Mickey V and Me

Carlisle, Pennsylvania

24/07/13

Well, you don’t see that every day. Whilst buying tools from The Home Depot I witnessed an Amish guy buying a Black and Decker power drill. And I thought those guys did everything by hand. Maybe he was doing a homer or maybe he was just downright lazy.

Anyway, I would like to introduce you to the amazing Mickey V, my guitar tech and breakfast buddy. Now as you can see Mickey is no Amish guy, in fact he’s never even bought a single product from Amway in his life. Here he is with me and my road worn Fret King Éclat after working hard on it all afternoon. He modifies all my guitars on this tour. First of all he took the P90 out of the neck cavity. I re-rimmed the holes in the pickup cover (by hand, no power tools) to accommodate the Strat pickup which came out of the red guitar. I then sealed it in with RTV silicone. The license plate came from a cereal box and the pressure gauge switch cover was prized from and old fire engine in a junk yard back in the Redwoods. Thanks to Mark for scavenging.

Mickey’s adventures in Happy Hour Land will be coming to a blog near you soon.

That is all.

Four Winds Casino on the shore of Lake Michigan, New Buffalo.

Star Date 21/07/13

The Romulans have taken over the………………………………hey wait a minute. I’m in the middle of a Vulcan nightmare.

The casino is massive. The food is obscene and I have never seen so many one legged people in one room, what are they doing, selling of their legs to pay gambling debts.

The show was held in the Hard Rock Café and it was very emotional seeing Stuart’s Moon guitar on the wall. It did initially remind me of happy times as it was made during the recording of The Seer album back in 85/86. But seeing the guitar close up, it looked like an empty shell. It was a bit beaten up and weather checked. The nut was broken. The strings and machine heads were old and rusted and the frets were so badly worn I don’t think you would be able to coax a note out of it. Shame really as it was a fantastic guitar back in the day. It now resides high up on the wall next to Paul McCartney’s guitar.

That is all.

16/7/2013

Little Rock, Arkansas

Well, I thought Austin was weird but how about this, land lubber? The good bus Titanic II limped heroically into the parking lot. Captain Jan and I were talking about mooring there the night before and the only connection we had with the town was the infamous pirate lover, ‘Connie from Little Rock’. Anyway, as I walked down the gangplank, I saw this elderly woman hobble towards me. This was no mermaid or siren I can tell you. Scared, I made a hasty retreat back to the ship but she got me in a pincer movement and tortured me for group information. I told her we were just a bunch of lost mariners stranded far from home but she sussed that we were a tour bus. She then introduced herself as Connie, the groupie from Little Rock. Shaken, I immediately piped myself back aboard and called Captain Jan. He came out and said hello, shook her hand and asked how she was. It had been around 20 years since their last encounter and after enquiring about her wellbeing she enquired, “Did I blow you?” To which Captain Jan replied “he couldn’t remember”.

As I have no photographic evidence of this encounter, here is a picture taken by a hobo on LSD of me playing Roy Orbison’s guitar outside RCA Victor studios in Music Row, Nashville.

Rock ‘n’ Roll is afloat (just)

That is all.

14/07/13

Dealey Plaza

Dallas, Texas

Texas. What a state to be in!

Well boys and girls, we survived the 45 hour journey form Aspen to Houston in 104 degrees heat and arrived exactly 30 minutes before show time. The support band loaned us their drum set and there are now no fat people on the bus.

Houston, you were fabulous. Austin, ditto. Dallas was a blast. The A/C people came down and did their repairs on the bus so at least we are not sweating like ladies of the night in a house of ill repute.

Everything’s bigger and better in Texas, and don’t get me started on the size of those food portions either. The waste product coming from my nether region is so big I was thinking of selling it to the Royal Navy so they could send it oversees as a task force.

Houston was the hottest and sweatiest. Dallas was great for the historical importance and head wound thing, but Austin was by far the funniest. I was watching a band in the club next door to the Belmont when a guy wanders in dressed as a panda. He shimmied across the dance floor and started hitting on some good looking big girl. For some strange reason, the front of house engineer took exception to this and ran across the floor and punched him square in the face. The panda guy retaliated and as the two of them rolled about the floor tearing lumps out of each other, the band played on. As I retired to the bus I was accosted by a heavy set Texan broad dressed as the statue of liberty and her boyfriend who demanded that we drive the bus to Motherwell, Scotland.

