with Jim DeVoss at Black Coffee’s 2011 People’s Choice Festival Performance

This will be my third year at People’s Choice (my second year and show with Black Coffee), and I’ll be continuing the thirst-quenching tradition of drinking a fresh squeezed lemonade before the show. I picked up some new pedal gear last week which I’m hoping to try out Friday night in Clarion, but I may not have time to organize it before the weekend.

Saturday’s show at Club Cafe will be shared with Ricardo Iamuuri and our friends Aristotle Jones & The Like Minds, whom we met at the HMAC for the Millenium Music Conference this year.  We split the bill with them in Morgantown a few months back and look forward to hanging with these fellas again.

Fri 7/13 @ Peoples Choice Festival (Boalsburg, PA)
Fri 7/13 @ Toby Hill Bar & Grill (Clarion, PA)
Sat 7/14 @ Club Cafe (Pittsburgh, PA)
Sun 7/15 @ Lions Square (Connellsville, PA)

Details for these shows and more can be found at the Black Coffee website.

Subtle differences:

• The first time I gigged with the Tele was with Black Coffee. I immediately noticed that a Tele’s volume knob is a bit out of reach of my little finger for volume fade-ins and fade-outs. Obviously, this isn’t a manufacturing flaw, but it’s a quirk to acclimate to.

• The neck on my Tele is incredibly similar to the Comanche, but a fast guitar lick in 5th position (Earth Wind & Fire’s “Got To Get You Into My Life”) reveals that the neck is wider up there and the strings are spaced slightly farther apart than what my fingers favor. (It was a bit embarrassing to find this one out during a Hounds rehearsal!)

Things I’d change:

• I have yet to add a string retainer to keep the high E string from popping out on string rakes, but it’s still a problem. I’ve adjusted to it by playing this guitar differently. Holding back on the guitar is not cool, so this is still something I need to add!

• Finally, there is the lacquered neck.  It just doesn’t feel right. My fingers feel like they catch on the lacquer. I’m hesitant to use any fretboard conditioner on the lacquer for fear of a chemical reaction causing damage to it. Yeah, I know – it’s a cheap guitar and I should sand it off. I’ve considered it, but my other guitars have me sold on rosewood fretboards. I’d like to get a new neck that has a rosewood fretboard with a string retainer pre-installed on the headstock.

Pick-ups, pick-ups, pick-ups. I’ve been playing my Tele through my Barker and my Ampeg Reverberocket. Though, it’s seen more time on the Reverberocket (a helluva versatile amp, I must say! And sadly, as a result, the J12T hasn’t seen much play time lately). At this time, replacing the pick-ups is low on my list of gear priorities. In fact, I’m pretty damn happy with how the stock pick-ups sound! Though, perhaps I am not a *true* gear head? I find that I use the pick-up switch and volume knobs far more often than on the Comanche. With the Telecaster, I spend more time tweaking the tone at the guitar.  With the Comanche, I find myself tone-tweaking at the amp.

With all of that said, and no regrets, this guitar was everything I hoped it would be!

Black Coffee at the Harrisburg Jazz & Multicultural Festival (2011)

Today the Coffee crew begins a 4 day run! We’ll be putting on the miles this weekend, as the shows will takes to Pittsburgh, Morgantown, Harrisburg, and back to Chalk Hill (near Somerset, PA) for our second trip to the Christian Klay Winery (where’s the BBQ?!). Not suprisingly, the gigs over the last 14 months have already put 40,000 miles on the Jeep. Before I know it, she’ll need new tires again!

While all of this weekend’s shows are sure to be blast, I’m very much excited for us to hit the Jazz & Multicultural Festival in Harrisburg again this year, as it’s always good catching up with friends near my old stomping grounds. Joining us on bass for this show will be long time friend David Pfister (whom joined me in our old acoustic project, the Jackdaw Boys).

Here’s the low down:

Thurs 6/28 @ The Smiling Moose (Pittsburgh, PA)
Fri 6/29 @ Morgantown Brewing Company (Morgantown, WV)
Sat 6/30 @ Harrisburg Jazz & Multicultural Festival (Harrisburg, PA)
Sun 7/1 @ Christian W. Klay Winery (Chalk Hill, PA)

The Arts Alive Fest line-up includes Keller Williams, Zack Deputy, and Larry Keel & Natural Bridge! Plus our friends Aristotle Jones & The Like Minds (whom we recently performed with at The Cue, in Morgantown), will also be there.

Last year we had the opportunity to perform at Johnstown’s famous Flood City Music Festival. This year, we’ve been invited to perform at the opening of People’s Natural Gas Park, with other previous FMCF performers Tab Benoit, Eilen Jewell, and Los Straitjackets!

