11/25/2014

with the Thanksgiving holiday upon us it was going to be difficult to get the whole band together. We were lucky to get a full band to play at all which meant jamming with our Core-4 meaning; me, Lee, Kevin and Rich. Scott and Alan were nowhere to be found this short week of Thanksgiving.

As Rick has a gig with his Keystone Band and a couple of weeks playing a set of classic old-time Jerry Garcia Band songs he requested that we do a dress rehearsal of that gig during the beginning of our jam. As accommodating as we are, we agreed to Rich's wishes and played the entire set from his sound check of Next Time You See Me through the Deal which was the last song of our evening, played without me as I was beginning the disassembly of the recording equipment. The final result was music that was small and tight and felt pretty good. Just enough for what you need to carry the tune forward with only tremendous amounts of extraneous "Much More's," but still significantly less than Deadstein's usual.

For Rich's gig coming up he will not be singing all the songs that he typically sings when he is with us, so for this week I happened to sing many of those songs that he sings. These included That's What Love Will Make You Do, Tore Up and that's about it. It was some really good moments from this week considering we played lots of simple 1-4-5 blues songs; Kevin's achilles heal. Our shuffling was good this week including the Big River and the Mystery Train. The Mission in the Rain may have been our most challenging song.

In closing, the recording and mixdown sound pretty good so give them a listen. Also check out the new Deaddstein YouTube channel I just created to upload some of those old time videos from Scott's camcorder that Rich just transferred to DVD. I was able to upload them all to YouTube and now have also incorporated those videos into a new Deadstein YouTube channel which is a place for me to put our Deadstein videos. In addition, I also incorporated these video playlists from the shows into the historic jams on the Deadstein website. So check all that out. In closing, let's not fail to mention the fact that it took me about 2 1/2 hours to get home after the gym this night is going up the Westside Highway was a total disaster and it took me a good hour and a half, believe it or not, to get from Carroll's to the George Washington Bridge, so welcome to the holiday season, Oy-Vey and "Freak Out"