The GraciousDeviants

New Music Video!

2012-01-16T19:54:00.000+13:00

We've composed a music video for the first track of our EP "Blue Skies & Thunderclouds".

How to succeed in the music business without giving up trying

2011-11-14T20:54:00.000+13:00

Darrel has been really busy lately writing to record companies, promoters, publicists, A&R people, music placement people, managers, basically anyone who can help us take our EP and our sound to the next level.
We have had some encouraging replies, and I'd like to thank all those who have taken time to reply - even if nothing comes out of it an acknowledgement of our efforts can be enough of a reward. We appreciate that the market is well beyond saturation point, particularly since it is getting easier to produce your own music to a respectable standard from your own home, and that New Zealand is too small to give everyone a break.
We have begrudgingly resigned ourselves to the fact that it is no longer all about the music - at least not until you become an established act (whenever that is) - and since an image takes less time to absorb than a song, one almost has to spend as much time on a look as one does on a sound.
We have decided to go back into the studio - our own this time - and put down a few more tracks. As you can see from the video, we've been hard at work!

Check back again soon for links to some new demos - our new arrangement of Lay Your Love is almost finished!

New stuff

2011-10-13T22:56:00.000+13:00

Yes, it has been a long time since our last post. *blush*

In that time we've played more gigs, written more songs, helped out an up-and-coming teenaged songwriter produce an original song for the Play It Strange Songwriting Competition, and bought a 12-string!

We've also updated our Blogger template and done a whole mess of edits on www.graciousdeviants.com.

Just a reminder, if you want to keep up with us a little more regularly, check us out on Twitter or Facebook, but do come back here occasionally if you need your news longform and ranty!

EP streaming now

2011-07-30T22:25:00.000+12:00

You can now stream our EP from our website: http://www.graciousdeviants.com

EP Release

2011-04-01T23:48:00.001+13:00

So everything finally came to fruition: the recording, the mixing, the mastering, the design, the printing... and now... we sell it!
Darrel and I have been working on a press kit to send along with the CD to various outlets. We'd like to get it on commercial radio as well as the usual indie channels as we think we have a product that will sit just as well in either camp. When the CDs were finished I had a sudden gulp of remorse - in this age of downloads, did we just waste money printing CDs? But looking at the complete package (and being a guy who likes to have something physical to hold and read while he listens to the music he's just bought) I very swiftly pushed those thoughts away. The CD looks great and sounds great - we just have to convince a whole bunch of people to buy it. We've been getting some great feedback so far.
We've put up the first track All About You on SoundCloud along with a couple of others from our website to generate a bit of online buzz. Since we have versions of all of the songs from the EP on our website we've had to be careful not to mix them up. Each of the new recordings are streets ahead of our self-produced efforts and we think it's worthwhile keeping them back awhile until we get a handle on how to sell music in this day and age.
We now, of course, bemoan the fact that we have so few songs recorded, and that people will think we haven't got any more material. With the three new songs we're currently working on we now have around 35 original songs to our name, which is nor bad for two professionals trying desperately to be a band around the demands of work.
So next steps...
Well, we will begin rehearsing for the EP Release Party. We have decided to play two sets: the usual acoustic set and then playing the EP tracks and a few others as a full band. We will bring Richard in again on drums and we have borrowed Scott ex-The Capitals to play bass. We haven't got a venue or a date yet, but we'll keep you posted.
Stay tuned...

New material

2011-04-01T23:31:00.000+13:00

With all of our focus on recording and releasing the EP lately, as well as the Christmas and New Year break, we've had very few chances to sit down and write anything new. About four weeks ago was the first time in a long while Darrel and I actually sat down and worked on new material.
I often look back at our songs and wonder how they came into being. We usually write songs in bursts; we may have an idea for a while and kick it around, but the bulk of a song including pretty much all of the lyrics are usually worked out in one night. I like to write lyrics this way because I can follow through an idea while it's fresh, and the conditions we're writing under (the time of night, brand of beer, quality of that night's curry, etc) influence what gets written down. Ordinarily I'm pretty analytical, thinking around things before doing them (or not doing them) and second-guessing myself. Writing the way that we do derails this behaviour - I get to enjoy the chaos of improvisation, but I get something concrete out of it also. It then makes it difficult, when my analytical side catches up, to work out how we came up with what we did.
Not that I'm complaining!
We have three songs on the go at the moment - one that we have been working on for quite a while, Honestly, and two new ones: Losing My Nerve and The Way She Looks At You.
We've played Honestly in public, but have since changed the key and approached the style a little differently, turning it into something way better than it was when we first performed it. All of the lyrics are written, we're now working on dynamics and the overall shape of the song. Honestly was one of the last songs Darrel and I wrote before we went into EP-mode and our writing muse headed off somewhere nice for the Winter. It's almost a year old and was somewhat overshadowed by Free Bird which was written not long afterwards but immediately incorporated into our live set.
We have since performed Honestly three times, and the last time was probably the best. We played it and debuted The Way She Looks At You at the last ever Capitals gig at The Watusi on 24th March. We have played alongside The Capitals (and their precursor Apricot Jamm) and Monroe for a year now and it was sad to see The Capitals go their separate ways. Thankfully Karen, Scott, and Morgan are all pursuing solo careers so we're not really losing their music.
Monroe, it seems, are going from strength to strength. Ever since Lux and Gerry decided to go electric and secured the talents of Kurt and Shane on bass and drums they've been rocking hard and loud, and they really are a dynamic live act. We wish them all the best and hope we can all get together again soon.

GraciousDeviants.com is now LIVE!!

2011-02-16T21:01:00.000+13:00

www.graciousdeviants.com

hooray!

More EP news

2011-02-05T19:51:00.000+13:00

Finally, some news to share! You're looking at the final artwork for the cover of our new EP entitled Blue Skies & Thunderclouds.

We've spent a long time on the whole package as it represents a major step in our career - much more so than our first EP and any subsequent self-released CDs - we're really proud of what we've achieved and we want to make sure we get this release right.

The EP has three tracks that we think best represent our strengths. We're each singing lead on a song, Darrel sings All About You and I sing The Mountain, and then both take alternate lead on Falling. We've also broadened our sonic horizon by bringing in Richard Greaney on drums, and being in the studio has meant Darrel could play both bass and guitar. We are also extremely fortunate to have worked with Mike Gibson and Darren Maynard at Inca/Trident Studios who helped us get it all down and bring out a sound and quality we'd never have achieved ourselves, nor even thought possible.

The next question is: When is the release?

The answer: Soon....

It's new! New! New!

2011-01-16T22:09:00.000+13:00

Check out the new Gracious Deviants website!

Next gig: San Fran Bath House, 4th November

2010-10-18T21:07:00.007+13:00

Same (ish) poster, different gig!

San Francisco Bath House

Thursday 4th November

7pm

Gold coin at the door

Next Gig: The Ruby Lounge 9th October

2010-10-05T21:38:00.003+13:00

The Ruby Lounge

Bond St, Wellington

8pm

Saturday 9th October

Gold coin(s) at the door.

The Gracious Deviants

Monroe

The Capitals

An excellent night of original music!

Recording

2010-10-05T21:26:00.003+13:00

Last weekend we spent two full days at Inca tracking three songs: Falling, The Mountain, and a late change of mind All About You.

It was quite emotionally and physically taxing but well worth it. The engineers Mike and Darren are a fantastic team, experienced and knowledgeable, patient and supportive, and really committed to getting the best sound onto tape (or rather, disk).

The studio is not exactly a wall-to-wall carpet, crystal chandelier affair, but what it lacks in form it more than makes up for in function. The rooms sound great, and Mike and Darren have recorded a huge number of performers from soloists to choirs, combos to supergroups in them over the years.

