Many, many thanks to all the folks who helped make our trip to Oahu so memorable. We had a great time playing for everyone out there, and hope to return again soon. In addition to all the folks Paul thanked, we owe a debt of gratitude to Rich and Coleen for showing us a great time.
You can see some of the pictures I took here:
http://tangleweed.org/HawaiiSlides
Kip
We’d like to thank everyone who made our tour to “O’ahu a success and will be sharing pictures and stories in the upcoming weeks. It was really great to be embraced by the community here and experience the “ALOHA SPIRIT”. If you liked what you heard let us know, we’d love to hear from you. Let the venues know as well because we’d love to come back.
It was a whirlwind tour for us. We performed 4 shows in 48 hours and loved every minute of it. The kickoff show was at the rRed Elephant in Chinatown www.rredelephant.com on Friday. This gave us a chance to meet some of the folks who helped us along the way. And I do believe there is no finer cup of joe on the island than at the rRed Elephant.
On Saturday with the help of square dance caller Darrow Hand we got the wedding reception of Christie Lutz and Matthew Vander Naald going with an old school hoe-down. Though there was a bit of rain nothing could dampen the spirits at this party.
After that we packed the band into a mini-van and drove off to Hawai’i Public Radio KIPO 89.3 to play on “The Blues Hang” with Jon Alan from midnight to 2AM www.hawaiipublicradio.org Even though it was like playing from 4-6 in the morning for us we had a great time picking, talking, and sharing stories with his audience.
The weekends playing concluded with a Sunday afternoon concert at Ward Rafters. In addition to being a great independant music venue this off the beaten path location has a world class view that is fantastic. It was like a mini Ravinia house concert with folks showing up, wine and picnic baskets in hand, ready to hear some great music. Judging from the crowd response they were not disapointed.
If you enjoyed our shows and would like to hear more roots musicians like Tangleweed or are planning to visit O’ahu contact the places we played and I’m sure they will not dissapoint. We’d like to thank Lawson Cannon, and Bob Schornstheimer for being generous with their time and equipment during the trip.
We’d also like to thank Caroline Wright www.bluegrasshawaii.com and John Stallings at www.alohagroove.com for helping us get connected on the island. And a very big thank-you to everyone who came out to listen. Our music would be nothing without you.
Aloha,
Paul, Scott, Kip, Billy and Ryan
About the only consolation of a miserable childhood in central Ohio was finding similarly miserable folks to play music with. I played with a lot of good folks there, but my favorite folks to play with were two of my classmates from Columbus Ohio’s performing arts high school, Fort Hayes. We studied there under an insufferable bastard who played bassoon in the Columbus Symphony.
We shared an admiration for music that was outside of the usual music school nerd canon: The Replacements, the Descendents, the Meat Puppets, and our hometown heroes, the Royal Crescent Mob. Our ouvre fell into four categories: songs about bands that were more successful than us and, therefore, we hated; girls that did not like us; being broke and miserable; and revenge. We were bored suburban teenagers with a desire to play loud, fast, numbingly cretinous music. And we did. To an audience of zero.
We didn’t have two nickles to rub together (see lyric theme #3), so we were never able to make the kind of record we wanted to make. We tried to make a DIY record several times, but were never happy with the quality of the recordings, and the raw tracks always remained unfinished. Our best attempt at recording our stuff was in late 1991 and early 1992. We borrowed a whole mess of equipment from everyone we knew and holed up in a warehouse on the north side of Columbus.
The songs were recorded on a relatively decent Tascam cassette 4-track using relatively decent mics. 4-track technology being what it was, we could only record two tracks at a time. We recorded drum and bass tracks for about ten songs. We could never get guitar or vocal sounds that we were happy with, though, and the tapes sat idle and unfinished for a looooong time. By looooong time, I mean a couple of presidential administrations.