And finally, we head back to Camp Kevin for our first FarmJammaLamma performance on Saturday July 7th. To name a few, we’ll be performing with friends Mysterytrain as well as Chris Vipond & The Stanley Street Band.

In the reviews, a few readers commented on the guitar having a thin neck, but this is a personal preference. Of the two colors, the neck on the Vintage Blonde felt thin to me (then again, this could have been me subconsciously wanting a guitar that looked like a Tele from the 50′s). Other reviews suggested that there were better pick-ups suited for the guitar, while the other end of the pick-up spectrum had folks who swore by the factory pick-ups.

A week into it and I’ve kept the original 9s on, with plans to change update them to 10s later tonight. With that said, 9s are a bit strange when you’ve been playing 10s as far back as you can remember – any excess string pressure or slight bend stands out. But, so far, the instrument feels solid and plays well.

If you are considering adding this to your collection, I will share with you a fault you might not encounter during a test run. After 40 minutes of test driving the Butterscotch and Vintage Blonde models, I brought it home and cranked up my Ampeg J-12T. Only then did I rake an open “E” chord down at the bridge… The vibration on the open high “E” string caused by a heavy dig with the pick will repeatedly pop the string out of the nut. This guitar has no string retainer on the headstock! Pretty strange if you ask me, but not a big deal, as one can easily be installed.

Aside from the missing string retainer, I haven’t uncovered any true mysterious quirks on it during my first week. This is a solid blues, jazz, or country guitar, and in no way lives up to Squier’s low-end reputation (except for the “do not throw away” sticker on the back – what is up with that??).

Hint for parents or beginners: If you’re looking for good quality gear that you can use for years down the road, $800 will buy you a Squier Classic Vibe 50′s Telecaster, Ampeg J-12T tube amp (with reverb & trem), overdrive pedal, two chords, and a gig bag. Just sayin’!

'Showtime' (Club Cafe)

It’s hard to believe that Black Coffee has been cranking for only a year.  To celebrate, we played our anniversary show last night at Club Cafe in Pittsburgh.  I like hanging with the band and friends after the show, but an occasional late night drive home is always nice to reflect.

It was a pleasure to share the evening with Aabaraki, a band that’s been in my funk/soul rotation for a few months now, who dubs their style as reduction-stutterfunk.  Earlier in the year, a few of us went to see the Tedeschi Trucks Band in New York and winded up catching these fellas at Rockwood Music Hall.  Definitely check them out.

'Doors at 7' (Altar Bar)

We also had the opportunity to talk with the sound engineer, Denny, who – as it turns out – used to run sound regularly for Queen Bee and the Blue Hornet Band.  He has been running sound for years, and it was great to have him behind the knobs last night.

Pittsburgh shows are always special to us.  There are some nice venues down there, great people, and folks just seem to genuinely enjoy seeing live music.  As usual, there were a ton of familiar faces, but it was especially good catch up with the Touch Faster crew and our friends Joe and Monica.  Joe was always among the performers at the Phryst open mic nights we’d hit when we were starting out as a trio.  (Great times, but I don’t miss carrying my Barker through the crowd on our way out.  Though, my Ampeg would fare well in that environment…)

'Hanging with The Lube' (Flood City Music Festival)

So we shall see what the year brings.  We’ve played over 65 shows in the last year including a pile of festivals, shared the stage with Lubriphonic and Bettye LaVette in Pittsburgh (not to mention a pile of touring acts at Johnstown’s Flood City Music Festival), met some really great folks along the way, and to say the least:  we are chomping at the bit to hit it hard again this time around.  We have a pile of new tunes in the works, and are truly branching out regionally with shows on the calendar in WV, PA, and NY and others in the works in MD and VA.

That’s all for now. Be on the lookout for our friend Jay’s recording of last night’s show.  And if you’d like, sign up for our email list in the meantime.

If you have been sending messages with an email account from your domain and have not been using a free webmail service (Gmail or Yahoo, for example), I highly suggest that you sign up for one today. A lot of folks get too preoccupied with the fact that an email from their domain looks more professional than an email coming from a free service. As a result, they overlook how they can improve their long-term email usage.

Domain Forwarding

When your 80′s hair band ‘Bangers and Mash’ breaks up and you stop renewing the domain registration, what happens to all the emails previously sent to that account? What are you going to do with all of your old messages, and the contacts buried in them that never made it to your address book? Likely, they won’t matter to you at the time, but you may have years of messages that you’ll want to get your hands on down the road.

A similar situation could occur if you don’t have a domain, but instead have an email address through a phone or cable company that you are tired of paying for. This is why it’s important that your webmail provider is free.

