My band, Maison Dixon, played the Festval de Sud Country Rock de Junas last night.
The headliners were an Australian group Red River's Band, with this cool cat Garret on a Sierra Session S-10 E9. Garret can play great and sings while playing too.
My pedal steel teacher Stephane Bizet, from Steel Ranch, sat in with us, plus the MC on piano and harmonica.
Steel Ranch's drummer also came up mid set. He was a sit in with them also. He played a great half set with brushes.
A first for our mandolin player. He has never in 44 years played with a drummer!
Stephane had a bit of sunstroke and wasn't feeling well, but played the Zum U-12 well anyway.
We seem to have been quite good, we were asked back for tonight, and got a raise too. The festival people had never heard us, nor even our CD, but the word of mouth was good enough to get us on the show. And get a few other gig offers.
We had a great time off stage with Red and his band. A fun bunch of charcters.
Garret's a big John Hughey fan and had a lot of C6 sounding licks on the 3 + 4 Sierra. We were talking steel much of the day. I didn't get may hands on the Sierra till it was half broken down. Too hot earlier and I was a bit to slow at the end of the night. I tried it without the pedals a bit.
A pleasure to hear him and the whole band.
He will most likely be joining the forum when he wakes up from the flight back to OZ.
Red is a fine guitarist he plays a old red Silvertone and a very cool 1954 Gretch archtop through an old Fender tweed, no effects and is a fine player and singer. A good showman too. Very much in the Dwight Yokam vien with a bit of rock/blues on top. Dwight meets Crocadile Dundee!
He and Garret realy had a good thing going on together over a tight bass and drums. Ears open musical dialog and a real Texas feel.
But for me the highlight was Garret's great take on the PSG. I have the night recorded on DAT from a stereo mic at the sound board. It's going in my car CD player for sure.
So there are some cool players down under.
That's the report from here.
PS. we seem to have won the best new band award from the festival organizers, we didn't even know there was a competition.. go figure.[This message was edited by David L. Donald on 27 July 2003 at 04:31 PM.]
