Stormcellar Band Home Page

Custom Amps, riding the waves, apocryphal stories, 10 years in the stormcellar

Never letting a good marketing opportunity slip, I haven't made mention of the fact that our first gig out in the wild, was around this time, 10 years ago.

We'd already finished Whiskey Talking by December 2007 and done our first gig as Stormcellar at the Sydney Blues Society BPOY comp.

Yep 18 Jan 2008 we did our first 'normal gig', supporting the Sydney Blues All Stars with Jim Finn, Al Briton, Robert Suess and...um...hey it was 10 years ago, right?

When I can figure out how to spin that to our advantage I'll let you know.

I can't get all nostalgic, we got stuff to do.

Mr Wizard and Vito have put together a Custom Amp

It does stuff. Things that will impress guitarists. He might post about it. Apparently its very good.

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Up the coast the wind was blowing today. the waves. Ahhhh....

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Cheers to Rob & Brad on sound and the guys from Halfway Homebuoy.

HH came on so strong we abandoned all ideas of Strong Stuff and went for the gentle.

Big ups to Rosie for rescuing me today when I wasn't up for driving.

I love the drives.

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The guys worked hard today, we had a long and strong show last night so it was a doubling down to get up early get on the road and get it right.

Here's a moment of Rosie from last night

Full cred to Sal for extra awesome lighting and sound. A very strong night indeed.

I'm too buggered to blog much more, but there is a story I got told today.

Johnny told me this story.

Some time back, Johnny picked up 'X' who wanted to be taken to a show and Johnny diverted to 'X' to our show.

'X' said nice things about the band.

We think 'X' is awesome. If someone we think is awesome said nice things about our show, we're a little buzzed about it.

However as it's apocryphal and in no wayin heck amd i goign to seek clarification, I'm going to chalk this one up as 'you don't say' and bask in the warm fuzzy glow of maybes.

Thank you x. Loved that song you did.

Thank you to every one who came out and joined us this weekend.

The Second American Civil War

Superman is unwell

He doesn’t know why

The crowd has turned against him

They boo from the stalls, they hiss when he flies

And strive as he might

To mount the head of Ozymandias back atop its pedestal

He’s merely a man

In his bright pyjamas

Blinking under the glare of an uncaring sun.

More work and a mixing competition

We spent a few hours in the studio on Monday, keeping the work moving.

'Sail away' & 'Brave with your heart' are still in construction and Theo & yours truly had a desire to hear some additional percussion.

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I dunno.

Unlike most of our work which is built from the drums up, the songs on 5D were built from the Guitars out. That means that the timing is a little slippery.

Adding a more formal structure to it may or may not work. We will see in mixing.

'Pirouette' has already made it out as a single. In discussing it with J. the other day I recalled the observation that we'd mixed it to the point where adding any more, or taking anything away, did not improve it. Therefore, even if not 'perfect' in some speculative or imaginary sense, it's 'as good as we're going to do today' and that's ok too.

The thought of stuffing around endlessly for perfection irks me, I'm uncertain that you (me? I? Us?) can ever get a sense of absolute perfection. I read once that a poem is never finished, merely abandoned.

That leaves 'Soul thing' in need of a solo and some main vocals. 'lay your loving' is in need of redo on the vox.

After that? New stuff.

So yesterday Mr Wizard got Theo to lay down some drum patterns to use as loops.

Brother Bill is slightly alarmed at the idea of Mr Wizard working on House Beats and EDM.

It's almost like we're looking for rules to break. Naughty Mr Wizard.

I for one welcome the chaos. As they say, Ph'nglui mglw'nafh DJ-Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

We started talking about remix ideas and I asked Ben if he knew anyone who might want to have a shot at remixing one of our songs.

I was a big fan of The Cure's 'Mixed Up' project.

Might be blasphemy, but I kind of liked the remixes better than some of the originals.

It's not like mixing EDM and Blues/Roots/Soul/Folk is a new idea.

Moby comes to mind. The soundtrack to the Generals Daughter contained old Blues and Gospel samples taken from the Library of Congress.

Why not?

Let the experiment commence!

My first attempt is to put 'Sail Away' up as a Mixing Comp. I've submitted it to an online mixing comp site, put in a small prize and when I get all the details right I'll post it here in case you feel like getting your Doof on.

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