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.