We will be going back in the next couple of weeks to track vocals for All About You with the aim to release it as a single. I'm currently sitting on the sessions for the other two tracks really wishing that, like Darrel, I was on holiday at the moment! Sigh.

EP update

2010-09-11T21:33:00.002+12:00

We had a really good meeting with Mike and Darren at Inca/Trident and we're on track to record our new EP at the beginning of October. Things are starting to get exciting!

EP news

2010-09-06T21:02:00.002+12:00

It's been a rather long haul but we're finally getting a new EP together!

We're off to talk with Inca/Trident Studios tomorrow to work out a recording and mix session before the end of this month.

We decided that it was about time we put some money into a recording instead of trying to self-produce another CD. We had to accept that as two professional people with roughly two days a week to spend on music we'd be old and grey before we could come up with something of a quality we considered good enough to represent us - best leave the recording to the experts and focus on the performance.

Darrel and I, and Darrel's brother Richard (a magnificent drummer) have been jamming the three songs we have chosen: Falling, Mistakes I've Made Before, and The Mountain. We've decided to go into the studio as a three piece with Darrel overdubbing bass (his first love) as well as guitar and we'll be filling as much of the space as we can with whatever we can play that will suit the final song.

I'me really looking forward to it, especially the mix!

Music Vault redesigned!

2010-06-26T13:41:00.003+12:00

Due to a rather fatal systems crash I've had to redesign our Music Vault.

Happily it is now up and running and with more content, including all of our new videos!

Visit it here:

The Gracious Deviants Music Vault

Gigs and news

2010-06-19T13:09:00.002+12:00

We played two gigs at the San Francisco Bath House recently - one Monroe's Deviant Jamm gig and then a slot at Acoustic Alchemy 2010.

We were set to play second in both gigs but ended up playing first both times because the first acts couldn't make it. This was fine - both acts had valid reasons for not turning up and Darrel and I travel light enough to be able to plug in and play at short notice - but playing first without having time to get settled or, more often than not, opening to an empty house, can get a little demoralising.

This time of year when Wellingtonians are fed up to the back teeth with Winter and can't be bothered to leave the comfort of home to go and listen to music they've never heard before and/or doesn't have a beat you can dance to and/or nod your dreads and/or stroke your beard to and/or wear your lenseless Buddy Holly glasses (like, Buddy, wuh?) to, and it's too early anyway and let's just stay at home and and watch TV... audiences are a little thin on the ground.

That said, we do, and always will, appreciate those who come out to see us, whether they're there for us or not, and we REALLY appreciate those who come out specifically to see us. Without you guys there isn't really much point going out ourselves.

Both gigs went well, Darrel and I are continuing to relax into the material and explore its dynamics, and we're having fun doing it.

We played two sets for the MDJ gig, one either side of yet another great performance for the (drummer-less unfortunately) Apricot Jamm. They are taking a short time off from their originals to pay off the last of their PA with the proceeds from upcoming covers gigs. I, for one, am hoping that the hiatus won't be for too long.

Our first set played to a crowd who had turned up for Happy Hour and promptly left when it ended, although one or two people stayed behind along with the members of the Apricot Jamm and the inimitable and indomitable Pete Baillie who had just closed the Acoustic Lounge earlier that evening.

We started with Mistakes I've Made Before which is our opener du jour but deviated from our set list a little to cover the extra time we had, finishing the first set with All About You.

Apricot Jamm's set rocked even without their drummer and standout songs for me were Star and Live Before I Die, which has an excellent a cappella reprise in the outro.

We took the stage again and began with Give Up All the Time in the World, a song we haven't played in a long time. As we had more time up our sleeve we decided to play a couple of favourites, If the Stars, and Photograph, but that night they came out somewhat differently from how we normally play them. Pete Baillie had dared Darrel to sing one of our songs as Sylvester Stallone and Darrel quietly mentioned it to me as we launched into If the Stars. My Sylvester Stallone impression is a bit crap, and it was clear in the first few seconds that Sly just wasn't going to do the song justice, so I switched to my impression of Brad Roberts, lead singer of The Crash Test Dummies - much better suited, I thought, to that song. Mr. Roberts sang the first verse to the delight of the audience and, with their suggestion and encouragement, Sean Connery and Billy Connolly (or pastiches thereof) sang the second verse. Listening back to the recording of that gig it is gratifying to hear that although we murdered the vocals, the guitar work was near flawless throughout. Buoyed by that success (?) I launched into Photograph as Eddie Vedder, but didn't keep it up until the end as the moment had passed.

Perhaps the greatest part of the night, and one of the best experiences we've had for a long time, was when we called up Mike from Apricot Jamm to play guitar for us in Free Bird as we had done at the Ruby Lounge gig earlier. We were about to start when Morgan and Scott came up also, contributing keyboard and bass parts respectively as Darrel called out the changes behind me. Mike took his solo and then Morgan fired up a blistering keyboard solo before we all brought the song to its conclusion. It was absolutely brilliant, and a testament to the skill of the Apricot Jamm-ers improvising their way through the song so well - had we not run out of lyrics we'd probably have jammed out for hours.

Acoustic Alchemy is a collection of some of the best performers from the Acoustic Lounge chosen by the host and co-ordinator (extraordinaire) Pete Baillie.

Our first Acoustic Alchemy was three years ago, our first taste of the Big League as far as we were concerned, playing alongside the likes of Darren Watson, Pixie, and The Thomas Oliver Band. Although every gig is a gig you don't want to bomb, Acoustic Alchemy is one of those gigs you must bring your A-game to or you just won't rate - as a performer you don't know who will be playing until a few weeks before, which is exciting, and more often than not you may never have heard of the other performers until they play, and more often than not they blow you away.

This year's crop were no exception: Louis Baker, a soulful voice and an excellent dynamic command of the guitar; Rose', catchy melodic pop songs with great performances all round; and Josh Mason & Karl Lavo, deep, dark, emotive ballads on keys and guitar.

Despite a few technical difficulties the night went well - the audience was sparse but enthusiastic, and though we felt relaxed in our time on stage we decided to eschew the impressions this time around and concentrated on our own performance.

The recording of this gig stands out as one of our best. It was great to see those who came out to support us, it's just a shame there were so few.

In other, rather embarrassing news: I discovered the next day that the CD I had made for the MDJ gig at the Ruby Lounge weeks before was defective. The tracks from Monroe and Apricot Jamm were fine, but the two tracks of ours had come out at the wrong speed - our voices and guitars are almost a tone lower than usual. Everything is in tune with everything else, it's just s-l-o-w and l-o-w, or to quote Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf, we sound "like Paul Robeson on dope".

It seems I had mastered the tracks at 24-bit, 48kHz instead of 16-bit, 44.1kHz which is the proper rate for CD mastering. The CD burning software assumed that, as the rest of the tracks were at the proper rate, ours were too and had burned the lot as normal.

D'oh!!

If you bought one of these CDs at the gig and want to get one with our stuff at the right speed please leave a comment or get in touch with me some other way and I'll send you a new CD.

In Palmy at the Patisserie

2010-06-07T20:43:00.003+12:00

We've just got back from playing a couple of gigs at Alexandre Patisserie in Palmerston North as part of the Manawatu Jazz Festival's "Cafe Scene". Although we're not exactly jazz practitioners we received a very warm welcome from those who decided to pop in for some wonderful food and excellent coffee and stick around for the free entertainment.

We played from 11am until 2pm on both Saturday and Sunday, which is something we have never done, nor been able to do before - we'd never had enough material! Darrel and I decided long ago that we play our own stuff much better than we play other people's and so have never sat down to learn any covers. We pretty much played every song we've ever written over those two days, and though the set was the same each day we didn't need to repeat any songs - quite an achievement for us if we may say so ourselves.

