John Hendow

On Friday 8/24 the Dudley Manlove Quartet performed in Bothell for one of their free public concerts in the park. I love these opportunities for us to play outdoors and it’s always fun to get exposed to new audiences. We played the usual assortment of crowd-pleasing hits, despite having to set up on the infield dirt of a softball diamond… why oh why did they put us there? Oh well. We happily played and had people dancing in the grass.

During our third set my amp suddenly started to make an odd distortion and the output dropped. I turned around just in time to see the pilot light go out, indicating the fuse had blown. With no spare fuse or amp in sight, I had to wave over the monitor operator and have him patch the output of my pedalboard directly to a DI. I’m told it sounded surprisingly good, but it wasn’t nearly as good as my amp.

The next day I had a chance to get the amp to my tech who diagnosed the issue pretty quickly. First off, it’s partially my own fault. I bought the amp used about a year ago, and while I intended to retube it “real soon” I never got around to it. The original owner had installed mismatched power tubes in the amp, which is a really big no-no in a Mesa Boogie amp because they don’t have a bias control. Three of the four 6L6 power tubes were Boogie tubes, and the fourth was a Ruby tube. Naturally it was going to cause a failure eventually, and it did! I replaced the four power tubes and had my tech check the amp out. No worries. Back in fighting shape again, and sounding MUCH better since the power tube section was properly balanced. I definitely should have checked out those tubes on day 1 and recognized this was a potential problem. It also made me wonder if I should always have an alternate output strategy, like carrying a good quality DI just case something like this happens again.

The 1 Uppers get together every week for a 2+ hour practice session. We’ve kept to this schedule pretty faithfully since the band’s inception. It gives us an opportunity to work on new material and polish up any rough spots from recent shows. It’s also our communal time to form the hive-mind that is at the nucleus of good bands. There is no substitute for playing together. I have certainly seen brilliant performances delivered by musicians that have spontaneously assembled but this is the exception; most truly great bands come from hours of invested time working together and becoming mutually attuned.

Sometimes I come home from 1 Uppers practice frustrated with my playing and feeling that I’m creatively blocked. Other times I have fantastic nights where I’m happy with my playing. Because so much of what we do is based on a framework and then extended via improvisation, it’s a different experience from delivering a meticulously rehearsed performance. In the case of my other bands, such as “The Dudley Manlove Quartet” we spend time carefully crafting arrangements of our songs to continuously improve our show. It doesn’t mean the music is less challenging; only that it requires a different discipline where memorization and recall are emphasized.

Over the course of the past several years, these regular practice sessions have yielded some great music and fun times. We often wrap up our practices and walk together to a nearby bar for a beer and snacks, and general musical chatter. Making music with such fine friends is a joy. We’ll be releasing a CD on Friday September 14. Stay tuned for details!

On Saturday 8/11 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at the Kirkland Summer Festival. I have played hundreds of festival shows over the past thirty years or so, and they usually involve some surprises. One of the absolute given facets of festival events is they will run behind schedule. The band before you will almost certainly start late and therefore they will run late. Fifteen minutes into what should have been our soundcheck we were still waiting for the previous band to leave the stage.

Still, we managed to set up pretty quickly and got ready for line checks. Naturally, when you’re in a hurry things will go wrong. One of my guitar cables, which has performed perfectly to date, decided to retire last night. I always carry spares, so it was a quick matter to switch it out. By the time we finally got to rocking the first song it was already getting toward dusk. Fortunately we have a supportive bunch of friends and fans, and it made for a great beginning for the night. We wound up skipping a couple of songs in the second set due to time constraints. Also, we had a few minor trainwrecks getting songs started… Jeff tried to count off “Summer of 69” when we were supposed to be starting “Power of Love”, and I followed up by biffing the beginning of “Summer of 69” thinking we were playing another song.  I’m pretty sure nobody noticed, except that we did announce it in both cases and make fun of each other. Other than that I’m certain we got away with it.

