Susan and I get up around 7 am and she goes for a walk
while I go for a run. I get back to the hotel and meet
Lisa and Karl at the van. She is loading her suitcase
into Big Mama before they take off to see their mom and
other family. Back in the breakfast room everyone is there
except Donto. We all say our good mornings, talk about
things, eat some breakfast, and make plans to meet at
the van around noon. We only have to drive 45 minutes
to Ogden to play at the Wine Cellar. Our plan is to check
in the hotel about 3 pm in Ogden, load our equipment into
the Wine Cellar, and then go over to Marc Ybaben's
house for some dinner. Marc is a good friend and guitar
player that I've played with for some time in the
jazz quartet, the Marc Why Group. He and his family have
just recently moved to the Salt Lake area.
We have a one o'clock appointment to visit the XP
audio facility to check out some new equipment so, after
we make a quick visit to Salt Lake City Center and the
Mormon Temple, we head over to the XP facilities. We are
greeted there warmly by Shane Smith, John Fisher, John
Johnson, and other very friendly people who I cannot remember
the names of. They have a showroom that is set up like
a small night club stage complete with keyboards, drum
set, bass rigs, and guitar amps. It is here where they
develop and test out their equipment and demonstrate their
product.
Laurie tries out the new Bolt amp that they have been
marketing for the last year. It is a cool little amp with
three separate channels that go from clean, distorted,
and lead sounds all of which are fully adjustable and
can be controlled by a foot switch. She also gets to try
out one of their Surround Sound cabinets which acts like
a Leslie cabinet. It all sounds pretty cool. I try out
a bass rig they have not even started producing yet. It
is called Forge and the idea is that all the speaker cabinets
will be self-powered. The cabinet I try has an 18-inch
speaker, a four 10-inch speaker array, and a two 5-inch
speaker array. Each of these has a separate power amp
which means that there are three power amps in each cabinet.
I'm told that the weight of the cabinet is kept
down by using amplifiers that use less mass, but I'm
told that the weight of this cabinet is 130 pounds. They
are planning to make smaller units that weigh less but
they are still in the planning stages. I don't think
I'll be using one of these backbreakers any time
soon. I'll wait till they make smaller cabs or we
can afford roadies. On top of this big cab is a pre amp
that has parametric EQ, a compressor, two tube amp settings,
an XLR direct out, and active/passive instrument inputs.
It sounds pretty good but took some tweaking to find a
suitable sound. I liked the way the bass was always present
but it did not mask the high end articulations of my plucking
hand. It has a lot of versatility and I look forward to
seeing the finished product line. Tommy tries out their
keyboard set up with the Surround Sound cabinets. These
units either look like the traditional wood cabinets that
we are all familiar with or they can look like a regular
amp. He tells me that they have that good Leslie sound
that we all know and like but the unit would not be able
to replace his regular amp and speaker set up that he
currently uses. This would mean using this in addition
to the amp he currently uses, and being that we are limited
on space in Big Mama it will have to wait. Besides, Tommy
already gets a killer Leslie sound on his organ stops
in his Nord keyboard.
The biggest highlight of the trip to XP Audio was the
Morpheus pedals that they have developed that are their
biggest sellers to date. One is called the Drop Tune pedal.
It takes the input-signal of any instrument and lowers
it from its original pitch by half steps. So you can learn
any song in only one key then be able to play it in any
key. It is also handy in letting a guitar player play
in an open position even if the song is not in an open
key on the guitar. For instance, you can play a song in
the key of F and still use open E and A chords just by
stomping on the box once. It also has a momentary switch
that allows you to modulate and return to the original
key. This would also be handy for guitarists who do not
like to retune their guitars to practice along with musicians
like Stevie Ray Vaughn who always played a half step down.
The other key is called the Capo pedal. It allows the
input of a guitar to modulate upward just like you would
do if you were to put a capo on the guitar. The display
on the pedal even shows a guitar neck with lights indicating
what fret the capo is currently on. This will also be
a big hit with a lot of guitar players as they will no
longer have to wrestle with the capo to get the right
pressure on all the strings. After hearing these pedals
demonstrated with Laurie's guitar, I was really
impressed. I might just have to order one or both of the
pedals. Yes. I am a pedal junky.
