finished and are thrilled by it. Part of putting it together was to chronicle where were are as a band and a side benefit is to analyze what we did and figure out what we could do better. It's a success on both accounts. The third benefit is raising money through sales of the CDs for our church's building debt fund. That one's a work in progress and we hope/plan/pledge/resolve to try some web-based marketing this year.
Plans for 2010; Mike wants us to work on traditional bluegrass instrumentals and all of our instrumentalists are pretty enthusiastic, I think. Chaz has already perfected a new one. I just dragged out Soldiers Joy yesterday and began re-learning it. It was WAY fun! My goal is to write and finish more childrens' songs this year, aiming for the goal of 15 that we all like for another CD. I hope to write more grownups' songs along the way, too.
All that along with New Year's Resolutions of more exercise, better diet, peace on earth, yadda yadda yadda. I think I have a good head start on the yadda resolution.

We heard ourselves

Last Sunday was another Bluegrass Sunday at church, which means Hicks With Picks does all the music for the worship service. We performed one from the new CD (and hawked it shamelessly), two new ones we've been working on, and few oldies the congregation could sing along with. After church we had our monthly after-church luncheon and found out some visitors were there just for the bluegrass, so hooray!
Mike hooked up a little, tiny (pocket-sized) digital recorder to an output from our audio amplifier and recorded all of our songs. Robby Dore was the Audio Technical Recording Artist Engineer (he pushed the start and stop buttons). Then Mike lost LOTS of sleep that night figuring out how to digitally transfer it to his computer, which he finally did and give us all dubs.
We learned a lot. We need to work on keeping our sound levels leveller. We need more oomph from the guitar. One highly respected critic said we sound like we're just doing TOO MUCH and need to tone down some. On the other hand, harmonies sounded great, mandolin leads were fabulous and there wasn't anything embarrassing in any of it, so that's huge!
Now that we're done with that event, we have begun rehearsing songs for the Advent/Christmas season. We won't make anyone listen to any Christmas songs, though, until after Thanksgiving. We promise.

It's here!

It's here! We have delivery of the CD. Only about 2 years in the making and a LOT of work, and now we have 200 copies of "Hey, Dog." Every cent of the $15 price goes to the Rock Spring Presbyterian Church building fund. The packaging came out great, with a cover photo of Hobbes, the basset hound who was Mike-the-Mandolin-Player's friend for many years, but who went to doggy heaven during CD production. As a HUGE bonus, each CD comes with the complete lyrics of every song. Can an old news writer really write songs? Find out; order now. For a CD email me at jeffwsb@yahoo.com

The Avondale Estates Autumnfest

Is this is a stunning look or what? You might not be able to read the menue on the food booth in the background but besides hamburgers and fries, you can also get fried Twinkies and Fried Oreos. No, I didn't.
It was a cold day in Avondale Estates, a pretty suburban town a few miles east of Atlanta. We performed for its Autumn festival last year and they invited us back; a good sign. I don't think the temperature got above 50 degrees and the wind was a pretty constant hurricane strength (that's my weather report and I'm sticking to it; others reported it somewhat milder), but it was still warmer than the condo association gig last Sunday night.
We were using their sound system, which only came with three microphones. We use gazillions of them for instruments and singers and just to have hanging around. Fortunately, Mike Nugent brought a good supply of our equipment and set it up before we started and they had a good sound guy who put it all together.
We are getting to the Final Days; not of Armageddon but of producing the much-awaited CD, "Hey Dog." Nugent is working with the production company; he has sent all the copy, spoken on the phone with their artists about design, made decisions about colors, layouts and other looks, and I am sure we are in excellent hands. We were using some pictures of our recording session that I snapped on my phone so, of course there were none of me and they were of questionable quality. I called my friend Don McClellan, who has been a reporter at Channel 2 even longer than I. His son Scott took lots of pictures during the recording session in the studio and Don e-mailed a bunch to me as soon as I called him, then I forwarded them from my Blackberry to Nugent, who shot them off to the production company, all in a matter of minutes! Technology is great when it works. Soctt also shot video of us recording, and when we get the final CD we'll send him and Don copies and then--get this--Don said he will marry the video and the final CD audio mix for a music video. Then if I can put it on this blog...COOL! We'll see; this involves huge leaps into the technological future (okay, it's only the future to me, but still...).

