Buffalo Nickel Family Circus

Though we did a fill-in show in early January this was the first scheduled Buffalo Nickel show of the new year. It took place in Hal & Mal's Red Room Feb. 24, 2007. Maybe a few words are needed to explain exactly what the "Family Circus" part of the show is.

We were originally doing this show with the band "10 City Run" from San Antonio, but they could not make the trip. So when thinking about who we could do a show with we thought, "why not open for ourselves". See, nearly everyone in Buffalo Nickel performs solo shows, and in those solo shows they perform many songs that the band does not usually play.

This way we could keep FIVE "opening acts" rotating every 15-20 minutes, which should do two things (1) keep things interesting for the audience, and (2) have feature spots for everyone in the group. Brad has a solo act with his wife Samantha, and since she is part of the "Buffalo Nickel Family" we called this little show, "The Buffalo Nickel Family Circus".

Steve, Clinton, and Brad & Sam have played quite a few solo shows and performed like pros. Kudos to Chris for performing his first solo show that night. We all know he's a great songwriter, singer and bass player, but he proved he can strap on an acoustic guitar and play harmonica as well. I even got into the act by doing a quick Buffalo Nickel trivia game with the audience, and then performed a drum solo based on Buffalo Nickel beats. This was the first time I have done a solo performance with no one else on stage in over 20 years.

By the way, the drum solo WAS actually structured around Buffalo Nickel beats, and kicked off based on the beat I play in "Eulogy", but with a faster tempo (which makes it sound different). Variations of that beat were played as well as fills off that beat then it morphed into the rhythms for 16th note shuffles used on songs like "Family Man", and "Alien Queen". Variations and fills off that beat continued to the freakout finale, and closed with a popular tag ending to many of our tunes. I'm happy with the new ddrum all-maple set I used at this gig. My tax refund was well spent. Those little drums sounded like CANNONS with only two mics...in fact, during our break I noticed that a friend running sound had even pulled them out of the PA mix, so I guess they carried (the sound) just fine on acoustic power alone.

After the solo sections ("The Family Circus" part of the show), Buffalo Nickel played a two hour set of all original material including songs from the upcoming CD. Covers thrown in to the Buffalo Nickel part of the show were Buck Owens' "Excuse Me", They Might Be Giants "Great Atomic Power", and Neil Young's "Powderfinger".

We thank all that braved the harsh weather that night to experience "Buffalo Nickel's Family Circus". This was a good way to start 2007!

Here's a couple of shots of me (Elliott) taken by Brad from the Buffalo Nickel Family Circus show 2-24-07 at Hal & Mal's Red Room. These shots were taken during my DRUM SOLO!

BUFFALO NICKEL FAMILY CIRCUS

The Buffalo Nickel Family Circus went off without a hitch on Sat., Feb. 24th in the Red Room at Hal & Mal's. We had a great time and thank everybody for coming out. After the success of this show, we'll be booking more shows for 2007--look for shows starting in April or May.

I'll upload some pictures a little later...

Buffalo Nickel/Will Kimbrough/Rodney Crowell

Here's a few thoughts after our show with Will Kimbrough and Rodney Crowell that happened on Nov. 30, 2006. This was a benefit show for Operation Shoestring. First, it was a great night. We played well, but when Will, and Rodney played it was pretty obvious to all of us in the Nickel camp that we NEED to practice! Not to slight our effort, but those guys played really well. With that said, this was the last night of their tour, so they had a several road shows under thir belt to tighten things up. We had not played in a month, and while it was pretty damn good, it was not as good as it could have been had we (1) played more often, (2) practiced, or (3) both. There were a few equipment issues for us too. Brad's amp/guitar had a NASTY hum in it, and Clinton's amp crapped out during soundcheck. Will K. let Clinton use his amp for most (if not all of our show), and Brad's amp settled down while he played. Chris and I were lucky to get to use Rodney's drummer's and bassist's gear, and Steve's stuff worked so no problems there.

As for Will & Rodney (and Rodney's band & crew) , they could not have been nicer to us. I even got to chat to Rodney about one of his old bands (the Cherry Bombs) and one of his old drummers (the late great Larrie Londin) and that was cool. The club and sound people at Hal & Mal's were great to us (back stage food-HOT TAMALES) as were everyone involved in the Operation Shoestring Benefit. Special thanks to Eric Stracner for snapping a few photos of us with Will K. and Rodney.

It was a great way for Buffalo Nickel to close out the year (as far as public shows...we have a privite gig coming up this week and that's it for the year). My hope is that 2007 will have many more shows like the Rodney Crowell/Will Kimbrough/Buffalo Nickel show, only with a tighter and equipment malfuntion-free Nickel.