Austin, you’re my kind of town.

That is all.

12/07/13

Just outside Quanah, Texas

Houston, we have a problem.

Well, it’s 104 degrees aboard Apollo 18 today. We are on a long journey from Aspen, Colorado to Houston, Texas and the heat in this tin can is unbearable. To make matters worse, we nearly got hit by a bloody crop duster just outside of Childress. It was so close that Ray, our new driver, discovered that farts have lumps. Both toilet and AC units have blown. The heat and smell is unbearable and we now resemble the cast of ‘Ain’t Half Hot Mum’ with Derek excelling in the role of Lofty. Because of these problems, our journey to Houston has been put in jeopardy. Our ETA is 20.00 hours and our onstage time is 23.00 hours. We may have to drive to Dallas and abandon the command module, rent a new smaller module and drive like the wind to make show time. This plan is doable as long as the supporting artists lend us their drum kit. Let’s hope they are not a Lawrence Welk tribute act.

That is all.

05/07/13

On the Queen Elizabeth II Highway from Calgary to Edmonton

Canada

Just thought I would share this picture of my effect pedals for all the tech heads who have requested the lowdown.

As I had to travel light I had to ditch my MXR Pitch Transposer and Line 6 delay rack unit/pedal board system and come up with something new. After trawling the local music shops the solution came from Guitar Guitar in the shape of a TC Nova multi effects unit. The Nova has all the delay and harmonizing settings I need and has enough storage space for my programmed patches. The unit took a bit of time to learn but after a few hours it became very familiar, the only drawback that I had was that it took too long to move up the banks (approximately 1 sec) which seems like 10 seconds when you are playing a live set. I overcame this by ripping the Midi buddy form my old setup and MIDI’d it up to the Nova. Now I have instant patch changing. The on-board tuner is sufficient but because my eyesight is bad I decided to buy a stand-alone TC poly tuner which has a better display. All this was carried across the Atlantic as hand luggage and unlike my guitar arrived safe and sound. The first thing I had to do was mount all this shit onto a footboard. I found a sheet of high grade marine plywood lying behind a skip next to our hotel at Newark Airport, Mickey V then purchased a hand saw and proceeded to cut the ply to the appropriate size. The board was then painted matt black and day glo tape was added to the edges whilst the paint was still tacky. A few layers of gloss added the final protection, then the units were attached using Velcro technology. At each corner you will notice the anti-Mike Peters tank traps. These large hoops basically stop our wandering singer from standing on my unit and changing my presets. It was either that or bamboo spikes covered in monkey shit but he drew the line at that.

That is all.

01/07/13

What does a bear do in the woods?

Myers Flat,Humboldt County (in the shade of the giant sequoias)

Does a bear shit in the woods? Yes he bloody does, and how do I know? Well I just stood in one. A big pile of shit that I’ll never forget. I’ve been in Big Country for 30 odd years so I know a lot about shit. Christ! I should have been a plumber, Hell! I know more about shit than Davy Broon and he knows a shitload about shit.

I’m sitting in a café in Red Crest, 34 miles south of Eureka in the Avenue of the Giants and I am looking for Big Foot. Unfortunately the only wildlife I can see at the moment is a road weary rock band and a couple of manky raccoons.

The Sequoia trees in front of me are indeed giants, 350 feet in height and over 2000 years old. These trees are so wide; tunnels have been carved in them so you can drive through them.

Jan and I hitched a ride on the back of a pickup truck to witness this marvellous site. Meanwhile back at the campsite Jamie and Mickey V are preparing their latest gastronomical experiment for the BBQ. Road kill Kebabs again

All in all a great day, I never did see Big Foot but I most definitely stood in his shit.

That is all.

30/06/13

Weapons of Choice USA Part 1

Like I said in an earlier blog, my Fret King yellow guitar had the bridge damaged en route from UK to USA, basically the wrap around bridge had been hit and one of the retaining bolts came loose and got lost. This resulted in the bridge coming away from the body and rendering it unplayable. Tone Pros were kind enough to send me a new bridge free of charge but it wouldn’t arrive for a week. I used Mickey V’s (guitar tech) strat which only had one pickup up working for first few shows which got us through but because the neck pickup didn’t work I couldn’t use the ebow so The Storm and Hail & Farewell suffered because of this.

So anyway, let me introduce you to the red guitar.

