BlakeAtwood.com

In an effort to better the sound of our worship services on Sunday mornings, my boss deemed it necessary to replace the electronic drums I’ve been playing for the last three years with a live set, to which I said, “Finally!”

After a few hours at Guitar Center, we came away with this Pacific MX Series Fusion Maple Set, with the Emerald Green-to-Black Satin Fade. I was sold on these as soon as I tried a Birch set next to a Maple set. The maple, as I learned, is louder, boomier (to use the made up parlance of musicians everywhere), and fills a room better than birch. It also helped that the maple set came with DW heads instead of the Pacific heads (even though Pacific Drums are made by DW, there are still different levels of heads – and I usually try to stay fairly level-headed, even if my head is in the clouds…)
We also came away with:

• a Pacific Hardware Set (DW Kick Pedal, hihat stand, cymbal stand, snare stand)

• 1 Zildjian A Custom 17″ Crash

• 1 Zildjian A Custom Mastersound 14″ Hihats

• 1 Shure Beta 52

• 3 Sennheiser E604s

I’m very pleased and can hardly wait to get the set together, tuned, and played. Course, I have to wait about a month or more before that happens, but right now I’m content just looking at their Emerald Beauty (which will be the first single released off my solo album).

First, go to Pandora and register. It’s a web-based music player through which you can create your own stations based on your favorite artists. While playing the songs, you can rate the music, thus allowing Pandora to learn your musical tastes and play more music it thinks you’ll like. It’s fairly addictive.

Once registered, go to OpenPandora and download the desktop client. It adds some quite nice functionality, like a mini-player and the unnecessary use of a browser to listen to the music. You can even look up lyrics. It’s great.

For the sake of my cousin, an SRV lovin’ and talented lead guitarist in his own right, I rode three hours to San Angelo with him to play as part of his band at a citywide, all-church event. Originally it was meant to be a youth event; somehow it transpired to this citywide event with a somewhat much older demographic.

We’d practiced together one time about a week prior to this gig. I was also worried about the couple of original songs they wanted to do that I’d never heard. We arrived at the church with plenty of time to soundcheck and setup, but we did neither. I spent an hour or so typing our words for the screens in the front of the church.

When we actually get up to play our music, it was 10pm, and maybe 30 to 40 people were still at the church. We begin playing, only the lead singer’s guitar wasn’t working due to sound system problems or bad cables or divine intervention. He begins preaching and prophesying over the song we’d begun playing behind him, taking it slow so he could be heard but building to crescendoes at certain times to emphasize the points he was making (although my monitor wasn’t working so I never really heard what he said). We wound up playing 2 or 3 “songs” for two nonstop hours.

It was a very freeing musical moment in that everything I’ve been playing in the last year or more has been so structured. The looseness and creativity required of the music was very cathartic. So, all the worry about playing the songs well faded to nothing because we didn’t play them.

We also got done at midnight, then ate at Applebee’s at 1am, and returned to our bassist’s home a little before 2am.

I saw Derek Webb for the first time last night at Stubb’s in downtown Austin. I’d seen him before, but only as part of Caedmon’s Call. I remember thinking even then that he should go solo, with no disrespect to Caedmon’s. His songs ring true in my ears and call me to a higher level of living.

The show, although attended by 30 people or so, was great, even despite the hard cement floors, the three hours of standing, and the late midnight ending for a Wednesday night show.

My friend Stevie made the good observation that it takes a talented individual to hold the attention of anyone for two hours with just a voice and an acoustic guitar, which Derek did quite well.

My favorite moments of the show might have been the two times he talked extensively between songs. He went on a short rant, of sorts, about getting his music out to everyone for free because he wants to initiate a conversation. He said he’s

“not in the record business. I’m in the music business. The record business wants me to sell you little round plastic discs. I want to make relationships.”

That was heartening to hear.

They, being Derek and his wife Sandra McCracken, sold their CDs for $10 each in order to clear out their merch before heading back to Tennessee. Derek, who’s released his newest album for free over the internet without DRM, has plans to release all of his albums for free. He even told us that if we could find 9 other people at the show, each with a dollar, that everyone should chip in, buy one of his albums, and then make 9 copies.

Course, he told us this after I’d bought two albums and a DVD. Oh well. I’ve already offered to make copies for my friends.

Day three is always the best, and this year was no exception. It was the day I was most looking forward to, and, in hindsight, I should have just bought a one day pass instead of the three day, but…maybe next year I’ll be more frugal. Rachel had a soccer game, but it (fortunately) got cancelled, so we got to head down to Zilker Park early and managed to catch K.T. Tunstall. I’d only heard her single on the radio, and liked it alright, but was pleasantly surprised when the rest of her music was pretty good. She’s a Brit too, so that was fun.

After her was Matisyahu, an Orthodox Jewish Reggae Rapper. No lie. And his set was amazing. Especially his ad-lib when he somehow incorporated the people sitting on the porta-potties. I’ve got video of that, which will be uploaded soon. The rest of the set was almost worshipful. I was a fan of his music before, and the live show only cemented that.

After him was a band I’d also just recently discovered in the last year, The Flaming Lips. Their music and lyrics may be strange (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and At War With the Mystics are their last two albums), but it’s intriguingly uplifting and moving. Their shows are visual cornucopias, nearly overwhelming the senses with their absurdity and discordance. For example, dancing santas populated the right side of the stage. Their counterparts on the left side? Dancing martian women.

Also, I had hoped to see the Bubble Boy at the end of the show, but no, they surprised me and opened with it. Wayne Coyne, the lead singer and head Lip, climbs into a transparent bubble, then walks onto the crowd. It’s great. I’ve got video of that as well, soon to be uploaded. They shot confetti into the audience during almost every song. Their guitar techs were all dressed as superheroes. Their onstage camera woman was dressed as Wonder Woman.

For reasons beyond my comprehension, Wayne often puts fake blood on his face during his sets. This year, not to be outdone by Ben Kweller, who, on the previous day suffered a nosebleed which was stopped with a tampon, Wayne doused himself in fake blood and then asked the audience to throw tampons onto the stage, which the Austin crowd aquiesed to with much gusto, tampons flying through the air like so many tiny white missiles. Strange, yes. Funny, of course.

I was a fan before, and even with the aforementioned incident, I still am. I keep thinking back to that set and to Matisyahu’s, wishing I could go back and hear and see it again. That’s the sign of a good concert.

The closer for the Festival was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I’m not a huge Tom Petty fan, and I’m still not. The set was good, even though there was about a 30 minute rain break (which brought much needed coolness to the area). To me, most of his songs sound too similar. But we stayed the whole way through.

The Festival was great, and Sunday was the best.