Chuffed Squirrel ...

As wet as the weather is now, you might not believe that the Muddy Basin Ramblers are planning to keep busy over the next month performing at outdoor music festivals. To get the season started, we turned a rain-cancelled hiking trip into an excuse to get together in the Hsintian hinterlands and do some improvisational jamming.

Probably we had all thought it would have been more like a Muddy Basin practice, but it turned into an evening more similar to the Big Drum sessions of old. We were on the porch, just winding the weekend down to its natural conclusion, passing the instruments around.

“Open the Gate!” Mother was licking the floor, a squirrel (NSFW) was hanging upside-down rocking to the brass, and the neighboring dog was answering the trombone. On the bed, under the canopy, the doctor inserted needles, but no water flowed. Just the rain, always the rain.

The smell of travel was in the air. Fingers was in town, on his way from South Central to South China. And Dave was packed and ready to roll off to the DobroFest in Trnava, Slovakia.

Trnava’s bluesiest booster, Bonzo, annually hosts a global gathering of guitar gypsies who celebrate the music of resonant guitars in the hometown of John Dopyera, the “Do” behind Dobro.

We met Bonzo when we shared the bill with him at the first BSOT Blues Bash in Taichung last spring. A few days later, we attended his show at the LR (hearing the same jokes) and then joined him on stage for a set, climaxing in a stirring rendition of G-L-O-R-I-A in front of a mystified audience.

That was then, and this is now. And right now, this very minute, the world’s best resonant guitar players, Dave included, are making their way toward a small town in Slovakia. Dave will perform from 12:50 to 1:20 P.M. on Saturday, June 3, on the main stage at the Museum’s Garden in Trnava.

... Fancy Goat

You have to seriously love the Blues to travel halfway around the world to perform for half an hour. According to the notes for the 2005 DobroFest, the informal jamming lasts late into the evening, so I don’t imagine those thirty minutes will be the extent of the guitar slinging for ol’ Dave.

Dave might even drop us a post if he’s able to leave the music long enough to spend a few minutes in a cyber café.

Keep the weekend of June 9-11 free. Hoping for Hoping is just around the corner. We’re on Saturday in the late afternoon.

I was listening to Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" today, and the marching band riffs reminded me of that part of my past. Also, I dreamt last night that I was wandering around my brother's old high school, Clear Lake High in Texas (home of the Falcons). I hadn't gone back in time, it was still present day, but I was just walking around the hallways and ended up outside as a tornado approached. "Do you think it's dangerous?" a sandy-haired student asked me.

"Are you kidding, look at those explosions!" I said, pointing at the blasts coming from the now towering school. It had only been one floor before. Then I woke up.

I started playing trumpet at 11, in sixth grade. I'd lost interest in both violin and piano after years of lessons, and I looked up to my older brother Kevin's exhalted status as a band member (he plays the flute). So when we went to Seabrook Intermediate School to the band room filled with tables and instruments, all seeming quite shiny and complicated -there were so many buttons and valves!- I picked the trumpet after falling in love with the sound and the versatility of the instrument (and the fact that it only had three buttons and didn't mind getting wet). My parents, wary of yet another loss of interest, took me to a pawn shop, where they rummaged around the back and fit together a patchwork cornet, with silver and gold pieces that clashed underneath thick tarnish. It would do, and did. I started playing in the marching band after we moved to Florida at Maitland Junior High School the next year. I picked the instrument up at an average rate, perhaps a bit faster than others, but my range and power were both abysmal. Still, I loved playing and saved up for a silver-plated Bach Stradivarius, the instrument I still play today. It had a beautiful tone and facilitated fast, complicated riffs and sonorous melodic soloes, but of course in marching season, none of that mattered. What mattered on the field was projection, mainly. "We got the beat" wasn't exactly Hummel.

It was fun hanging out with friends from band, and making interesting patterns on various football fields, even dancing about out there, but I didn't have enough pure volume to be effective on the field back when the law of the band was the higher you could play, the better you were. It was really just that simple. I recall in one practice session, for regular band and not even marching band, another trumpet player, disgruntled because he had a lower chair, interrupted me, yelling, "Just play a high C! Just try to play it!" to somehow prove his point that I shouldn't be talking about trumpet playing. It was indeed a rare day I could easily hit that note.

