Category: Music

Southeast Alaska State Fair

Southeast Alaska State Fair Poster

For as long as I have been apart of Fire On Mcginnis, they have talked about one day playing the Southeast Alaska State Fair in Haines. This year the band was invited over to play and everyone has been pretty excited about it. It has taken some hard work to get this all lined up and ready to go by some of the more active members of the band. They had to figure out how to transport not only our music equipment, but also our PA system on the Alaska state ferry as well as where and when we would be playing.

So, what I know of Haines is not much. It has a population of around 1,800 people and is home to the surviving set pieces from Walt Disney‘s White Fang picture, which was filmed there in 1990. From Haines you can drive up to Anchorage, but you do have to go through Canada to get there.

Packing up our gear

Armed with that little knowledge, I packed my bags, drum gear, some food because of my Slow Carb Diet, and waited for my bass player, Matt to show up with his wife to take me to the ferry Dock. At just before 7AM we arrived at the ferry dock and got our tickets and boarded the ship we would be on for the next four and half hours to Haines.

The ferry itself is filled with all kinds of nooks, crannies and corners that people can tuck themselves away in. My band and I found one such place with windows so we could see the scenery float by. During the trip we were able to review some of the songs. An acoustic guitar fiddle will pulled out at one point as music was rehearsed. The rest of the trip was filled with reading and napping.

Fogcutter Bar
The Fogcutter Bar

When we docked in Haines and exited the vessel we drove straight to the Fogcutter Bar to unload and set up our gear.The Southeast Alaska State Fair was in full swing, so we would not start performing till after the fairgrounds closed for the night around 11PM. We took a couple of hours and staged all of our musical equipment and then decided to get some food.

After eating we all headed back up to the Fogcutter and finished our setup. A quick two song sound check later, the five of us piled into three vehicles and headed to our respective lodgings for this trip to take a nap. Around this time I realised that Haines only had the Edge network available to smartphone users. So updating Google+ was impossible and getting so much as a text message out most of the time was either hit or miss.

When 10:30 rolled around Mat (bass player), Mark (guitar player) and myself (drummer) packed ourselves into Mark’s car and headed back to the Fogcutter bar. It was still light out and it would have been sunny if not for the clouds in the sky. At least it was warm(ish).

In the bar, I asked the barkeeper (I have been wanting to say that this whole post) to fill up my aluminium canteen with ice water which I carried back to behind my drum set. A few minutes of checking cables and our sound and we were off playing music moving through our song list one by one.

The Haines crowd loved the music and was very enthusiastic for us to play our brand of Celtic rock music. Dancing and cheers went on all night long. The people of Haines could not have been more welcoming and wonderful to us.

For this bar gig I switched to using baseball gloves over my normal golfing gloves. This is mostly because I could not find a store in Juneau that sold left and right handed golfing gloves and I just should bite-the-bullet and order them online already. The thing I did not like about using the baseball gloves is that they were to padded. So my hands could not articulate themselves as well. I opted to keep them on my hands over having my hands all bloody and blistered by the end of the night.

I think it was close to 4AM when we wrapped up at the fogcutter. To celebrate we all went outside to smoke a cigar and talk about how the show went. The sun was coming back up already. While we talked people from the bar came out to compliment us and eventually Mike (guitar and bagpipes) and Marth (Guitar, Fiddle and Vocals) grabbed their bagpipes and fiddle and played a couple of songs outside for those of us enjoying the cool night air. It was a wonderful night.

The next morning I was sore and slow to move. My back just felt like one bit knotted up mess. I stretched out a little bit and drank a lot of water and started to feel better. I think it was close to 2pm before we left for the fair grounds. There we found food and entertainment with several food booths and two musical stages.

With food quickly filling the void in our guts we started to work out the plan of getting our musical gear onto the main stage for our 6PM performance. A lot of which was a blur for me. Maybe because I have slight stage fright and maybe because there was just so much to get done between getting on stage, playing music, and getting all our gear back off again. There was a lot to do in a short amount of time.

When it was time for us to get everything setup we all worked together and worked quickly to setup ourselves on the stage. We were introduced as “Fire On McGinnis from Juneau Alaska”. With that we started playing. Two songs in I broke a drum stuck and flung it out into the crowd.

Four songs into our set at the fair and I broke my throne. How does that even happen? But I did it. I was able to stay balanced through to the end of the song we were on. Luckily there was a spare throne at the back of the stage.

I remember the show going really well and getting lots of applause after each song we played. We ended out set with cheers from the crowd. Together as a group we got all of our gear off the stage so the next band could setup quickly. We got all our gear packed up in our vehicles and then spent the rest of the night enjoying all that the fair had to offer.

The part of the fair I enjoyed the most was that it was right next to the White Fang set. I spent a lot of time walking up and down the boarded sidewalks and smoking a cigar in the cool night air.

We got back to Juneau early Sunday afternoon, unloaded all our gear. What a weekend!

