Musical Instruments | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

In the Recording Studio at Melodium with Félix and Gang….

February 14, 2014
bradspurgeon

Melodium Studios

MONTREUIL – There has been a big blank hole on this blog for the past several days as I have just spent four of the best and most important days of my life, rehearsing for a day, and then spending three days in a studio recording five songs, four of mine and a cover. That may sound like hyperbole or exaggeration, but really, I mean it. It was certainly four of the most enriching days I’ve had, and I am hugely impatient to show the results, but I won’t do that until the five tracks are all properly mixed. So in the meantime, just a quick post to say what I was up to.

It was Part II of a project I started nearly four years ago when I went into the studio to record four songs as part of my worldwide open mic and musical adventure, another media aspect to my open mic film, open mic book and this blog – i.e., the music I have written and been singing during this period. My goal is to do a full CD, and I now have nine songs recorded in full band mode, and I will add one or two in solo acoustic and maybe one live from an open mic somewhere…. I will put up links below to the first four recordings, from 2010, which I recorded live in the Point Ephemere in Paris. As soon as I have the mixes to the stuff I did this week, I’ll make that available somehow too!

But for the moment, a bit more on this week: Aside from my own guitar playing, singing and songwriting, another one thing that ties together the recording sessions from 2010 and this week is the presence on the tracks of the lead guitar player, Félix Beguin. I have spoken about Félix frequently on this blog, as he is also the lead guitarist of the bands The Burnin’ Jacks and Velvet Veins. These are two fabulous up-and-coming young French bands, the former of which had one of its songs featured on the Rock&Folk compilation CD last month. Raphaëlle – whose video “Mississippi” I put up last week – also contributed chorus and a fabulous vocal part on one of the songs.

And anyway, this time, Félix did much, much more than just play lead guitar on my songs as he did three and a half years ago – by the way, we first played together at the Lizard Lounge open mic in November 2008! – as he played lead and keyboards and did some backup vocals, and he engineered, recorded and even basically produced the five songs we did this week, along with Scott Bricklin and Jeremy Norris. Norris is the drummer for both of the aforementioned groups, and Bricklin is an American musician from Philadelphia who has lived in France for a decade now, and who has an illustrious history of making music – he is a multi-instrumentalist, and a singer-songwriter (I have one of his albums on which he plays basically all instruments).

Working with these three guys was superb in many ways, but not the least interesting aspect to it – which helps in the music – is that they are all used to working not only with each other, but also at the studio where we recorded: Melodium Studios in Montreuil, which is a funky neighborhood located just outside of Paris. Félix and Scott are both regular engineers at the studio, so everyone knew each other and the working environment, and it paid off in the music. In fact, it was three days of bliss in this amazing, spacious cellar studio that has several rooms, some really nice equipment and a warm and highly competent staff.

The Amazing Leslie Speaker at the Melodium Studios in Montreuil

One of the high moments in terms of the equipment was when they pulled out the absolutely wonderful antique Leslie speaker and ran the keyboards through that, and then later ran some vocal chorus stuff through it like the Beatles first did in the mid-60s. The Leslie, devised in the 1930s, uses a rotating fan-like device to distort the sound waves and give it a sound like an organ.

Together, we recorded my songs “Borderline,” “Crazy Lady,” “When You’re Gone Away,” and “If I Only Had You.” For the cover song, we recorded “Mad World,” which I have been playing for a few years, and notably, with Félix for about four years on occasion. But this time, this is a monster of a cover song, unlike any version I know of “Mad World,” and I can’t wait to show it here!

my J-200 and the singing space at the Melodium studios

In the meantime, here are the songs I recorded live at the Point Ephemere nearly four years ago. Believe me, the quality of the new ones is incomparable. (I feel like I’m boasting without showing the result – which is an empty boast – but I’m sooooo excited!)

