John Hendow

The Condensed Version
This past weekend, The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed two shows at the fabulous Crystal Ballroom in Portland. I got a flat tire. My niece had a baby. I drank beer. The Seahawks got stomped.

Friday
While en route to this gig the sidewall on my driver’s side rear tire blow out. This is a very unusual type of tire failure and can be extremely dangerous. It happened while on the freeway while going about 60 MPH. I was lucky it didn’t make the car spin or flip. I was also lucky to find a service station (that still actually works on cars) and they had a suitable replacement tire. So despite being inconvenienced by the tire failure I was still in Portland pretty early and succeeded in loading into the venue with plenty of spare time. Enough spare time, in fact, to find a nice sidewalk pub and have a beer. Jeff joined me after a bit, and we happened to see Kristi and Colleen walking by, so they joined us as well.

The gig was a lot of fun. Super Diamond was in great form and they were a delight to hang out with. The crew at the Crystal Ballroom is 100% professional, easy going, and funny as heck. It makes the experience of playing there so enjoyable for us when the crew is having fun too. I discovered that the gain stages in my Pod XT Live had somehow gotten a little too hot, and were adding more distortion to my signal path than I like. I didn’t have an opportunity to adjust these settings on the fly, so I just backed off the volume a bit and went with it.  This was a short set and we burned through it quickly, followed by perhaps the fastest teardown in the history of the band… I think we were offstage with all our gear within 5 minutes of ending our final song.

Saturday
I woke up Saturday and went to visit with family in Portland. My niece was due to deliver her baby at any moment, and I left for load-in at around 1:30. She gave birth at 2:42. I didn’t get to see the newborn girl, but received pictures via iPhone. She’s a beauty and I look forward to welcoming her to the family and reading her “The Stinky Cheese Man”.

The Saturday show at the Crystal Ballroom was a private event, specifically a wedding reception. I arrived early and set up my gear with the primary objective of getting those Pod XT Live gain settings under control. It took about 20 minutes to run through all the banks of patches and make adjustments. We soundchecked with some of the new songs we planned to play that night including a new Paul Simon track. After soundcheck Mack and I took a quick trip to Apple Music where I picked up a regulated power supply for my pedalboard (project ahead… pictures and narrative to follow). Once we got to playing things went beautifully. The crowd got up and danced, and I was surprised to see some friends from Seattle were in attendance. Apparently they are friends with the bride. The show was over early enough that I managed to get back to the hotel, get a late night snack / beer, and flop into bed before 12:30 AM.

Sunday
The morning was a big success. Cornflake-encrusted French toast, excellent French press coffee from Costa Rica, and fine company. The weather was nice and we walked around Portland a bit before heading back North to Seattle. I listened to the Seahawks game on the radio, which at least spared me the added misery of watching them get clobbered by Arizona. Hopefully the bye week will help put the wind back in our sails.

On Saturday 10/10 The 1 Uppers played at Conor Byrne in Ballard. It was a fun evening of music despite the band being a man short. The other guitarist, Kris, was unavailable that night so I held down electric guitar duties on my own. One thing I definitely noticed was that I don’t have nearly his depth of great licks as a guitarist. But I enjoyed being able to fill a little more space with denser patches. Overall it was a fun night and I look forward to having Kris rejoin us for the next gig.

Jon Hyde did his usual amazing job of playing great pedal steel on every song. He never seems to run out of ideas, and I love hearing him drop chord substitutions into the changes. Caben and Eric are rock-solid in the rhythm section, and David does a fine job on lead vocals. The 1 Uppers continues to be a very satisfying musical experience for me, and I feel fortunate to be in the band with great friends.

My amp sounded pretty good. This is the first 1 Uppers gig that I’ve played since having it reworked by Velvetone. The tonal balance seems better and it doesn’t break up at such a low volume. I can understand why this is Fender’s most popular guitar amp of all time. It’s really a great piece of equipment. I’m still messing with my patches on the PodXT Live, but I think I’m settling into a good collection of general-purpose patches for this band. I’ll be working on my pedalboard setup over the next few weeks, and hopefully this will give me an opportunity to tweak settings with the whole system.

