Last Week in North California

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 13 Aug 2001 1:34 pm

Thought I'd share the highlights of my week.

Wednesday evening I drove down to San Francisco to see "Jack West and Curvature". Normally fusion isn't my kind of music, but in this case I made an exception to hear David Philips on his 14-string keyless Williams. I was not disappointed at all!

The quartet included Jack West on 8 string guitar, a drummer, an electronic marimba player, and David on steel. Their music is all original, complex and difficult to play. David did a wonderful job, and in the process introduced the pedal steel to an audience that was probably unfamiliar with the instrument. He played through a Fender amp without effects.

You may have noticed that I didn't mention a bass player. There was none! The bass line was passed around among the 3 soloists. The marimba player was absolutely amazing - his instrument is called a Marimba Lumina, and it drove a Prometheus synth. The music had complex time signatures, but this guy was really on top of it all the way.

Thursday night was rehearsal night. Forward to the weekend... I played two Farmers Market gigs with the Open Hearts band. We're getting really tight, and it's a lot of fun. The guitarist and I split the lead instrument duties, and it's getting to where we know each others sytles well.

Sunday evening, another treat. Tommy Thomsen was playing in a park about a mile from my house, with Bobby Black on steel! The band was sort of loose and unrehearsed, but Bobby sounded just great. He was playing a Fender Stringmaster D-8 standing up, through a Session 400. We got to visit for a while between sets and after the show was over. He showed me his C6th tuning, which is barely C6th at all: <pre> D
B
E
C
A
G
E
C# </pre>It was nice to hear those ringing diatonic strings on the high end. He seems to be able to get all kinds of chords from this tuning, without slanting the bar much at all.

In between all of this activity, I somehow found time to re-rod the front neck of my Williams to the Sacred Steel E7th tuning. It was quite a week!

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<img align=right src="http://b0b.com/b0b.gif" width="64" height="64">Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs
Sierra Session 12 (E9), Williams 400X (E7, D6), Sierra Olympic 12 (F Diatonic)
Sierra Laptop 8 (D13), Fender Stringmaster (E13, A6)[This message was edited by Bobby Lee on 13 August 2001 at 02:35 PM.]

Jack Francis · Post by **Jack Francis** » 13 Aug 2001 2:01 pm

b0b
Sounds like a great week, I sure miss the old stomping grounds. I haven't seen Tommy since I ran into him in Dayton, Nevada, 15 years ago.
Fine entertainer!
Jack