Lighter, shrimpy, easy to download but less good quality file versions of my 2010 live recordings at the Point Ephemere in Paris. These are NOT the studio recordings of five different songs that I just did at the Melodium, and on these recordings Félix played lead on “Memories” and “Except Her Heart,” while Laurent Zarby played lead on “Let Me Know,” and “Since You Left Me”:

Memories

Except Her Heart

Let Me Know

Since You Left Me

Big, fat, heavy, high bandwidth better quality file versions:

Another Great Night at Le Baroc Open Mic in Paris

December 5, 2013
bradspurgeon

PARIS – Again for a change, I decided to head off to the Baroc open mic in Paris last night instead of a couple of other places where I maybe have spent more time in the past, but where I can be more sure of finding the same kind of evening all the time. At Le Baroc, I never know what I’ll find!

But last night it was a very cool, if low-key open mic at this mainstay of the Paris open mic scene. Le Baroc has held an open mic for years, but changed from organizer to organizer. For the last few years it has been organized by the genial Réjean Mourlevat, a nice, low-key musician who joins in on the piano or drum machine from time do time during the evening, and always makes sure musicians feel comfortable behind the mic.

The Baroc is a bar with an interesting character, with carpets hanging from the ceiling over the stage, the big mirror behind the stage, and a side room where you can sit and chat a little while still seeing the stage. It has a real 1980s feel to it.

The musicians vary from week to week, and last night the accent was definitely on French musicians singing in French – which is really refreshing for an otherwise pretty anglo kind of scene at many of the other Paris open mics.

It is also a place that emphasizes a real open stage, and if you’re into it, expect to be joined by other musicians while you play. Last night my last two songs I had a guitarist or two and a guy who played keyboards, and it was lots of fun. Especially on my Year of the Cat, which I had a friend film for me….

Well worth the detour out of the Latin Quarter and up to Belleville….

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Jamming into Something New ( for me) at Actors Jam Bar Singapore

September 21, 2013
bradspurgeon

actors jam bar

SINGAPORE – The night race in Singapore takes most of the night out of my jamming possibilities in this Asian wonderland. But part of the attraction in this city is that it is a nightlife city – and that means that the night goes on a lot longer here than in most places. So it was that last night after leaving the racetrack at nearly 1 AM, I decided to take a cab over to the Actors Jam Bar even though I did not have my guitar with me, to see if I could jam.

The Actors Jam Bar is fairly unique in my experience in having quite a chaotic open stage with all the equipment provided by the establishment so that anyone can come in and pick up a Stratocaster, a bass, or sit at the drum set or the keyboards, or just stand behind the mic and read lyrics from the large iPad kind of thing. You can play anything, sing anything.

It used to be there was an acoustic guitar, but I saw no trace of that last night. So I decided to try the Strat. I’ve never really played in public with an electric guitar, doing all my stuff on the acoustic, even when I play with a band. But two nights ago after I spoke to that Englishman I mentioned in the food hawker’s next to the Actors Jam Bar, I told him how little confidence I had in playing the electric guitar.

He said, nuts. The way I played I could do the electric with no problem. So it was that I suddenly had a little confidence, and last night playing on the stage in a relaxed environment at actors with no acoustic guitar to fall back on, I was forced to belt it out on the electric. And to my great surprise and pleasure, I has a really great time and felt the rockin’ like I never felt it before.

So it was that thanks to an open stage, an anything goes attitude, and no pressure from an audience expecting little, I was able to discover another musical performance pleasure. Oh, this was miles away from anything even vaguely resembling Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page. But it was f-ing cool and fun!

The Value of a Jamming Bar like Actors

It made me realize the value of jamming bars like this as a place to do stuff you’d never try otherwise, and given that at Actors there is no pretension to great music – check out the videos to figure that one out – it was an ideal place to do something new. Having said that, I’d never have done it if I had my guitar with me. It was also vital that the music went on until after 2 AM – although I don’t now how long, since I returned to the food hawker next door to have my noodle dinner and knock back a Tiger beer.

