Stormcellar Band Home Page

A great idea

We’ve got a great idea

Not like the last idea

Which turns out

Was not such

 a great idea

in fact we’ve learned

was a bad idea

you could say

we had no idea

how bad an idea

the last idea

was not a good idea after all

but we’ve got a new idea

a much better idea

and I think you’ll find

this is a really great idea

which we will look back upon

and say how clever we were

Howdy Folks.

Last night we had a slightly 'tired and emotional' (i.e: inebriated) audience member who decided that she really really wanted to sing. Taking no for an answer was not part of the available range of options. 

Stage intrusion etc makes the boys crazy. Our erstwhile singer stole the microphone during the break and Mr Wizard had to persuade her to return it. She was not pleased to do so.

Taking a leaf out of DC's book, I tried engaging her to sing one line in Southern Bells, the chorus 'gonna ring me some southern bells tonight'. 

Despite my best efforts, she opted to sing 'Ice Ice Baby' over the song,

following that by running off with the main vocal microphone and adding an impromptu version of 'a boy named sue'.

I wonder How Johnny would have responded to the interruption?

Fortunately our Soundo had been pre warned that I was going to try and make nice, so he gave her some latitude then killed the sound. She was not entirely happy with that outcome.

I'm neither offended, bummed nor fussed. The fact that she wanted to participate is great. Not only that but I know she'd look back upon her after-a-few-drinks-behaviour and most probably be mortified (OMG did I really do that?).

Yes Miss E., you did.

Please note, despite knowing your name,  I kindly limit my self to one letter to maintain your privacy, which I might add you effectively renounced by stage crashing a working band mid set :-)

We truly are your friends here in the stormcellar.

No I did not take offence when you gave me a hard time for not knowing any Slim Dusty songs, despite, as you said, him being the most important Australian of the 20th Century.

As Rosie pointed out, we have recorded several songs with Slim's fiddle player of 20 years, Mike Kerin, so I guess that ought to count.

I was equally unoffended  at the chiding for our failure to know, or include, Duffy or Dusty Springfield songs. if I could get away with that there'd be at least 1 carly simon song in the set, but you know how it is, the boys worry that people would start to talk. 

Yes, this is our blog, you probably wont read this and I wont be vengeance posting elsewhere because I fundamentally have love and compassion for my fellow humans and I know when you go out, it might be my 'workplace' but you're there to relieve some stress and tension, so I'll make you a deal.

We have 7 albums worth of songs, most of the lyrics up online. Learn the words and I'll get you up to sing with us.

Or, when we start covering Vanilla Ice, I'll send you a text. However I'm old school enough that i'd more likely go for a bit of Public Enemy.

We have the love. Remember to fight the power!  

Howdy Folks.

The benefit of a local gig is the normality of the day after and the time to blog and reflect.

We played the Annandale hotel last night, or to be more accurate, the reincarnation of the Annandale. Much as with the Empire (also in Annandale) the retrofit makes it 'better', but some primal essence is lost in the cleaning. Also probably some evidence. Moving on.

I know that Demographics shift, people move in and out of the rings of the city. Change is natural. The music scene in Sydney needs to create its myth anew.

In the case of the Annandale, some sound reflection diffusion would assist :-) The bright shiny flat surfaces and direct box like construction maximises space but pumps even quiet stuff straight down the end of the place to the restaurant, and who needs Guitar Solo a La Loud with your slow cooked beef cheeks?

Being the thoughtful chaps we are we opted to start with all the nice stuff, figuring that by the time we got to the louder bits we'd have a slightly-more-partying crowd. That worked fine but it got me thinking about the other songs we weren't playing.

Come to think of it, we could have played most of the night in a quiet acoustic-ish mode, something we haven't done since the power failed at that Tamworth Festival show. But I digress.

Wildly.

ahem.

Somehow, two very gentle sweet little tunes have crept into the starting line up. 'All that's right' and 'Stopping By'. Mr Wizard would like to point out that neither of them have sufficient clever chords or changes. Beware the pent up chord progressions that doing such simple songs will unleash in him. No seriously. Just wait until you hear a new one, 'isnt how i wanted it', you'll plotz.

During this week we had a chance to work on the next batch of moonshine, including, yep, you guessed it, More Complex Adult Oriented Chord Progressions. Several new candidates will be rolled out at coming gigs, to live, to fly or to crash and burn. This wonderfully disruptive process yields triumph and tragedy. Bring it on.