The red guitar cost me $149 in Sam Ash’s music store, as we had limited funds because it was our first week on the road I was worried about paying any more than $700 for a decent guitar. I made my way to the used section and came across it lurking in the background, Born in Japan in 1986. Squier guitars from that period are famous for being extremely well made and as good as, if not better than the USA models. This model’s neck reminded me of my green 61 Strat that I got during the Peace In Our Time album. The guitar felt that it had only been used by a bedroom player as all the frets were in good condition, a few dings and scratches on the body were also evident. There is no scratch plate and the configuration is humbucker at bridge and 2 single coils in mid and neck position. The guitar has a floating classic Strat tremelo and 3 mini switches for changing pickups. I immediately saw the potential in the guitar and went about doing my usual customisation. Due to being in America we usually get a lot of interference coming through the amps at venues. This is due to the lighting in buildings and different voltage. I found an EMG active single coil in Leesburg for $33 and my good pal Tom gave me another EMG humbucker out of his old Ibanez.

I ripped out the 3 mini switches as I found them confusing and filled the holes with 8 ball valve caps from an auto parts store. I then had the tone control removed and inserted a Gibson style toggle switch to control the pickups. I don’t use middle position pickup so that was removed and the cavity was covered over by an Altoids peppermint tin lid. The tremolo unit was floating but as I don’t use a tremolo, I screwed the springs up tight and turned it into a hard tail. The machine heads are fine and just needed a little tightening up. To finish the custom job I added a decal of a rose again from an auto parts store. Needless to say the guitar saved my bacon and sounds fantastic.
More on effects and backline soon

That is all.

28/06/13

Plectrums and Poker Chips

Well you may think that the boys in plaid have been taking it easy over the past few days but nothing can be further from the truth. Jamie, Derek and Bruce have been as busy doing an Ocean’s Eleven all through the state of Nevada.

Lake Tahoe, Reno and Vegas were all taken to the cleaners by the ‘Devils in skirts’, and boy did they come up trumps. Both Bruce and Derek got heavily involved in a Mexican domino ring and ended up beating Johnny Gringo ‘The Domino Kid’ in a grudge match that very nearly drew blood. Jamie on the other hand got roped into a crap game that was so crap he won 100 bucks. All in all a vast amount was taken in by Sir Derek of Forbes and his merry men in a game that was most definitely crap for the casinos but very lucrative for the check shirt brigade.

Because of this windfall the boys will be handing out poker chips instead of plectrums at the end of the show

That is all.

19/06/13

On tour bus driving through Mohawk Valley en route to Yuma.

‘En Route’, 2 groovy French words meaning ‘on or along the way’.

Derek’s on the road again wearing different clothes again, so sung Manfred Mann and his amazing earth band back in the 70’s. Well here’s another song. ‘Don’t go down to Tuba city baby, they got 2 time zones and no beer’. Have I got the blues, you’re damn right.

Ok Boys and girls we are coming to the end of week 2 and the journey continues, we have cut the umbilical cord from the bus and are out on our own for the next 2 days. First stop is Durango where we couldn’t find the kid but we did rent a Ford Econoline.

First stop is Four Corners Monument where you can be in Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona all at the one time. Jamie is no stranger to this sensation as he is used to being in a few states all in one day.

We drive west on the 160 briefly stopping at Baby Rocks to shoot a video for ‘In A Broken Promise Land’ then head north for Monument Valley, where the earth meets the sky. Home of the Navajo and in the words of the great John Wayne ‘God’s treasure’.
It’s hot, it’s sticky and my scrotum is painfully trapped between my buttocks and perineum. I desperately need to get of the Econoline and adjust myself. We have all seen the pictures of Monument Valley a thousand times but you have to be there in person to witness the panorama.

It’s getting late so we head back on the road, destination Tuba City Arizona. We arrived at the hotel around 21.00 hours yet when I walked over the street to the truck stop it was nearly 22.00 hours. Arizona does not observe Daylight Time, though the Navajo reservation does. In practice the town is a bit varied on this time zone thing, tribal offices and schools observe daylight savings time while most businesses do not. This is a fantastic excuse for being late for the bus next morning.

I ask the big guy behind the counter with the Mohawk where I can get a beer. He tells me it is not allowed in town and if we are caught drinking alcohol then we are likely to be thrown in jail for the night.
Sod it; I’ll go to Denny’s

That is all.