A few months ago I mentioned that we really need to have a demo CD for festival entries. The one that we have been using is very old, and was recorded before I joined the band, so the sound of sax is missing. Not to blow my own horn (groan) but, the sax fundamentally changed the sound of Deception, so the demo really isn’t representative of the band’s sound anymore.

Since our playing schedule got changed, we suddenly found we had 2 months instead of only 1 between shows. It was decided that now was the perfect time to do our recording.

Gary has a home recording setup that he uses with his musician friend, and children’s entertainer, Mr. I. Gary (Gary Q when he and Mr. I work together) and Yurgen (Mr. I’s real name), do all their recordings in Gary’s studio, so we thought we would see if Deception could do its recording there as well.  

Well it has turned out to be much more work than anticipated, and this demo has taken on a life of its own. We decided that we would record not just 3 or 5 songs, but 20! What the f%*#! were we thinking? Anyways, that’s what we’ve been doing for the past 8 weeks.

As a band we’ve hardly seen each other at all, but we’ve played together a lot via recorded tracks. Last week we had our first rehearsal in nearly 6 weeks. Tonight and Wednesday we’ll get together again, to play through our set list for our show this coming Friday.

We did something different for this show. Rather than do individual email-outs, we did a group mail-out from the band through our gmail account. Hopefully it didn’t end up in too many spam boxes.

Art told us last night that the Juniper Crescent crowd is coming, and when they’re out to our show, it’s always a good time!

So we hope to see you there as well!

Gourmet Gallery. 8pm. Friday, September 19th.

After spending a week in Seattle playing a lot of sax, my facial muscles are stronger than they’ve been at any time since I got ill, so I decided to bring out my handmade R&B/Rock mouthpiece that I bought a few years ago from Charlie Andrews. He developed them just before he passed away.

The BBQ kicks some serious ass, and is intended for just this type of playing. It can be raunchy as you need it to be, but can be toned down for the occasional ballad. The sound was perfect for the band, but unless you’ve got the chops, it comes with a warning: Don’t try this a home. It is not an easy piece to play, and takes all the control your years of training will have taught you.

However, you know what they say…Timing is everything…Art got channel 1 on his Ampeg amp fixed while I was away, so he now has more distortion effects available to him…Oh ya…And did I mention…Volume? Hmm…Oh well…You can’t win them all…

So at the end of the night the score was: sax 1, guitar 2.

I’ve asked the guys to post their thoughts on the pm as well, so you get a bit of a more “balanced” perspective, since I’m obviously more biased towards the non-electric perspective…And then there’s Gary…Even though he’s acoustic, he produces enough volume to count as an electric instrument!

This project will be “under construction” for a while come. But heh, it’s a blog, it isn’t supposed to be static. So please do check back again, and again, and again…And please tell your Blues-lovin’ friends about us as well

If you have any suggestions, ideas, or general comments, please leave us a reply. We really would like to hear from you. (OK, have I grovelled enough for comments? I hope so. It’s starting to affect my self esteem I think )

Take good care. We hope to see you at a show in the near future….helen