Dudley's Studio Pt 1 ~Transition~

 

“I want you, (to) show me the way,” (this thing works),is a phrase that kept running through my head as I tried to figure out the complicated connections of the SSL! Progress has been slow. Reading the manual on-line. So:

 

The next step was to unpack all of my studio gear. After 30 years of recording at home, I have amassed a HUGE amount of cables, connectors, power adaptors and miscellaneous gadgets. Question: Do I really need 135 RCA cables…?

 

I have a large pile of midi cables for someone that doesn’t play keyboards. It took me a few hours to sort through all of the old stuff. Some I trashed; but I kep most of it. If some obscure cable or connector is needed, chances are I have one, or maybe even two or three.

It is nice that I can set up all my amps at once! Lots of room for that. The studio is wired so that I can be in the control room, and plug either my instrument or speaker cable into the wall and patch it to any amp or speaker cabinet in the tracking room, and a few other rooms in the house.



As I said in the last blog, I needed help getting any sound through the speakers- the mound of cables under the console looks like a barber shop floor on the Predator’s home planet…



When I was able to set up my computer, I decided to get a jam playlist going on iTunes and see if I could mic an amp up. Amp> microphone > mic input #1 on the panel > input of channel #1 on the SSL… and… BOOM, there it was. Sounded great, too. Nice pre-amp and EQ on each channel in the board. It may sound ridiculous, but I was very proud of this minor accomplishment.

I was a bit surprised that Mr. Frampton left behind almost all of the studio furniture, which includes a beautiful leather couch, tables, lamps and a couple of Tibetan rugs. Apparently his new studio is furnished. BONUS. Lots of bonuses with this studio (you'll see). The Control room has a great vibe- lots of warm colors, dimmers on all of the lights, and a big window that overlooks the back yard. The house faces west by southwest, and there is great light late in the day.

I can't wait to get this thing dialed and get to work!

Part II - Moving In

We moved in to our new house mid-August. Exactly one week before the kids started school. “Ready, FIRE, Aim” is what I called this process. A bit sloppy, but it worked. (And no one was injured.)

Mr. Frampton was on tour until the end of August, and asked if he could leave his studio equipment in the house until mid-September. This included (not kidding) 30 guitar amplifiers, speaker cabinets, tape machines, drum sets, cables, microphones, etc… . He had to finish the tour before he could get organized in Nashville, and send for his gear.

This wasn’t much of a problem, and I was happy to comply because it was a huge task to unbox and put away all of our stuff, let alone start on the studio.

I have had a few houses over the last 25 years, and I have to say that Mr. Frampton was the most gracious homeowner I have ever bought a house from. It takes years of living in it to master all of the idiosyncracies of a home, and this one has a lot of 'personality'. Alarms, coded doors, 6,423 light switches, sensors and a 13 zone sprinkler system posed unusual challenges, but he was immediately available to help me figure everything out.

It is a bit strange, having one of your guitar heroes help you get the sound system in the basement working.  Over the phone. On a tour bus somewhere in Texas.

When Frampton's tour was finished, a production service was scheduled to come and remove all of the gear, and Peter himself would be here as well to make sure they had gotten everything.

Two huge box trucks arrived, and six burly dudes began packing up the studio, except for the mixing console. It turns out that he would be moving his recording gear into a studio in Nashville, but they already had a on just like it down there, and a bit newer. I made a deal to keep the SSL here in the house. (Way cool.) Now he didn’t have to remove the windows to get it out of the room!

So the doorbell rings in the early afternoon, and here he is: Mr. Peter Frampton! My wife and one of my daughters answered the door with me and we said “Welcome home!” Hahaha...

I found some scattered personal items of his around the house, and made sure he got them. He showed me a few things that I should know around the house- like an alarm linked to a water sensor that will warn you if the basement is flooding, and where the hide-a-key was stashed. He hung around for a few hours and we got to chat about the house, did he like Cincinnati and his killer Guitar Circus tour.