Is Austin, Texas Really the Live Music Capital of the World

November 15, 2012
bradspurgeon

I arrived in Austin, Texas last night late and had a problem at the airport and no time to go out and play in my first open mic. But I will have plenty of time in the coming week to do so, and I just wanted to put up a quick post to lay out the challenge and set the stage for the coming days. On my worldwide adventure of attending open mics and jam sessions over the past four years I have found lots and lots of musical cities and made new discoveries. I had never been to Austin before, but I knew that it called itself “the live music capital of the world.” Naturally, my reaction to that was: Prove it.

My feeling was, this is another one of those American boasts that if it happens in the United States, it must be the best. The center of the world. The “World Series of Baseball Syndrome,” you might say. But two things have led me to believe that I might, I just MIGHT have my mind changed over the course of the next week as I taste the music scene and perform in the open mics in Austin.

That feeling not only has to do with the massive number of open mics and music venues that I see listed on the internet and in the local papers. It also has to do with the small taste of the city I have had in my first couple of hours there this morning before heading out to the race track.

And ultimately, can you imagine my enormous surprise when I went to the baggage claim belt at the Austin Bergstrom International Airport and found a bunch of statues of guitars above the baggage belt?!?!?! I had my own guitar on my back, and a feeling of come “home” was huge. I could not believe it! I almost felt comical, like someone who has show up by accident at a Halloween party in bizarre costume one usually wears out of eccentricity.

That may be pushing for metaphors, but it was an amazing and odd feeling. Keep tuned to see how things progress.

Having said all that. While I am seeking my own answer to the question, what do you think? Answer my poll question:

Musical Contrasts in Abu Dhabi

November 2, 2012
bradspurgeon

Shangri La Hotel Abu Dhabi

I did not find a place to play in Abu Dhabi last night, but even if I had, the cold I – and many other journalists – got in India meant that I could not sing anyway. Total loss of voice. But that meant the perfect occasion to go out and listen to other musicians. It would turn out to be a big contrast in styles and atmospheres. The first place I went to was the massive, enormous, colossal hotel called Shangri La, where the oud player with whom I jammed the night before, was playing with his guitarist in the lobby. This was Layth Aldaene, whom I wrote about on the blog yesterday. The lobby of the Shangri La is massive too, and the music was beautiful within that environment. But it was all very much a laid back, don’t disturb anyone kind of music as the cream of the F1 crowd sat around and drank aperitifs or waited for their rendezvous of the evening.

Unfortunately it was not the best set up for recording the music with my Zoom Q3HD in a discreet manner. But I did my best.

After that I went back to my hotel, and there, I found the outdoor – tented – restaurant of the hotel with chicha pipes being smoked, snack meals or buffet being eaten, and people generally drinking fruit juices and other non-alcoholic refreshments. It was a family feel to it, a popular feel, and it was the first night of the weekend. So the live music reflected this, and as it went on it got more festive. I felt slightly intrusive filming the merriment, so I only got a few brief glimpses. But it was indeed a lively and contrasting popular moment of nightlife in Abu Dhabi, compared to the staid, laid back Shangri La opulence.

And the music itself… no comparison. After hearing the virtuoso playing of Layth Aldaene and his guitarist, the electronic drums, keyboards and other synthesized sounds of the musician and his singer at the One-to-One hotel was a little crude by comparison. But festive and fun, indeed….

Sick as a Dog in Korea, Listening to David Broad

October 14, 2012
bradspurgeon

David Broad’s New CD

There has been a long break from activity on this blog, partly because I have been traveling from Japan to South Korea, but mostly because I was lying sick as a dog in a tiny town called Mokpo in the south of South Korea for two of the three days. Sick as a dog is not a term I really wanted to use in this place, but it was the best one that came to mind. The good thing about all that is that it did give me time to contemplate the new CD of David Broad, one of the few guitar players I have seen at open mics who has made me briefly contemplate quitting playing guitar.

