Finally

I can't let the whole year go by without a blog post...

It's been a busy week...gigs, sessions and a video performance/interview. I was asked to do Chris Cooke's Acoustic Lounge. The show consists of a short interview followed by a live performance of me doing a couple of my tunes.

The first, "Song For Carlos", is a tribute to Carlos Santana. We debuted it live in October with the group Carlos The Tribute and we'll be in the studio recording it early in 2010. I did it with my scratch backing track on electric. I used my Blueshawk into Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3.

The second tune was "Toshi's Favorite", which is an older tune of mine. I've never performed it on acoustic before and I decided to use my Takamine 12-string so that I'd have at least something acoustic on the "Acoustic Lounge." I asked Chris, who is an excellent drummer, if he could do something to accompany me and said he could get a good bass drum sound by banging on the back of an acoustic guitar.

Check it out!

Tales of the bald...

I've just discovered that I've been included in the Gallery Of Shaved Head Musicians. http://www.takeitfromthehead.com/index.html
I'm not sure who submitted me but it's quite an honor to be included with the other 1000+ and counting shiny domes out there in music land!

In other news January has been a surprisingly busy month playing around town and has left little time for writing or production. I'm hoping to get into some writing over the next couple of months as things slow down. I've got a new idea for a group and I need some new tunes to play. I'm really looking forward to getting out and doing some of my tunes again!

One more Will Rize session

We did another session last night, what turned out to be our fourth of five, I think. It was a late one but it was a lot of fun. The tracks have been coming out great. We've been working at Sound Best Studio in Garden Grove. It's a nice studio. We've had Mike Best and Patrick Clancy engineering. I love it when the drums are all set up and dialed in...it makes it so easy to get up and running.

Podcast

The podcast that I did with Beth Hirsch in New York is now available for download. You can hear us perform live in the studio as a duo on acoustic guitars. Beth is a great singer with some great tunes and we had a great time doing this.

Man it's hot!!

The weather man says it's 106 in Hollywood now. It sure feels like it. It's a lazy, sticky day...good time for a blog update.

The Rae Indigo session last Friday went really well. My old pal Darren Ross was on drums, Andre Collins was on keys and Keith Barrows produced and played bass. We tracked at the Jungle Room in Glendale. We got four tunes done. Two of them had song forms in the computer for us to play to and the other two we arranged on the spot. I think the stuff came out great.

This week I've got a session with Will Rivera on Wednesday. This will be the third (of 3, I think) session that we've done for this project. He's got a great lineup of people and I know it's gonna be funky.

Session Log

Wheeew...this has been a crazy week of sessions.

I just finished what was easily my most unsual/wacky session. Will Faeber and his wife Karen Loshbaugh are just finishing a film that needed some acoustic guitar on the soundtrack and they enlisted me to do the session. I don't know too much about the plot but I do know there is a character who thinks he's Jerry Garcia from the Greatful Dead. There's a scene with him jamming by himself on an acoustic so I pulled out some Jerry licks on my Taylor 312-CE. I always liked Jerry's playing so this was a lot of fun for me to do. It looks like it will be a cool piece of indy film work.

The other thing I recorded today was a slow gospel track for an artist named Tangy Reed. This is the third tune that I've done in the past week for this project which is being produced by Mica Fisher and Nate Tschetter from the songwriting team Jomina. I'm the Jo in case you're wondering... I got to bust out my Yamaha nylon string prototype and did a track of ES-335 through my Dr. Z Route 66 while also recording direct. I'm looking forward to doing more sessions like this at home! I love to experiment with sounds and it's very liberating not having anyone waiting for me to "deliver." Nate and Mica are two of my most favorite people to work with as well and I can still feel the chemistry in the tracks even though they are in Nashville and I'm in LA.

I've got a couple of other sessions for Rae Indigo coming this week as well. We'll be doing live tracking with a full band on Friday and one night this week I'll be doing overdubs on some stuff that's already in the can. These sessions will be produced by Keith Barrows.

Back in the swing of things..

I had a great gig this a.m. with my trio in Long Beach. I had Andrew Ford on bass and Tyrone Fleming on drums today. We played last Friday in Chino so we were able to gel pretty quickly today. Soon after I got home I got a call from Keith Barrows to do a session. He was working on a track with singer Rae Indigo and needed some acoustic guitar and some slide. It was a cool tune and probably the shortest session I've ever done... maybe 35 minutes.

Off to Long Beach again tomorrow morning to do another trio gig. This one will feature David Hughes on bass and Tyrone Fleming on drums. Then on Thursday I get to do another one with Chris Roy on bass and Ty on drums again. What a great week...