I listened to Manu Chao last week on our trip to the mid-west and remembered how great his music is. He does a lot with drums and percussion without playing them in the traditional way. That’s what I had in mind with this song. I actually started with the drums and then wrote the music and words.
Also today is my parents 50th Wedding Anniversary!
One of my happy songs hasn’t come out in a while, so I guess I was due. I actually wrote totally different words to this one but after I played the drum part, I just wasn’t feeling them. This was the next batch of words I wrote for it and it seems to fit a little better. I probably should have written a song about Shaq going to the Celtics. Shouldawouldacoulda.
The golf tournament was fun. I played great for about 11 holes making 4 birdies and an eagle in that span but I was mediocre after that. I couldn’t seem to get over the hump. We had a whole lot of fun though and I played a lot of tunes with my friend Will for some folks on Lake Rabun. My golf songs were part of the agenda of the golf themed weekend of course.
Anyway, I dug back into my archives for the music of this one. This is a song Parakeet Nelson never released. This was recorded at Elixir in Athens, Georgia around 2003. Today, I took the music and re-recorded a few parts, re-wrote the lyrics and resurrected it from the dead. Which is one of the things I love about this format, now I can let the world hear John Wayne Tuggle’s slide guitar, Dwayne Wallace’s bass guitar, Dave Brockway’s drums and John Kell’s sax.
Today was the first time that I’ve had a true collaboration while writing my songs for 2010. My talented musician friend from Asheville, Chris Campbell came over and we pretty much wrote this song in a few minutes. I was jamming on my mini keyboard and he was playing guitar. I had written the words before he got here but modified them as we went along.
We started with the guitar and mini keys playing with a click track, then I did the drums and he played the bass part. I then did my vocal with him doing the backing and we finished up with Chris playing the lead guitar.
I hope to do more songs like this. I have a tendency to work by myself and be a recluse, so collaborating is a welcome change.
I had a good time recording some friends of mine today. Wicked Addiction, a heavy metal band out of Hickory also features my bass player Chris Singleton on drums. He rocks it too. It was fun wearing my engineer hat again for the weekend.
Somehow I managed to get up early and write this one. I just got a new analog synthesizer for Chris Cates & the Master Plan live performances and I got to use it on this. I’m now going to be doing synth solos live along with the harmonica and guitar solos. For you techies, I got a Akai MINIAK and I’m liking it so far.
“Six Second Delay” is my Coldplay inspired song for the month. It’s got surreal imagery about the vagueness of life.
Today is a joyous day, Jason Peeler came up and finished all of the drums on our new album “Follow the Feeling”. Now I’ve just got to do my work on guitars, vocals and keyboards and get Chris Singleton and John Kell here to do their parts and we’ll have it done.
Hopefully we can release it by March!
Today’s song takes me back to my elementary school days at Forest Hill. I still think about playing outside and down in the woods. I think I did actually marry a lucky girl in the 2nd grade, luckily we signed a pre-nup.
I’m still running behind but I did write this yesterday. I didn’t get around to recording it until this morning. It took about an hour to record which is still a little longer than I would like to take but my drums are getting a lot better already.
I’ve played and recorded drums five times this week which is five times more than I played them all last year. This blog is definitely going to get my off instruments more tight.
“Good Liver” comes from something I misread on a medical flyer while recycling the other day. It turned into a funny song with a tragic message about that friend of yours who loves to party.
I finally broke out the distortion pedal on this one.
Chris Cates .com 