John Hendow

On Saturday 2/16 the 1 Uppers performed at the Highway 99 Blues Club in Seattle. We were on a 4 band bill with Liam Fitzgerald and the Rainieros, The Roy Kay Trio, and the B-Stars. One of the guarantees of a multi-band bill like this is that it’s going to run late and be chaotic. It’s always interesting to me to hear other country bands. The B-Stars are based in San Francisco, but the other bands are all local and well-known to us. It was a great night of fun music.

In the past several months I’ve increasingly been focusing on playing baritone guitar in this band. It fits more cleanly into the sonic landscape with so many other instruments. It gets me out the guitar range which allows Kris Geren to stretch out, and it gives me a distinctive range of my own to work within. The more that I play baritone guitar the less I’m inclined to add much in terms of effects, so for this show I didn’t bring my pedalboard. I spent a great deal of time sitting in the bar waiting for our turn to play, and during that time I wondered if I had made a mistake by going without pedals for the show. Once we got into our set I was quite satisfied with my tone and didn’t miss having my pedalboard for any of my baritone guitar parts. I had to do a bit of amp knob twiddling to adjust the reverb for some songs, but overall it was great. I brought the trusty black strat because I knew we’d do a few things that just require me to have a regular electric guitar, including “How Soon Is Now”. For that one I switched my amp into its lead channel – the FIRST time I have ever used it at a gig – to get the grind that I usually evoke from my Wampler Sovereign. That might have been the only time during the night that I really missed my pedalboard. Otherwise, playing “naked” was refreshing and challenging.

Our next show is coming up 2/21 at the Royal Room in Columbia City. I’ll have the challenge of being the band’s only electric guitarist that night since Kris will be out of town. It means that I’ll definitely be bringing my pedalboard and filling up some additional sonic landscape in the mix. A new challenge is always just around the corner! Hope to see you there.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few weeks preparing for upcoming shows with both of my bands. In the case of the Dudley Manlove Quartet, many of our songs are requests from customers who hire us for private events. Those requests tend to us to recreate a specific arrangement of a song. Case in point for this week is the request for “Love is All Around”, originally performed by The Troggs, and recently reworked by Wet Wet Wet. The customer that made this request specifically asked us to refer to the newer version.

Here are the steps I took in working up the arrangement:

1. I find the song on YouTube or Pandora and give it a listen from end to end, observing the general arrangement and noting any especially challenging aspects. I don’t attempt to do this with my guitar in hand; I just focus on hearing what the song sounds like.
2. I sit with my guitar and start to determine the basic framework of the chord structure. I sketch it out using a free software application for music notation called “MuseScore”. I can usually establish the general framework of a song in a few repeat listenings.
3. If we’re changing the key of the song – which we do pretty frequently – MuseScore can do that automatically after the score is written, but I like to know that in advance because sometimes it makes the song much more difficult to perform in the new key. Once that’s locked down I proceed to the details. For “Love is All Around” the recorded version of the song is in Bb. I was tempted to move it down to A because it would sound so much better on guitar using open string crossings, but we decided to keep it in Bb.
4. Most songs we perform have idiomatic passages and solos that need to be performed verbatim. I’m very detail-oriented for these elements and explicitly transcribe solos. Putting the effort into really decoding the solo makes a big difference in performing it with authenticity. The song I was transcribing for this event doesn’t have a solo, but there is a little descending guitar lick before the chorus that required a few repetitions to play smoothly. It’s just parallel 6ths, but I want to get the same phrasing as the recording.
5. Finally, I publish the finished score as a PDF and print a copy for the gig. Usually by the time I’ve gone to all the trouble of writing out the score I’ve already memorized it, but there is something reassuring about having it as a reference before we hit the stage.

By the way, when I first starting doing this process back in my early 20’s, this seemed impossibly difficult and took me a long time. I’ve been transcribing my own parts for a long time and it’s become a big part of how I approach learning music, and after you do it for a few years it becomes much easier. Jazz musicians will tell you: transcribe transcribe transcribe. I completely agree! It’s a very good way to really understand a composition or solo.

This is the second week of a class that I’m taking in network principles and design. It’s an online class that offered via the UW and I enrolled in it because I want a better understanding of enterprise network design. My modest home computer network is pretty simple, with an unmanaged HP ProCurve doing most of the heavy lifting. My intent in taking the class is to fill in some gaps in my knowledge and I just happen to enjoy learning new things in general. I’ve already placed an advance request for remote support of upcoming questions that I’ll surely be sending to a few of my supergeek pals. Part of the fun of this class will be writing some code for tools and reporting. If I suddenly feel brave as a result of my new knowledge I might attempt something more geekily complex in my home network… 🙂

We’re most definitely ready for 2013. Things are moving ahead with bookings for the band and we’re putting together a great schedule of shows in night clubs. This is my 4th year as a member of The Dudley Manlove Quartet and it’s a great experience to work with such fine musicians who also happen to be great friends. It’s rare to have a solid bunch of musicians who are so even-keeled and dedicated, and who get along so well. There are long hours involved with being in a band and we are blessed with an abundance of goofy humor to keep things upbeat. As musicians, we’re a serious bunch and spend a lot of time discussing our music, and are constantly fine-tuning to improve.

