16 hours away from NOW

Yesterday headed over to a local music flee market. Saw a Line 6 echo park, but the price was not interesting enough. Picked up a megaphone for my show tonight - well in 16 hours from now. Also gonna use the house Fender Super Reverb instead of my normal fender tweed bassman, looking for some different tones. I was unable to find a Marshall JTM45 plexi, so I opted for the Super. Anyway we have load-in around 5:30pm on today (sunday 7/19), sound check from 6pm - 6:30pm, get some food, do the preshow meet and great then hit the stage at 8pm sharp opening for The Arc Angels in Petaluma CA - Mystic Theater. Awesome place which holds over 1000. Hope you can make it.

Aces will also be on KSRO on friday 7/24 promoting my Lo Fi Explosion show on 7/30 at the Last Day Saloon in Santa Rosa. Going ?

Action !

Derek and Sky from The Aces will have a small roll in an upcoming Butcher Brothers horror film called "The Violent Kind" - more on this soon !

The Beat Man in SF

I saw a killer show this past weekend with the wife. Reverend Beat Man was at the Hemlock Tavern in SF. This guy is killer ! Raw PUNK BLUES !!!! He is a songwriter, musician, and voodoo rhythm records owner. I mean wow! Beat Man is from Switzerland and I'm starting to thing there is some F'n good music over there. Check out Voodoo Rhythm Records from Switzerland and El Toro Records out of Spain. This stuff beats what is coming out for blues in US maybe with the exception of Fat Possum - what's great is they don't put out any "formulated sound". By that I mean the guitar plugged into a fender stuff. While that's good and all, after a while all the artists start to sound the same. Music should be fresh, raw and primitive. You know like the old Chess and Sun stuff.

Aces open for Arc Angels in Petaluma July 19

The Aces have been selected by The Arc Angels to open their show in Petaluma at The Mystic. The Arc Angels features Doyle Bramhall II, Charlie Sexton and the Double Trouble rhythm section. This show will be sold out so be there or be square.

Don't quit your day job until......

We'll on a day job front, I'm still un-employed after my day job got sent over sea's. I'm looking for IT Security or System Administration consultant work (part time or full time) until I can land a permanent IT job in Sonoma County. I've actually been in IT for 10 years, have a systems/network auditor certificate, etc.

Until this music thing pans out, the day job keeps my music dream alive and family feed.... Plus how can I buy tubes and strings?

$h*t - 4 guitars damn why do i like different tunings

Tomorrow night (sunday june 14th) The Aces will be over at The Russian River Brewery 7pm - 10pm (early show). I'll have a Dirt Transmitter Fuzz connected and due to different tunings and an interest in a tele I have, I'll be bringing four guitars tomorrow. Two will be tuned to standard E, one tuned to standard D and another tuned to open G. I probably only need one of the two guitar's tuned standard E but I'm thinking people will think I mean business if I have four guitars :)

Today is Sunday around 10:30am enjoying eggs and coffee. Last night Sky and I played our "blues trash duo" music over at a small coffee shop in Petaluma. It was like a mini school reunion for me with lots of people I have not seen for around 20 years. The gig was pretty cool some low wattage amps, guitar, harp and vocals. Even a small 10 watt amp was loud in the coffee shop so I think I'm going to hook up my Dirt Transistor fuzz box next duo gig. Sky and I are also thinking it'd be interesting to have a standup bass too. So we'll see if we can line that up for our next June 26 duo gig.

Earlier in the week The Aces recorded an episode for Santa Rosa's Community Access TV station. We'll be appearing on a show called The Beat. We did our performance on their sound stage, and this upcoming friday we'll heading to a Taco Truck on Sebastopol Road to shoot the "B" roll. The "B" roll will contain interview footage, etc

On Sunday June 14th The Aces be at The Russian River Brewery after the Peggie Sue Cruise. This is a Sunday from 7pm - 10pm

After that gig we have some duo gigs, then my "Lo Fi Explosion" gig at the end of July. The Lo Fi event should be pretty cool, got all the bands and burlesque lined up and I'm just finalising the funky cool vendors.

derek