 

On Downloading

I think it’s a good idea because it’s people trading music. It has nothing to do with industry or finance, it’s just people that want music and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the same as someone turning on the fucking radio, it’s the same as someone putting a cassette in a cassette deck when the BBC plays a special radio session. I don’t think it’s a crime, it’s been going on for years. It’s the same as people making tapes for each other. The industry is more threatened by it because it’s the worldwide web and it’s a broader scope of trading, but I don’t think it’s such a fucking horrible thing. The first thing we should do is get all the fucking millionaires to shut their mouths, and stop bitching about the 25 cents a time they’re losing. – Dave Grohl

Lossless Audio

I really love music. All of my life music has played a big part in it. I remember at a very young age listening to vinyl records on my father’s Sony turntable home stereo system. I would listening to records for hours and hours. When CDs first came out I started buying them. To this day I still buy CDs and have a pretty large collection.

When MP3s started to make an appearance in the 90s they had one large advantage for the causal listener and one large disadvantage. The advantage being that file size of an MP3 file was is very small. You could store hundreds of MP3 encoded songs on one CD. This was huge and lead the way for music players like the Apple iPod.

The big disadvantage to MP3s for people like me was that since the audio was compressed to be a smaller file size you could hear the compression or the missing audio data when listening to an MP3. This drove me nuts!

I have friends that to this day swear up and down they can not tell the difference when listening to a song on a CD or when listening to the same exact song from an MP3 file. To me the differences have always stuck out like a sore thumb. Which at times I can’t even believe since I have been a rock drummer for so many years and I have to be experiencing some form of hearing loss by now.

So, because I can tell the difference between the lower quality audio as a result of an MP3 file and a CD I have just always bought CDs.

Very recently I have been educating myself on the virtues of the Free Lossless Audio Codec, or FLAC for short. Because FLAC is a lossless audio format it sounds just like my CDs sound. I can not tell the difference when I am listening to a FLAC audio file verses listening to the same song on CD. Everything I have educated myself about FLAC says that there really is no audio difference between the CD audio file and the FLAC audio file. The lossless audio codec was specifically designed for audio and the resulting file will drop down to at least 50% if not more of the original audio file from the CD.

So, why do I care about all this? Why don’t I just continue to listen to my CDs? Well, I do still listen to my CDs at home, but we now live in a world with lots of portable devices that were made for our connivance. I would like to take full advantage of my devices.

When Apple announced the iPhone 4S, I ordered one right away. At the same time I started researching FLAC audio files as a solution for my portable music listening pleasure. I found the following FLAC audio encoding guide and FLAC audio player ‘Golden Ear‘ for my iPhone. I also ordered a pair of really great headphones that I can’t say enough good things about right now. Sony Dynamic Stereo Headphones MDR-7506 Professional.

Based on the audio guide I found I started encoding my CDs right away. I received my headphones a few days later and then my iPhone 4S arrived. I purchased and loaded a copy of ‘Golden Ear’ on to my phone and transferred over a few songs to test out the application and my head phones. I was amazed! Every song sounded wonderful and crystal clear. The ‘Golden Ear’ audio player works a lot like iTunes for the iPhone. You have the quick access controls from the home screen as well as a play list of music to scroll through and choose from.

If you are really into audio quality like me, I can tell you I am so happy that I found this solution. I wish I had found it sooner. It would have saved me years of frustration.

Rocking Petersburg Alaska

Sons of Norway Hall

Late last week I traveled with my band, Fire On McGinnis to Petersburg, Alaska. We were invited out to Petersburg to rocked their annual Oktoberfest Celebration. It was a challenge for us getting all five members of the band and our musical gear to the town of around 2,800 people. But seeing all the happy people of Petersburg as we took the stage at the Sons of Norway Hall made our adventure of playing outside of Juneau totally worth it.

Wednesday even several of us loaded up an old musty orange van with all of our musical gear. We were being careful to load things in a way that would not damage anything during the transport. After the van was loaded Mark, one of our guitar players, would drive the van down to the ferry docks and the rest of us would meet up with  him there before loading up on the ferry for our eight hour boat trip to Petersburg.

On the ferry we all gathered in the galley. With a guitar and fiddle we played music for most of the whole eight hour trip. It was a lot like this.

It was after dark when we landed in Petersburg and that did not stop the mayor of the town from meeting us at the dock. He along with his wife took us to the Sons of Norway Hall where we unloaded all our gear and setup most of everything. When we finished that evening we headed to the Tides Inn to crash for the night. We would be staying at the Tides Inn for the next two nights.

When we woke up the next morning we all got some breakfast/lunch before heading back to the Sons of Norway Hall to finish setting up the sound system and performing a sound check. Sound check ran a little longer than normally, but we where in a new place with different acoustics. I was also testing out for the first time a pair of wireless monitors which are just expensive ear buds that act as my monitors so I can hear the rest of the band. They where working pretty well during the sound check.

