John Hendow

Halloween is my favorite day of the year. The crisp air, the smell of fall, and lots of creepy spooky stuff to enjoy. It’s a double bonus for me when I play music with friends on that night, and this year was one of my favorite Halloween gigs ever. The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard. We had a sold out room full of costumed friends, and it was a wild and crazy event all around.

We kicked off the night with “Ghostbusters” and sailed into a bunch of fun hits. The band has a tradition of performing part of the night as another band. This year we were the B52s. Mack and I portrayed the two female members of the band, which meant shopping for wigs and dresses. We spent over a month working on song arrangements for the night, including the “top 10” worst songs as voted by fans. I was especially surprised by the strong positive reactions to “I Was Made For Loving You Baby” and “The Final Countdown”. The balance of our set was composed of favorites from our regular list.

Setting up the wireless rig on such a small stage seems silly, but it did afford me the freedom to run over to Mack’s side of the stage. And it facilitated a dramatic entrance for our B52s intro. I discovered early in our set that something is strange between the gain structure in my Line6 POD XT Live and my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. I just had the amp in the shop for a full checkup, which included new tubes and re-soldering the tube sockets. I don’t know whether the issue is with the amp or the pedal, and I can’t seem to get anyone at Line 6 to respond to my email. I’m generally fairly happy with the POD XT Live, but this is frustrating. I dialed back the gain on my amp and made a few on-the-fly (actually, on-the-floor) adjustments during the set. I’ll set up my rig in the music room at home and work on this over the next few days to see if I can determine what’s going on.

The Sunset is the kind of bar that bands and customers LOVE. It’s owned and run by cool, hip people who love music and are in the business for all the right reasons. They provide the perfect setting for a great party. Many thanks to the awesome staff for such a fun night. Seeing friends at these gigs is a real treat. A big thank you to Teri, Wally, Bill, Edgars, Celeste, Kristi and Alma, for their enthusiastic participation in the night’s festivities.

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.

My amp is currently enjoying a week of spa treatment at Velvetone Valve Works in Seattle. It’s hard to find a really great amp technician and I’m pleased that Jeff is available here in my home town to work his special magic. Since I bought this amp a few years ago I’ve occasionally wondered if there was a little more goodness to be be teased out. I’m looking forward to hearing it once it’s been retubed, rebiased and generally checked over for loose solder connections and other evil spirits. I am thinking of buying a flight case for this amp to keep my amp in good shape for years to come. Anyone happen to have a spare flight case for a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe sitting in your garage???

As the owner of a tube amp, it’s pretty much my expectation that I’ll occasionally need to do some maintenance to keep it happily purring. Last night I noticed that my clean headroom seems to be fading and that the amp sounds a little anemic. My assumption is that I need to get new tubes, which is no big deal. But I’m also aware that all amps have idiosyncracies based on the specific model, and these usually require some specialized knowledge for troubleshooting. My amp is a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe and has some well-documented areas where things need to be tightened up or re-soldered. I know it’s strongly recommended to re-solder the connections on the tube sockets and on the op-amp switching circuit on the preamp board. I had the latter work performed earlier this year, but I am quite certain the tube sockets have never been inspected. At a Dudley Manlove Quartet show this summer my amp fell on its back a few times (!) while powered up and hot (!) on a very hot summer day (!) on a stage that was bouncing up and down quite a bit (!). Good heavens. I can’t believe my amp and its tubes survived that crazy ordeal and the fact that it needs a little TLC hardly surprises me.  At any rate, I’ve been wanting to get it to the shop for a few months and I finally have a window of time when I can get it looked at. Hopefully when I get it back it’ll be back to the beautiful tone machine that I know and love.

Last weekend I played 2 shows with my country band The 1 uppers. Friday night’s show was the Conor Byrne. The regulars who frequent the bar are big fans of music in general and they seem especially enthusiastic about country. We were last on a bill of three bands, which meant we were subject to the late starts and late finishes of each of the bands before us… by the time we took the stage it was well after midnight. We played many of the songs which we’re currently recording for our CD and threw in a couple of cover selections as well. I have been experimenting with using just the Telecaster, straight into my Hot Rod Deluxe with nothing else in the signal chain. This does sound good, but I found myself wishing I had a little more tonal variety available. I had a bit of trouble with the output jack of the tele; the cord kept falling out and I couldn’t seem to get it to lock into place. Some soldering will be in my near future. I didn’t get home until after 2:30 which is quite a bit later than usual. Fortunately I managed to sleep in until around 9:00 the next morning, which allowed me to be fairly productive on a home remodeling project.