We spent Saturday rather cramped in the corner of the cafe pressed up against a cabinet full of extremely tasty looking chocolates and truffles, but enjoyed ourselves nonetheless as a steady stream of people came through. Sunday was much more successful as we played outside in the courtyard under the shop awnings between the cafe door and a guy selling roast chestnuts and almonds - a lot more elbow room and the courtyard lent its own pleasant reverb to our sound. If you screwed your eyes up just so (and maybe looked at a picture of Paris) it was almost like we were in Paris....

Seriously though, we had a great time and we are really thankful to the Manawatu Jazz Club and Alexandre for letting us play there. Despite the rain on Sunday we had a number of tables full of people who, if they had not come specifically to hear us play, decided to stay on for the whole set after partaking a pastry or two. I hear we even made it into the local paper - I'll post a link to the story as it comes to hand.

Darrel and I went straight from the gig to the local Rock Shop to try out a couple of 12-string guitars on the advice of our friend and soon to be producer Steve. Though were a little fingersore from the gig we spent about an hour playing through various songs with one or the other of us on a 12-string to see what it sounded like. After about five minutes it was clear, we want one. It was like a folk version of Wayne's World - "It will be mine. Oh yes. It will be mine." Hmm. Need more paying gigs....

Speaking of gigs:

San Francisco Bath House

Thursday 10th June

8pm

With Monroe and Apricot Jamm

Monroe's Deviant Jamm 2: Review

2010-05-30T20:23:00.002+12:00

The Ruby Lounge is the latest incarnation of a venue that has a long and chequered history in Wellington. It is situated in a side street running between what used to be two main arteries in and out of the central city, and has a kind of exclusive, tucked away feel as you mount the stairs from street level to the bar on the first floor. The venue is split in two by a wraparound central bar. On the lefthand side tables and chairs are set up for sit down dining or quiet drinks, looking out toward the balcony that, although large, doesn't quite afford a vista of any great interest. The righthand side sports a large stage at one end, and a small dais at the end by the balcony, and couches, table and chairs scattered around for the audience.

The main stage was roomy compared to many we've been on lately, and fetchingly bedecked in sweeping drapes of cloth to hide the soundproofing on the ceiling making it look a little like a cross between a boudoir, a cabaret, and The Muppet Show.

The PA system was great, with suspended main speakers and subs in front of the stage, and a foldback system that was clear and powerful. The front of house position was slightly off centre, however, which may have been for aesthetic rather than acoustic reasons. Ordinarily the sound mix in a venue is always the best around the FOH position, but not so in this case. Once again it is worth mentioning the sterling efforts of Dean the sound guy plucked once again from his day job at Groove FM to help us out -- calm, organised, and adaptable, and a helluva nice guy to boot.

The programme for the evening was slightly different from our last outing. Each band would play two short sets, one in the first half, one in the second. It is often the case at gigs where there is more than one performer that fans of a particular act will turn up for their act and leave straight after, often in the middle of the next act's set, which is a little off-putting. We've been the victims of this audience die-off many times. The strategy this time meant that the audience remained stable pretty much the whole night, as they got to see all three acts in equal measure (well... ok, there was a bit of an exodus before we finished off the night, but we rocked and they missed it, so yah boo sucks to them).

The Gracious Deviants played first, and despite a minor technical hitch that meant our guitars weren't coming through the PA for the first song, our first set went well. It was a Thursday night after a long week, but we pulled out the stops to make a good first impression. Our first set comprised I See, Mistakes, The Mountain, The Thought of You, and Release - kick off with some uptempo stuff and round off with a bit of harmonic showoffery - that was the plan. These days, as we get more and more confident in ourselves and our material, opening a gig is getting easier and easier. A couple of beers beforehand always helps, but our attitude to performing is changing, becoming much more positive and less tentative.

We had hoped to bring Gerry and Lucy from Monroe up to help us with Release and then sidle off stage as they began their set in an effortless segue, but as it turned out we ran out of time to get together and rehearse. Maybe next show...

Monroe took the stage and launched into their set with their usual grace and style. They played electric guitars mostly, Lucy coaxing a few well-chosen effects from her extraordinary array of pedals, but their distinctively shaped Luna acoustic made an appearance later in the set. As I have mentioned before both Lucy and Gerry have strong, confident voices and blend together well in harmony. Their personalities are complementary also, borne out in the songs they write and sing - theirs is a relationship of mutual support on stage, they are passionate about what they do and it certainly comes across.

Apricot Jamm were to round off the first set, but due to some unforseen and unfortunate circumstances only two of the five members could be there. Morgan and Mike took to the stage largely on the back foot, but proved that they were up to the task. They played a short but lively set of Morgan's songs played on acoustic and electric guitar. Darrel made a comment after the show, and I agree, that the songs didn't suffer in this paired-back arrangement - quite the opposite. Morgan's songwriting skill and solid rhythm guitar coupled with Mike's lead pyrotechnics provided a complete package - Ok, so it wasn't the full sonic potential of the full-blown Apricot Jamm, but it allowed you to get to the heart and soul of the songs, the way they must have sounded when they were first written. I finally found out the name of that song I'd had stuck in my head for days after the Happy gig, the one with the catchy "Hey Yeah" chorus - it's called Star.

Monroe took the stage again for their final set. I must confess that I had taken over door duties at that stage and didn't get the full force of their performance that time, but I was nodding along to You Are the Sun from the side of the stage nevertheless. Incidentally, You Are the Sun appears on the CD we produced for the gig, and the version on CD features a drum machine - I have to say that the all-acoustic version played that night stands up pretty well against it.

So with four beers and no food in us we took to the stage to finish off the night, as a significant section of the audience got up and left - yes it was getting late and the weather was atrocious but come on....

Anyway, we had a ball. We rocked. We kicked off with Falling, followed with Strong Enough and moved into If the Stars. By that stage I was so relaxed and (possibly drunk) happy I good-naturedly shushed the crowd for the quiet bit - something I've never had the courage to do in the past, and surprised myself when it actually worked, albeit for a short time. Still Got A Hold followed and then we brought Mike from Apricot Jamm up to play lead for us in Free Bird, a new track we've only performed live twice before. Mike's inclusion was definitely last-minute. There is a section for a solo in the song that I've always muddled through, and given the chance to perform with a skilled lead guitarist like Mike, well, we'd be stupid to pass it up. Full credit to Mike who had only run through the chord changes about three hours before, he followed Darrel's directions as we played and provided not just a killer solo, but accompanied us all the way through. It was great fun. Self-indulgent? Possibly. Awesome? Definitely. Thanks Mike.

The night ended and we all look forward to the San Francisco Bath House on June 10th when we get to do it all again (with a couple of changes).

To Gerry, Lucy, Morgan, and Mike: Thanks guys for your work, your support, and for yet another great night out doing what we all love.

Cheers,

Pete & Darrel.

Monroe's Deviant Jamm 2

2010-05-25T21:44:00.004+12:00

Thursday 27th May

The Ruby Lounge,

Bond St, Wellington

From 7:30pm

$5 Entry or $10 for a ticket and a CD

Once again we team up with Monroe and Apricot Jamm to bring you an excellent night out!

We're chopping and changing this time around, playing two sets each with a short break:

Set 1

The Gracious Deviants

Monroe

Apricot Jamm

Set 2

Monroe

Apricot Jamm

The Gracious Deviants

For an extra $5 on top of the ticket price you can take home a 6-track CD featuring two songs from each group - some of the tracks were recorded exclusively for this event!

