Montlake Ale House

My band is playing tomorrow night, Saturday November 26, at the Montlake Ale House starting at 8:30pm. As of our second gig, I’ve been adding some keyboard-playing to the mix, mostly just simple — okay, extremely simplistic — blues piano and organ. I hadn’t played in years, but felt the urge to add a few strains at some point using the synth our drummer had lying around in our practice space, and then got the brilliant idea to add Use Me by Bill Withers to our repertoire. I had to puzzle out how to make the fantastic fat keyboard sound you find in this song; turns out that playing a harpsichord setting way down low sounds great. I actually do have a modern(ish) keyboard myself, a Yamaha Portatone PSR-530 that I bought maybe five years back to help me get reacquainted with playing, but it turns out that I needed a reason to be forced into practicing — and now I’ve got it.

This gig will be interesting, as we added enough songs to make two sets’ worth only a couple of weeks ago, and since then I’ve been on the road solid with no good way to practice! We’ve picked out some great new tunes, though, like the classic Cold Duck Time, so I’m looking forward to it. And the original Eddie Harris/Les McCann recording had them trying it out after pretty much no practice time either, so it seems only fair. (Hmm, I think that rationale would definitely count as a case of flattering ourselves.)

So stop by if you’re in Seattle tomorrow night. Oh, and don’t go looking for the Madrona Social Aid & Pleasure Club — yes, we changed our name again. This time we settled on Mudcat. The real thing is a kind of skanky catfish. It’s not a terribly original name for a band like ours but I think it will serve our purposes nicely.

Since my travel schedule is so heavy and unpredictable, I think I’d better consider investing in one of these marvels. No, seriously. I’m not kidding. (Got any alternative suggestions??)