John Hendow

In the 1 Uppers I frequently switch between my stratocaster and my Danelectro baritone guitar. Our set lists seem to always be perfectly arranged to maximize the number of times I have to switch 🙂 After a recent gig at the newly opened Royal Room, I was lamenting the inconvenience of the repeated switching. I said (half jokingly) that I really needed a double neck guitar that had both a baritone and a regular neck. One of my bandmates immediately pointed out that Gretsch actually makes such an instrument. I did some hunting online and discovered the Guitar Center in Little Rock, Arkansas had one in stock that was used, with a very attractive price! After a few calls to the store I decided to have them ship it over to Seattle so I could give it a whirl.

It’s likely I’ll bring it along with me to the New Year’s Eve show at The Sunset, just because it seems like a perfect opportunity to try it out on stage. The overall tone is classic Gretsch, and you just gotta love that silver sparkle finish with the TWO Bigsby tremolo bridges! It’s pretty heavy so I don’t see myself playing marathon gigs with it, but I love its visual vibe. This will be a fun addition to the guitar arsenal!

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!

About 2 months ago I traded in my trusty Toyota Camry for a 2010 Toyota Highlander. I’ve been wanting a vehicle that had greater interior capacity and was all-wheel drive. After looking at a few options, I kept returning to the Highlander as a good balance between wagon / SUV. Now that I’ve driven this car for a few months I have made some interesting observations:

• The Camry had a 4 cylinder engine. The Highlander is a 3.5L V6, is all-wheel drive, and probably 1/3 larger than the Camry. And yet, somehow the Highlander gets better gas mileage. I’m guessing the new car has better efficiency all around, and its performance is being constantly tuned by the onboard computer systems.
• The interior capacity of the Highlander is astonishing. I recently carried six adults in the car without any complaints for space. The third row of seats in this vehicle is actually pretty decent. It made for an easy local commute (to the banana museum, no less!).
• The acceleration characteristics are very good. It’s been a while since I owned a car that I would characterize as “fun” to drive. The Highlander is fun and responsive.

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!

On Friday 9/16 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at the Wallingford Wurst Festival in Seattle. It’s an event the band has performed in years past but was my first time. The event occurs at a local Catholic grade school in Wallingford. Just entering the building was a flashback to my elementary school years in Catholic school. It’s funny how eerily similar all such schools are – especially those that appear to be of the same approximate vintage. Seeing that classic linoleum and tile environment made me nostalgic and slightly anxious (I have a completely irrational fear of yardsticks as a result of a few thousand thwacks from irate nuns).

Our performance took place in the auditorium, which was also the beer garden for this event. Washington State has a law prohibiting musicians from drinking onstage, and whenever we perform in bars we’re reminded that there will be no drinking permitted onstage. Ironically, Catholic grade schools seem to be exempt from this law, so the band was delighted to have cups of tasty IPA while playing.  For this show I put the Lonestar on the amp stand, placed about two-thirds of the way toward the back of the stage. It seems to me that most Boogies have a tendency to be “beamy”; they produce a very tightly focused output that doesn’t fill the stage. My Boogie Mark III, and my Boogie 1×12 cabinets had a very tight pattern onstage that allowed my to place the amp very far away and still hear it – provided I stood directly in line with the speaker… just a single step to the left or the right and the sound was gone. The Lonestar has a much more “Fender” type spread and cleanly fills my playing position with usable volume.

At this gig I tried running the clean channel a little hotter. It’s interesting that the clean channel on this amp still has considerable headroom even at the higher end of its gain structure. My Strats are wired with medium output pickups so I generally don’t wind up with much unwanted grit. The lead channel on the Lonestar has a good bark to it but still has clean articulation for chords. Compared with my Fender Twin, the Lonestar has a truer gain structure; it seems to me the Fender AB763 circuit has a tendency to naturally compress the guitar dynamics. I’m finding the Keeley compressor is more usable with this amp than with the Twin. The entire gig was an opportunity to try new settings on my pedalboard, with new clean tones and more amp-based drive in the lead settings. It’s especially good for big driven tones for songs like “Rio” and “Don’t Stop Believing”. The gig was a great success and we look forward to the next event!

About a month ago I sold my Fender Twin and purchased a Mesa Boogie Lonestar 1×12 to replace it. The Twin is a great amp and produces a classic tone. My decision to switch to the Lonestar was prompted by hearing the great tones the amp produces, and by my interest in getting a better blues tone. The Lonestar has two channels, “clean” and “drive”. Each channel can be set to 100 watts using a solid state rectifier, or 50 watts using tube / solid state (switchable) rectifier. The overall reverb level for each channel is assignable and there is a programmable boost function for solos.

Overall the amp produces a fantastic clean tone with deep dimensionality and lovely coverage. It has a pure 1:1 response for input dynamics, which is unlike the Twin with its natural compression. It was easy to get a beautiful clean sound out the amp, and to get a classic driven blues tone from the lean channel. On-stage coverage is amazing from this amp. For a single 12 inch speaker it has surprisingly broad spread. I’m pretty pleased so far and look forward to putting this amp through its paces at upcoming gigs.