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Mr. Bad Cat 

  So here’s my newest song…Mr. Bad Cat
  Mr. Bad Cat is a brand new song for me.
  While I was recording the Smoky Mountain Encounter, Mr. Bad Cat popped up unannounced with his claws out, grabbed on to my earholes and wouldn’t let go.
   In fact, I had trouble not dropping what I was doing on the other song, because I wanted to dig in to this one right away.
   But, I think it was better that I waited a few weeks to work on it.
   I had my first two shows of 2014 last weekend, and I played this song at both shows, and I think it helped for it to ferment just a little… although, it is still pretty raw and ragged!
 
  Now even though the song is brand new, I’ve had several of the components floating around for a while.
  In fact, I remember exactly where and when I first made up the guitar part for this one.

  Every year, I play a party for my friends Wendy and Victor Ing; they have a big old southern boil, and it’s just a great time out in their backyard every summer.
   Well, I usually end up playing for about 4 hours, and I do a lot of improvising because it’s a pretty laid back event.
   I ended up making this guitar part up off the cuff, and it stuck with me ever since last August (2013).
   It’s been my sound check riff for sure haha.
 
   The other component I had was the title... I’ve had that for quite a while too. (In fact, many of my songs start off as just a title waiting for some words)
   Ya see, we have a cat…and his name is Mr. Biscuit…but I usually end up calling him Mr. Bad Cat, because that’s what he is.
   At least that’s what he thinks is… a real tough guy haha.
   Well, that title finally clicked together with this guitar part; after that, the words came pretty quickly.
 
   So, I debuted the song at the Buzzbin Shop, a great live original music venue in my hometown.
   Also on the bill that night was the incomparable Matt Woods, with Larry Fulford on the drums.
(Larry’s one of my favorite drummers and musicians, but that’s for another blog)
   So Larry comes up to me after my set and tells me that he and Matt were floored by Mr. Bad Cat, they were cracking up over the lyrics, especially where a go… “with a capital BAD…C-A-T”.
   Larry was like…”not just bad…but capital BAD”

   I told Larry that I have an actual Bad Cat at home, and he asked (with some disappointment)… “It’s about a cat?!”
   I said, “well, it’s about a cat… or a dude…a bad dude”
   He said, “No, it’s definitely about a dude!”
 
   That launched us into one of those great conversations I love having with another well-versed musician.
 
   You see, I have always loved those old 40’ and 50’s Blues, and Rhythm and Blues, songs where all of the lyrics have a double meaning.
   So me and Larry were throwing all kinds of examples of these types of songs back and forth.
   For example; Big Joe Turners Shake, Rattle, and Roll … “I'm like a one-eyed cat peepin' in a seafood store”…have you ever THOUGHT about those lyrics before!!!
   Or the song, Little Bitty Pretty One…I’m not even going to talk about that one…Yikes
   How about Big Mama Thornton… “You ain't nothing but a hound dog… Been snoopin' round my door… You can wag your tail…But I ain't gonna feed you no more”
   This could easily turn into a three hour discussion, because I love those double meaning kind of lyrics.
   But, to wrap things up for you all, and for my friend Larry, Mr. Bad Cat is about a dude…a very bad dude indeed.
 


   To record this one, I used my brand new, sea foam green, Fender Vaporizer amp.
   So far I LOVE this amp.
   Just stick a mic in front of it, and that’s it.
   No EQ, no BS, no pedals…BAM!
   One take and done!
  
   For the vocals I used my Shure-55.
   The vocals are really, really overdriven on this one; (by design).
   Whenever I get up in a higher register with my voice I tend to overdrive a mic, so I left the volume cranked up and let it all happen
   Also, Jean shot video of me tracking all of the parts, so I pulled the audio from the video camera and mixed it in with the guitars, vox, and drums.
 
   That’s about it for this one…stay tuned for the video of the actual studio performance, coming soon!
~SRT
 
Update…heres the video!