"Just play anything well!" I shot back, but his point was made. I could play many things better than anyone there, but for pure power and Chuck Mangione-type screaming high notes, I was complete crap. A friend of mine who many considered my arch-rival, Jim Engle, had me every time when it came to range, though I did learn to play loud when the music called for it. Sometimes, anyway. I nearly ruined Romeo and Juliet squeaking through a high loud bit, but for the big garbonzo closing of Samson and Delilah I was the loudest damn thing in the orchestra. Jim and I traded off on solos and seats; he was typically first chair for marching season, while I'd take over for concert season.

Back then, I was quite defensive about it and tried to compensate with a certain amount of arrogance about my playing. "Good luck next year, TC, and try not to be such a jerk about your trumpet" was an oft-repeated reminder in my yearbooks. Really adolescent, when I think about it now.

So I looked on in envy as Jim and other trumpeters marched up to the front of the stands during shows and play solos into the cheering crowds. I knew that I'd make first chair again after marching season for concerts and things, but it still seemed like a defeat.

When I was 13 I got braces, not the thin wire type, but the whole-tooth-encompassing type, which I thought was the end of my trumpet playing career. After building up enough caluses inside my upper lip, however, I found that I could still play reasonably well. When they came off four years later, not much changed. I could still play, just about as well as before.

In high school, wearing the thick black wool uniforms of the Winter Park Wildcats in the hot Florida weather didn't help my growing dissatisfaction with marching band. I did the usual low-chair marching season/high chair for concert season shuffle for a couple of years. In the end I dropped band completely my senior year, electing to play instead with the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra. The school band conductor, Ken Williams, went to the symphony board to try to get me kicked out of the FSYO based on my reluctance to be in the school band, but he failed when my dad showed up at the meeting and challenged him to give a good reason why I couldn't play in the orchestra, except pure spite.

I continued to play in college, both at Washington & Lee and at Tunghai University. Both had orchestras, but neither had a marching band, much less a group as impressive as the marching band my brother ended up playing in , Texas A&M's world-famous Corps of Cadets. I'd pretty much plateaued, in any case. Further playing hadn't helped my range an iota. Once, at a gig in the Bahamas, I just ran out of steam and had to drop part of a mariachi solo down an octave, which was so embarrassing I got sympathy pats afterwards. I did, however, get my first taste of jazz and blues playing with my pal Boogie in a little jazz trio at a local sandwich shop, which was fun while it lasted.

The next marching experience I'd have would be in the army, and the only music involved there was singing army marching songs. I put the trumpet aside, and years passed. I didn't pick it up again until I got invited to play with the Muddy Basin Ramblers a couple of years ago.

Finally, I thought when I first sat in with the group, finally, I've found a place where I can play pretty much what I like for the crowd out there, Chuck Mangione be damned.

"...we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."

And so the Ramblers took the lift to the top of the 101, or as high up as they let us. It was only the 84th floor, but that was plenty high. (Check out this shot from Paogao's photos!)

Giddy and surreal are the best two words I can use to describe the whole thing. As we arrived at the top, thanks to those super fast lifts, we all noticed that all the climbers who had made the climb had wonderfully smug looks on their faces, which to be honest were well deserved because their efforts raised a bunch of cash for some really good causes. However, when reports came in that the climb could be made in thirty minutes or less, I felt a little bad that I didn't try to do it myself. So that made me want to try to play a little better, put a little more effort into being tight on the beat, and so on.

Unfortunately, due to the surreality of the height, the early hours, and the plentiful wine and Taiwan Beer (Thanks, Matthew Lien!), finding the perfect groove in the music was daunting. Not only that, but the Muddy Basin Ramblers had to face their worst nemesis--the inability to hear one another.

Hearing the whole picture was difficult. Dave set himself up on the right side of the stage close to Thumper, and this definitely helped tighten up the whole beat-tone kind of thing. But it was rough for me on stage left. I could hear it, but it was a half-step too late.

All in all, the whole shenanigan was a success. We moved around the stage while playing to create the best sound, and in the end, it worked well, and we are getting better and better at using those tricky condenser microphones. (Thanks go out to Dave for his ever increasing knowlege of microphone technology and technique!)

But the real reason it was so much fun was that lots of money became the lubricant to help things get better instead of becoming the root of evil. Plus, fun was had by all.

Thanks to everyone who does things like organizing these things to help the world become a better place. It makes it easy for lazy and confused folks (like me) to help out. The world thanks you.

Though we are scattered, we can find common ground, and a common groove, even at the top of super-tall structures.