I realized that we had some things in common: we both save EVERYTHING! Every manual, every remote control, any kind of gizmo adaptor. (See wifey? It's not just ME!) And dimmers- they're everywhere. I love dimmers on the lights. You can really dial in the mood with the proper lighting. First thing I did when we moved into my last house was to put dimmers on about 20 light switches. And the obvious similarities; we both are songwriters and lead guitarists, gear heads, and lovers of German cars.

What impressed me about the man most was that he is completely down-to-earth, and one of the most gracious gentlemen I have ever met. Not only has been wildly successful in his career, but he sets a great example as a human being. He is generous and kind of spirit. It would be great to get to know him better.

(It must be tough being a celebrity and having to frequently interface with people that may treat you only like what they picture you to be- instead of who you really are.)

Anyway, back to the studio: with everything cleared out I could start moving my stuff in and try to make noise in there. Yeeha!

Funny thing is, it took a visit from his local sound engineer to make the proper connections so I could listen to iTunes or a CD in there! My old studios were like riding a bike, and this new one is like flying a helicopter. How do you turn this damn thing on?

~Steep learning curve in the road ahead~

“Peter Frampton Has Moved To Nashville”

“Cincinnati has lost its British rock star. Peter Frampton has moved back to Nashville…”

On Jan. 23, he wrote on his Facebook page that furniture was starting to arrive in his new digs.
He tweeted:

“Sunny Cinci in my studio again. Have to move all this to Nashville. Console orig came in the window. Will have to go out same way. Oiy!”

From the Cincinnati Arts Blog: http://cincinnati.com/blogs/arts/2013/02/05/peter-frampton-has-moved-to-nashville/

Of course, everyone in my old neighborhood knew that Mr. Frampton lived close by, but exactly where was a closely guarded secret. And even if you knew the address, good luck finding it. GPS’s misplace it. Even the Fed Ex people have a hard time with it.

He listed the home for sale in June of 2012, and it sat there on the market for an entire year! Turns out no one really knew what to make of the fact that it has a HUGE recording studio in the basement.

What does all this have to do with me?

Turns out my wife and daughters enjoyed Cincinnati, and our visit with our family. So much so, that they really wanted to move.

In June.

And school starts in August...

So we looked at a bunch of houses and I immediately knew which one was Frampton’s. (The guitar amp collection was the giveaway.) But it didn’t have a pool, or much of a yard, so we kept looking. But compared to all the other houses we saw, it really stood out; it has a great vibe to it. Nice big decks that face the woods, and a fantastic kitchen and family room. Add to that the world-class recording studio, and it was hard to deny that this was the one for us.

My brother remarked that there is only ONE person that would appreciate this house, and possibly want to live in Cincinnati, and that was ME. He was right. What would Joe Blow do with the studio, set up foosball and ping-pong?! That would be a crime.

I have always had a studio of some sort wherever I lived, since I got my first multi-track recorder in 1984. I have made do in boxy rooms, put amps under the stairs and in closets, and even recorded drums in a tiny hallway. Never did I imagine that I would have a studio in my house that was every bit as good as Seattle’s Studio X or London Bridge where I have recorded most of my albums.

You think to yourself, “one day I'll…” and then you wake up and that day is today.
As an artist, the coolest thing about this whole deal is that what Mr. Frampton started will continue, full speed ahead!

Spring 2013 European Tour Blog

This was our second tour of Europe, the first one completed in January of 2012. All of the shows on the first tour were in the Netherlands, thanks to a booking agent that saw some promise in us. He only books shows in the Netherlands. On this return trip however, he managed to get us a show in Belgium, and one in Germany, outside of his normal venues.

Touring outside the states is logistically challenging: it’s not easy to take all of your instruments, amplifiers and merchandise on the airplane with you. So, I packed a few effects pedals, a box of strings and slung my guitar over my shoulder and called it good.