Our set list was:

Set 1
Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You
It’s Not Unusual
Copacabana
Dancing Queen
Let’s Stay Together
Right Back Where We Started From
Always Something There To Remind Me
Venus
Sweet Caroline
I Wish
September
Suspicious Minds
Brown Eyed Girl

Set 2
Evil Woman (skipped)
Don’t You Forget About Me
Let’s Go
Power Of Love
Summer Of ’69
Melt With You
More Than This
Let’s Dance
Rio
Never Gonna Give You Up (skipped)
Little Red Corvette
Take On Me
Video Killed The Radio Star
Don’t Stop Believin’
My Life (encore)

A beautiful evening and always a joy to spend time with my bandmates. On to another show!

On Saturday 3/10 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at the Triple Door in Seattle. The band usually performs at the Triple Door at least one per year. This particular show was a celebration of our 17th anniversary as a band. The show was sold out weeks in advance, and we really had  strong sense of expectation and excitement leading up to it. The set list for the evening was as follows:

SET 1

• It’s Not Unusual
• Dancing Queen
• Copacabana
• More More More
• Young Girl
• Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You
• Love Is In The Air
• Right Back Where
• Kung Fu Fighting
• Piano Man
• Ride Like The Wind
• I Will Survive
• Sweet Caroline

• Evil Woman
• Suspicious Minds
• Always Something There To Remind
• Let’s Dance
• Waterloo -> Call Me
• More Than This
• Rio
• Little Red Corvette
• Melt With You
• American Girl
• Video Killed The Radio Star
• Take On Me
• Don’t Stop Believin
• ENCORE: Don’t You Forget About Me

Another fantastic night with many friends and family in attendance. The band huddled after the show in our dressing room to talk about the night; all of agreed it was among our finest shows, and that we have such a strong sense of appreciation for playing together. Another nice surprise from this show was being asked to confirm another booking at the Triple Door for NEW YEAR’S EVE! We’ll be playing two shows that night. Look for details to follow soon!

On Saturday 12/17 the 1 Uppers performed at The Royal Room, a new venue recently opened in Columbia City. It’s a very music-friendly room with excellent sight lines and a great sound system. Local jazz keyboardist Wayne Horvitz is one of the founders of the club, and he deliberately established it with musicians in mind. The stage has a permanent backline of equipment including guitar amps, a bass amp, a drum set, a grand piano and a Hammond B3.

I arrived to discover that one of the guitar amps was broken. Fortunately our singer David hadn’t left home yet, so he graciously brought along an amp for me to use… a Dr. Z head and cabinet! It rivaled my Boogie Lonestar for clear dimensionality and blues voicing. Definitely made my guitars sound very nice.

We performed on the opening weekend along with several local jazz luminaries, which made for some remarkable collaborations throughout the evening. Wayne sat in with us for a song, as did guitarist Tim Young. Throughout our performance I was struck by how fortunate I am to be in such great musical company. Another fantastic performance with my great friends in the 1 Uppers. Can’t wait for the next one!

On Friday 12/16 the 1 Uppers performed at Darrell’s Tavern in Shoreline. We’ve played there before and it’s always a great time. The crowd there is very supportive of live music, and they seem to appreciate just about every possible style. We often are part of a country-themed night there, and it seems to bring out the true believers in this style of music. The stage occupies about 25% of the floor space in the bar and we’re very close to the audience, which makes for an especially interactive and fun show. This weekend I performed both gigs as the only electric guitarist in the band; 1 Upper Kris Geren was out of the country so it meant I had more territory to cover in our songs.

I’ve been playing more baritone guitar in this band lately, which I’m really enjoying. For these shows where we are playing as a five-piece band, it’s been interesting to hear the texture of the mix with acoustic guitar being the sole instrument in the “regular” guitar range. I switch back to the strat for a number of songs where those parts are more crucial to the mix.

One of the interesting interactions I had in Friday was chatting with someone in the bar who is a guitarist and is interested in understanding country guitar playing styles such as Travis Picking and “chicken pickin’ “. I always feel a little sheepish discussing the technical details of country guitar playing since I’m sort of figuring it out as I go! So in this case I was able to make a semi-intelligent observation about those styles despite offering a disclaimer up front.

A great night of music with great friends!

