
Paul Wesley
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Everything posted by Paul Wesley
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My advice for Strats and Teles - If you think you're looking for a "forever" version of those, think about late 80's-early 90's Custom Shop versions. They're not so old that you pay ridiculous "vintage" prices, but they *do* come from an era where I think the Custom Shop really did better (and more unique) finishes, materials, and set-ups. I have a mid 90's custom shop Strat that I bought new, and a late 80's custom shop Tele that I bought used (which got relic'ed the old fashioned way). I am just totally head-over-heels for each of them, and I would never sell either one. I also think that if you don't bond with it for whatever reason, you can either send it back, or you can sell it for pretty much exactly what you paid (i.e. the financial downside is pretty low). My .02.
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Yeah, Reggie definitely popularized it (though he wasn't going to actually tattoo his moneymaker). Telephone area codes are still about the silliest fucking thing I can think of to be tribal about.
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How about tattooing telephone area codes on your face? I mean, you gotta stand for something in this world, right?
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When I was 17, I got a traffic ticket around Wimberly, and I didn’t think I deserved it. So I showed up to my hearing, which wasn't really a hearing at all... just a 70-something year old judge just kicking back in his office, with his clerk outside making sure I had a punitive 30- minute wait for daring to show up. I wanted to look respectful, but the only “briefcase” I owned was one that was made to carry cassette tapes. Dumped those out. But if you looked inside, you’d know immediately what the case was for. He listened to me plead my case, and nodded his head very graciously, and said, “Son you can pay (the secretary) as you leave.”
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I Wanna Say ‘I Told You so…’ (Chinese Glass Bridge Shannonigans)
Paul Wesley replied to Doc Reeves's topic in Daily Texan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Garry_Hoy -
Share Your Music (it probably sucks but that’s not why we do it)
Paul Wesley replied to NoRagrets's topic in Music
Well said. I can relate. Probably everyone reading this thread can relate. Also well said. As far as I'm aware, the best solution to that sentiment is from Duke Ellington. I have seen several variations of his quote, but it's essentially, "Don't give me more time. I don't need time. What I need is a deadline." I have written around 40 songs in my life, and at most, there were 5 of those that were completed without any kind of a deadline. All the rest went something very close to this: I had three or four song ideas. Some more realized than others. I looked at my calendar and chose a day off that was several weeks in the future. I booked a studio, hired an engineer, a drummer, and a bass player. Sometimes also a keys player. Then I *had* to finish them. At least, I had to know the tempo and the structure of the song. I had three weeks to sit at the kitchen table work out song structure, sing the melody to myself a thousand times, decide that the ABCB rhyme scheme that I'd spent 20 agonizing hours working on... these lyrics really would work better with the chord changes if it were AABB. I started over. The kitchen table and the acoustic guitar were essential. I'm a night owl by nature, so this usually happened between 10pm and 2 am in the weeks before the session. I made Nashville-style chord charts for everyone. I used the metronome on my laptop or cell phone to make scratch tracks. Often that is very revealing (e.g. "Shit, the way I've mapped this out, it's a six and a half minute song."). Most of the hired players are *really* going to want to hear the vocal melody when they do the tracking. So if the lyrics weren't finished when I made scratch tracks, I had to sing the same lyrics in every verse. If the lyrics were non-existent, I'd sing "Doo doo doo" or "La la la." I cut a disco song last year where the lyrics were eluding me ahead of the tracking date, so for the scratch tracks, I sang the words to "Life During Wartime" to my own melody... which turned out to be really fun and energizing exercise (I even felt some remorse when my disco tune no longer had a falsetto, "Heard about Houston, heard about Detroit, Heard about Pittsburgh, PA." It was cool.). Anyway, NONE of this comes easily to me. I am meticulous and reserved by nature, and I am embarrassed to sing or play anything in front of other people unless I think it's *already* pretty good, so scat singing nonsense into a microphone is a truly horrifying feeling. As far as level of discomfort, it feels like recording myself performing something I've written in big, complex, and dramatic Spanish (which I definitely cannot actually do) and then playing that recording for a room full of highly accomplished Spanish writers. I usually don't cut lyrics on the day of the full-band tracking. So that requires ANOTHER DEADLINE where I book an engineer two weeks from now. Now I have to finish the lyrics. Back to the kitchen table. Anyway, that's what I meant when I said "discipline and grit." Sorry for such a long post. -
Share Your Music (it probably sucks but that’s not why we do it)
Paul Wesley replied to NoRagrets's topic in Music
I like the chord changes. Feels cinematic. -
What thread does this go in?
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Good topic and a fun read. In terms of singer-songwriters, few have gone into a studio for the first time with more wealth of material than Tracy Chapman.
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Me too. It was terrifying. Had a minute or two of being squished, feet off the ground, with moments where the entire mass of people lurched in one direction or another.
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Thanks for those pics. I’m not a bass player, but that lineup was pretty amazing.
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I think I became aware of Audley because I knew some guys who were working with the Dixie Chicks while he was playing with them (and maybe on the Courtyard Hounds too?). And they raved about him, which made me go back and listen to his other work.
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The Batshit Insane QAnon Conspiracy Theory
Paul Wesley replied to Hugo Stiglitz's topic in Cloak Room
Wow. That's awful. Cringeworthy and profoundly wrong. -
I just watched that '98 live video, and before I had even scrolled down to see the next few comments, my impression of the show was that Audley is criminally underused. There may or may not be guys who are a better fit for that band-- I'm not convinced there are -- but I don't think it would have mattered when there are already too many guys on the floor who need the ball in their hands (it's a strained metaphor, but you get it). I hired Audley to play on something a couple years ago, and I spent a few days with him. I can't rave enough about him as a musician, as a masterful guitarist, and as a kind and thoughtful person (an opinion shared by pretty much everyone who works with him).
