Notes
Incubated in Baton Rouge Blue Room Studio by Tom and a few select guests over the time frame of 2008-2010 and expertly tweezered, mixed, mastered, and generally glossified to a shining lustre by Devon Kirkpatrick at Sockit Studio, this Album represents the cumulative shape of everything that ever stimulated the cilia along my cochlea's length to vibrate and reward the brain with a soothing bath of endorphins. A summary of Southern stylings from the East Coast to the Gulf Coast to the West Coast flavors in soulful rockin' jazzy fatback funk with all manner of slide guitars from the Firebird (both white (as pictured on the front cover) and Dachshund/Doberman (back cover)), Les Paul, Stratocaster, Telecaster, Pete Andersen, Flatroc (my new fave...) solid and semi-hollow electric families and the Dobro and Martin acoustic families. I started this sonic sculpture as a solo endeavor while recuperating from surgery and then got tired of myself, so I invited a few friends over to sing along (Patty Houk and Debbie Landry) and/or inhale and exhale over vibrating reeds (Dave 'The Tube Guy' Long on harmonica and amp repairs...) while the stereo stew of Hammond C-3 organ thru a spinning Leslie speaker and several sorts of synthesized waveforms in both real and imaginary instrument incarnations thickened the roux in this gumbo while the percussive parts pounded a fatback funk in the foreground (please pardon the potentially annoying annihilated alliteration...). Track tales: track 1. 'You're The Star' - I always like to start off with a bouncy, fun vibe and this is yet another of my Little Feat-influenced groove things (RIP Richie Hayward... a huge influence on my drumming!). Patty and I do the Slim Harpo tune "I'm a King Bee" and it's her fave blues tune and that playful lyric style stuck in my mind and I wanted to get some of that spirit in here, hence the hive and the honey jar. The Reverend Pete Anderson guitar gets a workout in open G slide in a little tip of the hat to George Thorogood sonically and Johnny Winter melodically and Lowell George methodically... Bill Payne's Wurlitzer electric piano stylings (... all hail the 'King of Wurly"...) weave their way in and out here and there in combination with a couple cheap tricks provided by yours truly... track 2. 'Gotta Get You By My Side' - a bit of daydreaming about what it might be like to be involved with a 'celebutante' and be pursued by pesky paparazzi while living the 'reality-show' life and then waking up from the nightmare. No Stone left unturned here - Keef chords in open E, Charlie's Gretsch kit with the signature tom-tomming and press rolls, Bill's bouncing basslines that jump registers, MJ's 'outlook' and chicken neck, and occasional Nicky flicks of the wrist on some barrelhouse piano thingies... and some Duane-ish slide thrown in for 'good measure'... ;) ... track 3. 'Gimme Back My Bullets' - Lynyrd Skynyrd cover - I got to meet Gary and Allen when I lived in Jax and we opened for them and it struck me how funky their interaction was with their guitar parts, and I always liked this tune, so I tried to put some of my funk side forward on this re-casting of the tune. Kudos to Carmine Appice for the displaced ride cymbal bell accents that found their way down from New York to Florida and to Artimus Pyle for the 'ruffage' (gotta love a bad drumming pun....) and Jack Bruce for the displaced bass syncopation and Leon for the bass foundation. The percolating sounds that abound around the edges are from my slide guitar run thru the Pigtronix Mothership (ring modulation in a LS cover... yeah, baby) and a Roland/Boss Slicer pedal (instant Baba... get it? LS opened for The Who ... it made sense to me....). I tweaked a few words to personalize the song as I was recovering from prostate cancer surgery, and it was a theme of rebirth and restoration for me at the time! Track 4. 'Chevrolet / Chevrolet' Medley - 1st Chevy is a Robben Ford & The Blue Line cover and the 2nd Chevy is