Come along and support your favourite band, or discover some new music.

New News for Youse

2010-04-20T20:06:00.002+12:00

Content! It's all about content.

We played the Acoustic Lounge last week and debuted our new song Free Bird - nothing to do with Lynyrd Skynyrdrdydrdyd...ryddyr..d.ryd - to a fairly typical-sized Acoustic Lounge audience.
Mention must be made of Terry Shore, whose energetic set featured him playing live over his backing tracks. You can't fault Terry for his commitment to his craft - no matter what size the audience it's a stadium crowd he's playing to and giving it one hundred and seventy percent every time. He has a new album out, at long last. Go here for details.

We played second and although we were a little unsure of guitar balance, the vocal mix was pretty damn good - thanks sound guy! It looks like someone has shelled out for a couple of new Shure SM57s.

We played our rehearsed set - a little more ballady than usual but good - and found ourselves playing an encore, which is always nice. We played If The Stars at Mr. Baillie's request.

Last up that night was Anton Thomas - a phenomenal guitarist seemingly as much at home on acoustic as he was on electric the last time we saw him at the Kilbirnie Festival. At this point in the night he was responsible for the bulk of the audience, and his efforts were well-received. He has a soulful voice and a knack for songwriting - it's clear that music is second nature to him, first nature being, of course, music.

I had had a pretty stressful week and it felt great to be up there singing, as it always does, although we played our first song Mistakes I've Made Before with a little trepidation. We've been doing pre-production work on our new EP with our friend The Awesome Steve Gallagher, (to give him his full title) and we worked a lot on Mistakes the previous evening, playing with chord voicings, shifting solos, and adding dynamics. We decided not to try and recreate all that we had achieved the previous night and played the good ol' all-out version we usually play.

I must admit it is by turns interesting and difficult to rework a song from a live performance into a recorded one. When you're two guys with two acoustic guitars, you can hit the limits of your guitar skillz and vocal range and make the best of what you have. When the sonic potential is limitless it's often hard to know where to start. That's where Steve comes in, and that's what is getting us excited at the moment. Steve can listen to our songs as a whole and doesn't have the connection to them that we have as writers and performers. He has the technical training and theory behind him, a vast music collection and knowledge to boot, and is all that and a bag of chips - to paraphrase someone hipper than me. More on this in later posts as we continue to work on the EP.

The Gracious Tweetiants

2010-04-14T17:35:00.002+12:00

We've now got a Twitter account, #graciousdeevs, where we will be posting upcoming gigs. If Blogger is getting too passé in this day and age, or you like your information in more easily digestible chunks, come follow us!

Review: Monroe's Deviant Jamm

2010-03-27T21:38:00.010+13:00

Happy Bar is a warm, inviting, comfortable venue, but it has some rather unfortunate architectural features. It is essentially a basement - an oblong room accessible by stairs down from street level. It has a bar down one side, a small dais opposite, a raised stage area at the far end and some very obtrusive columns down the middle of the room.

Ideally, performers would be on the raised stage at the far end and the audience in the main body of the room - indeed we have played and been to a few gigs in this orientation - but the columns make it difficult to get a good view of the stage from most seats.

This time around we played on the small dais opposite the bar, which meant the best seats in the house were in fact behind the bar, the rest of the audience mostly clustered either side of the stage. We've played a gig in this orientation before as well, and it was a good time too, but it was also an all acoustic performance that better suited the audience at such close quarters.

I have to say, that with the line-up that night culminating in the excellent 5-piece Apricot Jamm, we'd have been much better located on the main stage - it is very hard to play to an audience either side of you when you habitually project straight ahead. As I say, the barman had the best seat in the house!

This arrangement also affected the sound, and I must take the time to mention and congratulate the sterling efforts of Dean the sound guy. Dean was brought in by Gerry and Lucy from Monroe, who had worked with him before. Had I a hat, I'd be taking it off to him at this moment, as he managed to make all three bands come across very well given the fact he had never heard two of the acts before, and had only a short amount of time to sound check all three before the night began. Excellent work.

And so, to the gig!

The line-up: Monroe, The Gracious Deviants, and Apricot Jamm.

Monroe have been a four-piece in the past, but tonight we heard from the two main creative forces Gerry Blair and Lucy Briant. Both played guitar and sang, alternating between acoustic and electric guitars to vary the sonic palate.

Their set was mostly new material, all original, soulful, evocative, emotive songs. Their two voices blended comfortably and smoothly - Lucy's wonderfully husky tones and Gerry's sonorous alto - winding their way around simple yet effective guitar lines and subtle and appropriately restrained use of guitar effects.

Although, as we have discovered, recordings often do not capture the energy of a live performance, I urge you to visit Monroe's Facebook site and check out the tracks that are there, as any further description from me is unlikely to do them justice. Suffice to say, they are great performers.

Darrel and I were on next and ripped through our set, as is our current custom. How far we have come from our initial performances where I talked and talked and talked before playing simply to calm myself down - every break in between songs would be an apology either for the song past or the one to come! With time and practice comes confidence, and Darrel and I were determined to come across the best we could.

We had assembled what we thought was the best set of songs to showcase our sound and set off under the hot lights, Darrel having to work hard to keep his voice after a week of parent-teacher interviews and general child-wrangling at school. All was going well until the first few bars of Mistakes I've Made Before when my B-string decided to part company with my guitar, just in time for my solo! Despite my guitar dropping out of tune, I managed to talk my way through the solo and borrow one of the Apricot Jamm's guitars for the rest of the set.

We were suffering a bit, but listening back to the gig we did a good job. I guess the only thing that really stands out in the recording is not our performance, but the audience. It's a curious feature of original music gigs - during the first act the audience is reverent and quiet, but by the second act, they've settled into the night, drank a bit more... and suddenly have very important things to say to one another, really loudly, until the music stops. That aside, they were very appreciative, and you have to admit that sitting down listening to three hours of music you've never heard before can be a little taxing.

We finished with All About You and Release just so that both of us, rather than just one, would be knackered by the end.

Finally Apricot Jamm took to the stage. They are a hard-working, hard-rocking five-piece who have a fairly busy schedule playing covers gigs, but tonight it was all about originals.

Apricot Jamm are Karen Gibson on lead vocals and guitar, Scott Roy on bass and guitar, Morgan Samuel on guitar, keys and trombone, Michael Rowlands on lead guitar, and Logan Gibson on drums. Their set featured many changes, in line up and instruments, going from two acoustic guitar singer-songwriter style to a full-blown five piece at one point featuring the multi-talented Morgan Samuel breaking out the trombone.

Karen Gibson's strong, roughsawn yet melodic and soulful voice partnered with her acoustic guitar work was well at home in both line ups, duo and full-blown band. Scott Roy of the furry trousers and somewhat unique slant on life in general provided some deft 12-string work in the small group songs and a solid bass line throughout the band songs. Morgan Samuel effortlessly moved from acoustic to electric guitar to keyboard, onto trombone, and back again - equally confident and proficient in each instrument - and sang too! Michael Rowlands' commanding lead guitar work leapt out from the mix in all the right places, evidence of an experienced and talented musician. Last but by no means least, Logan Gibson's extraordinarily tight and multi-faceted drumming belied his age - only 15 and yet playing with a fire and determination that would put many older musicians to shame.

With their solid rhythm section, great lead and rhythm guitar work, keys, and three-part harmony in the choruses of some incredibly catchy songs, Apricot Jamm deserve every success coming their way. I'm still humming the "Hey Yeah" hook of one of their songs.

All in all, a night packed with excellent music, and I'm looking forward to getting together with them all and doing it all again.

And you should be too.

What's in a name?