This is our new bass player, Beth Stevenson. Besides being super-nice and a terrific bass player, she has the sweetest old dog who is senile and mostly deaf (except when Mary screamed once for a song that involves a scream and scared the crap out of the dog) (to hear why a scream is needed in a song, get the CD), she also has a huge and really interesting job.
She works at the CDC and is at the center of coordinating the biggest and fastest vaccination effort EVER, for the swine flu. They have to coordidnate production, distribution, information, getting all the doctors and health departments and everyone else on board. And here's the cool thing; she has a Masters Degree in doing all this stuff, and all these PhDs and MDs have to recognize that she really knows what she's doing, so there's a cultural thing going on. She's working really, really hard at that, and still carving out time to play bass with Hicks With Picks in a really cool embroidered western shirt. She's told us the name of the company that makes those shirts TWICE and I forget. Bummer. Since she has to lug a big bass around, we hold all the rehearsals at her house, and she's even cool with us invading every week. So is her husband, John, who seems to be as nice as Beth is. Amazing! Beth also did not eat the Fried Twinkies or Fried Oreos. So shes smart, too.

Wow! We learned!

It's so exciting to find out we can learn! After the gig at the cemetery ("people were dying to get in") we talked about how to improve and came up with a good list.
First, we realized we needed to work more on how songs start, and really get those beginnings nailed, so during the week we worked on any songs that we had confusion about.
Several people told us that when Mary and Allison sang together, Mary overpowered Allison. Not a great surprise since Mary really is louder. We traced the loudness difference in part to being at the mercy of someone else's sound system and having to set up in a big rush. That meant we didn't have good audio in our monitors, so we had a hard time hearing ourselves.
We also realized that was part of a third problem, that we felt disassociated from the group. We all came to the same conclusion about another factor in that, though; in the cemetery, we were lined up in a long row facing the audience.
So last night we had another gig, playing for the condo association of Lullwater condos. It was a real nice event; they set up tables in front of the old mansion that forms the basis for the development, had a caterer bring barbecue, beans, corn on the cob and cobbler, had some portable fire pits out in front of the band (it was WAY cold for an October night), and a lot of really nice people.
This time we brought our own sound system. Mike had repaired cables so everything worked well. I bought a new cart to lug stuff around. We got there two hours early so we would hve plenty of time to set up and do sound checks until we got it right. And we set up in a semi-circle, all very close to each other and standing so we could see each other as we played. Put it all together and we were all very connected.
It made a HUGE difference in our playing! We were much tighter, felt engaged through all the songs and, as a result, really connected witht our audience in a way we had not in the cemetery. This crowd was much more alive. Ha ha. (In the cemetery it was hard to hear ourselves over all the coffin). And we had a lot more fun, too.
Our practice paid off, too, because we really nailed just about every song beginning, and even did a lot better on some of the tricky endings of a few songs (where we stopped the instruments and did a capella harmonies very slowly to end).
Now we have yet another gig next week! What an amazing month. We have a rehearsal Thursday when we should be able to achieve perfection. Of course, repeating that in front of a real audience is another challenge. For my part, I realize my picking goes all to hell when I have lots of people staring at me, so that just means I need to practice perfect and then stick to what I practiced. I think.
Next Saturday, we'll be live around noon (I think) at the Avondale Estates Fall Festival. Y'all come out, now, here?