On Sunday we played again, this time a mercifully early show at the Sunset in Ballard. This is a classic local bar that is legendary for its vibe. I decided to bring the strat instead of my tele, and also brought the Pod XTLive for some tone shaping. The addition of slight compression and delay makes a big difference in the feel of the guitar; it was worth the extra bit of gear for this gig. The other bands on the bill were very good, and it was fun to see friends who live in the area. During “Luxury Liner” we Kris spun a long solo that was a wild run of tricky licks. There’s no denying how good he is. This was one of his trademark jaw-droppers. Playing in a band with him and Jon Hyde is amazing. They’re great musicians who continually surprise us with great ideas. At the end of the night we celebrated another successful gig. The next show is a few weeks off because some members of the band will be traveling for work and other projects. We’ll get back to 1 Upping again soon.

Black Celebration performed last Saturday evening at Neumo’s on Capital Hill in Seattle. We were part of a three-band bill that included Love Vigilantes (New Order tribute) and Erasuresque (Erasure tribute). It was a hot day in Seattle and the club was very hot all night. They did have some fans operating to move the air a bit, but it was still mighty toasty! One of the nice things about doing these kinds of multi-band bills is that we always find ways to share equipment to minimize down time between bands. This also keeps the stage logistics to a reasonable minimum. I brought my trusty black strat and decided to bring the Telecaster as my backup guitar. Ricky (guitarist for Love Vigilantes) parked 2 of his ES335s in my guitar rack, and along with our 2 amps and couple of pedalboards it looked like we had an on-stage pawnshop going. 

  Neumo’s has a lot of rules. Probably as many rules as Dungeons and Dragons. Except there isn’t a saving throw. The venue is a lot of fun to play and I do enjoy it. They are quite organized and actually very cool to work with. Since I’m a PM by trade, documentation is always a positive thing.

I took advantage of the big stage by going wireless. It gave me the mobility to trot over to Zach’s side of the stage and wander back to visit Shane in drum world. Neumo’s has a very good sound system and our mix always winds up exercising their subs to great effect. Even the stage monitors and side fills are top notch, so it’s easy to get a good representative mix onstage. I thought we played an excellent show. All three bands were in good form, with strong audience reception. It’s always fun to have people in the audience singing along with their favorite Depeche Mode songs, and we even fielded a few requests (which, fortunately, were in our set list!). Overall, a fine evening of music and comraderie. I believe we’ll be scheduling more shows for the Fall, so stay tuned.

Hot! This was the hottest gig day so far this year, with temperatures hitting 90 on the outdoor stage at the Ballard Seafood Festival. It was hot enough that I could feel the stage burning my feet, right through my shoes. We did a great set of fun material and had a number of friends join us in the crowd. Most of them wisely stayed on the shady side of the street. Festival gigs can be a little random, and this one was no exception. I usually take a good look at the stage and sound system to assess whether there will be any issues with those elements, and it seemed like this was going to be a pretty standard deal.

Parking
The organizing team thoughtfully provided parking near the stage, which would have made it possible for us to leave our cars nearby while playing. Unfortunately the first band of the day left four cars parked throughout the event, occupying most of the available parking. We did manage to squeeze one of the cars into a spot vacated by a vendor. I guess the lesson is to be kind to your fellow musician and move your car after you’ve loaded out. Once we finished our set we left in search of showers and dry clothes.

Amp Gymnastics
During our setup time I placed  my amp on stand that tilts it up slightly. This makes it easier to hear without being loud, and is something I do at pretty much every gig. Because the stage seemed somewhat wobbly and prone to vibration I decided to take it down and put in on the stage to prevent any possibility of  it tipping over. I did this right after our first song, which took about 30 seconds to move it and replace the microphone. A well-intended stage hand came up and adjusted my amp by tipping it back against a monitor, presumably to improve my ability to hear it. Within 2 songs my amp had falled over backwards and was facing straight up. The sound guy came back up and replaced it in a leaning position, then put the mic back in to place. 2 songs later it fell over again. When he returned to monkey with again I shooed him away and left it lying on its back. Argh. My poor tubes, baking in the heat and being repeated impact stressed. Remarkably, my amp survived these drops without complaint. That’s a good amp!

Sound Operators
After our second song we wanted to make a few adjustments to the monitor mix. Stefan attempted to get the attention of the team at the front-of-house mix position for about fifteen seconds, without success. The production crew was having some kind of conversation in the mix tent and didn’t seem to be aware of the stage. Eventually the whole band waved and shouted into the microphones, which seemed to get them to notice, but it took a while. Strange. Most of the time the sound operators are on top of things. It might have been the heat.

