Carroll's 55th Street
Carroll's 55th Street
With Scott now officially on injured reserve with a variety of shoulder and biceps ailments, Lee is now in the solo drumming seat for the foreseeable future. Therefore it was the five of us in Studio B ready for another summer jam at Carroll Studios, at least it was comfortable in the room. We got off to a slow start as the equipment was still being set up as we got there, the guitar amps weren't in the room and the PA was messing up at the beginning of the night. It took us a song or two to get all the issues ironed out with the electronics but somehow it didn't really impact on the quality of the songs as the Suagree opener was pretty darn tasty. But it did impact the quantity as we only ended up playing 14 full song's throughout the night.
I have been working on the new songbook for the past several weeks and this week, as in the past several, I had brought in several songs to try to play for the first time. Unfortunately for me, fortunately I think for Kevin and in the c'est la vie sort of fashion, we really didn't know the songs well enough to pull them off. Kevin was very excited about the fact that I had charted out how to play Paul McCartney's Let Me Roll It, which the Jerry Garcia Band covered in a very slow fashion in the 70s. It should've been pretty easy to play but I just couldn't get into the groove and follow the charts and the slashes in the 6/8 timing, and it never really worked. Nevertheless, overtime this is a song to be played and to be enjoyed. It's even one Kevin is excited to play. Out of the 20 or so songs I have figured out over the last several weeks this is probably the only one he actually cares about.
While we only had 14 songs in the set list there were at least two songs that we played partially through like to Let Me Roll it and we did futz around a little on the Lonesome and a Long Way From Home, but they weren't complete and adequate enough to actually be worth the virtual space on the Internet. Maybe another day, another time and another week. I can only hope that we learn and check out the songs cause they could be a lot of fun to play.
The Beat It on Down the Line was something to ground us. I think we were playing pretty well for the whole night. Lee was sounding good, complete and confident on drums, Kevin had a good new more solid base cabinet set up and even my Mesa Boogie Mark 4 was sounding nice and chirping in the room with my Les Paul in the saddle pickup position for the entire night. When the PA wasn't messing up it sounded okay, not quite loud enough on the vocals, but the piano came through and we had a good sound in the room leading to some pretty good music.
The Birdsong was pretty complete as we took it to places up and down across the landscape that Birdsong enables you to travel upon, so that was a lot of fun. That was followed by a Deadstein first, That's a Touch I Like which Rich sang and I filled in on the choruses that he had no clue about.
I called for the early Let It Grow in the first set thinking that could keep us on the beefy course that we were traveling on, and it was a significant and a big Let It Grow, pretty good in most aspects of it even though parts of the songs were a little weak. W took a little set break right after the Let It Grow and that messed up our timing for the rest of the night.
We did a little three song segment to begin the second set that was pretty good also and felt pretty good with the Scarlet Begonias into the Lost Sailor, Saint of Circumstance. I think all three songs were nicely played, pretty comfortable and had good sounds. I even enjoyed the transition from the Scarlet into the Sailor. We did have trouble going into the ending of the Saint as my clues were too subtle to be picked up upon.
We then took another break and completed the evening with a whole big song segment. It one from a good Terrapin into the Other One and Rich actually brought us into Take Me To the River which was a Deadstein first. We could barely play it as he was reciting the chords as we were playing it, but nevertheless, it was pretty cool. We then transitioned into a really nice Stella Blue that felt pretty good I think the leads were pretty good if we give them a listen. Then we completed the Other One following the Stella Blue. Looking down at my telephone at the end of the Stella Blue I saw it was 12 o'clock midnight and I therefore vaulted us into a Don't Ease Me In to close the jam.
We certainly all miss Scott and wish him the very best and can't wait to see him back in Deadstein playing those drums like only Scott can do. But in the meantime Lee really stepped up to the plate then did a nice job during the jam and we had a really good satisfying night of Deadstein music. So until next time Freak Out!