Mokpo is the location of the Formula One race this weekend, and I got in so much music AND work in Japan that sleep and proper nourishment and all of the rest of the things we do to keep ourselves healthy were left out of my life for a little too long, resulting in a wretched, flu-like deathly cold. Now under control, I found a moment to write about the music I did NOT play, but would have liked to – that of David Broad.

Broad is this amazing finger-picker guitar player from Leeds, England, who spent some time in Paris last year playing at the open mics and doing some concerts. He sent me his new CD a couple of weeks ago, and is it beautiful. You feel like you are in the same room with him and his band listening to his songs performed to perfection. Old time, country, blues, it’s all here. Broad’s heroes are above all the country blues stars of the 1920s and 1930s, people like Mississippi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis, Skip James, Blind Blake, and of course Robert Johnson.

The album is not just beautifully produced in sound terms – with its mix of his finger-picking guitar, warm vocals, harmonica and double bass, and the mandolin, lap steel guitar, fiddle and 12 string guitar of the other musicians – it is also a wonderfully produced physical CD with a screenprinted cardboard sleeve. Recorded in Leeds and released on Folk Theatre Records, it has been produced in a limited edition of only 500 copies – so get one. If you’re sick and/or low, it will bring you out of it. If you are doing just fine, it might head off the flu – or the blues – lurking just around the corner.

P.S., if you are in the UK this fall you can catch David Broad on his tour at the dates on this list.

Quiet But Cool at the Bonheur Before the Break

August 8, 2012
bradspurgeon

Even the Ptit Bonheur la Chance open mic in Paris will take a summer break in August … of a single day. Next Tuesday there will be no open mic at this great venue; Yaco, the MC, was apologetic: “I’ll be here! I will be in Paris!!!” But all workers need occasional breaks. Musicians may not, but proprietors and barmen and women do. Anyway….

It was already the least well attended of the recent open mics at this place on the Rue Laplace, near the Pantheon, in several weeks. But that did not prevent it from being a fun and cool night with some new musicians – including Phil Donnan from California, who is filming to do a thing about music in Paris – and who also, by the way, has an interesting idea of having a “mobile studio” with him and he is looking to record people at their homes in Paris – and then there was also the man with the very cool resonator classical guitar, that he got built himself.

Resonators are those old fashioned guitars from the 1930s mostly used for the blues, with a steel or tin resonating plate on the front to help with volume in the days before amplification. I am not sure if the classical resonator ever existed, but now it does….

Personally, I decided to force myself into singing a couple of songs I have not yet memorized, having to read the lyrics. But I wanted to change what I do at this local open mic, since I’m always singing the same songs. I did a Rolling Stones…> “Take me to the station…” and a Bob Dylan, which had too many lyrics for what I did… “When you’re lost in Juarez, and its Eastertime too….”

All in all, a good night that enabled me to get home relatively early in order to spend more time on MY film today….

Have Guitar, Will Travel….

February 26, 2012
bradspurgeon

Bravo to the U.S. congress and the United States Federal Aviation Administration. As I prepare for my upcoming travels around the world with my guitar, I have just read a wonderful bit of news on the New York Times “In Transit” blog about how a bill recently passed in congress has just written legislation to allow musicians to carry their instruments aboard their flights.

“But a new bill passed by Congress this month sets a uniform national policy on the matter,” said the blog. “The Federal Aviation Administration will permit any instrument that can be safely stored in the overhead compartment or underneath a seat to be treated as carry-on luggage. It also sets size and weight requirements (150 linear inches and 165 pounds) for instruments checked as baggage, and it allows musicians to purchase an extra seat on a plane for instruments that are either too large for the overhead compartment or too fragile to be stored in the cargo hold.”

Yes, but…. that of course only affects flights in the United States. How much do you want to bet that I will continue to be hassled elsewhere as I travel to all continents except Africa and Antarctica with my guitar? The first time I experienced a problem was in 2009 on my first tour of the world’s open mics, when the Singapore Airlines people in Paris told me that I could not carry the guitar aboard. I found that I was flying on an Airbus A380 for the first time, i.e., the biggest airplane in the world. And there was plenty of room for the guitar.

