Blog By James

Alli had a work trip to Denver this past week and I decided to take a little vacation and join her. I enjoyed Denver and while Alli worked during the day, I wandered around on my own and took in as much as I could. On Thursday we made our way down to what I consider to be one of the best breweries in the world, Great Divide Brewing.

I can confidently say that I thoroughly enjoy every single beer they brew. Every style they take on is perfect and I’ve always loved their unique label design. So getting to visit the source of all this goodness was a treat indeed. The only time we could get down to the brewery for a tour was at 4pm Thursday afternoon which to my tremendous disappointment, they canceled it as we arrived. We hope to someday make it back for a tour.

We made the best of it and not only did I get to finally try the “Hades”, their Belgian-Style golden (unavailable in Baltimore so far), I experienced the 16th Anniversary Wood Aged Double IPA which is absolutely exquisite. Below are the shots I managed to take while we were there. Some of the images are a bit fuzzy because of the dirty glass, but you can at least get an idea of what the Tap Room and front section of the brewery is like.

I have a few music related things to mention here. I’ll get back to our trip next I promise…

Melborne and I had a gig at Joe Squared last Friday and I had a great time. Now that we’ve ditched the chains of technology (sequencing/laptop), the songs are fresh and have come to life. I look forward to future shows. Special thanks to Anand for coming out to see us!

Ryan and I have been trying to get something together for quite some time now. We thought we had a band going with the whole “Dream-Land” attempt a couple of months back. But that fell apart almost immediately and I won’t bore you guys with the drama on that. But I am very pleased to say that we’re back on the horse and charging forward in a very positive way. We’ve decided to go the power trio route which makes perfect sense for us. The bass chair has been filled by Eric, an extremely talented player who has brought with him a musical voice that truly sets what we’re doing apart. The tunes are coming together very quickly, including a composition of Eric’s that is just killer. We’re recording practices now so when we have something ready, I’ll be sure to post some stuff for you guys to hear. Then we need to call ourselves something and get some shows!

I am very excited to say that today UPS will be delivering a shiny new ride cymbal to our house. I currently have only one ride which I love the sound of (20″ Paiste New Signature Dark Dry Mark I), but unfortunately it’s pretty useless in a hard rock setting. I needed a second ride that’s louder and has a killer bell while still retaining that darkness and dryness that I like so much. So I decided on the Paiste 22″ Blue Bell Ride and what a beauty it is. Although this picture is not my actual cymbal, I feel it shows the detail well:

The Paiste site does a great job of describing what the cymbal sounds like:

“Dry, slightly dark, raw, melodic. Fairly narrow range, fairly clean mix. Heavy yet controllable feel. A clear, glassy ping over a dry and slightly dark, harmonic layer of wash. Very distinctive, tight and deep bell. Well suited for all types of musical styles that require clear stick work and a strong bell. Developed in co-operation with the legendary “The Police” drummer Stewart Copeland.”

On the new music front, there are two records that have been getting most of my attention over the last couple of weeks. First is the new epic from Opeth entitled “Watershed”. They’ve got a new drummer and second guitarist now and for those familiar with the rest of their catalog, don’t let that scare you off. Mikael Åkerfeldt and the guys have created yet another masterpiece, a brilliant follow up to “Ghost Reveries”.

If you’ve got the time to let the video load, check out the edit of “Porcelain Heart” here. It’s just a gorgeous video and worth the wait.

The other album I wanted to point out was the new album from Textures called “Silhouettes”. These guys do such a brilliant job of mixing technical arrangements and playing with raw, moody emotion. One minute it’s brutal heavy and the next it’s lush walls of guitar with vocal melody. “Textures” really is an apropos name for this band. Check out their myspace page for a couple of tunes from the new record.

So we’re all stocked up and ready for our get together this Saturday. We have the meat pies including two flavors; chicken pot pie and ground beef with potato (cottage pie). The drinks have been purchased which include my favorite makings for “snake bites” (Harp and Strongbow), Guinness, Bass, Tetley’s and Boddington’s. The tasty British snack foods are scheduled to be delivered today according to DHL. Now if only I could have placed a call ahead order of “clean house”, I’d be set! We’re still shooting for people to arrive around noon and then start episode one of Spaced as close to 1pm as possible. For those planning on coming that have not seen the show before, it would be awesome if you could make it before we start if at all possible. I know it’s early for some of you but the first episode is important to see. I can’t wait!

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Thanks to a very good friend of mine who used to work at Line 6, the extremely rare Variax 705 will be waiting for me when I get home this evening. Line 6 have discontinued all of their basses and the 705 is practically impossible to find. This acquisition is the result of a trade for my 700 (4 string Variax which is otherwise identical to the 705) which I absolutely adore the sound and feel of. I am really excited!! And to add even more birthday excitement to my week, I also now have the brilliant Bass PODxt Live sitting on my pedal board right now. I switched it on and played it through my amp for the first time last night and was just blown away even below normal playing volume. Modeling is where it’s at people!

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Windows Vista. About 8 months ago I tried using it and although I liked it at first, within a couple of days I was frustrated and back to using XP. Well I decided to give it another go recently since Microsoft is on the verge of releasing SP1 for Vista. (That was about the same time XP started to become usable when it came out originally.) I am totally surprised to say that many of the things that did not work and frustrated me before are in fact working now and usable! Now we’re still talking about Windows here so although it seems like a happy time now, next week could find me back on XP for another 6 months. But so far I am using Vista Ultimate at home and Vista Business at work exclusively and things are going quite well. We’ll see how things go over the next month or so…

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I will be playing a gig with Melborne on the 19th of January at Joe’s Squared in Baltimore. Playing with us will be ilyaimy and Sahffi. I’ll post more as the the date gets closer.