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Relive your fondest & worst memories "on the road".

Moderators: bandmixmod1, jimmy990, spikedace

Are you interested in hearing reports from the tour?

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#230837 by t-Roy and The Smoking Section
Sun Mar 09, 2014 12:41 pm
J-HALEY wrote:Looking good Ted! I hope the tour goes as planned and exceeds all your expectations!



Thanks Jeff,

I posted that amp pic for you actually. Ever heard of a Gibson Mercury? The owner tells me that it screams...


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#230839 by J-HALEY
Sun Mar 09, 2014 1:17 pm
yod wrote:
J-HALEY wrote:Looking good Ted! I hope the tour goes as planned and exceeds all your expectations!



Thanks Jeff,

I posted that amp pic for you actually. Ever heard of a Gibson Mercury? The owner tells me that it screams...


.

The neighbor that I inspired me to start playing guitar in 1068 had one and they do scream!

#230842 by gbheil
Sun Mar 09, 2014 5:15 pm
8)

#230844 by J-HALEY
Sun Mar 09, 2014 5:40 pm
J-HALEY wrote:
yod wrote:
J-HALEY wrote:Looking good Ted! I hope the tour goes as planned and exceeds all your expectations!



Thanks Jeff,

I posted that amp pic for you actually. Ever heard of a Gibson Mercury? The owner tells me that it screams...


.

The neighbor that I inspired me to start playing guitar in 1968 had one and they do scream!

#230873 by MikeTalbot
Sun Mar 09, 2014 11:40 pm
Haven't seen a Gibson amp in so long I'd forgotten they ever made one.

Tour info is always interesting. What happened to your bass player? I know it's easy enough to get hosed by delayed flights and so on.

Get it done brother.

Talbot

#230874 by t-Roy and The Smoking Section
Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:29 am
MikeTalbot wrote:Tour info is always interesting. What happened to your bass player? I know it's easy enough to get hosed by delayed flights and so on.

Get it done brother.

Talbot




It was the bass player pushing hardest to go on this tour, with the drummer being almost as enthusiastic. They both live in Poland and said they wanted to tour this album so much that I started putting it together for them, really.

Months of telling them that I was going to fill up March and April happened, then when I started posting the confirmations they suddenly remembered that they were booked with other bands on the weekends, and wanted me to fly them in for weeknights (like thats going to happen?) and use fill in musicians on dates they couldn't make it. Found a hot German chick that is a great drummer yesterday...if we can find a bassist I'll bring her on the tour.

I'm sure it is my unorthodox method of booking shows that scared them. Basically I go around visiting my friends and receive an offering, so I have no way of knowing exactly how much we will make until we're done. I will usually get more than could be negotiated in a guarantee, but all these guys are in high demand in Poland. The bassist/drummer decided sure money was better than taking what is behind door #2 because they've never toured with me before.

The percussion player and the keyboard player have done this with me before and know that it works well, so there wasn't a problem. The keyboard player bought his wife a new car with what he made with me on one weekend in Arizona last October.

Everyone in the band is an artist with their own CDs, and I'm introducing us as solo artists of several nations who have joined forces for a tour (hence the name cultural Xchange), so they also sell a boatload of CDs and are getting booked for future gigs by my contacts. For example, the place we played yesterday and today is going to help the guitarist and percussionist with a large tour in October now. They will handle all logistics and be the "base" for his band to come from Israel and play for a month around Germany. They will also be hiring the keyboard player to produce their church worship team CDs (one a year). This is only our first stop of many...

We will be paid well on this tour but the future payoff will be even bigger and they know it. The bass player and drummer were afraid of taking the risk, but they are already wishing they had come. They will join the tour in Berlin early April, some dates before then I will be solo as the other guys get a break. I will be putting a different band together several times in the next two months. This is like herding rabid cats!!!

Now I remember why I don't use a band...but these guys are worth the trouble. CDs fly off the merch table when I play with them and the music we've just made will keep me in demand for at least the next few years.

It really takes a business owner attitude these days to be successful. There is a lot of risk in being a recording artist that produces your own music, but the rewards are much better than just playing in a band. Of course, none of that matters if the music isn't really good. Making a great record is where it has to start and we've done that, so now it's a matter of going out to sell it. Besides that, I'm an adventure junkie and this is my idea of fun.

This Wednesday is Albstadt Germany. We need rehearsals because that is a 90 minute concert. But the guitarist is going to visit a friend in Switzerland on his day off. Oh well.....looks like we'll be doing a lot of jamming onstage.

Instead of stressing over it, I'm going to visit some castles.






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#230877 by gbheil
Mon Mar 10, 2014 1:19 am
Requires . . . faith . . .

#231000 by t-Roy and The Smoking Section
Thu Mar 13, 2014 10:00 am
And speaking of faith, our last remaining Polish musician took off back to Warsaw for this week (will rejoin this weekend in Belgium) so the remaining trio put together another band, with the help of 5 Germans.

We played in Albstadt-Ebingen last night. It was a small weeknight crowd of about 50 people, but they were very generous in the offering and we all left with a big smile.

I put pics up at: culturalXchange.info if you need proof (LOL)



Have a 7 hour drive today....and it will be a jam packed weekend in Brussels, Amsterdam, and The Hague.