Luckily, I was introduced to a German guitar amp builder who likes to work with American artists touring the EU. He makes fantastic amps, and was even willing to let me borrow his Les Paul knock off in addition to his amp head and speaker cabinet. Ralf from Tonehunter amps also assembled a pedalboard with some of his and some of my pedals. He knows that it is tough to get started playing in Europe, and he is willing to help artists get started. He also benefits from people seeing players use his gear. Ralf’s equipment is fantastic, and I even bought one of his amps after this tour was finished and he’s shipping it to North Carolina for me! It is really important to have these kinds of relationships to get the ball rolling for a foreign act.


                         ~Tonehunter Head and Cabinet~

On the first tour we hired a Dutch drummer, Theo Thumper to round out our three piece band. This time we decided to bring Chris Leighton from Seattle with us to pound the skins. This means that we had to rent a larger vehicle, get more beds in hotels and find a drum kit! Luckily on the last trip we made a great friend from one of the venues we played in eastern Holland who is a drummer. Anko Lammers from Almelo was kind enough to let us use his kit, stay at his house and rehearse before the tour. To us, Anko is a great example of the people you get to know through touring over there – he loves music and making new friends. Even though his club (Café Dr. Rock) closed down, he was happy to see us again. We love Anko and his family; they are fun to hang with. He actually wears wooden shoes. (Size 13) Also, he has quite a collection of Whiskeys and Scotch- and we helped him deplete his supply! Whaaaaahaha.


                                           ~Anko's Shoes~

After flying into Cologne, Germany, I spent the day with Ralf from Tonehunter. We got the guitar gear together and he also lent us a bass amp for John to use. The record label sent CDs to his place to sell at the shows, and the t-shirts (made in Germany) were shipped there as well. The next day, I loaded up the VW Transporter and headed for Geleen, NL to visit some other friends we made on the last tour to pick up the Left For Dead CDs and Highway 99 DVDs we left with them. After a nice breakfast, I headed to Schipol airport in Amsterdam to pick up John and Chris.

We spent the first night at Anko’s place, rehearsed and sampled some of Anko’s whiskey. He has a nice apartment above a garage-like structure on his property where his band rehearses.



The next day we headed south to a town called Groesbeek to play in a small bar where the Bluesmoose radio show interviewed me and recorded us playing about 15 songs. (Note to self: do this towards the end of the next tour after we hit our stride.) A few people came to watch the taping, and dropped a few Euros into a hat for us. We stayed above the bar in guest rooms that night. It is common to play a bar that is owned and operated by a family that lives in the building. The atmosphere in these venues is not unlike playing at their house- each bar has it’s own unique personality that is a combination of the owner’s tastes and the history of the building itself. Most of these are several hundred years old! Another example of Dutch hospitality--they fed us before and after the show! The after show meal was a huge pile of different sausages, not sure what animal or what part of the animal was used, better not to ask.

The next day we drove through some farm fields by a few Belted Galloway cows. You don’t see those very often. We hit a music store in Rijmegan (try to pronounce that correctly) to get a couple of drum heads and a tambourine stick on our way back to Anko’s place in Vriezenveen. (We called it freezing brain.) That night we played at Café Belgie in Almelo. We had a nice crowd that night – the place was 75% full, and had a nice stage and monitors.

It was a short drive the next day westward to Dordrecht to play the Jazzpodium, a blues and jazz place we played last year. They were happy to have us back, and said we had made a good impression last time. I was a bit surprised by this- they have a lot of quieter acts, and if you read the blog from the trip in 2012, you’ll remember that they have the sound meter that will cut the power if you are too loud. They had to disconnect it last time to get us through the gig.

The place was packed, and we played a couple of encores. We stayed again at the historic Hotel Dordrecht which is not the plushest place you will ever stay, but has an unmistakably old word charm to it. Dordrecht has some of the oldest architecture we saw, and many of the brick houses that line the streets are canted at odd angles because of their age and the soft ground. Chris and John climbed the 200 foot tower of Grote Kerk, a massive cathedral built in the 1400’s, and then found themselves locked inside. Luckily they were rescued and were able to play the gig.

