Most of the time I'm a peaceful man

Over the last few years the Kincaids have messed around with quite a few cover songs. Some we adopt into our core repertoire, such as it is (as with Chilton’s “I’m in Love with a Girl” or Reed’s “Satellite of Love”). Others we toy with for a week or three and then forget again (too many to mention).

Back in early ’10 we decided to try the one real song song from Negativland’s class Escape from Noise LP (that’s what we used to call a vinyl record, kids).

We had a lot of fun with it, playing the tune at various tempos, eventually stretching it out into an odd Grateful Dead meets Velvet Underground space. As if often the case, the penultimate take was really the best one.

On this one Cecil Dan is on bass and Rev Bill is on the acoustic guitar. I’m on electric uke and lead vocals. Dan and Bill sing backups. I like to dedicate this one to B, who’s name is often misspelled in the way of the soda*.

Nesbitt’s Lime Soda

* Speaking of which, there doesn’t seem to be a Nesbitt’s Lime Soda, although there appears to be, or to have been, a Nesbitt’s Lemon-Lime at some point.

Video of 'Playful Design' from UX Lisbon

Back in May I posted my slides from my talk at UX Lisbon this spring, on the topic of Playful Design.

Recently, the UX LX organizers released a free version of the video of my talk (including a very brief little ukulele demo at the end), so here it is for y’all:

This ain't no cocktail you buy in a bar

One of the songs I’ve been playing the longest with the Reuben Kincaid is an original by Dan Brodnitz aka Cecil aka Dan about prison booze called “Pruno.”

In fact, before the Kincaid even got together Pruno was one of the first tunes Dan taught me and that we played together, and it was one of the first songs I recorded myself playing with Dan, when I started to get the idea that this playing music together thing is actually pretty cool. At the time we were playing it on piano and uke but not TRK plays it in our current power trio format, with Dan on guitar (sometimes acoustic, sometimes electric), the Reverend So-Called Bill on bass, and myself on ukululu, of course. Vocals on the “I don’t want to be right” chorus by hillbilly leprechaun Samuel, who would himself never make or consume pruno.

Over the last few years we’ve played the song scores of times, usually with some major or minor flubs. The version I’m posting today is done in the slow epic/anthem mode, and has its share of clams, but is also a fairly representative demo of how we play “Pruno” today:

Pruno (demo)

UPDATE: Shared with the gracious permission of Dan Brodnitz!

Ukepalooza remixed

At long last, the entire Cheeses & Tequila set from Web Directions in ’10 is available, now with multi-camera intercutting and rockstar-like fretboard closeups!

Tomorrow's the day my bride's a-gonna come

I’ve been messing around with the Bob Dylan song “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” which was popularized by the Byrds, among others. Six years ago I posted some vocal and baritone uke musings to this blog and promptly forgot about it. Then the Reuben Kincaid started jamming together and we broke this song out once or twice. (It’s only got three chords and the verses and choruses are the same so it’s, uh… kind of easy to play.)

When the time came for my scary stage debut as Cheeses & Tequila with Bill DeRouchey at Ukepalooza, I dragged it out of my memory banks for our frantic rehearsal and sessions and this ended up being one of the songs we played in our set.

Recently, while one of the members of the Kincaid was gallivanting halfway around the globe, the Right Reverend “So-Called” Bill and I got together for a duo rehearsal, Bill on acoustic guitar and myself on my trusty electrified ukulele, and among other things we played this song.

Now, after I played in Portland with Other Bill, my old friend Levi Asher dropped me a note complimenting me on choosing to sing that particular version of the lyrics. It happened to be the one I was more familiar with at the time, and that’s the first version So-Called Bill and I improvised.

What’s strange to me now is that I distinctly remember that Levi used to quote the lyrics “strap yourself to a tree with roots” in one of his email sigs of yore, and that’s from the other well known version of the song. I can never keep straight which one came first.

Well, Bill also expected more lyrics so I found the other version and we played that one too. Bill demurred when I suggested a guitar solo, so I take all five solos (two in the first version and three in the second) with varying degrees of success and ability to resolve a phrase in time for the next verse.

Given that every ensemble has to have a name, Bill and I have dubbed ourselves Bacon ‘n’ Biscuit for the purposes of our duo excursions, so without further ado, I give you two versions of You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere, performed by Bacon ‘n’ Biscuit live in the studio:

You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (three-verse version)

You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (four-verse version)

I must admit I felt a little uneasy

Sometime last year I was messing with the changes to “Tangled Up in Blue” by Bob Dylan and worked out a somewhat comfortable way to play it on the ukulele.

I put down a basic rhythm track with a little bit of fingerpicking on it, doubled it (there are, like, nine verses) and then sang over it. The result is the sort of demo I make to show other people how I’m playing the song and to possibly use as a sort of stone-soup scratch track to be overdubbed into oblivion.

But life has its own ideas and other songs have pushed this aside in my active practice repertoire and yet I still feel kind of good about this very loose take and so I’ve decided to share it here.

Tangled Up in Blue

I like to watch things on TV

Recently Cecil aka Dan aka Cecil suggested that the Kincaid cover a Lou Reed song I’ve loved for quite some time, “Satellite of Love.” I’ve been working out a ukulele part and the other night in my hotel when I couldn’t sleep I spent some time putting together a quickie solo version of it:

Satellite of Love

Genghis Khan and his brother Don…

The fourth and final song from our Ukepalooza set was the oft-recorded Dylan classic, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” a tune close observers of this blog and my ukulele adventures would know I’ve been working on for years (it’s really easy to play!):

Another day come and gone, oh well

The third song in our Cheeses & Tequila set was a semi-obscure number by the Replacements called “If Only You Were Lonely.” For equal time I’ll post the Vimeo version here (but then I’ll go and “like” the YouTube version so it shows up on Facebook where people actually notice when I post something):

Finest girl in the world

My partner in Cheese and Tequila, Bill DeRouchey, has been busy putting us up all over the interwebs, so as a followup to that vimeo embed from yesterday of Bill singing the punk classic Anarchy in the UK, here’s a youtube video of the second song from our Ukepalooza set, Big Star’s “I’m in Love with a Girl” (by Alex Chilton, R.I.P.), which I semi-inaudibly dedicated to the lovely B, who could not be there:

That little bit between the two “All that a man can do…” bridges may be first ever live recorded solo.