2010-03-24T15:17:00.005+13:00

Here's the poster for our upcoming gig. We've been busy promoting it online on our various sites including our new Twitter account: #graciousdeevs.

All this work on publicity got me thinking about names again.

The Gracious Deviants, we think, is a great name but it's becoming clear to us that a name is a very powerful force.

Having the word "Deviants" in our name is ironic given our stage presence and the music we play, but when you have no other frame of reference we may as well be a metal or punk outfit. Having been The Gracious Deviants for almost six years now, it's very difficult to seriously consider changing the name in the (vain?) hope we might improve our appeal, or open some more doors.

As you know, we arrived at the name using The Internet Anagram Server with the phrase "voices and guitars". We'd tried all sorts of other words and combinations of names but this phrase came up with the largest and most varied list.

If you think Gracious Deviants is odd, you should see some of the other suggestions:

Ovarian Dice Gusts
Divine Sugarcoats
Seducing Aviators
Inert Disco Guavas
Turd Invoices Saga

and a few rather lurid ones:

Erotic Vagina Suds
True Disco Vaginas

Try it yourself! There were 64,000 variations (three words and above) for "voices and guitars", there are bound to be a few gems I've missed.

Someone suggested an anagram of "acoustic duo" which was Stucco Audio, but I don't think we want to be associated with a style of wall covering popular in the 1970's and now dreadfully kitsch.

If you come up with any good ones, let us know.

Until then, see you at the gig!

Monroe's Deviant Jamm

2010-03-23T13:08:00.002+13:00

Monroe's Deviant Jamm

Live at Happy Bar

8pm

Friday 26th March 2010

Monroe

The Gracious Deviants

Apricot Jamm

Three bands, three hours of new original music

For less than the price of a cup of coffee!

Kilbirnie Festival Rocked!

2010-03-15T22:15:00.002+13:00

The Kilbirnie Festival was excellent - a bright sunny day, lots of people, lots of music, and a bouncy stage next to the Laughing Clowns - what more could you ask for?

Big thanks once again to Pete Baillie and the Acoustic Lounge for organising the stage and equipment, and a shout out to the sound guy for a very well-balanced mix.

We love outdoor gigs, there is just nothing quite like playing and singing in the sunshine while your audience comes and goes in a relaxed fashion.

We played a half hour set, then were asked to play on for another 15 minutes, as the timetable had become a little fluid during the day. We've started many a gig off with the two favourites I See and The Thought of You, so we thought we'd change up this time around and played a very different set, bringing out some material that hasn't seen a crowd in some time.

Darrel and I were fresh from another gig the night before at a Barn Dance (!) deep in the Hutt Valley and it felt good to be onstage two times in a row.

The sun was shining, the wind was not as strong as it had been (this is Wellington, after all) and the crowd was quiet yet appreciative - we had some great comments when we came off stage.

The stage was built on top of a truck trailer and was somewhat inadequately braced underneath, so as I got more into the gig and started moving around, so did the floor, and so did our mics, which was a little alarming at first, but entertaining towards the end.

Overall, it was a great afternoon, and with any luck we may get another chance to play outdoors before the Wellington Summer finally stops fooling itself and succumbs to Winter.

Until then, roll on Friday 26th at Happy!

March Gigs

2010-03-08T21:19:00.002+13:00

We will be playing the Kilbirnie Festival, Sunday 14th at 3:15pm.

There's live music there form 10am though, so why not make a day of it?

We also have a gig coming up at Happy on Friday 26th March playing alongside Munroe and The Apricot Jamm.

More details as they come to hand.

2010

2010-01-17T18:33:00.004+13:00

Well, we've only got two more years before the end of the world according to the Aztec calendar so it's about time we got cracking, I reckon.

So what does 2010 hold for The Gracious Deviants?

In February we will be playing at the Island Bay Festival (if the weather has improved by then, of course), but for now our calendar is looking decidedly empty gigwise until the Kilbirnie Festival in March. However, we aim this year to get more of our music out, whether it be live or recorded and try to get it into the ears of someone who can help us out.

After a long dry patch brought on by the inexorable decline of 2009, Darrel and I have been writing recently and have come up with a new song tentatively titled "Free Bird". The song has absolutely nothing to do with the Lynyrd Skynyrd composition of the same name, it is about loss and desire. Though the outer shape is an angel, in all of us there is as Michael Hutchense once sang a devil inside.

It always strikes me as funny that since the Romantic period poets and writers have tried to bury the devil in language with metaphor and imagery, and yet if you listen to much of the popular music these days the intention once hidden is now very much on the surface. Is it that people aren't trying any more? I don't think so, I just think people have become a little more practical - why waste time with words when you both know what you want, and you can't buy stuff with poetry. Am I being cynical? Yes, of course.

However, look at this. As a songwriter I'm often worried I'm using the same words and the same imagery. I once did a word count on all our lyrics (yes, sometimes there isn't much else to do), but those infographics are way cooler.

Recent Deviance

2009-12-10T15:32:00.002+13:00

Forgive me father, it's been months since my last blog...

Well, the year is finally winding down and the demands of work are lessening gradually. Darrel and I are looking forward to getting back into writing and recording after many missed opportunities these last few weeks. The flu that conquered Darrel some weeks back has now sunk its talons in me, but I hope to shake it in time for the weekend. I apologise if my typing is a little adenoidal.

Although we've not been writing and recording much we have been gigging a fair bit. Since we last spoke we have played (among other gigs) a party, two outdoor gigs and a couple of stints at the San Francisco Bath House, including the recent Acoustic Alchemy '09 Volume II: Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back To The Bar.

AA09II:JWYTIWSTGBTTB (not the most catchy of acronyms) was a great gig, thanks once again to the efforts of Mr. Pete Baillie. The line-up was packed to the rafters with talent, and ran as follows:

5pm - The Doylees
5.30pm - Kim Potter
6pm - Claire Terry
6.30pm - Josh Mason
7pm - Megan McCarthy
7.30pm - The Gracious Deviants
8pm - Jodie Gummer

The Doylees were a five-piece, normally electric group, who played a kind of Dylan-esque alt-rock with three guitars, bass and drums. Their lead guitarist was denied his wah pedal due to some sort of malfunction but more than made up for it by swapping his guitar for a tambourine and wandering outside for a cigarette and then a pint at the bar in the middle of one song, all the while keeping time with the band! Despite technical difficulties and teething problems with the sound, the Doylees' confidence and humour prevailed over all.

Kim Potter played next, a man of many talents and at least two distinct personalities: comedian and songwriter. Kim Potter the songwriter has a fine voice and a great gift for songwriting, and though his appearance on stage was much more low key than the raucousness of the previous act, his talent and his confidence and self-assurance kept your attention throughout the set. He has a new album out, and it is definitely worth checking out on his website. You can check out Kim Potter, comedian AKA Vinyl Burns here.

Claire Terry's set was full of strong, dynamic, and emotional songs. Her sound was highly-charged with big, percussive guitarwork and a soulful alto voice. In addition to her songwriting Claire is also the owner of funky Wellington fashion boutique Madame Fancy Pants, and, therefore, was perhaps the most stylishly presented performer of the night.

Josh Mason may have taken to the stage in a borrowed hat with a borrowed guitar, but he brought all his own material with him. Choosing to sit and play, Josh talked about his whole set before playing it, so as to save time between songs. I guess that's logical...? He played and sang in a contemporary pop style, relaxed and comfortable, and well received by those flocking the front of the stage.

Megan McCarthy, AKA Rosé, took to the stage next with her band featuring Pete Baillie on bass. After minor feedback issues Rosé launched into a confidently-crafted set of songs from ballads to more uptempo numbers - even a rocking sing-along! While Megan shifted between acoustic and electric and acoustic guitar, the rest of the band, drums, keys and bass, kept a solid backing to her strong, well-trained, soulful voice.