On Saturday 12/31 The Dudley Manlove Quartet will be performing our annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve show at the Sunset in Ballard. Advance tickets are available now and are strongly recommended as this event will sell out.  We’ll be pulling out the stops for another great show with new music and surprises. Come on out and ring in 2012 with the band and 200 of our closest friends.

This is the best NYE value in town, hands down: Twenty bucks gets you a champagne toast at midnight and all the Dudley you can handle. This will sell out fast, so get an early start on that “no procrastinating” resolution and buy your tickets now!

On Friday 11/18 the 1 Uppers performed at Slim’s Last Chance Chili Shack in Seattle. This venue is one of my favorite places on our regular circuit. It’s a cozy room that gives off the perfect vibe of great music, cold beer and yummy chili.

I’ve been playing a lot of shows with the Dudley Manlove Quartet lately, and my bandmates in the 1 Uppers are gracious in allowing me to balance  my time between the bands. So it has been over a month since we had the band in full force, and at this gig we worked with substitute drummer Andy Roth. At our rehearsal Thursday evening it was evident that we were ready to attack this show with a lot of energy, and I had a feeling it was going to be a good one. Andy (drums) was perfectly prepared for this set, the mark of a pro player!

At rehearsal on Thursday the songs were perfectly arranged (not by me) to group the songs where I play baritone guitar all together. This meant only one switch between baritone and regular guitar during the rehearsal set. Naturally, at the gig we move a few songs around which meant switching four times! Good thing I can move fast. The set was great. You can tell when it’s going well onstage, and there was a fun relaxed vibe as tore through the songs. The set concluded with the audience demanding an encore, which we’re happy to do… just unusual to have such energetic reception. Another fun night with great friends. I look forward to the next one!

On Saturday 10/29 the Dudley Manlove Quartet will be performing our annual Halloween Spooktacular show at the Sunset in Ballard. Every year our Halloween show includes our tribute to some other band, so our second set involves a costume change and we come onstage to play a number of songs as another band. In past years we’ve done such bands as The Talking Heads, Spinal Tap, The B52’s and David Bowie. This year we’re working up songs from another band; technically it’s a surprise, but I think most people have a strong hunch based on the (outright blatant) clues we’ve dropped 🙂

I’ve been transcribing guitar parts and working up the tones to recreate the style of the guitarist in this year’s band. It should be a very enjoyable show and I know we’re all looking forward to playing this special set.

For the gig this weekend I’m planning to bring my trusty Mesa Boogie Lonestar, two Stratocasters (the black custom shop model and the white Eric Johnson model), my pedalboard, and the usual miscellany of cords and stands. Definitely going to be a show to remember. If you haven’t already gotten a ticket, we only have a few dozen remaining, so act now!

On Sunday 10/9 the 1 Uppers performed at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard. This venue feels like home to me, given the large number of regular performances I have there with the Dudley Manlove Quartet. This was another very enjoyable show with the 1 Uppers, and we’re continuing to develop our musical communication onstage.

When I play at the Sunset with DMQ, I’m over on stage left which means I’m standing more or less behind the PA mains in a dark corner of the stage. I do jump out and stand on the subwoofer for big solos, but most of the time I’m pretty tightly tucked back into that corner. With the 1 Uppers I tend to be on stage right, standing behind Jon Hyde on pedal steel. So this gave me a nice open area in which to play. Always good to have a little room to roam 🙂

The show was part of a triple bill. Fortunately we were on first and it meant that we could get a soundcheck – AND it meant we were done at a mercifully early hour. Our set consisted of mostly originals with a few selected covers. For this show I brought a pretty lightweight rig, consisting of the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe and my micro-pedalboard (Line6 M9 + Ernie Ball volume pedal).  I’m working on putting together a new pedalboard base for those two items, which should be small enough to fit into an Anvil briefcase. It’ll make an easy rig for fly dates. During the course of the show I switched guitars several times between regular electric guitar to baritone guitar.  I’m finding that playing baritone guitar is a great experience and clears some space in the mix where the other guitars reside. The 1 Uppers have a number of gigs coming up in the next month and I think it’ll be great for our sound. Always a delight playing music with great friends!