 

Smoky Mountain Encounter 

This next release is called The Smoky Mountain Encounter
 ...Listen to it here
 
Well we packed up all our luggage in our ragtop Ford
The first thing you should know is that we’d made this trip before
Cuz we love them Smoky Mountains; we don’t even need a map
We put the top down and point our nose towards the Cumberland Gap
But things were gonna get just a little weird this time around
 
Darkness fell fast with no moon up in the sky
The trees were hanging low; the road was strange on this eerie night
Weird lights tailing us: headlights failing us
We wanna put the top up, but I can’t risk a stop
Slowed it down to a crawl on that mountain as time stood still
 
The next few hours was a jumble of events
Vague recollections of a kind that make no sense
Dashlights flickerin’, the clock took a backwards spin
Static cross the dial as we’re flooded in unearthly light
Stopped dead in our tracks as memory fades into black
 
We finally came around as we were heading down
The other side of that mountain 
With the sun sitting high in the sky
The only souvenir we’d picked up on that ride
Was a subconscious dread of objects unidentified?
That’s about all I recall, nothing much more I can say
Now I got a good tale, to pass to my grandson one day
 
   The lyrics to this song are loosely based on a story my grandma had told me on many occasions over 40 years or so.
   Now, when she first told me this story, about a trip through the smoky mountains in the late 1950s in their convertible, I was probably 7 or 8 years old, maybe younger...and I asked her to tell it to me many times in the following years, up until last year, when she told it to me for the last time.

   But, when I first heard her tell this story it was the 1970’s, and movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind were in my mind, as well as TV shows like Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of, which seemed to frequently feature stories about UFO’s and Alien Abductions.
   Now, my grandma was such a terrific story teller, that as she was telling me about what happened to them on that dark and eerie night in the smoky mountains...
   -where they couldn’t get the top up fast enough on the car
   -and they felt as though something was following them…watching
   -and they stopped for fuel in the middle of the night in a place that shouldn’t of even had a store, let alone all of the weird looking people that were in the store staring at them silently...

   Well, my imagination filled in a lot of blanks!

   So this is the story she told me, processed through the filter of 1970's pop culture in the mind of a 10 year old
 

  
   Now, I’m sure that you noticed; I had a guest star sit in for the intro to this track, none other than OUR grandson, Mathias.
   It makes me pretty happy to pass along a story from my grandma down to him.
   And he did a great job getting up in the mic and doing his part, especially since he’s not even 3 years old yet!
 


   This is a fairly new song for me, and I have only played it live once or twice. It’s a fast one and its hard to play, so I had to rework the arrangement a little before I recorded it.
   I did however play it at a show at the BuzzBin Shop in Canton Ohio, and my friend Bill Locke who is the drummer in a fantastic band here in Canton called The Said So, grabbed me after the set and said, “What was that fast one? I like that one!” so I knew it was a keeper!
 
  The music itself actually came about in sort of an unusual way. I adapted and borrowed the main guitar riff from some music I had created for a documentary that one of Jean’s friends had put together …read more about that here if you’d like
 
   I used my late 30’s Kalamazoo on this song. I split the signal, running one side direct into the board with a couple of cheap transducer pickups that I taped together, and the other side I mic’ed up with my Shure 55.
 
   The whistle track at the beginning was me, and A LOT of reverb and slapback delay
 
   This song is one of the first I have recorded that reflects how much old time and mountain music I love and listen too.
   It’s not really a rockabilly song; but what is rockabilly anyway, but a mixture of hillbilly music, rhythm and blues, jazz, and great American Music.
   So hopefully you will all bear with me as I explore some more sounds in the future
 
   I’ll be playing this one at my first two shows of 2014.
   The first show being Thursday March 13th at the BuzzBin Shop …click here for details
   And the next being Sunday March 16th at Sadie Renes in North Canton  …click here for details
 
See ya soon
~SRT
 
 
  
  
   

My Old Man 

This next new release is a song about my dad; it’s called My Old Man.
...Listen to it here

My old man was born in 1943
While his old man was overseas
Fighting in the big one; Shooting at the Nazis
 
He grew up in Akron Ohio
Went to the same high school as David Allen Coe
But his buddy Bob was his favorite country music singer
 
He started drinking PBR when he was 15
With a pack of Pall Malls rolled up in his sleeve
He wore his hair slicked back and always had his sideburns low
 
He had plenty of jobs because he loved to work
He once was an ambulance driver; he was even a soda jerk
Until he started up his own Aluminum siding company; Back in the ‘60’s
 
When I look back what I always remember
After his long work day him sitting at the table
In his plain white t-shirt and a pair of Dickies work pants
 
He had these giant work boots, I used to put ‘em on
I’d run around the house with them flappin’ along
It never seemed I’d ever get big enough to wear them shoes
 