Everyone at XP Audio was really nice and they let use
jam for quite a while trying out their new gear. They
even let us wander around back where they are building
their products. It was a lot of fun checking in with a
company that is on the cutting edge of what can be done
in the world of performance electronics. We all thanked
them for their valuable time and we get back on the road
to make our short trip to Ogden.
In Ogden we check in at the Ben Lomand Hotel, which is
on the Utah historic register, and it has been here since
the early 1900s. Once checked in we go around the block
to the Wine Cellar to set up. We are greeted by Mitch,
the club owner who is a super nice guy. We have to use
an elevator or go down a flight of steps to get the gear
in, which is always a hassle, but once inside we see that
the space is really cool and has a nice vibe about it.
It is a long and narrow room with the stage at one end
but instead of the stage being up against a wall there
are pool tables behind the stage. The bar is on one of
the side walls about two thirds of the way down from the
stage. The stage is small but we manage to get everyone
set up. We do a sound check and then head over to Marc
Ybaben's house which is ten miles away. It is now
after 5 pm and we play at 8 pm, so this means we need
to eat and run at Marc's house. Needless to say,
I think we were all a little stressed about this time
constraint.
Once at Marc's we are greeted by Marc and his wife
Rose, Stephanie and her daughter, Marc's two children,
Conner and Karine, and the Australian shepherd, Kona.
Everyone's eyes get real big when we see the delicious
meal that has been prepared for us. There are tortillas,
fajitas, carne asada, broiled fish, coleslaw, a summer
vegetable salad, watermelon, beans, rice, cheese, salsa,
guacamole, and chips. Whew. We ate ravenously and quickly
as we wanted to be back at the hotel around 7 pm. to change
and warm up for the show. We had this wonderful meal out
on their patio deck which looks upon their backyard with
a view of the Wasatch Mountains. To top all of this off
we had a dessert of brownies, chocolate syrup, and ice
cream. We all are quite sated and wish we could just hang
around and visit but we say our good byes and head back
to the hotel.
When we get back we find that there are parking spaces
just in front of the Wine Cellar so we elect to park Big
Mama here and walk over to the hotel which only few steps
away. We all meet back at the club and a few people have
shown up. This is a Tuesday night and Mitch usually only
opens the club on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays however,
he has done some advertising for this and we hope this
pays off.
By the time we get into our first set Marc has arrived
and so have some of Lisa's aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Midway through the first set I believe I counted about
30 to 35 loyal blues fans. We play the first set which
was a ninety minute set and then take a thirty minute
break. The audience is having a good time and the sound
in this room is really good. We even got some couples
up dancing. We did not have a soundman and the P.A was
one of the smallest ones we have used on this tour. Hmm.
What do you think? Is a soundman sometimes a liability,
as at times, they seem to want to put their own twist
on things? At any rate, being that this was such a small
room, it was easy to manage the sound ourselves. We meet
a lot of nice blues fans including Winston and some real
nice local musicians.
We play our second set which was sixty minutes long at
which time we take a break around 11 pm. We are all really
tired and we can't believe we still need to play
a third set. We are to play until 12 am. At about 11:25m,
just when we were going to play our final set, Mitch tells
us to shut 'er down. He says that is enough and
besides he wants to go home. Yippee. It is like getting
a gift when you least expect it. We get packed up in record
time and, even though we have to slug the gear upstairs,
we get Big Mama loaded in short time. We park her back
at the hotel and head off to our rooms around 12:30 for
some sleep. We need to meet back at Big Mama in the morning
around 10 am. Tomorrow is a twelve-hour plus drive to
San Francisco. We play in San Francisco at Biscuits and
Blues on Thursday, so tomorrow, which is Wednesday, will
be a driving day. We will be staying at the same hotel
for the next three nights while we perform our last two
engagements of this tour. Sadness and Gladness. We are
reaching the end of a fun tour; but gladness to be returning
home to our familiar surroundings and friends
