Charlotte, NC
This morning is the first morning since the tour began that we didn’t have to drive. It’s rainy and cold outside, so it’s a good chance to stay in my hotel room and get caught up on the diary. We are staying in a nice hotel, and I can actually open my window for fresh air. Although my view is not so great, and hopefully there is nothing toxic coming out of those vents.
Bert, Hideyo and I arrived in Charlotte yesterday late afternoon and were treated to amazing home cooked Italian food last night by our friends that live here in the Charlotte area. Thanks Gary and Jo!
To recap on the past week:
On Monday and Tuesday of last week, CGT was in Kevin Ratterman’s studio in Louisville KY recording more tracks for our new album. We recorded 2 original compositions and an arrangement of Hideyo’s of a traditional Japanese Koto piece written in the 1600’s. One of the original pieces is something that I wrote the original ideas for a few years back when I was in Argentina, playing music with some Argentinean friends. The piece is called Chacarera and is based on an Argentinean rhythm of the same name. CGT had recorded a version of this piece for one of our earlier Cds, and Robert Fripp suggested that it wasn’t quite ready yet for release, so we are giving it another try now. And have been including it in our set lists on the current tour. The other original piece was written by Hideyo and is called Hazardous Z. Hideyo wrote this piece in Japan while playing music with two of his Japanese pals, and we’ve made a new version for the CGT. While I was creating my own part for Hazardous Z, I was inspired by some music by Tony Levin, Terry Bozzio and Steve Stevens, which had a very flamenco sound to it. I recorded my part on my part over Hideyo’s initial recording of the piece on my laptop at home, and emailed it to Bert, who got out his nylon string classical guitar and created a beautiful Spanish sounding part. The scale used in this piece is one that is often used in middle-eastern music and also classical music. Hazardous Z is a Japanese, Belgian, Utahan, Spanish, Middle-Eastern, Classical fusion!
Kevin Ratterman and Bert in the studio
Hideyo changing strings
Bert recording Hazardous Z.
CGT soundman Tyler Trotter is opening his own store in Louisville and will not be joining us on tour for now. We got to visit Tyler and see his new space being transformed into a very cool beer store. The grand opening is on October 30th. Good luck with the store Tyler. We will miss you on tour!
The first show of the tour was last Thursday in small church by the water in Oxford MD. It was our first show without Tyler doing sound for us in many years. It was a challenge to figure out how to do the live recording as Tyler had taken care of that for us. Basically, we have transferred all the gear that Tyler had at the house soundboard up onto the stage and are controlling most everything from the stage. The recording did not happen the first night, but by the second night of the tour, we had all the gear running properly and were able to sell the live recording after the show.
Before we made the drive from Oxford MD to Frederick. A very friendly Oxford local took Bert and I for a ride on his boat in the waters around Oxford. What a beautiful place. Many people told us that once we visit the Oxford area, we are going to want to move there, and I can see why they say that.
Oxford MD
The show on Friday night at the All-Saints Church in Frederick was really great. This was our 7th or 8th time playing at this Church. Our friends/promoters Harry and Jeanne take very good care of us, and I always enjoy playing for the people who come to the shows there. I also feel some roots in Frederick as it’s very near where I took my first Guitar Craft course back in 1986. I used to go to Frederick on my days off on the Guitar Craft courses. I bought my first Ovation guitar from Boe’s Strings and I had my first lunch with Robert Fripp and Trey Gunn at the Firehouse restaurant, just down the street from the All-Saints Church.
The concert at Wolftrap in Vienna MD on Saturday evening was completely sold out. Wolftrap is on our list of best acoustic music venues in the country. It’s an old Vermont Barn that was moved to Vienna and turned into a world-class music venue. Everything about the place is really top notch. The sound system is superb. The staff that works at the venue is great. And the audience there is exceptional. Not only was the show great, it felt like we were beginning to get a good handle on the live recording and controlling the gear on-stage. Hideyo has been running the CDR recorder and doing a great job at creating track ID’s between each piece during the show.
On Sunday night, the concert was in the historical town of Williamsburg Virginia, which was the original colonial capital of the U.S. It’s funny how often we visit places of interest like Williamsburg, but don’t have any time to see anything of the place we are visiting. The concert was in a nice auditorium at the city library. The audience for the show was fairly small in size, but I could tell that they really enjoyed the show.
Monday night was a big surprise for us. The show was at the state theater in Abingdon Virginia, which is all the way on the other side of the state, a 7-hour drive from Williamsburg between the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountains. We were pleasantly surprised to have an audience of about 400 people in this small town of only 7000 people. Very few of the 400 people in the audience had ever heard of or seen CGT before. It was a lot of fun hearing their responses to each of the pieces we played as the performance unfolded. At the end of the set, the entire audience was standing cheering wildly. We left the stage as we normally do, anticipating a call back for an encore, especially since the audience was so enthusiastic. But as soon as we walked off the stage, I could hear the cheering immediately decrease, and people began leaving. We wondered if the folks in Abingdon are not accustomed to the traditional encore procedure. About 2/3s of the audience were still cheering, so we came back and played another song for them.
On Tuesday, we drove north through the Appalachians on the “Country Music Highway” route 119 up to Williamson West Virginia, which is a small mining town on the border of Kentucky. Several people on the Tug Valley (Williamson) Arts council had seen the CGT play at a booking conference, and they brought us in as part of their yearly concert series, which consists of just a few shows a year. The concert was held in the local high school auditorium. I could tell that there were several guitar players right down front watching our fingers. It seemed as though that they’d never heard or seen an acoustic guitar played quite like we do. This area is the birthplace of many amazing country and bluegrass musicians, so I’m sure they are accustomed to hearing musicians really tear it up on acoustic guitars, but not like CGT does.
CGT on stage in Williamson WV. Photo by Dave Dickens
On Tuesday night we stayed in a motel in Williamson, which was located right next to the train tracks. Every few minutes, trains carrying tons of coal went by screeching and honking their horns. I eventually fell asleep. Yesterday morning as we were getting ready to leave the motel, one of the women working at the motel gave us each a lump of coal as a souvenir from the town. Her name was Shorty Hatfield. She is a direct descendant from the famous Hatfields of the Hatfield-McCoy family feuds. Leaving Williamson we drove down route 52 along the Tug Fork River, the area where the original Hatfield-McCoy’s lived and feuded. There were many little mining towns along the way. Some looked more like ghost towns with rows of empty houses and buildings. We were told that some of the mining towns were booming with as many as 50,000 residents and now were as few as 5000.
Williamson WV
On route 52 from Williamson to Charlotte NC