He loved to sit at a Barstool with all of his friends
Shootin’ the bull about how things used to have been
Tellin’ those same old jokes that were funny every time
 
Although I was just a kid, he’d take me along
Had me queue ‘em up; all his favorite songs
After he loaded me with quarters for the jukebox and the pinball machine
 
He loved Hank Williams and Johnny Cash
And Elvis was king no disputin’ that
Hank Thompson, Johnny Horton, Loretta Lynn,
Heck, all of the good ones
 
Things were pretty good and they should’ve went on
But life has a way of knocking us down
And those good old days turned into this sad country western song
 
I got a little older, and we butted heads
I thought I knew it all and hit the road instead
Years went by before we were able to patch things up
 
But even then I didn’t see him much
Which was a dang shame cuz I liked that old cuss
The world seemed right just knowing that he was around
 
But those Pall Malls finally took his breath away
And they tried to cut him back to just one beer a day
But he was gonna gamble for as long as they’d let him stay and play
 
He never did fold, he always went all in
But in the end the house always wins
The stakes are Rich and we’re all gonna run out of chips
 
On a cold March day we said our goodbyes
With my funeral suit on and a tear in my eyes
I wish we could’ve had just one more for the road
 

   I started writing this song for my dad, back around Christmas 2009.
   It was going to be kind of a funny song, because he was quite a character!
   I thought maybe I’d record it for him as a Christmas gift, but I didn’t get it done, so I figure I’d finish it up and get it done in time for his birthday in May (2010).
   Unfortunately, he got sick… for the final time.
   He passed away on March 19th 2010, about 2 months before his 67th birthday.
 
   As you can imagine, this song did not get finished that year.
   I didn’t have the heart to work on it anymore.
   I felt bad for all of the time we had missed together over the years; and not getting his song done in time…well that was just one more thing to make me feel badly.
 
  But finally, a couple of years later right around May of 2012, I got to thinking about this song.
  I decided it was time to finish it up.
  The entire ending had to be rewritten of course, and what was once a comical song, now turned into something much different.
  The final verses actually came pretty quickly to me this time, and I feel like these are some of the best lyrics I’ve ever written.
  Who knows, the old man may have helped me along a little bit with the ending.
  It sort of felt that way when I was working on it.
  

   Now, other than all that, the toughest part of writing this song, is that my dad was such a character that I had waaaaayyy too many stories to fit into a verse structure of a 2 or 3 minute song (in fact, this song is over 4 minutes long; which is much longer than most of my stuff)
  
   From the minute I started writing this one, I had page after page of words... which had to be whittled down and distilled to get to an actual song.
   Each line of this song to me is the launching pad for a story; and I had to cut out so many stories that never made it into the song. 
   Like, how many kids get to ride with their old man to pay off a loan shark named Nick the Greek.
   Or get to hang out at the race track and help their dad pick the ponies.
   He told me stories of the brand new Ford Galaxy he had before I was born with a Police Interceptor Engine; or working on a construction job back in the 60’s when he and his buddy decided to jump a fence to pet the cows in a pasture next door. Unfortunately these cows were BULLS!...they were running for their lives!
   I could go on for days…
 
   From the get-go when I decided to write this song, I chose this sort of country western talking blues style of song structure.
   My dad always loved songs like this; some of his favorites were “A Boy Named Sue” or “I’ve Been Everywhere” by Johnny Cash. Also, all of the Elvis songs where the King would just speak a verse like “Are you Lonesome Tonight”
 
  I think he would like this one.
  I wish I could play it for him.
  Maybe I will someday.
 
 
   Now one thing I will always remember about this song, (and which is also an absolute highlight of my music career) is the first time I played it at a live performance.
 (I put off playing it live for a while, I wasn’t sure how it would go over in front of an audience. Most of my stuff (up until then especially) is pretty high energy.  A lot of short, fast, fun/ funny, songs. Also, I wasn't sure if I could make it through the lyrics without choking up.)
 
   Well, we had rolled into Philadelphia to play at the world famous Shore Road Tavern.
   This was our first time there, and our first time in Philadelphia.
  (I’ll be writing a blog about the Shore Rd. Tavern in the future, so I won’t go into it too much here, but it has been one of my favorite all time places to visit and play a show.)
   Anyway, when we got into town we didn’t know anyone, and the night started off kind of slow, but I ended up playing 4 one hour sets; so I was reaching deep in my bag of songs to keep them entertained.
   There were a lot of great people we met that night, from Mike and Kathy who own the place, to Awesome Bill and Loki, and Smitty and Mike, and all of their crew.
   These guys were raising some hell… they were swing dancin’ with their girls... they were grabbing up Jean and swing dancing with her, they were heckling me… making me play hilarious songs like OMB versions of Flock of Seagulls and Safety Dance… Just a great time.
 
