Pickels and Bass

Tonight I had a guest at the studio house. Thomas Pickels and Jamie, both of whom work at Lietz Music in Panama City came by for a while. Thomas contact me by Facebook and wanted to know if I would play on some tracks he is putting together for a CD. He emailed some tracks over and I gave ’em a listen. Good playing – in tune, in time and well recorded. But something was missing. So I asked him to drop by and pick a bit. I met them at my office and steered us all over to the studio. You know, you never know what is going to happen when you invite a player over. He carried in his amp and guitar and got situated. We listened to the tunes he sent in LIVE and talked for a bit. I shared a few of the current compositions I’ve been working on and I think LIVE blew Jamie’s mind (he said he was going to learn to use it so he could demo it better at Lietz). Then I said hey, enough of the computer – let’s play!

Thomas sat on one of the high stools and started playing. The first thing he played was Train, Train – I’m not sure who did the tune but I can clearly remember Dickey Betts sitting around the motel rooms on the road with Great Southern and the Allman Brothers jammin’ on that tune. Man, I haven’t heard that in years. It brought back some great memories.

We jammed on that a bit and then Thomas played “I’ll see you in my dreams”. He sounded great. I asked him to write down the changes to it and as he did I learned the basic structure of the tune. We played it a few times and then things started to get interesting. I asked Thomas to show me the melody of the tune. It took a while but eventually I got a good head arrangement of the tune. As I was figuring it out I think we were all really getting into the sound of my upright bass played with a bow doing the melody of the tune. It just felt really nice to play – which I completely credit to Thomas. My rule is, if the bass feels good, the others players must be great. Thomas was really fine to play with this evening.

I think we will be doing more… stay tuned.

Here is a bit of what we did… http://soundcloud.com/goldflies-music/ill-see-you-in-my-dreams

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