And for anyone who knows what it is...have a great Purim celebration and I'll check back soon.

Shalomski



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#231023 by t-Roy and The Smoking Section
Fri Mar 14, 2014 12:16 am
Dang, that was a long drive!?

My google maps GPS kept losing the satellite and we ended up adding an hour to the trip because of missing exits and not finding out until much later.

So...tomorrow I pick up our Polish pianist at the Brussels airport and away we go. He got us a gig in Warsaw next Wednesday so we'll fly from The Hague to Poland and then back to play London on the weekend.

This tour is full of surprises.

#231039 by J-HALEY
Fri Mar 14, 2014 2:46 pm
yod wrote:Dang, that was a long drive!?

My google maps GPS kept losing the satellite and we ended up adding an hour to the trip because of missing exits and not finding out until much later.

So...tomorrow I pick up our Polish pianist at the Brussels airport and away we go. He got us a gig in Warsaw next Wednesday so we'll fly from The Hague to Poland and then back to play London on the weekend.

This tour is full of surprises.
8) 8)

#231110 by t-Roy and The Smoking Section
Sun Mar 16, 2014 9:03 am
Brussels was fabulous...We showed up and they had prepared a feast for us. Even if the gig had gone badly, it was already worth it. ;-)

The room was filled with Italians that speak French. Go figure? They were extremely warm people, and every single one of them greeted me with a kiss. I've never kissed so many guys in my life!? LOL

There were a lot of visitors from surrounding churches who came to see us at this congregation. Almost no one spoke english, which was a little scary for the first couple of songs knowing that very few could sing along.

But we rocked 'em hard and they loved it. This being only our 3rd gig, and considering the bassist and drummer aren't with us we were somewhat limited with only 40 minutes of music, so I wanted to stretch the songs with some jamming and long solos, but the lead guitarist kept the songs to the tighter short arrangements so it wasn't long before we started jamming on songs that we had never played together.

The band is made of 4 solo artists who all have their own projects so I just started passing off to the different guys and it worked very well with Jamie doing a bunch of energetic Israeli songs, Jeremiah doing some hip-hop, and Pawel playing some classical/jazz.

We got 3 encores and I was starting to worry that we would eventually be stumped, but we did a refrain of an earlier song and I just told them, "hey, that's it...we're out of songs". They would have stayed all night, I think. Then the local music team got up and started playing some of my music to honor us. They put out an album last year with 4 of my songs done in French, and one of out lead guitarists songs also in French.

Then they mobbed us at the merch table. We all have our own merch and tonight I did better than the other guys. I got offers to go to Sicily and a few more places in Belgium...and a Sicilian lady gave me a couple of Italian leather jackets.

I had packed all our stuff into what europeans call an SUV (ha!?) and thought we were going to have to buy one of us a train ticket because there was no way we were going to fit 4 people with all our gear, clothes, and product into that tiny little car...but Pawel (keys) somehow filled every nook and cranny and we squeezed in for a 3 hour drive to Amsterdam.

Again, there they had prepared an amazing feast for us in a beautiful hall with a great sound system and sound guy. About half the room could speak english we were limited to only an hour set tonight...but we got 2 encores anyway. Luckily we easily had enough music for 75 minutes after last night. The percussionist broke out a new hip-hop song tonight that was really cool.



Tonight we're in The Hague. After that I'll have a few days for exploring the Netherlands. I'm losing the keys and guitarist for a couple of weeks as they go back to Poland for some artists they are Producing and the original band is down to a duo next week. Not a problem, I have friends in London who will join us and at least we can talk in the same language for the next week. Yay!

Oy. What an adventure this is so far. Not a lot of time to upload pics from this host house before I have to leave for The Hague so that will have to come later...


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Last edited by t-Roy and The Smoking Section on Tue Mar 25, 2014 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

#231538 by t-Roy and The Smoking Section
Tue Mar 25, 2014 11:52 am
Haven't had time to do an updated report in a week or so with all the traveling but we had some great shows in the Hague before the keys and lead guitarist left the tour for a few weeks to rejoin later.

So I was scrambling to find temporary replacements to join the percussionist/rapper and me. We just finished 3 shows in London and was able to employ this guy, Stuart Neil, on lead guitar.

He played keys in a band called Kajagoogoo in the 80s. I always thought this song was Duran Duran.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKWbMJOIkUk

#231543 by GuitarMikeB
Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:53 pm
Ted - do you have any issues when traveling as far as 'working' in each country? Work visas, musician's union, etc?

#231586 by t-Roy and The Smoking Section
Wed Mar 26, 2014 12:04 am
shhhh....NSA is watching.

I have never even been asked in Europe, except England but I just tell them that I'm playing in churches and they correctly presume that I'm not making any money.

Canada will usually make me pay taxes on any CDs I'm bringing in, but it's not much.

#231649 by t-Roy and The Smoking Section
Thu Mar 27, 2014 6:25 pm
I really love how all the different musicians in this band come from a different background. This is our pianist and Producer of the "Warsaw Sessions" CD, Pawel Zarecki, whose background is classical and jazz.

We will finish a song and he'll just take off on a jam and start into another song when he's finished tinkering, so I started carrying a camera with me onstage. We're going into a song but I got what I could before I had to play guitar/sing.


Live from Amsterdam last week....


https://vimeo.com/user13789916

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