   So, in the midst of all these drunken hell raisin’ shenanigans, I decided to try out my new song “My Old Man”…very unsure of how they would react, and unsure if I could even get through it without getting choked up.
 
   As I got into the first verse, the place went silent.
   All of these big tough Philly guys with their gals moved closer to the stage.
   We were all locked in and connected during that 4 minute song.
   When I finished, there was a round of applause
   (And I did get choked up on some of the verses at the end.)
 
   I’ll never forget that…
 

  For the recording of this song, I used my late 1930’s Kalamazoo Archtop guitar that I found at Barn Treasures, which is a really cool place, sort of an Antiques and Salvage store in the Canal Fulton area of Ohio.
   I ran direct into the board, and also mic’ed it up close to the f-holes with my Shure-55.
   On the bridge sections of the song, I used a brass slide, which I made by cutting up a pipe I got at Home Depot one day with a hacksaw.
 
That’s about it
 
See you all soon out there on that road
~SRT

If ya ain’t first, yer last… Shake 'n Bake  

   This next new release is an instrumental that is both one of the oldest and newest songs that I’ve written and recorded…
   and here it is... Shake 'n Bake
 
  But first… the title 
  Coming up with a title for a song is often more difficult than you’d imagine, and is especially tricky for an instrumental song.
   This particular song has been stuck with 4 or 5 different working titles, none of which I really liked or fit, (although of few of these titles may become songs in the future)
 
   So, as I was thinking of why I had even came up with a song like this and what it meant, I realized that I wrote this song for one reason
   I just wanted to go fast.
   Yep, that’s right, I just want to go fast, just like the immortal Ricky Bobby.
   So in honor of one of the greatest teams ever, Ricky Bobby and Cal Naughton Jr., I’ve decided to call this song…Shake 'n Bake
 
   Now back to why this is both one of the oldest and newest songs that I’ve written.
   I actually made up the main guitar part that opens the song 20 years ago, way back in 1994.
   I had just seen The Reverend Horton Heat at the Odeon in Cleveland, and I made up this part the next day.
   I was playing with a band back then that really did a mish mash of musical styles.
   We wrote comical songs that would jump genres form verse to chorus. There would be a thrash metal inspired part that would mush right into a ska or reggae part, or a hardcore punk riff that would jar right into some hoedown music.
 
    Although I wrote this part for that band, it never made it into a song.
    But year after year it stuck with me, (even though I can hardly remember any parts from any of the songs that that band actually played in its sets or on the albums.)
 
  I once read an interview with Stevie Ray Vaughn and he described the guitar part to the great song Scuttlebuttin’ as just some little doodle he would play whenever he picked up a guitar.
   Sound check… Scuttlebuttin’ riff
   Just changed his strings… Scuttlebuttin’ riff, and so on.
   He never considered it a song at all.
   But he was warming up in the studio one day playing that riff, and the band kicked in, and the engineer hit record, and it became a song.
 
   Well for the last 20 years or so, what is now Shake 'n Bake, has been one of my warm up doodles, (for lack of a better term.)
   This “riff” has resurfaced a few times over the years but never found a home.
  The last time it resurfaced was back in 2010 in a RumbleDaddy song.
   Unfortunately the song that it turned up in, was in my opinion, probably the worst song in the RumbleDaddy catalog.
   I really hated that one! And I wrote it!
 
   Well, I got to thinking about this part last July (2013) and decided I couldn’t let it die such an ignoble death, so I started monkeying around with it.
   The rest of the song is all new stuff I came up with that seemed to work pretty well, so I kept it.
   I think that this trusty old guitar riff has finally found a permanent home in a decent song.
 

   Now… the nuts and bolts, for my friends that like to see how the gears turn…
   I recorded this one with my 5128 Gretsch Electromatic, (my main guitar for the last 6 years or so.)
   I ran the Gretsch into my no-name vintage crap amp that I use in my live shows
   I split my signal out of the guitar. I ran one side direct into the mixer, and the other side into my amp with one mic in front of the speaker.
   I mic’ed up the drums just like normal, and played.
 