The next morning we headed east into Germany to Isernhagen, a town just outside of Hannover, where the record label M.i.G. has its offices. We were looking forward to our first show in Germany, but were disappointed to hear that the attendance would be low because two German soccer teams were playing that night in the international championship in London.

But there were about 70 that attended, and they struck me as the ‘hard core’ blues rockers. A couple of them had the first Left For Dead CD’s that I had made and sold to a German mail order catalog before I signed the deal with M.i.G. We were not prepared for multiple encores, and only played two. Next time we will have 3 or 4 up our sleeve.

The venue in Isernhagen, the Blues Garage is owned and operated by a guy named Henry (we nicknamed him Baron von Henry), who built the venue in an industrial warehouse that he was using to store his massive American car collection. He has a neat old Cadillac limo and a Cadillac branded mobile home, among other things. He struck me as part Dale Chihuly, who almost obsessively collects all kinds of strange items. The stage is built on top of a ‘67 Caddy, and the soundboard is housed in an old Pontiac. We stayed at his “Motel California” where he lives, which looks like a traditional motel, but is only for bands. I haven’t seen a better collection of rock and blues memorabilia outside of Seattle’s Experience Music Project!

Each room was decorated with a dense collection of guitars, posters, amplifiers, movie projectors, etc. all of which worked. John stayed in the “Southern Rock Room”, decorated with paraphernalia from Dickey Betts, Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet, and Chris got the “Drummer’s Room”.

The motel lounge was done up in Victorian style, with huge stuffed chairs and ornate cabinets. It was crammed with Rolling Stones mementos, posters, snow globes, throw pillows.

And a snifter of brandy...

Rising early, and having breakfast in Baron von Henry’s 1950’s diner room (complete with an extensive model fire truck collection) we hit the autobahn and headed back to the Netherlands for an afternoon gig in Assen. Assen is a cute little town, and we played in a bar that has been under the same ownership for 35+ years. The matron of the place lives upstairs, and fixed a nice dinner for us. She had an old jukebox with 45’s from the 50’s that Chris and John thoroughly investigated.

Sunday afternoon gigs start around 5 or 6 pm. They are a bit tougher to play, especially when we don’t get enough sleep the night before, but this one went smoothly.

The next day we drove to Baarn to do an interview and performance for a radio show. The weather was nice, so we hung out in a cafe where coffee turned into beer...

That night after the radio interview, we headed back to Anko’s place and slept until 11 AM the next morning. We decided to take the train to Amsterdam and visit the Rijksmuseum, where there is a great collection of 16th century paintings, including a huge Renoir.

Getting a late start, we didn’t hit the museum until about 2:30, and just as we were about to see the huge Renoir, the alarm went off and we had to clear the building. I suppose it was a drill, because they let us all back in in 30 minutes, but not before we could snap a few pics out front.

A bit tired from 6 shows in a row, we called an audible and stayed at a Holiday Inn Express on the outskirts of town so we could sample an Argentinian steakhouse and stumble through the city at night. The town was bustling with tourists, and it was fun to wander the city streets and canals.

Back at HQ, we were pleased to hang out with some of Anko’s band members, and we sampled some fine Whiskeys. We slept like bags of rocks...

On Thursday we drove south to Belgium. The rolling countryside and steep hills made Verviers visually a contrast to the flat Holland landscape. That night we played “Spirit of 66”, a blues rock venue that has been around for awhile. Notables such as Walter Trout, Joe Bonamassa and Government Mule have gigged there. The stage was great, complete with a big PA and lights. Being a weeknight, and also challenged with the fact that this was the French part of Belgium (all of our press had been in either Dutch or German), the attendance was sparse but engaged.

One of the best breakfasts was waiting for us though- French pastries! Oh yeah. I finished all the chocolate croissants...