Trolling For The Blues

This is Trainreck, a two-piece blues band. That's K.M. Williams on guitar and Washboard Jackson on percussion. I stumbled across this video of them performing on YouTube. You've got to see Washboard Jackson play. He plays the washboard and kit at the same time: no sticks, just hands and feet.

Here's their myspace website with mp3s of some of their music.

And one more site they claim.

The picture is of them on "stage" at the Juke Joint Festival 2005 in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

They're going to be playing at the Frogg Blues Festival in Elmo, Texas in August. (I know that sounds a lot like "emo," but don't hold it against them, Slim.)

"Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens,..."

And so, the Muddy Basin Ramblers are set to climb the Taipei 101, with or without the aid of electric lifts or elevators. This is one tall building. It's the tallest in the world for now, and I challange anyone to find another incident in history of a jug band, blues band, or "whatever we play" band playing on the top of the the tallest building in the world. God give us strength. Not only will we be towering over the world, we will be towering over the Muddy Basin, which we all hold so dear. It should be fun, and interesting as always.

This gig, at the true tip-top of Tiptown, Taiwan, will also be full of good people who have not used the lifts, but have taken the stairs for a good cause, the Garden of Hope, with thanks to the L’Association des Canadiens. (You've just gotta like the idea of helpin' the xiao pengyous have a good life.) So it will be even more fun.

Tomorrow is the soundcheck, so we shall see what the day brings.

Adventures of a Jug Band


As many of those far-flung Ramblers followers may have noticed, the website has been renovated, and in the parlor, stories of the "adventures of a jug band" have been promised. Actually, stories of the Ramblers have been around for sometime.

In dark corners of the Internet, often through underground counter-revolutionary servers in the mainland, which can only be accessed by having counter-revolutionary software that is unavailable in most of the world, a lot of Muddy Basin Ramblers fan-fic can be found. I can't post the links here for two reasons. One, it would be counter-revolutionary and two, we are now involved in high-powered legal battles trying to get the rights to all of the stories. (That way, when our movie deal comes through, we won't have to worry about continuity problems that may arise in the sequels or prequels).

However, dear readers, I can provide a few snippets from some of them. But you should note, these are not official Muddy Basin Rambler products and they may not be safe for children or pets. Use at your own discretion:

"Peering over the tumbler of whiskey, Slim knew that he had to figure out where Thumper and Steamboat were, but the Captain hadn't called in for a long time, and the ice in the cooler was melting faster and faster...."

"Fog settled in as the Ramblers started to sing. Their voices only brought in more of that obscuring fog, but the harmonica cut clean, and the fog began to clear...."

"Dr. Huguley smiled as he listened to the recordings. It wasn't what he had expected, but it would do well enough for the plan at hand...."

"If you could have seen him, you would have thought he was sleeping or dead, but no one noticed him. No one could have. He had blended into the plush red sofa in the far corner of the room. Some may have seen the slight, sharp movement of the head--up maybe a centimeter, and then a glint in the eye as it looked out under the brim of the hat. In one movement, the trumpet case was open..."

"'We may look like gentleman [sic] but...'"

"Captain Dave looked around the stadium shaking his head. The lear jet had done much more damage than he had expected."

"The Sandman whipped out his sax. The beams of the laser sights lit up the floor around his feet with an eerie glow. He knew he needed to do something or a rain of teflon coated lead would fall on the stage...."

"With only ten minutes to go, the city was arriving too quickly. The Ramblers knew things were going way to fast. In one motion, they all started to chuck all of the instruments into the back of the bus. All the while, the interior of the vehicle began to shrink slowly...."

"The tap shoes were starting to heat up and the sparks began to fly. Then the roar of the washboard erupted forward and the Ramblers all stepped up...."



"The Basin filled up with joy and happiness...."



Well, that's all we can give you now, but keep your eyes open for more. The adventures are always just around the corner...when you're in the Muddy Basin!

Spy Ware

This title has nothing to do with our last performance. Instead, it refers to the site tracker embedded in this page's html code. Besides indicating how many times the page has been loaded, it reveals information about where visitors are coming from, known as referring links, and also indicates a visitor's host ISP, location, time spent on the page, the type of browser used, and other technical information. I wasn't aware exactly what a site tracker program did when I installed it on the page; I just wanted to see some indication of how few people were actually visiting this site.

