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My new Axe....


Backstepper

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Yup. It's a box. Best box ever. Gotta transducer pickup inside, volume and tone controls, brown chicken heads and a standard quater inch jack out the back. Played with drummers brushes, it makes for the perfect acomaniment for what was previously a one man honky tonk show. Will debut in one of the most real honky tonks on friday night. May try some slap back on it some time too....

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For those of you who like long stories, here's a long story. For those of you don't like long stories, go else where and read about overdrives....

A couple years back I spent some time working with a group of guys who wanted to do a 60's 70's honky tonk project. Buck owens, Johnny Paycheck, Merl Haggard, and some fantastic truck driving rarities. But everybodys other projects got busy and things just stopped with this project.

A few weeks back, I see on a local message board that he's "Playing real Honky Tonk, in a real Honky Tonk" as a one man thing. I bump his thread for him. He drops me a line saying that if I come out I can back him up using brushes on a box, apparently this is not uncommon in Nashville in the off hours when folks are still performing.

I go down there intending to just sit back a watch. I get there and find that it is fact a very real honky tonk. Small and unglamorous, but comfortable. Mis matched bar stools, everything on the walls comes from one beer company or another, including the clock that is right just twice a day. A crowd of about 9, at 35 years old I'm probably the youngest by 5 years, half the age of the three guys with skin yellowed by smoking and cirrosis. But it all feels very real, kind of a nice change in a bar really.

So after a couple refusals, he talks me into backing him up. I've got a Budwiser tray, the kind that holds two twelve packs, between my knees held over a mike on a chair, and two brushes to work it with. And we start playing as soon as the juke box runs out, don't want anyone to have wasted their money.

After a few songs I've got a good feel for it actually, slide the brushes, pop 'em, control the volume by moving my legs so the box is closer or farther from the mic. So out of my lead guitar playing days with him, I'm watching his hands to know what key he's in, not that it matters but old habits die hard. He starts running songs together, looks at me and says "just keep playing". This goes on through three songs, finally I look to the back of the bar to see someone being thrown out. Cool, this is a real honky tonk. Pretty soon there's another dust up between the remaining patrons, but it resolves itself quickly, every one goes back to drinking.

Shortly there after the bartender gets into it with one of the three women in the bar. He goes to throw her out, but she gets herself wedged up against the front door so he can't open it, and they are stuck there fussin hard at each other. We just keep playing through this. By the time we get to the third song with out stopping, the two of them are making out. She goes back to his barstool, he goes back behind the bar.

Then another comotion in which one of the ol' yeller fellers ends up on the ground. And before you know it all three ladies in the place are going at it, this particular fight seems to start and stop three times, finally with the bartender yelling for the girl he tried to throw out "really hit that bitch, hit 'er" and one of the ladies leaving with a big ol' goose egg on her head.

So for beating on a box, I got free beers, $20 in tips, and a great story to tell. I'm hooked, and I'm going back as often as my work schedual will allow. If I'm gonna beat a box though, it may as well be a box worthy of a gear slut.

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There used to be an avant garde musician locally who played on a variety of home-made electrified instruments.

The weirdest was probably a really heavy cast iron skillet with a humbucker welded to the bottom. He would "play" this thing by rolling a large ball bearing around in it and sometimes flipping the ball up into the air so it would CRASH back down into the pan. All this was run through a Fender tube reverb unit set really, really high, and some sort of delay pedal into a Fender Twin.




:freak:

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For those of you who like long stories, here's a long story. For those of you don't like long stories, go else where and read about overdrives....


A couple years back I spent some time working with a group of guys who wanted to do a 60's 70's honky tonk project. Buck owens, Johnny Paycheck, Merl Haggard, and some fantastic truck driving rarities. But everybodys other projects got busy and things just stopped with this project.


A few weeks back, I see on a local message board that he's "Playing real Honky Tonk, in a real Honky Tonk" as a one man thing. I bump his thread for him. He drops me a line saying that if I come out I can back him up using brushes on a box, apparently this is not uncommon in Nashville in the off hours when folks are still performing.


I go down there intending to just sit back a watch. I get there and find that it is fact a very real honky tonk. Small and unglamorous, but comfortable. Mis matched bar stools, everything on the walls comes from one beer company or another, including the clock that is right just twice a day. A crowd of about 9, at 35 years old I'm probably the youngest by 5 years, half the age of the three guys with skin yellowed by smoking and cirrosis. But it all feels very real, kind of a nice change in a bar really.


So after a couple refusals, he talks me into backing him up. I've got a Budwiser tray, the kind that holds two twelve packs, between my knees held over a mike on a chair, and two brushes to work it with. And we start playing as soon as the juke box runs out, don't want anyone to have wasted their money.


After a few songs I've got a good feel for it actually, slide the brushes, pop 'em, control the volume by moving my legs so the box is closer or farther from the mic. So out of my lead guitar playing days with him, I'm watching his hands to know what key he's in, not that it matters but old habits die hard. He starts running songs together, looks at me and says "just keep playing". This goes on through three songs, finally I look to the back of the bar to see someone being thrown out. Cool, this is a real honky tonk. Pretty soon there's another dust up between the remaining patrons, but it resolves itself quickly, every one goes back to drinking.


Shortly there after the bartender gets into it with one of the three women in the bar. He goes to throw her out, but she gets herself wedged up against the front door so he can't open it, and they are stuck there fussin hard at each other. We just keep playing through this. By the time we get to the third song with out stopping, the two of them are making out. She goes back to his barstool, he goes back behind the bar.


Then another comotion in which one of the ol' yeller fellers ends up on the ground. And before you know it all three ladies in the place are going at it, this particular fight seems to start and stop three times, finally with the bartender yelling for the girl he tried to throw out "really hit that bitch, hit 'er" and one of the ladies leaving with a big ol' goose egg on her head.


So for beating on a box, I got free beers, $20 in tips, and a great story to tell. I'm hooked, and I'm going back as often as my work schedual will allow. If I'm gonna beat a box though, it may as well be a box worthy of a gear slut.


Hello, Sir. It's been a long time and that story is awesome.
:D

~MkF!
"We're gonna ooh, ahh, yum, and eat!"

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