John Hendow

With four days until the gig, I’ve gotten my notes onto a spreadsheet with little outlines of chord structures and solos. This is my study material and forms the basis of what I’ll need to memorize for the show. I’m especially enjoying working out the solos:

• Addicted To Love (Robert Palmer) – The solo is really a blues form after the second chorus, but the guitar tone here is monstrous. No surprise here… it’s Andy Taylor, guitarist of Duran Duran and of Power Station. I have always loved his sound and am delighted to be playing this one.
• Don’t Stop Believin’ (Journey) – Neil Schon is a great guitarist. His rhythm parts are a study in guitar goodness. The solo in this song isn’t particularly challenging (mostly just E major) but it really propels the song. 
• Let’s Dance (David Bowie) – The classic Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar licks are pretty easy to recreate. His solo is basically a Bb blues.
• Kiss On My List (Hall and Oates) – It’s easy to overlook this one. The guitar solo in this song sits over a simplied version of the chorus, mostly outlining a C and Bb structure.
• Rebel Yell (Billy Idol) – Steve Stevens is amazing. In “Vital Idol” I spent a tremendous amount of time painstakingly transcribing his layered parts and solos to recreate his playing. This is a classic example of his virtuosity.

I’m looking forward to this show. There are a number of elements that I still need to nail down, including the final tone programming on my new preamp… good thing I have a few nights left for final tech preparation. It’s a little unnerving to head into a three hour gig without a rehearsal but I have a lot of confidence in the other band members and I’m sure we’ll all be ready.

Another gig is on the horizon, and I need to learn 45 songs in the next week! My friends in 80s Invasion asked me if I could fill in for an upcoming show, which means transcribing and learning 45 songs in short order. I also need to program all the necessary guitar patches to play this set. It’ll be a good workout for my new preamp / effects unit, and I’m looking forward to using it in this setting. I haven’t gotten a flight case for it yet so this may be an interesting logistical challenge as well.

Fortunately, a portion of the songs don’t have much exposure on the guitar parts. About a third of the set has songs with signature guitar parts and solos, and I’ll be cramming to learn those elements. It’ll be a good challenge and a fun gig.

The Rendezvous is a small, hip bar in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. It contains “The Jewel Box Theater”, which is where musicians perform. The room probably holds 50 people, and looks crowded with two dozen.

Our gig was a late addition to our schedule, with another band inviting us to join the bill just a few days before. It turned out we were one of five (!) bands playing that night. Fortunately we got to play first, which meant we could start as early as we were ready, and then we could be home and asleep at a relatively decent time. We decided to only use the PA for vocals, with the drums going acoustic, and all the instrument amps just filling the room as best they could. Josh has a Fender Blues Deluxe guitar amp and like all Fender amps it sounds better when it’s turned up a bit. I like the slight compression provided by tubes running loud and hot into an open back speaker cabinet. And Janie plays better when she’s allowed to hit the drums a little harder. Brad and I pretty much do our thing no matter what, but I noticed we both were playing with more energy and intensity than usual.

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The Preons will be playing Monday 7/16 at the Rendezvous in Seattle. We’ve been invited to join a multi-band bill with five bands performing(!) , so this should make for an interesting logistical evening. Brad wisely negotiated our position as the first band on the bill, so our downbeat is no later than 9:30 PM. Forty minutes of Preons, then we’ll vacate the stage to make room for band #2. My guess is that the evening will be considered a well-attended event, as the Rendezvous is a small bar. It’ll seem packed with just the band members present…

Last night we had a fairly productive band practice, even though one of our members is currently in Uganda (!). Three of us worked through our current set of live material, focusing on timing and a few tricky rhythmic passages, then we had a go at some new stuff as well. I continue to be impressed with Brad’s musicianship. He always has good musical ideas and plays them beautifully.

We’ll continue to practice without Josh for another few weeks, which will give us more opportunities to work on new ideas. Hopefully we’ll have some pleaseant surprises for him when he returns.

Last night’s Preons show at The High Dive went fairly well. Originally there were going to be three bands on the bill:

• Monostereo
• Mercurius
• The Preons

At about 8:00 we were informed “Monostereo” had dropped off the bill, so we adjusted the set times a bit. Ultimately this meant pushing back our start time by 30 minutes. The guys in “Mercurius” were cool and fun to chat with. I always enjoy meeting musicians who play for all the right reasons. These guys had taken the ferry from Bremerton on a Wednesday night, just to play in Seattle. That is a refreshingly unjaded attitude.

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I’ll never be the official GOD OF THUNDER as that position will be eternally occupied by KISS bassist Gene Simmons.  However, I’m fairly pleased with the low-end mayhem that I occasionally wield. Last night at Preons rehearsal during one song I turned on the “ultrabass” feature on my amp, which generates a note an octave below the one being played. It was a fairly satisfying addition to the bass line in that song and added a new dimension of intensity to that part. Our guitarist noticed it right away with approval.

Read the rest of this posting for more.

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In the musical landscape, electric guitar is my home town although I occasionally stray across the tracks. I currently play in a couple of bands, each of which is in a different style. My favorite current project is The Preons, which I joined a few months ago as their bassist, auditioning at the suggestion of a co-worker who plays trumpet and keyboards. It’s a great experience to play with a good musician like him, and it challenges me to write music in a new style. The band tends to write music in the “Indie Pop” genre, incorporating some interesting and unexpected harmonic structures in songs. It keeps me on my toes as a musician since I need to compose bass lines against unusual chord changes. This is also an opportunity to develop some of my song fragments that always wind up sitting on the hard drive at home.

We have a gig on Wednesday 5/23 at The High Dive in Seattle. We’re first on the bill and will be starting at 9:00 PM. With some luck (and few rehearsals) we might be ready to debut a few new songs at this show. I’ll definitely be playing some songs with the Warwick Corvette, and perhaps experimenting with some new effects as well.

 My first gig with Black Celebration was last Saturday night and it went pretty well. I had a limited amount of preparation time, so it was a bit of a scramble to prepare for this show. The show was quite a lot of fun and I look forward to working with them again. The band members are good friends of mine, and I’ve worked with them all in numerous musical settings. It was a comfortable and professional atmosphere, and overall I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

Because Depeche Mode has such a dense texture in their arrangements, I was trying to be careful of filling too much space. In this context my guitar parts were generally percussive and sparse. I did a lot of palm muting to keep from muddying up the balance of the mix, and my effects patches were completely dry (no reverb or other guitar effects). The songs with signature guitar parts, such Personal Jesus and Enjoy The Silence were the most challenging to nail. For these, I approached the songs by transcribing the guitar parts myself to ensure accuracy. As much as I appreciate online sources of shorthand and guitar tablature, the versions made available online are never sufficiently accurate or complete.

Read the rest of this post for the set list and other details.

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Last night I was asked if I was available to play with local Depeche Mode tribute band “Black Celebration”. The show is tonight, and I’ll be spending a lot of today working on guitar parts for this gig. I have 24 hours in which to learn 24 songs (!). They use a tightly sequenced track structure for their music, and there is no room for error or variation. My strategy for learning the songs is to map out the main portions of the song arrangements using Nashville notation, a kind of musical shorthand developed by studio musicians. I’ll be doing some reference checks against my chart during tonight’s show, but overall I think everything will go pretty well.

If you happen to be out and about this evening, drop by the Chop Suey on Capital Hill in Seattle. We’re on last, which usually means a 10:30 PM downbeat.