The next 1 Uppers gig is coming up in a few weeks. We’re working on some covers for a multi-band show. More info to come…

Last weekend The Dudley Manlove Quartet played at a wedding reception in Pullman. Because the show was relatively early in the afternoon, we had to leave Seattle at 9:00 AM… we were well supplied with coffee and banana bread to help us survive the trip Eastward. The drive to Pullman is (mostly) interesting and I enjoyed the van banter and Jeff’s excellent DJ selections. As we neared Pullman I hooked up my iPod to study the guitar solo from “The Final Countdown” (special request by the bride and groom).

The actual event took place in a barn in Colton, about 10 miles South of Pullman. It was a beautiful rustic barn with a wonderful atmosphere, and somewhat chilly and drafty too… but that minor inconvenience was soon forgotten once we got to playing and the crowd began to dance. This was one of those wedding receptions where everyone started dancing from the very fist tune and the enthusiastic energy was flowing until the very last note. Many of the guests had shakers, rattles, maracas, and other rhythm gizmos. I had some reinforcement in the guitar section… a couple of young boys had inflatable guitars and were hanging around the front of the stage imitating me. So I invited them up to stand right next to me and to rock out with the band, instantly transforming us into Lynyrd Skynyrd (or some other band with a 3 guitars). They stayed onstage with me for all three sets! One of them was watching me very intently and moving his hands when I did. During the big solos in “The Final Countdown” and “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” we all struck our best rock poses in unison. They got their first tast of being in a band… I’m sure their parents are now thanking me for derailing whatever career plans they had in mind for those kids.

Most of the night went really smoothly. I thought there were a couple of spots that could use a bit of work a future rehearsal, but overall this was a great gig. After we packed up and got back to the hotel, the rhythm section huddled for a game of Texas Hold’Em. The trip home involved driving through a fairly large dust storm; so much dust was blowing around that everything had a strange brown/orange hue and even then sun was noticeably dimmed. Visibility was very poor and I wondered whether they state patrol would close the road at some point. We found out that about an hour later they did close the road for several hours due to zero visibility conditions. I’m glad we got through it early enough to make it home at a decent hour.

All the really great band roadtrips come with a theme. For this one it was “The Final Countdown” which has a disturbingly hooky intro. Just singing that little fanfare was enough to get us all going. We played it so well that I suspect it will surface at a future gig. Another fine adventure. Onward to the next one!

Over the past two months I’ve been putting a lot more time into practicing and transcribing. This has been largely due to my involvement in The Dudley Manlove Quartet where I’m in the very fortunate position of being surrounded by great musicians. So I’ve been working to ensure I’m in getting my parts together for our songs. One of the dividends that is paid by doing this is that my playing is improving in general. Last night I practiced with The 1 Uppers and was covering both of the electric guitar parts; we have a show coming up next weekend and Kris won’t be able to play that night, so I’m doing my best to provide some fraction of his awesomeness. Our rehearsal last night felt great and I think part of my comfort level was directly due to having spent more time lately playing in more styles.

This weekend The Dudley Manlove Quartet will be playing an event and we’ve been asked to perform “The Final Countdown” by Europe (!). It’s one of those songs that I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to back in the 80s and with only a few days’ notice I’m having to transcribe the fairly pyrotechnic guitar solo. The more I challenge myself, it seems the better I feel about the results. I suppose this is hardly a revelation. But it sure feels good when I’m attuned and in the moment. My goal is reach that space on a more regular basis in all that I do.

I’m in the process of building a new web site for The Dudley Manlove Quartet. This is an interesting exercise in design and development and I’m looking forward to launching it in October. Stay tuned…

Friday night The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at the Fremont Oktobertfest. This was an enjoyable event for many reasons, and being a festival it had a few funny aspects. Our band dressing room was the back of the stage. As in: the area behind the band currently performing. I decided it didn’t matter. It’s Oktoberfest in Fremont. How out-of-place is some guy standing around in his underwear?

