It all comes down to the low end: I’ve had two shows this weekend, neither of them with The Taters. For both I played bass, which used to be my full-time axe-tivity with The BopCats. So, the chops are sharpened a bit – and just in time. I think I’m doin’ my first recorded Tater bass track tomorrow night…..AND…..we will also bring in our first official guest Tater for the sessions, our friend Flyin’ Brian Sulser, who will provide some bull fiddle on a cut. Ya Hey!

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!