Darrel and I played next. The heat of the evening, and the excitement of the gig meant a few cold beverages passed my lips between the start of the gig and when we were due to perform, and I took to the stage a little more relaxed than usual. I should have been more nervous, this was our first gig since Darrel got his voice back. The last couple of gigs I had had to take all of the vocal duties because Darrel's flu had stolen his voice and replaced it with that of an asthmatic wolf. However, tonight we were once again firing on all cylinders, and with an abundant supply of alcoholic lubrication we played a strong set to a very appreciative audience.

Jodie Gummer was last to play, and a fitting finale to an evening of great music. Jodie is a great performer, the strength and power of her voice belies her years, and is a refreshing change from the weak nasal Disney-fied twang of many popular female singers of her generation. Her guitar work was a fine accompaniment to her voice in a set comprising original material and a cover of a contemporary R'n'B pop tune, the title of which escapes me.

We left the venue in high spirits, a successful night for one and all. For The Gracious Deviants, as always, it was curry time....

The Vault updated... again.

2009-09-13T15:42:00.002+12:00

I've gone all webby again and redesigned the Vault with a more compact and cleaner design template.

The site now contains a short biography of the band, some links to NZ music sites as well as links to this blog and our MySpace page.

Check it out here

GIG UPDATES

2009-08-27T17:07:00.003+12:00

A C O U S T I C A L C H E M Y

Starts 6pm, Saturday 29th August.

The San Francisco Bath House, Cuba Street, Wellington.

Entry $5 at the door

Acoustic Alchemy is a showcase of the best of the Acoustic Lounge nights this year, featuring:-

Mara Simpson
The Gracious Deviants
Vorn
Pisces
Jodie Gummer
The Charcoal White

The Gracious Deviants & Guests

at The Fringe Bar

Starts 7pm, Thursday 3rd September

The Fringe Bar, cnr. Vivian and Cuba Streets, Wellington.

Entry by koha (donation)

The Gracious Deviants are supported by two local bands:-

The DuFresnes - an acoustic trio, and

Highly Unlikely - a four-piece acoustic ensemble.

This will be a night of excellent original acoustic music. We will be playing an extended set of old favourites and new material as yet unheard on the Wellington stage.

See you there!

Acoustic Lounge 26th August

2009-08-24T20:55:00.002+12:00

This just in...

We're playing a warm-up gig at the Acoustic Lounge on Wednesday 26th in preparation for Acoustic Alchemy this Saturday.

We're playing the middle slot starting 6:30pm, but be there from 6pm to catch the whole show.

New gigs and new recording

2009-08-21T18:18:00.002+12:00

We have two gigs coming up:

A C O U S T I C A L C H E M Y

The Best of the Acoustic Lounge 2009

San Francisco Bath House

Cuba Street

Wellington

Saturday 29th August

6pm - 9pm

We will be playing a half hour set alongside the best performers from this years crop at the Acoustic Lounge hosted, as always, by the inimitable Pete Baillie.

-------------

An As Yet Un-Named Gig Featuring The Gracious Deviants and Friends

(Not to worry, we'll think of something clever soon)

The Fringe Bar

cnr Cuba and Vivian Streets

Wellington

Thursday 3rd September

7pm

Supported by the band Highly Unlikely, we will be playing a longer set for those who like a little more Gracious Deviants in their diet (98.3% RDI. Gracious Deviants should be consumed responsibly and as part of a healthy diet.)

-----------------

Also, we have finished the bulk of recording for Still Got a Hold on You, and I'm currently mixing it. This weekend we'll look at additional bits and bobs, but I hope to have the track finished soon. We're adding drums and bass to this one too, and it's sounding pretty good so far (if I may say so myself).

Catch you soon!

New Song: I See

2009-08-02T16:02:00.003+12:00

We have a new song on our MySpace page! It's called I See and is a staple of our current live set. This is a studio version recorded at Darrel's some months ago and only just finished mixing at my place last night.

These days as we write new material we have begun to shift our focus beyond what Darrel and I are capable of recreating live and have started to think more about arrangement, and what we might be able to achieve in the studio and eventually on an album.

Our primary goal is still to be able to play everything we write live, and we make sure that we're not up there just playing the same chords, but some of our songs feel like they deserve a little bit more.

Consequently I've added some drums and bass to the new song. It's a kind of country-fried uptempo number with a stomping beat that we couldn't quite do justice to on guitars alone.

I See is a good-humoured upbeat song, no real story or message, it's a vignette inspired by a typical Wellington Summer day at the beach (i.e. sunny but windy and a little cold).

Hope you like it!

Review: Acoustic Routes 26th July 2009

2009-07-27T21:25:00.002+12:00

On the 4th Sunday of every month the Wellington Folk Centre gathers for Acoustic Routes, a concert featuring both club members and invited guests. Last Sunday Darrel and I were invited to play a "floor spot", or short set in support of the main act of the night, singer songwriter Helen Dorothy.

These were untested waters for The Gracious Deviants, we did not know what to expect. We turned up to Toi Poneke, the Wellington Arts Centre, and found our way to an innocuous white concrete room at the back of the building - it was like walking into a tutorial at University - with a small raised stage, rows of seats and a backcloth draped over the back wall.

The room was filling fast and Darrel and I secured ourselves a seat once we had made ourselves known as performers - kind of pointless, the guitar cases gave it away. We didn't know anybody, it was Annie who had spoken with Mary the current president and got us the gig, so we were feeling a little shy.

The evening began with Mary introducing the performers and outlining the night's entertainment. At this point I will have to apologise that I can only remember a few of the performers' names.

After a few hitches, including a drummer somewhere else in the building choosing this of all times to start practising, the first performer launched into his set. He played a skilful finger-style guitar and sang with a rough baritone songs of Celtic and English heritage, the crowd joining a line here, a chorus there.

The most striking thing about the evening for us, even at that early stage, was also the most obvious: Everyone in that room had come to listen. How often have we played to audiences in bars and venues only to come away with the feeling that no-one really heard what we'd played? This audience had turned up to hear music, and sat in respectful silence, nodded their heads or tapped their feet, and were not backwards about showing their appreciation.

As the first performer finished and Darrel and I scuttled off to pick up our guitars I was nervous, worried that we wouldn't fit in, we'd be too "pop". So we get up on stage, are introduced and warmly applauded by an audience keen to hear what we have to play. What was I worrying about? I don't remember...

Folk music is an umbrella term encompassing many styles from as many places as there are folk. The great thing about folk music is that it is the music of people - at its heart are the stories people want to share with one another - the music is as much a method of conveyance as a part of the story itself, as is the performer.

When we write songs I like to build characters and situations and tell stories - I think because haven't quite mastered adequate "ooh baby baby, yeah baby baby" (formerly known as "Moon in June") skills. How then, does the music we write differ from folk music? It doesn't. Still trying to remember what it was I was worried about...

We played The Thought of You, Still Got a Hold on You, and Falling, and we folked the house, baby. It was one of our most satisfying performances, completely unplugged in a venue with surprisingly good acoustics. I loved it.

They applauded us on stage, kept going as we walked off stage, and carried on right until we left the room to drop off our guitars. Good golly.

The next act were a double bass, played by Richard Prowse, accompanied by another man on guitar (once again, my apologies for the lack of names!). Richard Prowse is a very talented player, embracing his bass to play high up on the neck - fingers of iron, fist of steel (it's bloody difficult to play high notes on a double bass!) - coaxing extraordinary notes from the woodwork.