Save all of your domain’s emails with your new webmail provider by setting up an email forwarder with your domain’s host to forward all incoming messages. This ensures that everything hitting your domain’s inbox will be stored away safely even if you stop renewing your domain. Beyond having them stored, I guarantee your messages will be more safely stored with Google or Yahoo than with your much smaller domain provider.

Finally, if you decide to start using your new email account as your primary account, you will have fewer email accounts to log into to read messages.

“Send Email As”

A bonus feature that goes hand-in-hand with email forwarding is the “Send Email As” feature. Webmail providers often allow you to setup your account to send email as another address (at least, I know first hand that Gmail supports this). For instance, I log into Gmail with my personal address, read emails that I get from Ralford.net, and reply to them within Gmail as my Ralford.net email. Using the “Send Email As” feature means you never have to login to another account to read email.

Since you are logging into your domains’ emails less frequently, make sure to remember the passwords for these accounts. You may also want to do an occasional check to make sure your email forwarders are not broken and that you are getting all incoming messages. The easiest way to do this is to send a test email to the account under question, and see if it gets forwarded to your free account.

October Runoff

It’d had been a while since I’d been on a challenging hike beyond a leisurely day hike or an evening camp-out in the woods. I’d been craving a weekend trip with a loaded backpack and the burdens that come with hiking a long distance since September. A month ago, I spotted a clear weekend on my calendar, and plans were as good as made.

My pal Steve and I hiked a portion of the Loyalsock Trail this past weekend, commonly known as the Loyalsock-Link Loop. The Loyalsock Trail (the “LT”, for short – as designated by tree-markers) is a 59.3 mile trail in Pennsylvania’s Lycoming County, that runs east and west, from route 220 on its east side to route 87 at its western terminus.

We decided on the loop after some debate as to whether we’d would tackle 15 mile hike or one closer to 20 miles. Given our two day time frame, twenty miles seemed best, so the Loyalsock-Link Loop fit the bill. After obtaining maps we learned that the loop itself is 22 miles, and is formed by the Link Trail (designated by a red “X” on a circular yellow tree-marker) which connects to the LT at two junctures. The Loyalsock-Link Loop is evenly bisected by the Loyalsock Creek, which by my definition (at least during this soggy October) was a formidable raging river. The river runs east to west, and is sandwiched between two parallel ridges. Along the north ridge is the Loyalsock Trail, and along the south ridge is the Link Trail.

Our National Geographic topo maps and some hiker reviews indicated that most folks start at the west end of the loop in World’s End park (along the river), and hike clockwise, with the first half of their hike heading eastward along the northern ridge. We took an alternative route, and started at the parking lot marking the eastern terminus of the LT along route 220. This extra 1.5 mile loop access trail resulted in a 25 mile hike, which, while it was satisfying to complete, was probably biting off more than we were ready to chew in two days.

Our Hike

We hit the trail on Saturday at around 9:30am, and there was no doubt that it would be a cool weekend. Stepping out of my buddy’s truck made me laugh that I even considered my hammock over my tent, but as soon as we hit the trail, we warmed up.

There are two trails that leave the parking lot at 220, both of which provide quick access to the RX-7 connector trail which is the path we took to the loop. These are the LT and another trail called the Haystack trail. Leaving the lot, both trails head down the ridge and cross the RX-7 trail (marked like the Link Trail, with a red “X” on a yellow circular yellow tree marker). The RX-7 trail follows a railroad grade westward and is certainly the most level and direct way to access the loop. Optionally, from the grade, you could continue down the LT or the Haystacks Trail to an area called the Haystacks, where the trails run together along the river, and eventually climb back up the ridge and meet again with the railroad grade. Our hope was to complete more than half of the hike our first day, so we avoided the hike near the Haystacks and took the (very wet, but waterfall ridden) railroad grade until the LT returned from the Haystacks to join with it. At this point, we followed the two trails (now joined) down the valley which connected us to the Eastern-most point of the loop.

Bridge Closed

As the LT meets the river, there is a large bridge, which was closed to motorized traffic – likely due to the recent hurricane flooding. You can continue along the south shore of the Loyalsock Creek, along the Link Trail (“X”), or follow the LT across the bridge, and along the northern ridge. While our map and hiker reviews showed most hikers tackling the loop in a clockwise fashion, it seemed most logical for us to cross the river and follow the LT, taking us around the loop counter-clockwise. This proved to be the absolute best decision we could have made, as the entire northern ridge was soggy and littered with rocks that prevented tent camping in most areas (with the most notable exception being in the area of Soans Pond near the east of end of the ridge, which had a gorgeous forest, with a soft bed of pine needles and plenty of room for camping).