As the years passed, I occasionally ran into the problem again – with Vueling, Korea Airline and Emirates. Unfortunately, somewhere on the Emirates flight from Paris to Singapore the guitar was severely damaged. As I had a stop over in Dubai, it may have happened in the transfer from one flight to another. But Emirates, classy airline that it is, offered me a voucher for future services as an apology.

In fact, I have found in the three years that I have been flying around the world with my guitar, that the most difficult airport of all to try to board a flight with a guitar has become Charles-de-Gaulle in Paris. I now believe that the problem stems not from the airline – although both Vueling and Singapore Airlines said it was their policy to not allow instruments aboard – but rather the instructions that the people at the check-in desks have concerning instruments. IE, the local staff. Having said that, I managed to make it through on several occasions despite queries from the check-in as to whether or not they should allow the guitar in the cabin.

I hope that the rest of the world’s aviation authorities will adopt the FAA standard. I never, ever, encountered a situation in which the guitar was a problem for fellow passengers. But as I said, it has been damaged, and therefore a problem for the musician, when placed in the hold.

Now I will never have to consider writing a song like this:

Another Grand Cru du Mazet

November 19, 2011
bradspurgeon

Every time I go to the new open mic at the Mazet Pub on rue St. André des Arts on Thursday night in the Paris Latin Quarter, I like it more and more – and I already liked it to start with. Okay, there is one problem: This is one of the loudest, most talkative audiences I know of! But they are also an appreciative audience that seems to enjoy both talking AND listening to the music, as they applaud and are generous in their compliments, their little dancing moves when the music moves, and a general sense of well-being.

Last night I was also really pleased that I resisted the temptation to NOT take my new Gibson J-200 with me. I had been thinking that since I had been having so much trouble with the amazing, yet complicated, Fishman pick up and all its controls, that I was better off taking my Seagull, which just plugs in and sings. But I fell to the temptation to bring the Gibson just because I love playing it. I am pleased I did because, in fact, it took no work at all – except turning on the anti-feedback switch – to get it sounding great. I only really knew it sounded great, however, when I gave it to Justin Purtill to use during his songs. Then I was able to stand at the bar and listen and appreciate his great fingerpicking playing as I heard the Gibson from the room PA and not from the stage monitor amp.

Justin and I later went up for a second set during which he played bass along to my songs, although he had never heard them before. He learned as we went along. Actually, not quite true: He did know “Crazy Love,” by Van Morrison, and that was cool just to slip into doing that perfectly.

Justin then played with a Frenchman whom he did not know and whose songs he did not know either. There were some cool things to come out of that too. In all, I’ll be returning as often as possible to the Mazet….

Liberated by Success in Abu Dhabi – Jamming with the Oud Masters

November 14, 2011
bradspurgeon

House of Oud - Bait Al Oud

Who will ever be able to trust my rambling accounts of playing music around the world ever again? Yesterday, despondent, having failed after three days of effort to find the elusive “House of Oud,” or “Bait Al Oud,” I wrote a post talking about how great it was to fail! But at the end of my working day at the racetrack I found myself with two and a half hours available before I had to go to the airport for the flight back to Paris. So I decided to make one more attempt to find the mecca of oud.

That would require a half-hour cab ride downtown from the track, followed by eventually another half-hour cab ride from there to the airport. That would leave one and a half hours to find the oud joint and hope that it was open and hope that I could jam, film, talk and sing with whomsoever might be there. What spurred me on to having a little hope at the end of the day was that by changing my search method online to “Bait Al Oud” I discovered a Facebook page for the House of Oud AND a web site talking about the Oud House and on these I actually finally found a photograph of the building – so it was now an identifiable object. (What a saga!)

