or rather, one fine evening was had on Saturday, at the 5th (6th? 8th?) annual TaterSons Christmas Party show in Ashland. We’ve been doing these shows for sometime now with our Tater pals from up the road apiece, the Grandsons, and it gets more fun each year. At several points in the evening there were 4 or 5 Taters, 4 Grandsons, and I could swear I saw at least a few ladies dancing, and a lord or two a’ leaping on stage (or maybe that was just Harry. It gives us a chance at least once a year to pull out the stops on most of the Christmas songs we know, and a few that we don’t -- would you expect any less from a Taters show? Some of the best parts are trying new arrangements on the fly and having them work!

Here’s an example -- Greg was riffing around on guitar with “I Can’t Turn You Loose” as we were about to start a song, and Chris (from the Grandsons) picked up on it, so Silver Bells turned into a most unique rendition! Take a listen -- Silver Bells

We hope to be having some of the Grandsons on the new CD, doing some horn parts, and after this show I’m especially excited about the prospect. As a lot of you know, there were on several cuts on our live CD Just One Night, and that was a blast as well.

Thanks to all who came out and making it a fine, fine evening. I’ll leave you with this for now (no, we didn’t actually do this song, but in the future…?)

Just finished a live radio show here in Richmond. Trying to sing at 7am is not without its share of hurdles, but if you want to hear what it came out like, you can find the songs here. Bill & Shelly have had us on each year on their Christmas show, along with dozens of other local artists, and we want to thank them for continuing to do this each year. We’re always grateful for folks who go out of their way to support local musicians & artists. If you heard the show, or just like the idea, be sure to write and let them know!

We had a great show yesterday at the Virginia Home, playing a very informal Christmas concert for some of the residents there. Even had a guest vocal from one of the folks in attendance, so that was great! Thanks to Billy, Betsy, Robbie, Jody and others who live & work there for giving us the opportunity to come and play. I love getting a chance to do Christmas songs as often as possible!

Got a bit more recording to do this week.  We’ve had a week off due to all the shows (6 shows in the last 7 days), and with Christmas & New Years just around the corner, we may not get a lot done in the studio for the next few weeks, but we’ve made good headway so we’re happy with what we have so far.

A few more big shows coming up before the end of the year. This week, on Saturday, Dec 20, we’ll be hosting our 5th or 6th annual Christmas with the TaterSons show, at Ashland Coffee & Tea. Can’t remember offhand how many of these we’ve done, but everyone has been fun, so I’m looking forward to it. On stage with us will be our pals from the north, The Grandsons. If you’re within driving distance, call the venue and see if there are still tickets available! And, on New Year’s Eve, we’re up in Winchester VA for the First Night celebration, sharing a stage with singer/songwriter Andrew McKnight. This is an all-ages celebration, and a great way to finish out the year!

One of these days we’ll finish a Christmas album (maybe after we finish the current album… focus… focus…), but for now we do have 2 songs up for sale on a Taters MP3 page, as well as several free downloads. Still testing out a few ways to handle the free downloads, including Box.net, so let us know what you think.

In the meantime, you can also listen to the song for free on MySpace  – go to http://www.myspace.com/tatermusic add “My First Christmas” to your MySpace playlists as well!

Just a quick posting to say thanks to Ruth for the very nice gift she sent. It will certainly help with getting the work done on the CD, and it’s much appreciated! I’m really grateful to know people are interested enough in what we’re doing to help support it like this. Came as a total surprise, and that made it all the more… Christmassy!

For those of you who don’t know Ruth, she is a music lover who hosts a great series of house concerts in VA. We played one of her House About Tonight shows this past Fall and had a blast with it.

As Clarence said, “Remember, George: no man is a failure who has friends.”

Some great stuff from everyone last night in the studio sessions. Brad put down a bass track on “Cat in the Window”, and Tater Pal Flyin’ Brian Sulser stopped by and played stand-up bass (being the stand-up kinda guy he is) on “That’s Me”, a re-working of a tune from our Recess CD a few years back. Mr Marrs proceeded to amaze and astound the masses on both nylon string and electric parts, adding, as always, new directions to the songs that I hadn’t even known existed! I think you’ll be really happy with the results. Hope to post something here soon, in some state of incompletion.