A closing thought (or two) on Buffalo Nickel's 2006 AKA: "The Seven Year Itch"

There have been times this year that our club shows have got me down. It seemed to me that we (as a band) have played fewer shows, and the audience turnout been less than expected (and less than previous years). Even CD sales have seemed to stagnate. To help make up the difference each guitarist in Buffalo Nickel has played as many (or more) solo shows, or sideman projects than Buffalo Nickel shows. I even slipped in a couple of outside recording sessions with other musicians this year when Buffalo Nickel was not active.

Why has CD sales and attendance in the clubs been so spotty? Perhaps it has something to do with what I perceive as the "devaluing of music". When more and more people download music for free, why would they want to pay for it (a CD)? I think that mindset also translates to the situation for a cover charge to see a live show. I don't believe it's misperception on my part. We've talked with other musicians that make original music that are out there hitting the clubs and they say the same thing. It's never been easy, but it seems worse these days. Of course when pointing the finger at outside reasons it's important to look at what we could be doing (or not doing). For example, our sales could be spotty because our CD is two years old. Our attendence could be low because we mainly played the same two cities (and same clubs) for SEVEN YEARS.

So, as I look back on our 2006 gigs, it was really a very good year, and we played about as many shows as we usually do. Not many DIY bands in our area got to share stages with Wilco, Shooter Jennings, and Rodney Crowell in one year, AND all of those shows had enthusiastic audiences with "sold out" performances. Even some of the poorly attended shows were good shows, and some of the same people that came out seven years ago return time after time to get more Nickel, and for that we are thankful and blessed. Upon reflection even the poorly attended club shows were an honor to do for that reason and, because I was in good company with my Buffalo Nickel band mates. On top of that we are recording our third CD (even if people will only want to download the songs for free). We WILL find a way to do our thing, because when it really comes down to it we LOVE what we do and the people we do it (and share it) with. Looking forward to a Buffalo Nickel 2007!

FEEL LIKE STEEL

Finally finished coming up with a steel guitar part to Brad's tune "Feel Like Hell." I think I've gone through 3 or 4 different approaches to that tune. First I tried a gimmicky fast tremolo part--didn't work. Then I tried a minimal guitar part played on just two strings for the entire song--nope.

Then Brad mentioned that he thought steel guitar would be good for the song. I didn't want to clutter up the tune too much, so I tried to do just sort of improvised meandering within each chord as it came by. I was okay with the way some of those came out, but overall it kinda sucked.

So I eventually thought, "I am just gonna have to bear down and grind out an actual part to this song." So I looped the various sections over and over (and over) and just played with all kinds of variations--playing "out," playing "in," major 7th type of stuff, more country, less country, more mellow, less mellow...to tell you the truth, I was afraid I'd never come up with anything good.

Then for some reason, I started fooling around with open strings against moving tones. I think what I was trying to do was figure out the best way to play "El Camino" in C6 tuning so that I could change my "El Camino neck" out of low, loose G6 and put that in a useful, inspirational tuning.

Anyway, I realized that you can get a lot of pedal-steel sounding stuff on the lap steel using open strings. I'm sure I may have run across that before, but I go through phases with the steel guitar--I study it intensely for a while, learn some positions and some concepts, and then forget about half of them when I have to stop focusing on the steel and do something else for a while.

Anyway, the part I came up with is practically a study in open strings with "fretted" tones. I was pretty pleased with the way it came out. I did two takes last night and I did the solo (Brad whistled the melody for the solo on his demo and wanted my to try to play that) 3 times. And my right index and middle fingers "felt like hell" because I've decided once and for all to stop using finger picks (I want to use them, but they don't feel natural to me and I feel inhibited by them).

But I think I split the difference between country and non-country fairly well in this part--the chorus part is my attempt at doing a Don Rich Buckaroos type of thing, and the verses are more trying to do something ear-catching rather than trying to fit a genre, if that makes any friggin' sense...

Of course, Brad hasn't heard the whole thing yet, so what you end up hearing may be totally different from what I'm describing right now...

FAT O's And RECORDING, Part the Second

Didn't write anything after our show at Fat O'Harry's on Sept. 7. But the show went very well--the crowd gradually got into it and by the end of the night, people were begging us to continue.

We played lots of originals, even mixing them in after we played party rock tunes. There was lots o' Celtic shin-swinging during "Copperhead Road," probably more than this laddie's ever seen, don't you know...

The staff and management of Fat O's was very nice and helpful and treated us very well--better than a lot of clubs, that's for damn sure.

We also recorded the show and may put up an mp3 or two on myspace or something...it came out fairly decent...

Recording

We all went to Plowhandle studios in Jackson today to work on our upcoming album (which might end up being called "Liberty Road"). What we worked on was mostly for show, though, because we were being filmed by a crew from Mississippi ETV for a future segment on their "Mississippi Roads" show. Key Ivey was the producer, Jeremy was the cameraman (who'd jammed with us before at Todd and Katie's wedding a few years back), and I didn't catch the sound guy's name, but he was good.