Making the CD

We didn't exactly raise the dead at Oakland Cemeterey, but none of them got up and walked out on us, either, so we count it as a victory. We had great weather (cloudy and cool with a threat of rain, unlike last year when it was broiling hot) and a good turnout from family and friends. A few people we didn't even know hung around and listened through the whole performance! Who'd a thunk it?
But, as you can see from the picture, we are looking ahead to the CD (and the next gigs we have lined up). That's Mike Nugent in the background on mandolin (my jokes about leaving his guitar out in the rain and drying it on the hot setting wore kind of thin at the gig) and Charles Chaz Gowing in the foreground on guitar during our recording session at Doppler Studio. We have the final mix and now we're going around about packaging. We may have decided to use some of the gig payments to pay for the packaging, rather than donate all that directly to the church, which is our usual warmhearted and generous pattern. Since we give all the proceeds from selling the CD to the church anyway, it seems like an ethically acceptable way to do it, because the packaging costs were climbing pretty high.
We have decided on a pretty ecofriendly package with almost no plastic except for the shrink-wrap, which we all hate but apparently its required for a professional look. We plan to go with a "wallet" design on of cardboard, or at least very heavy paper, that opens like a wallet (hence the clever name) and the CD slides into a sleeve. So there's no plastic jewel case. It would be printed on 4 panels, and we hope to include lyrics on an insert.
The goal is to have this done, printed, packaged, ready to sell, by the church's Homecoming in early November, so times a-wastin'. We hope to sell a bunch that day, and then sell more at the church's Live Nativity Scene leading up to Christmas. What a perfect gift for those people who are wasting their time looking at live animals and religious stuff when they should be out buying presents!
We have several gigs lined up in the near future; Avondale Estate's annual festival in the park, and a home owners association; then we have a Bluegrass Sunday at church November 15. Whew! What fun. We learned at the Cemetery we need to do more practicing on the starts and stops of songs; there's a big difference between handling the tough stuff by ourselves and pulling it off perfectly on the first try in front of an audience. Back to rehearsals!

The Excitement Is Building

The growing excitement has created an almost unbearable tension. This Sunday, we play at the annual Historic Oakland Cemetery Festival and I know of at least two people who will go there JUST TO HEAR US PLAY! I'm married to one and her commitment is wavering, but I think she'll make it. Of course while we are actually on stage she might be on an extended search for Margaret Mitchell's grave.
Excitement is also reaching epic oozing proportions for the pending release of our newest CD, "Hey, Dog," with an actual photo of a dog on the cover. It's like poetry, without the rhyme. We just got the mastered CD and now are feverishly working on the packaging. It's harder to work when feverish than we had thought. We think we're going with an eco-friendly package involving no plastic, except that they come shrink-wrapped, which we will put on because we really enjoy hearing lots of swearing. Surprising for a band that does so much gospel music, huh? We are trying to reach consensus whether to include the lyrics, which raises our printing/packaging cost. Then people could listen and read the words I was supposed to be singing.
Meanwhile, we are rehearsing. We still haven't made it through the whole playlist yet; a little disconcerting since the Big Event is coming up. The good news is once we get a song started, we generally do pretty well with it. It's just the starts and stops that cause trouble, kind of like a bicycle rider using shoes that snap onto the pedals for the first time. We are pretty excited that Patrick Dore said he wants to buy the CD; okay, that's one sale we know we have! Yes!

Counting Down to Gigs

Tough rehearsal last night, but then those are the good ones! We realize we're a little rusty with some of the songs on our playlist. The good news is, we have a playlist now for the Historic Oakland Cemetery Festival coming up October 4. We thought we'd rehearse straight through all the songgs last night and identify the ones we need to go back to for more work. Unfortunately, we worked on all of them as we went so only made it about a third of the way through.
Exciting news, though; Mike went by Doppler Studios earlier in the day and picked up the final Mastered CD of our album! Drumroll and fireworks, please. He made copies and we all have them. We've decided on the packaging for them (cardboard "wallets" the fold over with four-panel artwork, no plastic) and the company that puts the whole package together; they print your artwork on the actual CDs, put the music on the CDs, print the "wallets," insert the CDs in the wallets and shrink-wrap them (I know, I know, we all hate shrink-wrap, but it seems to be the industry standard without which people think you're back to making CDs in your basement) and get them to you all in about a week. We hope to have them ready for our church Homecoming in early November. The next challenge on the list is finishing the artwork for the disc and 4 panels.
Besides the Festival For The Dead, we have a neighborhood association party to play and a town Fall Festival where we played last year, all in October, and then we'll have a Bluegrass Sunday at church and a Sunday evening cookout at church, too. We go months without a gig, then about six in about a month! Fun times!

