Yep.. That’s right where I played this week with Steelin’ Dan. It’s county fair season, and those are always a hoot to play. We were set up on the main stage at the El Dorado County Fair. Just off stage right was the mechanical bull ride, and just off stage left was the wild animal show, complete with a monkey and a tiger. I’m not complaining. That’s just an awful lot of entertainment is all.
Sound and lights were great, and we had a lot of people there really excited to hear us sound like the old Steely Dan records.
Lorraine and I are playing with Joe Dolister this Saturday night in Nevada City. Come on out and have dinner or a drink at the Stonehouse, enjoy some music, and have some fun.
Thanks to everyone who was cheering for Jane Rivar (and me backing her up) at the Song of Peace Contest in Tipperary Town, Ireland this past weekend. We’ve been having a great time, and our performance was really fun and touched a lot of people. We took fourth in the contest. The winner was Derek Ryan, and you can check him out here.
I’ve been having fun in Dublin for the past few days. Here’s a photo I took of the sidewalk in Temple Bar this evening. It’s an obvious statement, but sometimes it’s nice to see a truth printed out right there in front of you where you might least expect it.
This didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped, but there is a thick layer of rosin on this fiddle, which had just been set down while the fiddler went for another pint after playing the hell out of it.
Here’s the view out my hotel window of the beautiful and historic Christ Church Cathedral.
We had some big fun this week getting some photos and video for the band. The audio demo is pretty cool. I’ve fooled a couple of friends with it already–they thought it was the original Steely Dan recordings–but nope, this is my band playing. Give these a listen and let me know what you think.
Black Cow
Reelin’ In The Years
Do It Again
Check out www.steelindan.com in the next few days for all the latest and greatest. If you’re around Sacramento this Saturday night, come on out and hear us at Ace’s at the Holiday Inn near Madison and I-80.
I took the family and went backpacking this week at the Channel Islands. It was beautiful and remote, and a great adventure for a few days. So, you get the catamaran out of Ventura, blast across the channel breaking through swells at 25 knots and looking for dolphin and whales, and then they drop you off at Santa Cruz Island, where you hike your stuff in about 4 miles to the camp. This was my idea of fun. Hard work, but we sure had a lot of fun together.
After that we had reserved a tour at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. I’ve wanted to go there ever since the Voyagers launched in 1977. What an amazing place. Voyager 1 is now almost 10 billion miles away, and they are still getting data from it. Here’s a pic of me geeking out at Space Flight Operations with Rob Manning, Chief Engineer of the Mars missions.
The B-52s have a new album coming out next week, but they have already released the whole thing for free on the internet. Someday I’ll understand all this new music business. It used to be that a concert tour was just an ad campaign for the record and the songs. Now it seems that it’s pretty much the other way around.
I spent last weekend working with the Perry Mills Project on our new recording. We finished tracking drums for the album and got reference tracks for everything else. So far so good — we got great sounds and had a lot of fun. If you click the image below, you’ll see the band’s page at SunSound Studio’s web site.
Thanks to Tony Finnerty for this and all his fine photos.
Well, I finally saw Once tonight. I wish I’d seen it earlier, but it actually comes at just the right time because it was very inspiring as I head into the studio this weekend, and to Ireland next month.
What a beautiful, wonderful movie. It’s like a movie version of one of those trompe l’oeil paintings. It’s so real in every way, yet spectacular and fascinating. Check it out. Here’s the signature tune from the film, performed at the Oscars.
Here are the Oscar speeches from these two. I think these are really touching.Glen Hansard:
Thanks! Go raibh mile maith agaibh. This is amazing. What are we doing here? This is mad. We made this film two years ago. We shot on two Handycams. It took us three weeks to make. We made it for a hundred grand. We never thought we would come into a room like this and be in front of you people. It’s been an amazing thing. Thanks for taking this film seriously, all of you. It means a lot to us. Thanks to the Academy, thanks to all the people who’ve helped us, they know who they are, we don’t need to say them. This is amazing. Make art. Make art. Thanks.
Marketa Irglova:
Hi everyone. I just want to thank you so much. This is such a big deal, not only for us, but for all other independent musicians and artists that spend most of their time struggling, and this, the fact that we’re standing here tonight, the fact that we’re able to hold this, it’s just to prove no matter how far out your dreams are, it’s possible. And, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream and don’t give up. And this song was written from a perspective of hope, and hope at the end of the day connects us all, no matter how different we are. And so thank you so much those who helped us along way. Thank you.