The final act before the main event was another soloist on steel and nylon string guitar who played a "muddley" of South American music, then led the crowd on a chorus song about a wayward teenage daughter, her suspicious mother, and dismissive father, before bringing Mr. Prowse and his bass back on stage for a blues number.

After a short break where Darrel and I mixed with the audience over tea and bikkies, Helen Dorothy took to the stage. Instead of attempting to capture her performance here, I urge you to have a listen for yourself - she has a CD out that you can preview here.

Rather than consult a set list, Helen simply introduced each song with a little story, certain details or themes linking loosely with those of the preceding or following songs. She is originally from England with an Australian mother and English father, and has travelled extensively soaking up stories and experiences, some of which she has set to music.

She has a delicate and fluttering, harmonious touch on the guitar, and a soft keening soprano voice to complement her stories. A stand out song for me was Eucalyptus Man, an adaptation of a novel about a eucalyptus plantation and girl unhappy that her husband shall be chosen for her.

The night ended with thunderous applause and the possibility of another gig for us sometime in the near future. What better way to round off a Sunday night!

Review: Acoustic Lounge 22nd July 2009

2009-07-26T14:05:00.002+12:00

We were a bit nervous about this one, our first gig at the San Francisco Bath House for months, and a chance to redeem ourselves after our last less-than-adequate performance there.

We missed the first act of the night, the Joy Toys, and came in halfway through the set of the second act, Dan Bohan, who was attempting the rather ambitious task of playing hip hop on the acoustic guitar. To his credit, he did what he did with passion and confidence.

After a typically warm introduction from emcee Pete Baillie we launched into All About You, usually a set closer rather than an opener which was brave, but possibly ill-advised. A few tuning and mix issues plagued us early on, but we ended the song well and our plants in the audience whooped and hollered in support (thanks Annie), eliciting a warm response from a moderately-sized (for the Bath House) crowd.

Next up was Still Got a Hold on You, which we have put on high rotation in our repertoire since completing it only a short time ago. It's a song about meeting the love of your life and constantly being reminded of her in everyone new you meet. Often, as in this case, the trouble with finding the love of your life is that the feelings may not be reciprocated.

After another warm round of applause we went into The Thought of You with Darrel on lead vocals. The song is quite simple, but the rhythm of the two offset guitars, and the harmony in the chorus is infectious. This is another song we've got very confident playing, and was again well received.

Buoyed by this we launched into Four A.M., a very new song we have never played in public before. Normally this is a recipe for disaster for us, but we felt confident enough with this song to steam ahead. The great thing about this song is it's a real "wave your lighter in the air" song where I get to throw back my head and belt out the lyrics in the second verse and chorus. It's a song about loss - waking up in a cold bed and reaching over only to be reminded again that she left. We're keeping the recording of the response to this song to play over the PA at any future gigs we might play to smaller audiences. Hopefully we'll never have to do this.

After a short tune up we launched into Things Don't Come Any Better - another stomping favourite. This was Darrel's chance to throw back his head and belt it out - and belt it out he did.

We went back to a song we haven't played in a long while, Public Eye, a song Darrel wrote over ten years ago. I love the chorus of this song, even though I often mess up the lyrics (which I did that night).

At this stage we felt more than happy to round off the set with another as yet unperformed song called Photograph. This is a song about a man who finds himself at the point of giving up on his relationship, but an old photo of his parents, still happily married, makes him reconsider. We played it well and, listening back to the recording, I think it will be a welcome addition to our repertoire.

All in all it was a very successful night - we redeemed ourselves of the last performance, and we brought two new songs to light in front of a very appreciative audience. The best way to finish off a night like that is with the consumption of fine, fine curry, so that is of course what we did.

Ok. Band Meeting. Now... Gigs

2009-07-06T22:28:00.006+12:00

Look out for us at the following venues coming up this month:

Acoustic Lounge - San Francisco Bath House, Cuba St, Wellington

Wednesday 22nd July, 7.20pm.

Be sure to get in by 6pm to catch all of the Acoustic Lounge acts that night.

Acoustic Routes - Toi Poneke, Abel Smith St, Wellington

Sunday 24th July, from 8pm.

We're playing a short set in support of guest artist Helen Dorothy.

Thanks to our new Murray, Annie, for organising these for us. She folk'n rocks.

New version

2009-05-19T22:03:00.004+12:00

It seems we weren't quite done with All About You.
I have uploaded a new version to our MySpace page, but it may not be immediately available.

Check out The Vault to listen to it.

Our thanks to Steve Gallagher for relighting the fire under this song and bringing the rock - Steve we salute you!

New recording

2009-05-03T01:11:00.001+12:00

Our studio version of All About You has finally made it out into the world!
I've been mixing this on and off for the last 4 months and am just going to have to wear it as it is.
All of the instruments except the drums are real - we've just overdubbed a bunch of acoustic guitars and added a few effects. It sounds more complex than anything else we have up here which may not necessarily be a good thing. The song, however, is a good thing whether the production values are your cup of tea or not. We're very proud of it, and we hope you like it too.
Head on over to MySpace and check it out
It will also appear in the Vault over the next couple of days.

Music Vault Redesigned

2009-03-12T17:48:00.004+13:00

The Gracious Deviants Music Vault has been redesigned!

Each track now has its own page linked to the home page. This means the site should load much more quickly, and it will be easier for us to add new content.

Speaking of new content, we will be adding new material shortly including new versions of All About You and I See.

Visit the Vault HERE.

Kilbirnie Fair 2009

2009-02-19T16:42:00.004+13:00

The Gracious Deviants will be playing at the Kilbirnie Festival on Fair Day this year, Sunday 1st March 2009.
The fair is an annual event featuring music, food and stalls and celebrating everything that is Kilbirnie-y about this southern Wellington suburb.
The last couple of years have been great - well-attended and full of things to see and do.
Come along!
For more info click HERE

The Vault

2008-11-06T15:57:00.003+13:00

The Gracious Deviants Music Vault has been overhauled into a design that fits more with the rest of the sites.
Unfortunately downloads are suspended at the moment, you can stream from the site or save as QuickTime movies.
Also, the page may take a while to load as it attempts to cache all of the audio.

You can visit it HERE.

I will take some time out to optimise the code and speed up the page as much as I can.

Acoustic Pioneers @ Happy Review

2008-10-09T21:23:00.002+13:00

Truly a redemption gig for us after our somewhat under-whelming performance at Bodega.

(per-for-mance, it's pronounced PER-for-mance, PER-God Damn-for-mance -- sorry, it's just that New Zealanders have started saying "preformance" and moronic television celebrities are ensuring its widespread misuse on local media, damn them all to crusty foetid hell -- but I digress.)

Not to say that the crowd at Bodega enjoyed themselves - they did, as we very much appreciated them enjoying themselves, it's just, well, listening to the recording again, there is a definite lack of whelming in the performance. More whelming was indeed required. But whither whelm?

Thank goodness for Tim and the Acoustic Pioneers at Happy Bar!
Happy is a basement level bar beneath another bar that was formerly The Sticky Wicket, the local hangout for cricket supporters and the students of the NZ Drama School.
Happy is like a favourite blanket or piece of clothing, perhaps a pair of sneakers. Shabby, but comfortable, and comforting. Intimate, with a sense of Opportunity Shop pan-temporality (look it up).
The proceedings were not so much hosted, rather they were gently led along by Tim, bearded and bespectacled bard and balladeer himself.

The line up was an interesting mix of low-key, heartfelt, high-energy, and a little angry. All of the performers (PERformers. See? it works there too) were accomplished players and songwriters, and the night passed pleasantly by the small but respectful audience.

Emily Pea played first - an interesting picking style accompanying a voice reminiscent of Celtic folk, perhaps Natalie Merchant, although not stylistically. She used her voice to drape melody between her lyrics like a silk scarf in a breeze.