Originally we did not have a gig on Friday night, the 31st of May, but fortunately we ran into Liesbeth val Hal at the gig in Dordrecht. She asked if we needed to fill any dates, that she knew a place in Oss... So we got lucky and played a nice little club called The Machinist, which was right by the train station. Thank you Liesbeth! Also, we stayed at the nicest hotel of the trip there- Hotel de Weverij. I wanted to ship the cool purple chair in my room back to the states. Some day all of the hotels should be that nice! The place was packed and we were happy to play three sets, remembering some old stuff we used to play in our side project, The Quantum Mechanics. This was also the first club we played where everyone was smoking... ughhh....

Saturday found us heading south and east to Zeeland (locals are quick to point out that Holland is to the north) in a town we played the last time around called The Lane. Tired from the night before, we headed straight to the hotel to take a nap before sound check. Apparently, this was a faux pas, the owner of the club Jaap took this as an insult, and came and unceremoniously woke us up. So much for our nap...

The Lane is a cool little place run by a single family. They have a performance hall behind the bar and a blues club with enough members to support international acts. Great stage and PA as well. I have to say, for me this was the best gig of the tour. We had worked out all the kinks at this point, and had a nice array of hand signals and cues for dynamics and song ending punches. We even pulled out the James Brown “hit it and quit it” five-punch! Hahaha...

The next day was pretty nice outside (most of the trip was cloudy and rainy- like Seattle weather) and it made the drive north to Spijkenisse beautiful. We saw with our own eyes how the sea on one side of a dike, and the land on the other, some 30 feet or more below sea level. Creepy!

Our last show, not too far outside of Rotterdam was in the Cafe des Fles, a quasi-biker bar. It was a lot like the Machinist- small stage, lots of smoking, but everyone had a great time.

It seems like once we hit our stride, the tour was over. The next trip will definitely have more shows, so maybe we can really do some damage as the tour progresses.

Well, 2013 has started off with a bang! I am releasing my next album, Deep Deep Blue on May 7th. It feels good to finally release DDB - I think I twiddled with it for too long. That's what happens when you do most of the work yourself... Thanks to John Kessler (bass, producer) for pushing me to get 'er done! I think there is alot of good stuff on there- more songs in the Spaghetti Western style - "Bandit Queen" and "God Forbid," a nice slow blues tune that has an edge - "Deep Deep Blue," some funky blues "Feeling Good Now," some Americana vibe "Wishing Well" and "Shanks Akimbo," a couple of tongue-in-cheek pieces "The Waiting" and "Satify You," and a few covers of GREAT songs - Bob Dylan's "Meet Me In The Morning," Freddie King's "Palace of The King" and Lou Reed's "Sally Can't Dance." Thanks to Lukas Nelson for playing "Meet Me In The Morning" at a show in Seattle- I never thought of that songs in more of a blues/rock context. I took his version and then poured some gas on it. It's hard to deny the fun of Freddie King's boasting in "Palace of The King." And who would have thought of doing a Lou Reed song on a blues album? Hahaha... It is so fun to play that one.

I hope everyone reading this will get the whole album - there are so many sides to it. Sometimes I think my albums might be too eclectic, but isn't Led Zeppelin IV? My favorite albums take listeners on a journey. It's hard to listen to 12+ songs that all sound the same. Gets tiring to the ear. Maybe this is where my ADD is a plus?

I have had lots of time to wrote more new soings as well, and I have 9 or so ready for the next CD. I am pleased to say that the next album will be produced by blues heavyweight Tom Hambridge. He has done the last few Buddy Guy records, George Thorogood, Susan Tedeschi, and wrote a few tunes on ZZ Top's new album El Futuro. He has won multiple Grammys... Thsi should be fun to say the least! Stay tuned for more info about this one...

All is good here in North Carolina - I am playing more and more shows, and the Harley enthusiasts are sniffing around... The weather is nice, and WOW, what a great place to really DRIVE your car - windy roads, and ebveryone drives really FAST!!

LOOKOUT.