Tonight is our last Shenanigans show for the year, so if you’re free come on out and join us! If not, you can sit home and just watch this instead:

CDs, that is. An interesing post on Wired’s blog about the sale of portable CD players, which is up 50% from last year in the UK. They cite price and ease of use as a few of the reasons why some people are going back to this technology.  In Taterland, we’re always trying to keep an eye out for ways to get our music into as many hands (and heads) as possible, so this is at least one argument in favour of continuing to press CDs. As with most bands, we’re seeing a growth over the last few years in our digital download sales, and we’ll certain keep making those available, as well as any new media that comes along (haven’t gotten started on the Taters Blu-ray yet!), but I don’t see those little shiny discs going away in the near future. Now, as for other formats… ?

still trying to figure out this WordPress thing, but I really like all that you can do with it. I’m trying out a Christmas theme to get used to how “themes” work. It may change many times over the next few weeks, who knows? Also trying to figure out how to get everyone’s avatar to show up next to their postings. Every time I figure out one part, there are 3 new questions! But I’m having fun with it, when I have time to sit down and tinker.

Been off for a few days from recording -- everyone’s schedule got filled up, including Bill’s, so we’ve all been listening to what we have so far and getting some ideas on where to head next. Brad was doing shows last night (with BJ Kocen, Jim Wark, and Tater Emeritus Geo Garrett), and then tonight with the Bop Cats. I’m playing a show tomorrow night, Sunday, at the Barksdale Theatre in Willow Lawn, with Harry Gore & Buzzy Lawler (When Harry Met Buzzy), so looking forward to that. I hope to get to play some piano on that as well.

Then back in next week for a few recording sessions, in between several shows -- got 3 Christmas parties and one public show (Shenanigans, on Tuesday night). And, all the time, Christmas just keeps getting closer! It’s barreling down on us faster this year than ever!

In the meantime, here’s an odd little bit of Christmas cheer for you!

and I’m pretty sure I heard at least one hoo-whunker before the night was through (oh wait, sorry, that one was me)! I’m very happy with how the rhythm tracks came out from yesterday. We got some great sounding stuff and made a bit more headway through the basic tracking. We’re only 2 sessions into the album, and we’ve already managed to get down most of the drums, some acoustic and electric guitars, and a leather cushion off of a chair in my house. There are so many more things around that will make noise, so I don’t really know what we will end up with, but, as any other Tater will tell you, I love the whole process of recording! So many chances to try things that we can’t really do live, like having 2 Brads, or 3.5 Gregs, fr’instance, and the discovery of sounds and ideas is so much fun! It feels like painting does, in that we get to see the finished work revealed to us a little at a time. In performance, we never have that luxury; we might wish we had played something differently, or I might like something we just played, but basically by the time we discover that, it’s over. If we’re lucky we can try to repeat (or not!) the same thing next show, but it’s never the same.

In the end, it reinforces the idea that recording, at least in the studio, and performance are two very different things, with very different results. There are benefits and pitfalls to both, and I guess the trick is let each one be its own thing – use a live performance to do what you can’t in a studio setting, like interact with an audience, and feed off of the energy back & forth, and use the studio to capture ideas and possibilities that are either impossible or unlikely to come from a live concert. For myself,  I’m not really that interested in hearing an artist in concert duplicate their album note for note, solos & all, and hearing an album that is just a ’snapshot” of a live concert isn’t much better. Without being there, as part of the audience or on stage, the “live” aspect of it just feels lost on an album. There are exceptions to both, but in general I’m much more interested in letting each medium do what it does best.

So don’t expect to see the leather cushion at a show anytime soon, but I think you’ll like what it can do in the studio!

continuing to try to find ways to link all the various web stuff we have out there. Found out how to link this blog over to our Reverbnation blog, so that helps some. Now, if I could just get all of our sites to read from the same calendar…!

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving, and takes a little time to remember some things you’re thankful for. If you’re anything like me, I’ll bet there are probably a few you’ve forgotten.

Well, we started back in the studio last night, and got started on the new CD! Got the beginnings of 4 rhythm tracks done and the ball is rolling (or is it “the clock is ticking”?).  This will be our first CD with the new crew – Greg Marrs on guitar and Buz King on drums, so we’re in for some surprises, no doubt! We’ll keep you posted on how it goes…

Last night we got started on “Spend a Little Time with Me”, “Oceans Apart”, “Cat in the Window”, and a cover of the Beatles’ “We Can Work it Out”. We’re back once again at Slipped Disc studios with Tater pal Bill McElroy manning the board, so we’re in good hands. Ideas are flying back and forth on what to do next, so I hope to have some more news soon, as well as some pics, and maybe even a few work-in-progress sound files. Stay tuned!