On a non-Tweed-related note, my grandmother, Alphild Glatzert, turns 100 this week. Longevity runs in her family — her older sister Gertrude lived to be 98. Kristin, Sophie, and I will be joining the rest of our family in Pennsylvania this for the celebration.

In 1904:

• There were 45 states in the Union
• Theodore Roosevelt was elected to his first term as president
• The New York subway opened
• Ground was broken in construction of the Panama Canal
• A newspaper cost one cent

Some famous people born in 1904:

• Cary Grant
• Dr. Seuss
• Sally Rand (of ‘fan dance’ fame)
• Joan Crawford
• Jimmy Dorsey
• Glenn Miller
• Joseph Campbell
• B.F. Skinner
• Robert Oppenheimer
• Salvador Dali
• Fats Waller
• Pablo Neruda
• Deng Xiaoping
• Count Basie

My grandmother has outlasted them all.

We’re getting closer to our November 12th recording date, and we’re busy getting ready.

We’re recording on the second floor of Scott’s two flat. It’s a nice, bright, open space with high ceilings. It’s also a surprisingly live room acoustically, so we’re going to have to spend some time deadening it. We’re bringing in carpets, blankets, drapes, anything to help deaden the space. We’ll probably end up using the couch as a bass trap in one corner, and a mattress in another corner for a similar purpose.

We’re also trying to pick the tunes that we’re going to tape. Although we’re busily writing new material (we just knocked off another song in rehearsal this week), we’re probably going to spend the bulk of our time recording the more traditional tunes that make up our repertoire. Given the nature of this recording experiment (live to two-track), it makes sense to concentrate on the material we’re most comfortable with.

If you have any suggestions for tunes that we should record, drop us a line. Likewise with record titles.

We’re getting ready for another Thursday night show at Kitty Moon this week. The performance room there is a surprisingly comfortable and good sounding space. If you haven’t made it out there yet, come on by and stay for a while.

Billy and Paul will be helping to provide music for the Provision Theater Company’s production of A Christmas Carol, so we’ll be reducing our performance schedule a bit between now and the end of the year. That said, we still have some great shows coming up. We’ll be at the Kitty Moon on November 5th and 19th, the Gallery on November 12th, and we’re making a return trip to the Charleston in December. We’ll also be heading back to the Wabash tap soon.

We always list our upcoming appearances on our calendar page, and, if you sign up for our mailing list, we’ll send updates to you via email.

Starting this weekend, we’re going to be plugging in for most of our gigs. Given the choice, we prefer to play unamplified or to use a single condenser mic for the band. Most soundmen don’t know how to mix acoustic instruments, and we prefer to make it easier for everyone by letting the instruments ‘mix’ themselves into a single mic. This works well in small, quiet rooms.

But as we move into larger and louder venues, this is impossible. We’ve been confronted with some long and excruciating blasts of feedback at the hands of some inept soundmen recently. We have to play through a PA in large rooms, and condensers don’t work well in loud or noisy situations. They’re designed to pick up sound from a large area (they condense the sound, as it were), and they’re therefore susceptible to picking up the signal from the monitors or house speakers. When this happens, the audience is treated to an ear-piercing burst of high-frequency noise. This is, I’m told, bad.

Using pickups on our instruments makes it easier for soundmen of limited ability to mix us. Sadly, most soundmen could be described as being “of limited ability.” A friend of mine once gave me some sage advice about soundmen. “Always assume,” he said, “that you are at the mercy of idiots.”

Billy’s got a Fishman pickup on his fiddle, I’ve got a Fishman on my mandolin, and Ryan has a Fishman for his banjo (endorsement offers welcome. Send inquiries to sellingout@tangleweed.org). We’re going to give it a go at Sylvie’s tonight. Come on by and say hello.

Scott taped our Sunday sets at Metropolis this week, and we’ve added more downloads to the Music section of the site.

There are five new tunes:

1. Cindy
2. Make Me a Pallet
3. Foggy Mountain Breakdown
4. Spoonful
5. Train 45

Enjoy!

When John Kerry and George Bush met at last week’s debate, Kerry pulled Bush towards him and whispered something in his ear. We asked the crowd at the Charleston to guess what he said. The crowd voted on their favorites.

The winners:

• Dude, wanna split an eight ball? [editors note: this is not a billiards reference.]
• Hasta la vista, beeyatch!

But there were many, many more. More than we could read at Saturday night’s show. So, as a courtesy to the public, we’ve listed all the submissions here on Tangleweed.org. Enjoy. (more…)

It looks like we’re going to be doing a regular series of gigs at Kitty Moon. They’re commited to starting a ‘bluegrass night’ there, so we’ll be alternating Thursday night shows there with another band. It’s a new club, and it’s a nice space. There’s a bar area in one half of the space, and a lounge/ stage area in the other half.

The stage area is a great room. It’s long, narrow, and comfortable, with couches for sitting and a small stage at the end (sort of like a miniature version of the old Lounge Axe). It’s a surprisingly good sounding room, so we will most likely try to play there without amplification. We’ve yet to get a good mix through a PA (our struggles with soundmen is another topic for another thread), so we’re glad to play anywhere we don’t have to get amped up.

Our next show there will be on October 21st. Come on up and check it out. Kitty Moon is at 6227 N. Clark Street in Chicago.

Meanwhile, we’re looking forward to our show at the Charleston on Saturday night. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that Scott will be with us, and we’ll be back to full strength.

We’re playing our first show at Kitty Moon on Thursday. Scott is out of town with family, so we’re going to play it as a quartet with me on guitar.

Last time I played guitar with Tangleweed, I broke three strings in one set. My goal for Thursday is to reduce string breakage. And to remember the chords to the coda of Honeysuckle rose.

Kitty Moon is at 6227 N. Clark Street in Chicago. Come on by and say hello.

We should be back at full strength for our Saturday night show at the Charleston.