Master Guitar
Master Guitar News - 2005
Dec 21, 2005: Working on a new section for the site: PUBLICITY. I've got a file cabinet drawer full of scrapbook stuff - articles, reviews, pictures etc. from various newspapers and magazines over the years. Never made a scrapbook. Now I know what I can do with it, I'll put it on the web!
If you've read the forum at VS-Planet.com you'll know that I got my recorder back. I had to start over on the CD so now I'm looking at releasing it in the spring or summer of 2006. That's show biz. One nice thing about the situation though. When I'm producing myself in order to maintain some modicum of objectivity I follow the 90% rule. If I think the song is 90% there, then it's done. To deal with the other 10% would involve obsessing over minutia, I might NEVER get it done, and if I did get it done 99.9% of the people wouldn't know the difference. BUT NOW, since I'm forced to do the whole thing over, I can deal with some of that 10%! Little things that bugged me that no one but myself would notice on the original recordings I can now "fix" because I have to do it all over anyway.
The gig at Plaza III has been going well, I enjoy the room. It's high-class. Very quiet, I can actually play with some finesse there. Barley's on Wednesday nights is not looking so good - I can't see that one continuing for much longer.
I've had a teacher from Seattle and another one from New York contact me after finding the scam page I put up in September. It seems Mr. Nojeto is continuing to run the same scam without even changing his name. These teachers googled Williams Nojeto's name and the masterguitar scam page was #1 in the rankings! That's awesome!
Oct 9, 2005: The gig at Barley's on Wednesday nights looks like it will last a while. Ditto for the new O'Dowd's in Zona Rosa on Fridays. The gig schedule is looking better than it has for the last few months.
Sept 25, 2005: I've had guy attempt to run a scam on me - it makes for a somewhat entertaining read, I think. Check it out:http://www.masterguitar.com/html/scam1.htm
Sept 23, 2005: Bad, bad, bad! My new recorder is down. See the forum at VS-Planet.com
Sept 5, 2005: Played the KC Jazz and Blues Festival yesterday. It was the most musician-friendly festival I've ever played. No humping gear for 3 miles in the heat. No fighting with security to get backstage. No Johnny-on-the-Spots. People right there to take my gear to the stage from the time I drove up to the front entrance . Air conditioned quarters (with a bar!) for the musicians. Nice vans that transported us to the stage and picked us up. REAL BATHROOMS! The sound was awesome, the sound guys knew what they were doing, the stage was BIG. The stage was shaded. The stage was well constructed. I've played on some mighty shaky stages. I'm sure the lights were great too but we played in the afternoon so no stage lights for us. Kudos to Mark Valentine who put it all together. Check out some festival pics at: http://masterguitar.com/html/photos.htm
Also - I'm in the middle of recording my next CD. I'm doing it on a Roland VS2480DVD. I was hoping that my experience with Cakewalk would carry over but the Roland software is proprietary so there has been more of a learning curve than what I'd hoped. Things are coming together pretty well on it though. I'm almost done tracking. Spent last week bringing soloists in to put some solos on various things - Phil Brenner (saxes) Stan Kessler (flugelhorn) and Kent Means (vibes). The music is acoustic guitar-based singer/songwriter type stuff - think James Taylor, David Wilcox, or Van Morrison. 14 tunes - 12 originals and two covers. Hope to have it out by Christmas but we'll see. The photo to the right is my little home studio. It's actually a finished garage so it's a medium sized room but most of my activity is right where I'm sitting. Notice the 7-string on the stand. That's the EuDaly Special by Wendler Instruments.
Feb 2, 2005: Check this out. A press release for the EuDaly Special by Wendler Instruments - that's Dave Wendler who built my 7-string.
http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2005/EuDaly-Special.html
Jan 31, 2005: This weekend was the 4th show I've done with Artist John Bukaty. It's a performance art kind of thing where John paints in tandem with the band playing. It's really cool and I've enjoyed it every time. John is very affected by the music, he claims he HAS to have it. We change up styles and subject matter, mood and tempo and so on and watch how the music and atmosphere affects the painting. He uses some kind of acrylic, the paintings are generally a pretty good size, about 4 x 6 or larger and very colorful. Generally they are not abstract but impressionistic, many times he actually paints the band.
He works very quickly and when the band quits playing the painting is done! There have been times when we decided the painting wasn't quite done and so we would extend the song, play another solo or whatever. Usually 2 to 4 paintings in a 3 or 4 hour period. So far I've made it into 3 Bukaty paintings! The paintings are for sale and generally are in the neighborhood of $1000.00. It's quite an artsy scene - people stand around and watch John paint. That sounds trite, I can't really give descriptive justice to what happens. It really is performance art. It's pretty fascinating.
Dec 30, 2004: The gig at Union Station is over before it began. New manager, all gigs there off the book, the agent has to renegotiate everything. That's show biz! Among other reasons, that's why I teach!
Dec 13, 2004: I received my new 7-string guitar today from Dave Wendler. He's a luthier in Lawrence Ks. who solicited me for an endorsement deal several months ago. (http://www.electrocoustic.com/) His guitars are unlike anything I've seen, ergonomically speaking. They're very light, extremely thin solid bodies with the back being concave. The Jay EuDaly Special (dig it!) will be offered in 6 and 7 string versions. I've tuned the 7th string to an A. It will take some getting used to but I think I can do it.
Dec 6, 2004: Gonna start a new gig every Tuesday at the Union Cafe in Union Station. It will be solo jazz guitar accompaniment to lunchtime fine dining! 11am to 1pm starting the first Tuesday in Jan.
Oct 4, 2004: Started gigging with Valentine's new R&B dance band this last weekend. "Valentine's Old School Knights". I think it's going to work fine. Back to the Jackson Strat and earplugs!