But it was really cool, they were very professional and easy to work with. We may end up keeping some of the parts we recorded while our every movement was being filmed--or we may not. Either way, the show should be interesting--they plan on recording some live shows, doing interview segments, and what not.

Molly Thomas, artist in her own right as well as session/road musician for Todd Snider and others, came in to lay down some fiddle on a few tunes--"Sorry About That," "Carolina Divorce Song," "Just To Be Free," and--I think there was another one...she sounded really good and was also very easy to work with.

Chris and Steve are working on Chris' bass parts and vocals tonight and tomorrow, and will probably finish by tomorrow night, when the rest of us will go back up that way for a show at the illustrious Ribeye's in Yazoo City...then it's everybody else's turn to lay down their tracks...

Buffalo Nickel Recording New CD

Here's a rundown of the first of many sessions for the next Buffalo Nickel CD for anyone interested.

THE SESSION:
The session was at Plowhandle Studios on Friday Sept. 1, 2006. Steve Deaton was producing, and I (Elliott) was drumming with my trusty Pearl Rhythm Travelers, and an assortment of snare drums, and cymbals. We started recording at 9AM, and took a lunch break around 11:30AM. We started again a little after 12PM, and continued recording to about 3:30PM. When the day was done we tracked drums for 11 songs in six hours. The room at Plowhandle was great for doing drums! Something about the size of it, the walls, etc etc. gave the drums a punchy sound. The raw tracks pre-eq, and effects sound great.

THE PROCESS:
For certain songs I "doubled" my Rhythm Traveler tom-toms by inverting a second 12" tom, and a second 14" under my main (single headed) toms to simulate a double headed drum sound. Snare drums used were a vintage 6.5"x14" Gretsch wood shell, and a 6.5"x14" Tama Grandstar metal-shell snare drum. For certain tunes the drums were slightly muffled, for others they were wide open. The small 8"x20" RT double headed bass drum (with a small hole cut out in the front head for the mic) gave a gut-thumping punch with an AKG D112 mic.! Other mics included Shure SM57s for the snare and toms, and SM81s for overheads. I believe there was an A.T. room mic also...not sure on that one.

There will likely be more than 11 songs on the new CD. This was just the first of many more sessions to come, but the recording process for the next Buffalo Nickel CD has started. YAY!
EC

ALUMNI HOUSE 8-12-06

We hadn't played in over a month, and it felt really good to do it again. And the
Alumni House is an interesting place--I lost count of how many TVs they have. TVs on tables, on the walls, in the bathroom. All tuned to different channels. At one point, some talent show was on and it was showing a bunch of dancers on this giant screen in the same room as the stage, and it was interesting to see if the dancers on screen matched tempos with us at all (not really).

But the AH food is good, the atmosphere is really nice. They have these really tall beer dispensers that they will put on your table--I didn't think to ask what they're called and last night was the first time I've ever seen these things. It's like a tap for your table with a very tall tube on the top that holds the beer. I'm not even sure how they got the beer in there...

Anyway, we had fun playing. Virgil Brawley of the Juvenators made an appearance, and our good friend Natalie Long was in the house.

The Stomach
Chris said that our new song "Dust Of The Seventies" gives him "the stomach" (or one part of it does). So we talked about which of our songs give him/us the stomach more than others. I should explain what "the stomach" is--it's kind of a rush of emotion from the pit of your stomach accompanied by goose bumps and/or a feeling of connection with all things, an epiphany-ish feeling.

I first heard the term from my friend Ken Hall (he's shopping a novel, if you can help him in that regard, let us know) to describe the feeling he got from listening to U2 songs--particularly "Joshua Tree" stuff. As soon as I heard him use the term, I instantly knew what he was talking about and have used the term ever since. I like all kinds of music, but my favorite music is the kind that gives you the stomach.

And my nominee for new Buffalo Nickel song that gives you the stomach is Chris' tune "Carolina Divorce Song," particularly in the chorus--"Oh my, what are you doing tonight?" An elegant, emotional question...

Set List

Pretty typical set list--started with "Willin'" and ended with "Purple Rain/Freebird." Did the new originals, shook the rust off of "East Bound And Down" (can't remember the last time we played that--when it got to the solo, especially) and so forth.

Got a busy September on the way...and we're starting to make significant progress toward beginning to work on the new album (as R.E.M. might say, we're about to "Begin the Begin"), which is going to be called one of the following (if last night's "Whiskey Talk" session has any lingering effects):

1. The Greatest Record Ever Made (or The Greatest Record Of All Time)
2. The New Originals (a nod to Spinal Tap)
3. The New Originals: The Greatest Record Of All Time

And there were a few more bandied about between sides of Chronic Town, Don Williams Best Of, Toto, Doobie Bros., etc. Oh, and America.

But my nomination for title of the new album is "What Now, Little Brother"...