The Time Out story about the place had said people could just walk in off the street and see the place and ask for a jam. So I took a cab to the same place behind the One-to-One hotel where I had been before, and I asked the cab driver to drive around ALL of the surrounding back-streets. We were almost ready to quit and go directly to the airport when suddenly a seeming mirage appeared before me: The very same majestic image of the House of Oud that I saw online! All was pretty dark, but the front door was slightly ajar. So I asked the cab driver to wait while I explored. Picture a horror film where the victim enters an empty, massive, mansion in the middle of nowhere – “Hello, is there anyone here? Helllooooo? Anyone home????”

I just kept following the lights from within to a back room, and there I met up with a man in Arab clothing and with an oud – a beautiful handmade oud – by his side. On the table next to him was an interesting auto-harp type of thing too, and there was another man as well. The Arab with the oud spoke the best English, and so I explained that I was a musician on a visit to Abu Dhabi and I was about to leave the country but I had been searching for three days for this place, that I had heard there were jam sessions. Could we jam?

Another man came and joined us, and it turned out that they were all about to leave for the day, that the place had closed for the day. But they were curious about me, about my guitar – which was still in the cab – and they invited me to join then, get my guitar, and we would jam. Eureka! It was no longer just a mirage.

musicians at house of oud

I got my instrument and my luggage and asked the cab driver to return an hour and 15 minutes later to take me to the airport. I went back into the House of Oud and proceeded to have the time of my life, jamming with the oud player and the harp player. They also let me play the oud myself, they allowed me to film us and interview them for my film. And they took me on a tour of the workshop where the ouds are made, in a back room of the same building. The third man who had shown up was the luthier who made the ouds, the man in the Arab dress was a student, and the harp player was an oud music teacher. He and the luthier were both from Egypt, which is the greatest land of the oud. I immediately fell in love with the instrument and its beautiful feel and sound, and I regretted upon leaving that I had not tried to see if I could buy one.

The luthier, whose name is Amr Fawzy, builds around 40 of them per year, if I understood correctly. He showed me how they are built, and with what wood. He later inspected my guitar, and liked it. The oud, an ancestor of the guitar, has existed since 2350 BC! It is central to Arabic music, and this Bait Al Oud is a project that was started by a man named Naseer Shamma, who also started one of these institutions in Cairo, and I believe elsewhere as well, as he tries to develop and maintain the oud. In fact, he brought about some changes with the making of the oud to bring it up to more modern standards, without detracting from the traditional instrument. One of these, Amr – who was trained in the Cairo House of Oud and is a master luthier – pointed out to me, was that the tuning head is made entirely from one single piece of wood, which is carved out in the middle.

The House of Oud, which was founded only two years ago, is partly sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, which provides wood, strings, budget, I suppose. And the villa is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. There are rehearsal spaces, concert spaces, a library, all sorts of rooms. The institution chooses students through a system of try-outs, and they follow a course with the teacher I met – who is also Egyptian – and in turn can go on to teach. Aside from the regular free jams, all the students usually gather on Thursdays to play amongst themselves.

I said yesterday that I was happy with failure as I travel the world and seem only to meet with success on this musical adventure seeking out the music of the world and places to play and jam, and I said that failing to find a place proved just how difficult a task it has been, and how different each place can be. But the feeling I had playing with these musicians, discovering the oud and their institution, and succeeding at the last minute after so many efforts, was far, far, far greater than that feeling of accepting failure! It was also, above all, a window into a real bit of Abu Dhabi and Arab culture – and hospitality – that I had before then had no inkling of. Before the House of Oud, my only experience of the country was the backstreets of the smokey cafes, and above all, the western bars in the western hotels. Soooo glad I made the last effort, so glad the House of Oud was so accomodating.

I made several videos, but the best one is too long, too big, to put up here – and I will put it in my documentary. It contains much more oud playing and me playing the oud and all three of us jamming with me on my guitar, and the other two on the harp and oud. But for the moment I have only these two shorter ones to put up, which have more of the harp than the oud! But the workshop one is fabulous, and I like the moment where the luthier tells me the oud is made of Indian rosewood, and that he had noticed part of my Seagull guitar was made of rosewood too….