Busy times! We had a great rehearsal last Thursday at Beth's house, getting ready for the Historic Oakland Cemetery Festival coming up October 4th. We plan to rehearse again this Thursday, and we would be getting together on weekends, too, except I was in Arkansas last weekend for my nephew, Justin's, wedding, and I'll be in Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend for the wedding of the daughter of some of my dearest friends.
This week is taken up by bad weather and flooding in Atlanta. How bad's the weather, you ask? In some parts, they've gotten more than 15 inches of rain...in 24 hours! That's on top of what they've gotten over the week leading up to it. That means lots of flooding. I've been covering flooding around Peachtree Creek, which flooded about 4 or 5 feet deeper than when Hurricane Ivan came through five years ago. Flooding is such a devastating catastrophe, and the muddy water has swirled around in countless houses and apartments. Many of the victims have been very kind about sharing their stories with me, and our viewers.
We have a couple of river songs on the upcoming CD; how about that?

Bad CD promotion attempt

Some musicians--we counted them, six--
Got their kicks out of playing bluegrass licks.
When their pickin' got speedy
They recorded a CD
It's called "Hey Dog" by Hicks With Picks.

coming out soon.

A Gig For The Dead

Hicks With Picks is rehearsing for a gig coming up October 4th for the Historic Oakland Cemetery Festival. We played there last year as the lead-off act, when there weren't many festival-goers around yet. This year they've invited us back as the last act (we like to think of it as the Headliners) just before they do all the stage announcements. We are WAY excited.
Oakland Cemetery is Atlanta's premiere cemetery, resting place to many notables (Margaret Mitchell being the first one usually mentioned). It is gorgeous and huge. It was also hit by a tornado year before last which toppled lots of giant oaks,which in turn creamed some of the graves and markers. The Foundation and Cemetery have done huge work cleaning up the mess, which costs huge money, and we are excited about playing a contributing role in raising the money.
Hicks is reconstituting, since Haddon retired as bass player. We're excited that Beth Stevenson has joined us on bass. She is a terrific musician and just a wonderful person. Last night we had rehearsal at her house on her fabulous screened porch, her sweet, geriatric dog at our feet.
We have a pretty long list of songs that we might perform for "the dead." She knows some of them, like "Will The Circle Be Unbroken," but not others, like "A Monkey Who Can Dance." Go figure! Getting everyone together for rehearsals has proven to be a big challenge, but then it usually is as we approach deadline like gigs and recording sessions. We still need to get Allison to a rehearsal with Beth; Allison had a bad health problem and surgery earlier this year and has been recuperating slowly and painfully and, at times, frustratingly. We can't wait...but have to wait...to get her back with us at full strength. In the meantime, she got to spend some time in Florida where we hope the R&R was good.
While running through songs with Beth, we have a bad habit of jumping into a song and then way into it realizing there's about to be some totally bizarre twist we do that none of us remembered to warn her about. So far, she's been really good-natured about the surprises. We'll say, "Oh, yeah, we forgot to tell you that on that last chorus everyone all of a sudden stops playing," and she'll just smile and say, "uh huh, I noticed that."
Meanwhile we are moving ahead with CD preparations. It's all a process.

This is Wade Medlock. Wade is the Johnny Appleseed of Atlanta bands. Since they're country music bands I guess that makes him the Johnny Hayseed. Wade used to go to Rock Spring Presbyterian Church and noticed at one point that two members, Mike Nugent and Andy Rutledge, had acquired their first mandolins and were learning to play them. Wade knew that mandolins are tuned just like fiddles (violins played with country attitude) and he rounded up some guitar players at the church, Charles Gowing and Dan Byrne, to join them at his house in Clarkston and learn some songs. After awhile Jeff Dore got wind of the group and joined as a guitar strummer. After a few months, the group learned some songs and then had the bold idea of playing them in Fellowship Hall at church on Sunday morning as people were arriving for Sunday School.

     They were well-enough received the first Sunday they came back and tried it again. That's when Haney Brooks approached the group and said, "I bought a banjo about 30 years ago and intended to learn how to play it. After 30 years I'm getting the feeling I'm probably not going to get around to it. If I donated the banjo to the church, would one of you want to take it up?" Jeff had been thinking about the banjo and figured 1) the group had more than enough guitars players and 2) he was just a 3-chord strummer anyway, so he became the band's banjo player.