I had intended to take the raw tracks into a real studio and clean them up, but lacked either the time or money (as above, see lyric theme #3) to do it. About a year ago, I was corresponding with the drummer, Jose Nelson, and he mentioned that he had been thinking about taking the raw tracks into a real studio to clean them up. Jose hopped on a plane to Chicago, and we took our humble homemade tracks into Mike Hagler’s studio to clean them up and add overdubs. Mike is a miracle worker — he took our dinky homemade tracks and honed them into radio-friendly, arena-ready rock. The bass tracks, for example, were recorded on a borrowed Cort bass (one of those godawful Steinberger copies) through a Peavey guitar amp. That there is any low end at all is testament to Mike’s knowledge of the black arts of recording.
In all we finished enough tracks for a six-song EP. The results, considering the humble beginnings of the tracks, sound surprisingly good. See below for a sample track.
The personnel for the track:
We got a nice write up for our gigs in Hawaii from the Honolulu Weekly. You can view the article online at their site, or download it as a PDF here. Many thanks to John at alohagroove.com for all his help setting up and promoting these shows.
Funny folk
by Jamie Winpenny / 02-21-2007Calling Tangleweed a bluegrass band is accurate, but it’s unfair, too. Yep, they’ve got the fiddle, the mandolin and the rest of the acoustic accoutrements that compose an outfit that warrants a stereotype, but Tangleweed somehow pokes fun at folk music while honoring its storied legacy. Their arrival in Honolulu for gigs at rRed Elephant and Ward Rafters over the weekend will let those in attendance in on the joke.
These guys don’t even have a drummer. It’s five of them, assembled in Chicago, arranging a masterful pastiche of original compositions and traditional tunes from a prodigious archive of musical Americana and Celtic mischief. There is something more than vaguely punk rock about Tangleweed’s music, but the accuracy of their harmonies and the tactical proficiency of their musicianship indicate a predilection for form over function.
As evidenced by song titles like “Hard Times” and “Make Me a Pallet on the Floor, ” Tangleweed’s music isn’t far from the ancient sources of its inspiration, but it is also ticklishly close to the kind of irreverence that makes for brilliant pop songs and beer commercials.
See y’all on the beach at Waikiki.
I’m not a fan of SonicBids, although we do have an Electroinic Press Kit (EPK) there, and use the service occasionally.
SonicBids allows performers to create an EPK and submit it to venues for a fee. The fees are split between SonicBids and the venue. The fees are generally greater than the cost of sending a press kit through the mail, and sometimes exceed fifty dollars. Beyond taking the world further down the dreaded ‘pay to play‘ slippery slope, SonicBids sucks because most of the opportunities listed are thoroughly awful. Why on earth would one pay to submit a press kit to a coffee house open mic?
That said, I got an alert from SonicBids today for what may be the worst opportunity ever: unpaid performances at KOA campgrounds. I’m not making this up.
This exciting opportunity is a great way to network your music, gain great contacts and establish a fan base in areas other than your home town. KOA campgrounds enjoy new and exciting talent and are looking forward to offering great bands to their campers.
Here’s a nice blog entry from someone else who thinks SonicBids sucks.
Here’s a wartime ditty from the archives, recorded by western swing legend Ocie Stockard for Cincinnati-based King records. The song laments the ineffectiveness of the wartime Office of Price Administration, or OPA. The tune bears a striking resemblance to ‘Milk Cow Blues’. This is King 600B.
OPA Blues (MP3)
There’s a nice review of Where You Been So Long over on backporchnews.net. You can read the review online over at backporchnews.net, or download it as a PDF here.
More music from the archives. Ocie Stockard first rose to prominence as a member of the genre-defining western swing band Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies. Following Brown’s death in 1936, he worked with a number of different groups as a sideman and leader. This is a hot number recorded for Cincinnati-based King records, the Twin Guitar Polka. This is King 600A, for those of you scoring at home.
Twin Guitar Polka (MP3)
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