   That’s about it!
   Nothing fancy on this one, except it’s really hard to play it on both guitar and drums, so there was about 500 “takes” and lots of cursing haha!
   But remember, if ya ain’t first, yer last!
~SRT
 

The Old Coal Trail 

   OK, so I finally got a new recording done! …CHECK IT OUT HERE
  AND... I’m hoping to keep ‘em coming for a while. (I’m shooting for one a week for the next few months at least…) 

   This is a song I actually wrote almost 2 years ago called the Old Coal Trail.
I’ve been playing in my live show all along, but I’ve never taken the time to properly record it until now.
 
   This one just popped up all of sudden after Jean and I had been meandering through the hills of North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia for a few days.
   Jean actually wrote a pretty cool story about our trip, which you can check it out HERE
 
This song is definitely a true story as you can tell from the lyrics
 
Down at a crossroads on the old coal trail
Pulled right over to set a spell
Rain’s coming better take cover
Up ahead
I don’t know what’s around the bend
 
The roads they wind and twist
On that old coal trail
Out past the church
The buildings look dead
Falling to rubble
Crumble back to the earth
 
The houses all boarded up
But you can feel their eyes
Staring out through the cracks
Boring right into your neck
If you squint your eyes
You can almost see
How it must have been
Before it all began to die
Once bright and filled with life
Now faded out and gray
On the old coal trail
On the old coal trail
 
 
   As far as the music, I’d been listening to some Junior Kimbrough and T-model Ford and that's right about when I happened to find a cheap old Kay flat top at a garage sale for $20.
   Now, this old Kay is clunky and sounds kind of crappy, but it does that old Blues thing pretty good with a brass slide.
    The music just popped out of that guitar on accident, and when we got back from our trip, the lyrics just popped out of my head after our travels
 
   One cool memory I’ll always have of this song, was playing it for one of the first times at 123 Pleasant St. in Morgantown West Virginia.
   There was a guy there with his wife, and they were rockin’ out to my stuff.
After my set, she grabbed me and told me that her husband was a coal miner from a long line of coal miners, and that the Old Coal Trail really got to him!
 
 

  Now for the musicians and people who like to peak behind the curtain…
  For this one, I used my Harmony Archtop running into my Magnatone M12 two channel bass amp.
  The Magnatone is a true two channel amp from the 60’s, so I split my signal separately into both channels.
I ran clean into one channel with some compression, and I added an old MXR distortion pedal to the other side.
   I stuck one mic up close in front of the speakers, and a second mic a few feet back.
   I also videoed the performance on my phone, which turned out pretty cool so I dumped the audio from my phone back into CuBase and mixed them all together.
   This is actually a “one-take” guitar performance, but I think that using the 2 channels with 2 mics, and then having the video capturing the sound right off of the f-holes is giving the guitar kind of a cool “chorusy” dense tone that makes it sound a little overdubbed and layered.
   A little aside...I use a bunch of cheap pieced together pieces and parts in my recording process and still get some very interesting tones and sounds, so don’t ever let anyone tell you that you or your gear aren’t good enough!
 
   This is also the first recording where I used my new hi-hat set-up on my homemade drums.
So that was a challenge figuring out how to mic it all up and make everything sound “not crappy”
   The Hi-Hat stand was given to me by my friend Randee McKnight from the Living Deads (I believe he found it at a junk store in the Southern States somewhere.)
   Come to think of it, Randee and his bass playing better half Symphony, also found my Magnatone amp, down in Florida at some kind of Flea Market!
   Where would this song be without them!
   The actual cymbals were given to me by my friend Rockabilly Ray Kollar, (former RumbleDaddy drummer)
I KNOW that Ray found them at a junk store!
Ray is a Flea Market/ Junk Store/ Pawn Shop Aficionado ha!
   I've modified the hi-hat pedal so I can play my snarebox and hi-hat at the same time; or individually if needed.
   I’ve been learning how to angle my feet differently on the pedal to get a crash sound, or a closed hat snap, or a jazzy ride/hat feel. (it ain’t easy, but I’m getting there)
 
Well, that is probably more information than anyone would ever want!
If you’ve read this far I thank you!
Looking forward to getting back out and playing some shows here in a few months with lots of new recordings and some new songs!
See ya soon!
~SRT