   Eventually the group became Hicks With Picks and played every Sunday morning before Sunday School. Allison Foster and Jan Antman joined as singers. Haddon Foster joined as bass player, initially thumping on a washtub bass--literally a metal tub turned upside down with a stick and a clothesline attached that he could adjust the pitch on by tugging on the stick--and eventually bought a real, upright bass. Patrick Hodges joined as a lead guitar player. 

   After awhile, Dan and Wade moved on. Hicks With Picks played during some church services, and now "Bluegrass Sundays" are a tradition at Rock Spring, when Hicks does all the music for services four times a year. Jeff tentatively offered a song he'd written for his daughter Rebecca, a children's song called "A Monkey Who Can Dance." The others said, "we'll play it if you'll sing it." That was the beginning of Jeff becoming the band's song writer and one of its singers.

   Anyway, it all goes back to Wade bringing us together. We brought him back to play as Hick Emeritus on our new CD and he was his usual brilliant self on steel, electric and acoustic guitars.

This is Brad Laird. He recorded our first CD, which we called "A Monkey Who Can Dance." Brad has played in bluegrass bands in North Georgia since about when people whittled the first mandolin out of a tree and has taught students how to play everything with frets and a lot of instruments without frets for years. I've taken banjo lessons from Brad and Mike has taken mandolin lessons from him. For awhile, some of us were taking "how to be a band" lessons from him.
Up to that point, we were each isolated instrument-players. He taught us how to get along as a group, making each other sound better than a bunch of individuals by blending sounds; the value of backing off, how to work out harmonies, adding drama by bringing instruments in and out of an arrangement...all kinds of valuable stuff it has taken us a long time to put into effect. We're still working on his great lessons!
After we'd been trying to make songs for awhile, we decided to make a recording as a "snapshot" of what we could do at that point. Brad brought his recording gear to my basement, we laid in a tub of beer, and we played and sang into a few microphones. I think all the songs were done on the first take except one and there was no multi-track fancy shmancy stuff going on. We end up with "Monkey," named after our most popular song, which included a few Jeff Dore original songs and some traditional standbys.
We were amazed that people actually bought some and asked us to record another one. It took years, but we finally did, and that's the CD we are working on now. Having figured out how to upload pictures, my next challenge is to figure out how to add a link to music. If I can do that, we'll give you a sample or two from our upcoming CD. Hey, by then we might even have a name for it. And I'll try to give you some idea of what it's like to create a CD from scratch. It's been really fun and really challenging.

HIcks With Picks

I think I might have actually uploaded a picture! Who would have thought it was possible? That's Mike Nugent on the left who plays mandolin and guitar. Over his shoulder is Charles Gowing on acoustic guitar. In the chair in front of him is Mary Gowing, singer (and rain stick player). Seated on the right is Allison Foster, singer and slide whistle player. On the big honkin' bass is Haddon Foster. Standing on the right is banjo player, singer and song writer Jeff Dore

September 3, 2009

Welcome to the first blog for Hicks With Picks. We are the house bluegrass band at Rock Spring Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia, which makes us, as far as we know, the only Presbyterian Church on Piedmont Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia, situated near Fat Matt's Rib Shack and the Gorilla Car Wash, to have its own, in-house bluegrass band with 2 IT guys, an accountant, a jazzercise instructor and a reporter. "Find Your Niche And Fill It," that's what we say.

The reason to start a blog now is we are about to come out with a new CD. This would be our second CD. We recorded the first one in the basement of the banjo player on borrowed equipment set up conveniently close to a tub of beer. It was a huge hit (I think we sold hundreds of them! We pretty nearly "went linoleum" on that one). This time we were able to record in one of the great recording studios of America, Doppler Studios in Atlanta, Ga. For all we know it's one of the great recording studios of the whole universe, but we're checking that out.

We're also only using songs written by our banjo player, because we know we can stiff him on royalties. You can't sue yourself, right? Actually, he probably could but he's too cheap to pay separate lawyers both to sue and defend himself, so we're home free.

So far, we have recorded the songs and we have a preliminary mix that's we've really, really enjoyed listening to, and as soon as we can figure out how this blog thing works, we'll put a sample here for you to hear.