What has become the most interesting part about having this program on the page is that I can try to guess who is actually stopping by. I'll give you an example. Today, May 9, 2006, the page was loaded 6 times (so far) by someone in Omaha, Nebraska. This just happens to be Slim's hometown. I figure this is one of his friends. I've met several of them when they've visited Taipei.

Other visits have come from people conducting Google searches. I've mentioned these visitors before, in connection with my fixation on Shar-peis, and they keep coming. Sandy's post about Don Mo's ukuleles attracted a fair amount of attention when that post was more current, but recently Slim's article on whiskey jugs has been pulling in the hits also. Just today we recieved one visitor who performed a Google search on the phrase "how to play a whiskey jug." Most of our visitors are not visitors at all, but members of the MBRs. More than 90% of the site's visits are from fewer than ten ISPs located in Taiwan. No surprise there.

The surprising visitor of today is more mysterious. This visitor is reading this blog from an ISP (internet service provider) located in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. That in itself is not so unusual. Blogger has that "next blog" button up at the top right that takes visitors on a tour of random blogs. Visitors can and do come from all over, even central Asia. What is unusual is that this person has accessed the Muddy Basin Ramblers blog over two dozen times. I believe that makes you an honorary Rambler. If this is you, please drop us a comment and let us know who you are so we can send you your membership card and kazoo. For those of you who want to know the context to the photo at left, check this link.

I apologize to any of you who feel your privacy is being violated. It probably won't come as a surprise to most of you to know that your Interent activity is being monitored. If you want to sneak around on the Net, try something like this.

Edit:
The Onion for May 10 carries a picture of a (different) band and the following headline:

Local Band Attempts to Track Down

Mysterious Visitor To Its Website

There are no bars on the windows!

Leave it to TC to spot the detail that ties the whole gig together. There were no bars. There were policemen just down the way, and they were protecting us, and the masters of reality, and their teen age children, from the commoners.

Question: Who were those people that cleaned up the tables, chairs, tents, empty bottles, and mosquito corpses? They were like fairies that flitted about, hauling heavy equipment, extinguishing the mega-barbecue, returning calm and order to the leafy suburban cul-de-sac. They looked like a bunch of middle-aged Chinese women, but that must have been a disguise.

How about the microphone that broadcast our catty asides? Every once in a while, when we realized what we were saying, and that the microphone was probably picking it up, we’d slyly look out at the assembled to see if they were reacting. But if they heard us, they never let on.

The music was spirited, and we were full of spirits. An open bar is a great way to celebrate the coming of evening. I remember Connor saying, “Play another fast one,” a couple of times during the second set. And we did, until we switched gears and gave them a little gospel with Ain’t Gonna Study the War No More, and then a little later, Taiwan Song, which seemed relevant, almost, to a leaving Taiwan party.

Technically, it was a pretty simple set up. We used one condenser microphone, and ran that into a combined amp/PA unit that they had handy. It was quite a tool. All of the mixing controls were one the back, and it included a CD player and tape recorder. A good toy to have, or at least play with.

We had a lot of room in which to work, and we were able to array ourselves around the microphone without much difficulty. TC mentioned that we didn’t mic his bass because it sounded loud enough in sound check, but I couldn’t hear it much myself. Conor played into his amp as normal and layered his sound on top.

Speaking of Conor, he busted out Red River, the song where he does a nice solo intro. We’ve given him a good-humored hard time about the length of the solo in the past, and he kept it pretty short this time. Too bad. It’s a ripping tune. I think he just wanted to get the big band sound underneath his harp again.

Jump forward to the end of the night, after the jam in the house (what was his name?), the brass section and violinist headed off in a taxi, and the rest of us were ferried out to the main road in a car.

Not quite ready to head down the mountain, we grabbed further liquids and retired to a nearby street for our post-gig debriefing. I remember getting pretty comfy on Slim’s beer-logo groundcover.

Eventually, we got a taxi, after I vainly tried to flag down numerous private vehicles. Taxis are not easy to come by on Yangmingshan at 3 A.M. on a Sunday morning.

We jammed into the first taxi that came along, agreed to pay a NT$100 surcharge, and started down the mountain. We switched to a more comfortable ride near the old Shi-lin night market, and sped into Taipei by way of the Chien-kuo Expressway. Conor and Dave got out at Hsin-hai and Roosevelt and caught their third taxi of the night. Will, I let out at a Yoshinoya in Hsintian somewhere, and I took the taxi all the way to my hilltop. Now I know that my house is just a one hour, NT$700 taxi ride away from Yangmingshan.