Over the past four years we’ve spent a lot of time polishing material that has been in the band’s repertoire and adding new songs with more complex arrangements. I didn’t expect that I’d ever have to learn to play harmonic, or to transcribe mandolin parts. But that’s been part of the fun! New songs almost always require transcription for me; I’m a big proponent of transcribing songs as a musical exercise – especially for guitar solos. It requires careful listening to an entire arrangement, and dissection of minutae that give a song its personality. For some songs I’ve spent significant time listening to the guitar parts trying to figure out exactly how something was performed on the recording. In a few cases I’ve been able to ask questions to the musician directly, to determine whether something was recorded backwards or sped up in post-production, or how they perform the song live. All that helps me develop an authentic arrangement for the song that can then be embellished with the band’s performance style.

For 2013 I have a number of objectives including developing my vocal range. More of our songs feature 3 part harmony and I’m enjoying the challenge of singing outside my usual range. The band has two very strong vocalists already so I have plenty of incentive to improve! As a guitarist, my objective for the year is to develop a stronger command of our jazz standards. I have some training as a jazz guitarist and want to extend my abilities, particularly for soloing over complex arrangements.

The opportunity to perform in an ensemble that has a balance of fun and serious musicianship is very rewarding. It keeps me on my toes and is good incentive to constantly improve. There is no substitute for playing in a live setting with other musicians.

On Monday 12/31 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed two shows at the Triple Door in Seattle. The shows were separately ticketed events and both shows were hugely full… we sold out one of them, and came within a dozen seats of selling out the other. What a night! Our set list for the two shows was pretty large since we had our horns along with us, so we stacked the songs with the horns at the top of each set to allow them a break.

We had a 3:00 PM load-in, which meant arriving early with everything ready to go. It generally takes us about 30 minutes to completely set up for a show. For this event we spent a little extra time preparing the large stage for our use, and to minimize potential hazards. The Triple Door has a handy feature on my side of the stage: a cable trough that runs from the front of the stage all the way to the back. It is covered by removable steel plates with cable notches cut into the ends, so when I place my pedalboard at the front of the stage I can run the audio and power cables all the way back to where my amp is, which protects them from the occasional stampede (as shown in the picture).

I brought the black strat and the red tele for this show. I had intended to bring the Eric Johnson strat with me but when packing up at the house I couldn’t find the tremolo arm; it’s extremely rare for me to misplace part of a guitar in my music room at home (seriously!) and despite a thorough search it never turned up. Before leaving for the show I jumped on the internet and ordered a replacement. For both shows I played the black strat, and it’s increasingly clear to me that this guitar (my main instrument) is in serious need of fret work… looks like I’ll be visiting my favorite guitar tech at some point soon.

The staff and management at the Triple Door are top-notch. Working with the production crew at this venue is a treat; they have great expertise and take an engineering approach to putting together the mix. Everyone always tells me how good the band sounds at this venue and I know the tech crew is a major contributor to our success there. Once we finished soundcheck at 5:00 we had some time to kill until the first show. Most of that was spent changing into our suits and having a light dinner. The first show went from 7:00 until 9:15, and within 30 minutes the staff had completely emptied the room and reset for the second performance. During the break between shows we had just enough time to change the batteries in our wireless transmitters, put gear back in order and eat a quick snack. We played again from 10:00 until 1:00 AM. Then we got to load out… I had my gear all packed up and on the cart by about 1:30, but ran into friends in the bar who insisted we stay and chat for a bit. The bar closed and I finally left the club around 2:15 AM, almost 12 hours after arriving. We had a fantastic night and enjoyed seeing so many familiar and new faces for this special night. Thanks to everyone who joined us!

Set list from 12/31/2012:

• Let’s Stay Together
• Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You
• It’s Not Unusual
• Copacabana
• You’ll Never Find (You’re Gonna Miss My Lovin’)
• Silly Love Songs
• Sweet Caroline
• Me & Mrs Jones
• Evil Woman
• Dancing Queen
• Right Back Where We Started From
• Piano Man
• Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting
• I Wish
• September
• If You Could Read My Mind Love
• Suspicious Minds
• Power of Love
• Let’s Dance
• Auld Lang Syne
• More Than This
• Rio
• Don’t You Forget About Me
• Take On Me
• Melt With You
• Video Killed the Radio Star
• Don’t Stop Believin’
• Don’t Change