With our goal of completing more than half of the trail the first day, we knew early on we had to hike to the second river crossing (near World’s End’s park office), and up the southern ridge before we could setup camp. Fallen leaves forced us to poke at the trail with trek poles, which became necessity to negotiate any hidden puddles of water and mud. Knowing the distance we had left to hike kept our pace in check. By around 5pm, we made it to the west side of the ridge. By this point we had crossed about five streams, a few of which made slipping very probable. We were fortunate to not have any injuries or falls at the stream crossings, though after a careless step on a wet log early in the day, I had a good tumble down a hill, and am thankful to have landed on my pack without getting a scratch.

Hiking down the northern ridge to the river was treacherous. The trail was steep with many wet boulders and one challenging stream crossing. We descended the ridge with about 12 miles under our belts, so rubbery legs undoubtedly contributed to the complexity of the task at hand. We were thankful to reach the river, where there was significant flood damage (again from the hurricane floods), but we knew nightfall was approaching and it that would be four miles until we reached our destination. We hiked onward, with one more stream crossing (a bridge was washed out), and shortly later junctioned with the Link Trail, which would take us back east along the southern ridge. The cloud cover over the forest cover made darkness settle in quickly, and seeing trail markings on the trees became more difficult with every step. The Link Trail led us up along a slick narrow ledge just along the edge of another raging stream, the first we hiked along all day. Some of the falls would have been a beautiful sight during the day, but we were running low on steam, and needed to get up the ridge and call it a day. The trail climbed up and away from the stream, and after a bit of hiking with our headlamps, we found a good place to tent and call it a night. We were about 16 miles into the hike.

Our hike Eastward along the rest of the ridge on Sunday was no competition with the previous day on the soggy northern ridge: The trail was dry, with fewer rocks, and the weather was also teasing us with some sunlight.

Soans Pond

Final Words

Given the week of rain prior to our hike, we were in disbelief that the Link Trail along the southern ridge was as dry as we encountered it. I would encourage any backpacker tackling the Loyalsock Loop to camp on the southern ridge and avoid staying the night on the north side of the river, with the exception of the area around Soans Pond.

Wildlife during our hike was limited, except for a doe we spooked and an orange salamander we found during a stop for a slug of water. However, there were many different landscapes which include waterfalls, streams, Hemlock forests, Soans Pond, numerous vistas, caves and rock overhangs, and unforgettably, the Loyalsock Creek (river!).

All in all, I would recommend this hike to any hiker with some experience under their belt. I recommend taking a pair of hiking sticks or trek poles to help negotiate wet sections of the trail and use them to keep balance while crossing streams.

The song is hot of the press, released very early this morning after a late night of mixing at Marc Frigo’s studio: No Guarantee. Enjoy!

Having lived in Centre County now for eight years, I can certainly say that musical interest among the general public favors popular music over original music – or at least the typical downtown band line-ups selected by our venues make it appear this way.

With State College holding a large population of the county, it’s common to hear local musicians blame the venues and their student patrons for this lack of variety. True or not, many naturally relate the demand for sing-along bands to the thirsty student patrons that stimulate the borough’s night life economy. On the contrary, bluegrass – an example far from sing-along pop music – has much local support not only from musicians but more importantly the community. So it is not truly fair to say that State College night life only caters to popular music. Though bluegrass’ local popularity may be largely attributed to its American roots, other roots genres such as blues and jazz do not share the same steady niche that bluegrass holds in and around State College.

Again using bluegrass as our example – there is another reason for why it is a more successful contender than jazz in a community where pop seems to flourish. Centre County already has numerous popularized gathering circles for bluegrass music. They are hosted on a regular basis by local churches and cafes and offer a free open-to-any-skill-level environment to learn how to play bluegrass music. The circles provide a unique opportunity for musicians to collaborate and meet each other, and it’s my belief that these circles have created an unintended movement over time. The result is a stronger community foundation for bluegrass to thrive in the county. American root genres or not, the same cannot be said for jazz, blues, jamband, and funk, though, some intimate downtown atmospheres such as Zeno’s Pub (and occasionally Bar Bleu) show that there is a consistent interest in such creative music styles.

For whatever reason, there are not many gatherings in Centre County to bring attention to jazz guitar and much more generally, original music. I too agree with Becks, and generally speaking, I believe that it is up to our musical community to establish localized “cells” of musicians to hold playing circles that encourage growth of original music in the community. Numerous local organizations and venues already exist to thrive on the music and musical relationships generated at such creative music circles. Though, much like the circles that assist the interest in bluegrass among the public and local musicians alike, I believe the original music circles must occur regularly and encourage participation at every skill level to successfully increase awareness that original music is indeed a community interest.