Did i mention that all of these thoughts flashed through my head at the start of the show?

Thanks to DC's training and mutual agreement, we're now 'calling' songs rather than prebuilding a specific set. Sort of. We have 'song clusters' (face it we are so nerd-core) to allow Mr Wizard to swap guitars and also Yours Truly to check the vibe and match the song to it. 

So, when you're at the aforementioned Annandale and think OMG it's a bright loud room, I can pick songs to suit, you cast your mind to the repertoire and think 'oh yeah we'll play that one' then 'oh no the boys will get mad if I call that one cos we haven't played it in months' and then 'hey that's a bummer that's a good song' and finally 'come to think of it, there's a lot of good songs we're not playing..'

When I voiced that thought, Mr Wizard pointed out that some of the 'show piece' songs we used to do - parchment farm, mississippi meltdown, Hollow Tree, Texas Rosie...etc etc...are completely out to pasture at the moment. Wow.

That's a bummer because some of those are band favourites. Of course, there are less well beloved experiments such as 'Shake'em down mama' and some relegated to the OMG bucket (sadly a personal fave, island time is in that bucket).

As the new songs come in to the set, of necessity, they unseat the previous champions (sigh). See what happens when I get Saturday off? I get all reflective.

I can feel a rehearsal coming on :-)

Also, we're Aliens.

My recent Tech disasters have distracted me to the point that I almost forgot we have 2 shows on this week.

Friday night at the Annandale hotel and Sunday at Shady Pines, Darlinghurst.

Whoah.

Ok, time for new songs!

LOOKIT! New ARt! Me Rebuld computer more! Smash technology hammer! 

Via SMH,Photo Nick Moir

Far out huh?

For all our off-shore readers, we're experiencing some freaky cold snap down here in 'temperate' Sydney. The Blue Mountains (west of us) are copping it. Yay for the snow fields, yay for tourism, holy crap I wish we insulated our houses better.

On the plus side I am sitting in sunshine with a cup of tea and blogging. Therefore all is right(ish) with the world.

In the absence of my crashed Storage Drive, the news will be in Text.

DC Tour Finito.

Yay. Cheers.

El Hard Drive Es Muerto

Please no more missives from my geek mates re backups, yes I bow in your masterly presence yadda yadda raspberry. ARGH.

The boys all have bags of photos and videos but face it, they're blogging-impaired. When I get this drive sorted I may or may not do anything with the additional data. You just never know. I'm kinda contrary like that :-)

Backlog of Recordings/New songitis

Whilst we've been otherwise occupied, the song banks have recharged. Forcing new songs into the set terrifies the boys but keeps us on our toes. I especially liked the key change Rosie pulled on me the other night at the start of a brand new one. I wasn't even sure I could hit that note. Terror helped but when I get my hands on him...I mean...I truly enjoyed the unexpected nature of the challenge.

Also worthy of mention was the randomised nature of the song list from Friday night. Good work boys. Improv skills ranked up.

Right so where were we?

'Everywhere feels like home' is still two recordings from completion. Or Is it? I mean, who's in charge anyway? I mean, who says we have to have X amount of songs and then call it an album, I mean who...hang on, apparently that'd be us making those choices. 

I'm not so sure about what formats have to do with it anymore. EP's, albums, singles, USB's ye gods... We've been releasing the songs as singles and we still have the 'soundtrack' elements unreleased. Do we split them, combine them, wait, do nothing, join a convent or..

Just continuing making stuff that appeals and figure the rest out later. Brilliant planning.

Lookit all the pretty shiny new stuff

All this new stuff is fun. 'Stopping By' is such a simple cute little ditty that it failed the Mr Wizard Complexity Test (TM, copyright where gnu's roam free) yet we're opening with it. 'Isn't how I wanted it' drives Rosie bonkers and Bill loves it. 'All that's right is beautiful' is still trying to find a key, Mr Wizard has a bunch of new obscura to try and so do I and so does Rosie and...CHAOS!!

MJEB happy time

I love winter, I love the storms. The lightning crashing around us and the thunder rolling recharged my batteries enormously. Yay.

Growth Rings

Every time one of the new songs comes in to the set it disrupts what we''e doing. It's risky. We're trading 8 years worth of crafted road tested crowd pleasers for potential DOOM! DOOOOOOM!! 

Yaaay!

It's getting randomer by the day!

More soon! Or maybe. Who knows?