Overall I had a great time playing. It’s always a gas to work with DMQ and I’m enjoying my time with them. Everyone in the band has played at these kinds of festivals and no one seemed affected by the random strangeness. We delivered a good show and the audience seemed to have fun as well. Another fine day, well spent!

Last night the 1 Uppers assembled for rehearsal. It’s been a little while since we were all together, and last night we were without our drummer. Eric is a busy guy and is occasionally unavailable, so we plodded along with the help of our substitute techno-drummer “Al E Sis”. We ran through some new songs last night; Jon and David continue to bring beautiful new songs to our set and it’s a pleasure to be a part of the music. Caben is rock-solid on bass which helps keeps the rest of us loonies in line. And of course Kris is just plain old amazing… he laid down a solo last night that gave me goosebumps.

It’s gratifying to hear the warm gritty tone of my telecaster straight into the amp. As much as I enjoy the tone of my Line6 gear, it’s just so fabulous to hear the uncolored sound of the guitar. A big salute to the Lollar pickups, Joe Barden bridge, compensated brass saddles and sneaky four-way pickup switch. This was all Kris’ idea and it turned my run-of-the-mill tele into a lovely tone machine.

I’ll be working on my guitar parts this weekend and hoping we’ll get a chance to finish up our recording soon. I need to track some solos and fills, and then we’ll add those final bits of audio candy to wrap up the CD. It’s been a good summer for music, and I’m playing more guitar than I have in years. I am very lucky to have a family that supports my love of music and tolerates all the madness that comes with it.

I’m not in the habit of using my blog for commercial posts. The main reason I’m posting this information is that many of my friends and readers are musicians, and I’m always happy to pass along some gear as part of the great circle of groove. As part of my ongoing effort to consolidate my equipment setup and free up some space, I’ve decided to sell a few pieces of equipment. I’ve got gear just sitting around rather than fulfilling its rightful rockin’ destiny on a stage somewhere. The process of thinning worldly possessions is actually quite freeing, and it makes me happy to know that the new owner is so pleased with the item. For example, last year I sold my Jackson guitar to a co-worker. It was a perfect shred machine and was fun to play. But lately it had spent a lot of time hanging on the wall. I happened to mention I intended to sell it and found out my friend was VERY interested in that guitar. So it was a perfect deal for both of us; I had purchased the guitar used at a great price and passed the savings along.

So for any friends shopping for music gizmos, my list of excess gear includes

• Digital Music Ground Control MIDI Pedal. 90s model. Mounted with 2 Ernie Ball volume pedals, configured as continuous controllers. I also have a flight case that fits this unit.
• 2 Mesa Boogie 1×12 guitar cabinets, each loaded with an EVM 12L speaker. Includes covers.  
• THD 2×12 speaker cabinet loaded with “Cotswold” speakers. Convertible, with open and closed back panels.
• Stewart Reference Series power amp. 60w Stereo. Chrome faceplate. Rack mountable.
• Crown D45 power amp. Studio reference series monitor amp. Rack mountable.
• Audio Technica guitar wireless. True diversity, 100+ channels. 2 transmitters.
• 6-space ATA case.
• 2-space SKB “Roto Rack”.
• 4-space rack bag with shoulder strap.
• Roland GR-1 Guitar Synth with GK2A Pickup. Expanded voice card.
• Ibanez Artist electric guitar. Double cutaway. Cherry sunburst. 80s model. EMG 85A pickups. With case.
• Fender “Roland Ready” Stratocaster. White. 90s model. Has factory-installed synthesizer driver / pickup with both 13-pin output and standard 1/4″ output. This model has superior synth tracking and is becoming difficult to obtain. With case.

Give me a peep if you’re interested in any of these thingies, and I’ll bring this stuff home from the rehearsal space so you can check it out.  I’ll list these items on CL or eBay next month.

Yesterday’s gig at the High Dive in Fremont took place on the same day as the Fremont Solstice Parade, which involves all manner of fun and big crowds. I enjoy the atmosphere of these events because everyone is always in such joyous spirits. Our show was earlier than the usual bar gig; we played from 6:00 PM until 8:15 PM for a pretty solid and enthusiastic crowd. It’s clear that Mona and Paul are becoming more confident in their roles as lead singers. Both of them are developing some faithful fans in the audience who know them by name and chant for more when songs are finished. Good stuff. I’m finding myself more “present” during our set, with a stronger connection to music and bandmates.

read more…