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Thing$ $till not going well for Joe Rogan, I $ee.
Paul Wesley replied to Parliament's topic in Cloak Room
All true, but the yokels talking about tyranny and freedom and control and "I woke up in a free country..." --- fucking zero of them could explain on the very simplest level how *any* vaccine works, much less how cellular biology and messenger RNA works. -
Share Your Music (it probably sucks but that’s not why we do it)
Paul Wesley replied to NoRagrets's topic in Music
Wow. I really dig this song. Odd time signatures aren't usually my thing... but this one works for me. Bravo. Only thing I'm not liking is the sound of the acoustic (or maybe that's a clean electric?) -- it's kind of thin and buzzy, and it feels like it overwhelms the other rhythm electric (which sounds great). Very cool tune. Also, I cannot tell you how much I identify with "ridiculously ambitious work that may never get finished." If I were to describe the last 3 years of my own creative efforts, that phrase would pretty much sum it up. Here's to finishing. -
This gets discussed every year or so, and the usual names come up (Erlewine, Lauren at Strait, etc). One of those usual suspects is Tom Oatley. He works out of the garage behind his house in South Austin. Does pro-level work for a fair price. Here's an article from the Gibson website (so, of course they're going to talk about Les Paul and Gibson guitars): http://es.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle/Features/en-us/Gibson-Preps-For-SXSW-with-Guitar-Tech-Tom-Oatley.aspx Tom has a facebook page with contact info. If I needed pickups swapped out or minor-level set-ups, I'd use Tom. If I needed a bigger job (refret) or I had a guitar with major playability issues (buzzing strings, minor warping), I'd go to Danny Shoemaker - who also works out of his house in South Austin - simply because as far as I know, he has the only Plek machine in Austin: https://straightfrets.com/pricing-and-services/plek-machine/
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"Fretless" also works.
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Wesley's Law: As a bass player gets more bald and/or overweight, the chance he will wear a fedora approaches 100%.
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A haggard, convicted felon who - during the height of his fame - was caught on tape dropping N-bombs... telling Fox News' audience about how policing should work.
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Sounds like a singer.
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That band I mentioned was the "what might have been" band for me. The drummer was super talented... he plays in a band that still routinely sells out at pretty big venues (House of Blues, etc.) all over the country. Our lead guitar player was a young wizard with great tone and feel. I could sing, write, and play guitar and a little keys. Trouble was, we couldn't reliably fill the bass player's spot. The guy who was playing bass when I showed up was a few years older than us, and had a new wife and a career as an engineer, and he was sort of "over it" as far as grinding out the commitment needed to be a serious band. So he nicely told us we should find another bass player. In the 90's, there was no internet, and you had to find a bass player by hanging messages at music stores and advertising in the local alternative paper. So we auditioned 4 different players in consecutive weeks, and my drummer friend and I still marvel at the parade of incompetence that followed. One bassist was under the impression that "band practice" meant that everyone was gonna get obliterated on weed and alcohol. He showed up with a bottle of whiskey, drank the entire thing over an hour or so, and could hardly stand up by the end of the evening, much less play. I'm sure he's dead now. Another kid was just out of high school, told us he was just kind of an intermediate level player. But seemed like a nice kid (we were only a few years older) and told us about his influences, which seemed to demonstrate good musical sensibilities. So he shows up, sits down.... and I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that he couldn't fucking play **at all.** Had no idea which was the A string, had no idea what "keys" meant... nothing. I think back about the disconnect between being so utterly clueless and yet having enough self confidence to answer an ad and then show up to audition for a band. He's probably a congressman now. I think it would make a really great premise for a 6-episode Netflix or HBO comedy.... a bunch of 20-somethings in the 90's trying to fill an empty chair in their band. At one point, the three of us begged the old bass player to just come back for a single night so we could at least run through 15 or 20 songs with a credible low end. Eventually, with no bass player, 3 busy schedules, and a couple of personal tragedies (divorce, shocking death in a family), it all just fizzled away.
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This made me smile. One of my later garage bands - I was in my 20's - was with a bunch of guys who I first met when one of them invited me to sit in and just sort of jam and play guitar at their rehearsal. Until the evening was over, I had no idea how much antipathy there was among the other guys toward the singer. So when I was leaving and loading out my gear, the drummer followed me to my car and asked me if I could sing. I told him yes, and he wanted to make sure I could be there for the next week's rehearsal. So that week, the drummer called the singer and told him that everybody was super busy, they all had a lot of commitments, etc., and so the band was breaking up. Except they didn't break up, they just had a new singer (me). Anyway, that became a running joke. "We quit" was a code for "We're replacing you." That was a couple decades ago. The drummer and I still keep in touch even though we live in different cities. Every year or so, one of us will leave the other a voicemail that says, "Man, I'm really sorry, but we're just super busy and we're not gonna practice for a few weeks..."
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Of course Cornyn is incapable of recognizing satire. He is both tone deaf and really fucking stupid. People would notice more, except that the other senator from his state is one of the most widely disliked people in DC. edit: yeah, I know it's the Cotton thread, and Cotton might have been a more contentious asshole at this hearing, but Cornyn was dumber.
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