We finished our sound check just as the people of Petersburg starting bringing in their home made chili and beer to be judged at the Oktoberfest Celebration. I had some really fantastic corn bread.

There was some time to kill before we where scheduled to play so Mike, another guitar player in the band, and I headed to the local radio station. We wanted to stop in and thank them for advertising the show and for playing our band’s CD on the air the last several days.

When we returned from the radio station the winners of the chili cook off and home beer brewing contests where bring announced. Once that was finished we took the stage to a packed hall. Our set started off with the normal ‘Bells of Dunblane’ which leads directly into the high energy of ‘Paddy’s’. Not one minute into ‘Paddy’s’ and my earbud monitors slipped out of my ears because I was sweating. They would be useless to me for the rest of the show which was not good because this ment I could not hear the band well. To compensate for this I had to play quieter than I normally do and really follow the visual queues and body language of the rest of the band. This worked out well enough that I made it through the whole show with out making to many mistakes.

We played two sets that night and the high energy of the people of Petersburg kept us all going. They all cheered and danced as we played our music. It was amazing.

We ended our second set with a song I had not played live before called ‘Snow Light’. At the end of the song each member of the band takes their turn putting down their instrument and walking off the stage leaving only me on stage playing the basic beat to the song on my drums. One limb at a time I stop playing the song. First my left hand which I use to play the Snare drum. Than my right leg stopped hitting the bass drum and finally my right hand stop playing the shakers. I stood up and waved good night to everyone, but before I could get off stage everyone in the hall was chanting “One More Song!” over and over again.

We could not leave like that so we all took the stage one more time to play one of my favorite ‘Fire On McGinnis’ songs, ‘Charlie And The Wheelbarrow’.

At the end of the night we where all thanked heavily by everyone in the hall. They where so happy that we came out to play and put on such a good show. After the fact I heard that the event raised twice as much money as they did the year prior.

We packed our equipment back up into the old orange van and hung out by the docks. Mike, picked up some cigars and we all had a celebratory smoke as we talked about how amazing the night was. Its not a night, or a gig for that matter, that I will soon forget.

With the van packed up and everything ready for the ferry ride to Juneau the next day we all walked over to a local bar called, ‘Kito’s Kave’. When we walked in we where greeted by everyone in the bar hollering “Hey, it’s the band!” Several people came up to us and shook our hands and said ‘Hi’ and thanked us for coming out. It was clear to me that Petersburg was very grateful to have a night of great food and music.

The next morning Mike and Martha decided to get up early and fly back home to Juneau. Three of us, including myself, stayed back with the gear to catch the ferry home that afternoon. We met up at Seaside House Restaurant for lunch. The restaurant, which was over the water atop pilots, made me quite nervous as it seemed to sway back and forth randomly. The ferry was supposed to leave sometime around 1PM. Mark said that on his way over to lunch he stopped by the ferry and saw that the departure time was pushed back a couple of hours and we all just assumed that the ferry was running late. So we had a long lunch and spent the time talking mostly about how well the show went.

When we got to the ferry we were told that the boat left just after 1PM. Mark said “But the sign?”. The guys in the ferry house came out to look at the sign and admitted that they changed the times on the sign, but failed to update the date. The later ferry date was for next week. So as a result we missed our ferry ride home. Shocked and a little upset we changed our tickets to the next day. Luckily there was a ferry leaving the next day late in the afternoon. The eight hour trip means we would not be back in Juneau till 5:15 Monday morning.

Facing the fact that we where going to have to spend another night in Petersburg we checked back into the Tides Inn for another night. The nice people at the Inn gave us a discounted rate after hearing our tale of missing the ferry.

After we got settled back into our rooms Mat, the bass player, and myself decided to go catch a movie. Petersburg does not have a movie theater. Rather the high school students of Petersburg run a program where they bring a movie into town and play it in the high school auditorium. So sitting in the auditorium the two of us watch ‘Contagion‘.

Before calling it a night we also went back to ‘Kito’s Kave’ where the bar was having an 80s themed night with 80s music and most people dressed in 80s garb. It was pretty fun.

The next morning was a slow and lazy one which we spent loitering around town till it was dark. Than we made our way to the ferry dock and hung out till after 8PM when the ferry finally loaded.

We all had a lot of fun in Petersburg. I have never come into a community and felt so welcomed in all my life. Thank you people of Petersburg for inviting us out and letting us play some music for you all. I hope you will have us out again.

4th of July Music

My band, Fire on McGinnis played a show at a local bar in downtown Juneau. Starting at around 10:15PM on July 3rd and finishing up at 2:30AM on July 4th (I have written before about how Juneau, AK celebrates the holiday by doing its fire work show the morning of the 4th) I was quite sore and tired after all was said and done, but I had such a good time playing for so many awesome people. Check out the couple of YouTube videos below from our performance.

Thanks goes to Bo Anderson for making these recordings. I really appreciate buddy!