Without a plan leaves Deadstein thinking on its feet which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. This Tuesday night, it seemed to work for us. Scott suggested opening with the Here Comes Sunshine which made a lot of sense and that sent us down a path that got us going for the night. The Sunshine enlightened us to go for the Viola Lee and without and worry about the song we were in it and playing our hearts out of it. The cool thing about that transition was I turned to the page in Kevin’s book for him from an upside down position and turned right to the page and off we went. Remarkably, I then went to my book to turn to the Viola Lee and also turned to the page on first swipe. It was destiny in a good way. We transitioned out of the Viola Lee into a easy Bertha and before we knew it were were on our weekly Deadstein journey far away from home base.
By the time the 4th song hit some of our guests came in to watch us including Ryan Steve and Maggie and they brought a friend of theirs, Willow to experience the Deadstein experience. Scott Bayer and another couple of friends of Rich showed up by the end of the night and that was it for guests. As far a band members, all 6 of us were there this week inside Studio #2 with the refinished Piano. Scott and Lee were is reversed positions for the week, but it didn’t feel too different.
With respect to instruments, my Fuchs Fender twin I started with felt weak and under the weather. I swapped it out after the Bertha and was good to go for the rest of the jam. As soon as the amp swap was done there was no time to waste and away we continued. I selected Jack-a-Roe next which has always been tough for Deadstein but we did it early and kept up a good pace with it so that song was more enjoyable than usual.
We successfully navigated our ways through a bunch of first set songs ending the first half of the night with the One More Saturday Night which featured Ryan on drums, being thrown into the fire without any warmup. Its the best way to go forward.
The nice feature of the second set was the Miracle, Wheel, Gimme Some Loving Dear Mr. Fantasy combination. That we performed from the seat of our pants without a plan, but it felt like we had been preparing for it all along. These are rarely played songs for us and to do them where they feel good gives us a boost of confidence. I think Kevin was at the vending machine for Thrill is Gone but he was back for the closing.
Kevin always hates when we brutalize Beatles songs so he wasn’t psyched about trying the Across the Universe just before the end of the night. People we doubting if there was even a drum line to the song, but I got it going and it felt pretty natural for us to do. To close the night at song listed as #25 was the Getaway, not easy to do when you are tired after midnight, but it was a great closer and a great way to send you home stuffed from an evening of digesting unlimited Deadstein.
What a Freakstival.
To hear what we did , you can go to the MP3 links provided below:
http://www.deadstein.com/audio/06-19-12/
For another week, Deadstein was without its full compliment as Rich was out of town. This left the five of us to our own devices to move the momentum forward. Our own devices were limited to iPhones to record the jam as none of us have a simple MP3 recorder to capture the evening’s music. I captured the first 13 songs on my phone before I ran out of space, but at least it is something. As I am typing this on Sunday morning following the show, I have no idea what we played except the 13 songs listed, but I know we played several more. I don’t think we go past 20 but we probably came pretty close.
my Steal Your Space book 