Once we started playing things went great. The set is sounding good and I think we’re getting really solid on the material. During the Second set we played “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger. When the song began there were some people in the audience who were unsure whether we were actually going to play the song, or whether it was a gag on the audience. No, we really did it, and by the time we got the second chorus everybody was into it. The Neil Diamond songs are always crowd pleasers too. Closing with “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” always gets enormous audience response though I suppose the beer garden helped a bit… 🙂

My amp spent a few days in the shop last week and it seems to be much better. I am beginning to think seriously about getting a flight case for it. This is an amp I intend to use for a long time and I’d like to keep it in good shape. Hopefully I can find a case at a decent price.

Well, hopefully all my music gear is rested and ready, because tonight The Dudley Manlove Quartet will be playing at Oktoberfest in Fremont. I’m looking forward to rocking the streets of Fremont with our groovy music. Join us for a mug of cheer and some fine tunes!

On Wednesday we played at the Tulalip Casino in Marysville. Mid-week shows are something of a gamble (appropriate for a casino I suppose) and we weren’t certain how big a crowd to expect. We arrived to discover the casino was well-organized but not good at communicating their plan to us. We had to figure out some quizzical things through investigation / guesswork but eventually we got set up and ready to rock. It was billed as “80’s Night” which resulted in the addition of several songs to our set [Sister Christian, Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Working For The Weekend, Ride Like The Wind, Cars, Any Way You Want It] and some other songs being resurrected from the back pages of our book.

The crowd was big and enthusiastic, and included a few friends who made the trek Northward for the gig. Edgars cracked me up with his quick wit. Also in attendance were two special friends from my first professional music experience: Jim Cull and John Jansen. Jim is a great vocalist and John is a wonderful country guitarist and musical sage (inducted into the Western Swing Hall of Fame in 1996). They were both members of the country / Elvis band I played in as a teenager. Seeing them was a treat. I still refer to John’s great guitar licks when I’m trying to come up with something new in the 1 Uppers.

My broken pinky continued to hamper good playing. I taped up to reinforce the break, but it is still quite sore. Some of my solos were difficult, especially the outtro solo in “American Girl” which included a lot of pain and clams (and me yelling “ow! bloody hell!”). Thankfully we had ice backstage and I dunked my offending digit to keep the swelling under control. It seems to be getting better daily and I’m hoping to be back to at least 75% of functionality within another week. My amp misbehaved a bit at the night went on. I couldn’t get a good clean tone during our last set and my overall headroom seemed to be severely limited. I’ve already scheduled my amp for a weekend at the spa and hopefully it’ll come back tanned, rested and ready to roar.

The show was a great success and we intend to play there again. Hopefully we’ll start doing weekends rather than mid-week gigs.

Last Saturday I played at the Tractor Tavern with The Dudley Manlove Quartet. This was another of those amazing gigs with a fun band, where everything went very well and a great time was had. I played this show with a broken pinky on my left hand, which made for a lot of on-the-fly chord voicing changes. In order to facilitate any sort of usefulness in that finger it was fortified. I bent it into an approximately correct position for playing, and my wife put on a layer of pre-wrap followed by some strips of athletic tape. The end result was that I had enough stability to play the few songs that really required four fingers, and for everything else I just kept that finger off the fretboard. What remains now is to keep off it for a few days and do my best to get through the next gig on Wednesday.

At the show Saturday we played many songs that were recent additions to the set list. It made for some fun surprises for the audience and a number of people commented afterwards that the enjoyed hearing those songs. My impression of the gig was very positive. I think we’re sounding better at each successive performance and it makes me look forward to every time we get together. This week we’ll be playing at the Tulalip Casino on Wednesday 9/9. Come on out and join us for a mid-week party!

On Saturday evening the DMQ headed over to Bainbridge Island to play at a private party. We arrived early enough to enjoy the beautiful scenery and friendy critters that were present on site. Our first instruction was that our initial set(s) of music should be pleasant dinner / conversation instrumental selections. Steve and Mack wrote out charts for about a dozen jazz standards and off we went! Two things became apparent to me: (1) the guys in this band are seriously good musicians who can play any style of music and (2) I better dust off my jazz guitar chops. It was a blast to do that set. Eventually we got the green light to play our regular set and we launched right in with “America” as the opener. We had a great set going, and peope were even dancing and singing along. We finished the our last scheduled song of the night and chatted with the party organizer about future gigs. Overall, a fine evening. Onward to next weekend at the Tractor!