Wish you could have been there (the release party for BELL ENGINE's first CD ROOMS, the band my oldest son Miles plays bass in). Two great hard charging sets, a packed house (restaurant bar actually) and lots of dancing, shouting, whistling and other energetic expressions of appreciation.
I tried both taking photos and filming it on my phone, but it was the first time I experimented with that and the results weren't too good [and I couldn't figure out how to get the tape onto the blog anyway].
Best thing is to check out their CD at either CD Baby (where mine, LOST ANGELS, also with my son Miles on bass, is also available) or download songs—if only one to find out if you dig them, I suggest making it "Soul Breaker," the song Miles wrote and the band's singer John sings, with harmonizing from the other singer in the band Lisa (both write the songs too except for this one)] from iTunes or Spotify.
I'll try to find the links tomorrow and insert them in this post [just did], but it was a late night and an early morning [went to see my daughter Caitlin sing a with a chorus and do a solo for an Easter season cantata at a Sunday service for three churches—I think the choruses were combined as well—in a very beautiful old Episcopalian church in Sheffield, Massachusetts with Tiffany stained glass windows, and despite fighting a cold her voice awed me with its angelic purity as it always does when I hear her sing, and I'm not just being a proud father—because as anyone who knows me knows, I don't hold back on critical opinions about people's creative work—her voice was simply the purest and most effortlessly conveyed among many in that chorus, and for that matter that I hear on recordings] so I'm heading to bed.
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Looked around youtube and found a couple of videos of Bell Engine. I enjoyed them. Hope the new CD sales go well.
Thanks Tom. In person Lisa's voice and harmonies sound so perfect it reminds you (or I guess I mean me) of what great singers sounded like before autotune or whatever it's called (that electronic device that automatically corrects a singer's pitch but also adds an element of robotics to the sound of the human voice). Also in person they become (and I'm sure they won't like this label but) more of a jam band and get such great grooves going with fantastic musicianship on everyone's part—Dan's electric guitar solos and riffs and Sam's signature unique drum patterns and Miles' solid bass grooves and Lisa and John's beautiful harmonizing and amped acoustic guitar playing—all of them contributing almost different styles of jamming, I can seriously imagine them holding a Grateful Dead crowd entranced for hours.
Thanks for the kind words dad!
...oops, meant to thank Tom too. Thanks Tom!
I'm proud of the entire cd, but I'm especially happy with how the band brought Soul Breaker (the last track on the cd) to life. It's the first song I've written totally on my own outside of a creative partnership. It was inspired by the book Last Man Standing about the life of Geronimo Pratt.
I turned an old (I mean in his eighties) Jersey friend and long time jazz fan and scholar onto the CD and reported back, without my prompting, that He thought he could hear the influence of jazz, especially in the bass line, in "Soul Breaker" which made me even prouder!
Cool feedback from your friend dad! I was doing my best to approach the bass the way the Motown great James Jamerson might have done it. There is no question that Jamerson brought his Jazz experience to the way he played electric on the countless hits he was an integral part of.
Here is a very short interview with the author of Last Man Standing. It's a succinct vivid summary of Geronimo Pratt's story:
http://www.jackolsen.com/geronimo.htm
Great interview Miles. I may just have to put that up as a separate post.
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