Reuben Collins, a bluesman by reputation, brought his unique voice, his harmonica (which, thankfully, did not feature greatly - see a previous post for my thoughts on this instrument), and his tambourine to the stage. His guitar work was fluid, and songs more ballad than blues, but enjoyable nonetheless.

We played four songs: I See, The Mountain, The Thought of You and All About You. As a two-piece, we do have the advantage of being able to make more noise than a solo performer, and Happy is small enough to find the corners easily and fill them with sound. I think, however, Darrel and I were determined to do well and enjoy ourselves. After one of the most stressful days I've had at work in a long time, I was desperate to unwind, and found my bliss in the middle of I See. We played a good version of The Mountain (finally, whew!) and rounded off the rest of the set nicely.

Chloe Langley was last to perform - a woman whose voice went from smooth and melodic to rough and powerful, angel to devil, as the mood took her. A very proficient guitarist, Chloe's songs were often introduced by complex riffs and interesting chord inversions and centred around passion in both love and hate.
Her set ended abruptly with pleas from her to Tim the host to get up and play.

Tim reluctantly came up, re-tuned the guitar in very short order to an alternate tuning that baffled Darrel and I completely and proceeded to pick out a very beautiful song, accompanied by his plaintive but melodious voice.

Chloe Langley took the stage again to finish the night with a really nice version of The Cure's Lovesong, complete with iconic keyboard line interpreted on guitar. Effortless.

All in all, it was perhaps one of the best gigs we've played at, and we are more than a little bummed out that Darrel's voice recorder ran out of batteries three minutes into it! The audience and performers were very supportive - we had some really nice comments from both about our set.

So that's it for a while. The next time we're on stage is for a 21st party this weekend for the son of a family friend, but after that the lone and level sands stretch far away.

To tide us over, we've entered the International Songwriting Contest on BroadJam, with The Mountain, Not My Angel and All About You - the live version taken from the Savage Club video. Guest judges in the competition include some of our heroes such as Neil Finn, Robert Smith, and Ray Davies. The first announcements are in February next year. Fingers crossed.
Wish us luck!

Bodega gig review

2008-10-06T20:55:00.002+13:00

Well, it was a long and convoluted journey but in the end I think it was worth it: The Gracious Deviants Benefit Show at Bodega.

There were at least 20 people in attendance, mostly our friends but a few surprises (thank you all for coming) and even a couple of walk-ups. It was, perhaps, the greatest number of people we've had come to one of our gigs specifically to hear us play.

Bodega has a bit of a barn-like space at the end of the bar that has a raised stage, rudimentary lighting rig, and a massive PA. A large number of different acts play at Bodega from DJs to punk bands, so it is both concert venue and dancefloor. It can house a great many people, though it really doesn't look all that big. It did seem rather empty, however, even with our modest audience, but then there were few tables in the main space and even fewer chairs, so many people clustered around the bar.

We played two sets of around 25 minutes each with a break in between. We structured each set so that it had a bit of everything we were capable of, that way latecomers wouldn't miss out, and we wouldn't put all of our eggs in one basket.

The first set went off well, beginning with I See and ending with Spoke at the Same Time, and we left the stage in good spirits.

After a short break we kicked off the second set with the rare Eastern Patagonian 7" mix of The Mountain - an often misunderstood version of that song but we think important part, nay, lynchpin to the entire oeuvre of the Gracious Deviants and a bold move on our part. To the untrained ear, the Eastern Patagonian 7" version of The Mountain sounds a lot like the regular version played badly with the last verse thoroughly messed up and the last chorus missing whilst both players embarrassedly muddle their way to some form of conclusion before abandoning it completely. Music critics are divided on this point.

We also played 98-3 for the first time in a long while. It is very different from most of our songs, coming as it does from the time when I was into odd time signatures in a big way, but I think it stood well among the rest of the set. The second set concluded officially with All About You, but we played a couple of encores We Could Be Good and Woman.

All in all, a successful night and, if I can just avoid listening to certain songs in the recording, a memorable one. We have some redemptive work to do for future performances of said songs, but otherwise I'm pretty happy.

Speaking of Happy, that's where we are tomorrow night.

Many thanks to Joel Anscombe-Smith, one of my workmates, for driving the desk on the night, and keeping us well-balanced.

Acoustic Pioneers @ Happy 7th Oct

2008-10-04T11:21:00.001+13:00

The Gracious Deviants play at Acoustic Pioneers!

Tuesday 7th October

Happy Bar
cnr Vivian and Tory St, Wellington

from 8pm

Entry by koha (donation) or cake (yummy)

Bodega 2nd October

2008-09-30T20:19:00.002+13:00

The Gracious Deviants are playing a FREE gig at Bodega on Thursday 2nd October.

FREE entry

At Bodega, cnr Willis and Ghuznee Sts Wellington

The Gracious Deviants play.

Oh yes.

Free.

The Gracious Deviants on Video!

2008-09-18T21:47:00.004+12:00

Good golly! Televisual representation!

Here we are playing All About You, one of our newest songs at the Savage Club in Palmerston North.

Many thanks to globe-trotting cameraman and Spaceman Candy Sticks afficionado Tim Saunders for the filum.
Please note: The video is 34MB, so if you're on a capped plan or (god help you) dial-up, I'd wait for the DVD release...

Songcraft and Bodega

2008-09-09T21:12:00.003+12:00

The Songcraft gig went well, although again, it was not very well attended. The line-up was not as it appeared on the poster, a couple of acts had to pull out due to illness (get well soon Pete), but Terry Shore soldiered on throughout, keeping things moving. It was, after all, his gig.

I remembered to plug in my guitar this time, which was a bonus. We had a few issues early on with the monitoring, but we played and sang well, and were received well by the audience (the performers and their hangers-on, and the bar staff, and the bar-flies). Darrel's recording of the gig is noisy but relatively good considering.

Terry captured the event on video - where that may surface is unknown at this point, but it may turn up on his MySpace page.

Thanks to Joe Standeven and Mahinarangi Maika we've found another place to play. There's a bar in Petone that holds an Open Mic every Wednesday. We'll be heading over there very soon.

So.

What's next?

Well, we've booked to play at Bodega again - the first time since it changed hands - for one of their Tuesday Showcases. The date is 23rd September. We'll post something closer to the time.

It'll be nice to get back to Bodega. This time we'll go all out to get some audience, though.

Stay tuned.....

Tune reshuffle

2008-09-06T21:14:00.003+12:00

We've decided to release a couple of new tunes and a re-cut of Not My Angel (that better represents the song as we play it live) on our MySpace page. This has meant we've had to drop the two new songs I See and Thought of You because MySpace only allows six songs per profile.

If you missed out listening to or downloading the two dropped songs they are available in The Gracious Deviants Music Vault.

Check it out!

Howltearoa gig

2008-09-06T11:43:00.002+12:00

The Howltearoa gig at the Southern Cross Bar was a big success. Thanks to Cameron for inviting us, and thanks also the folks who supported us.

The first half of the evening, the Open Mic bit, brought forth a larger number of people than the last time we were there, and some of those who turned up to read were really entertaining. It was a little unfortunate that most of those people didn't stick around to see us... a little more than unfortunate, but I suppose we never stick around too long after doing our bit when we attend Open Mics either. If Darrel hadn't brought his friends from work, it may well have been business as usual - us, the bar staff, and a big old empty bar.

We played about seven songs, even an encore, which was nice, and then I realised I'd played the whole gig unplugged. I'd made sure Darrel had bought our DI pedal so we could both use the PA and then completely forgot to plug myself into it. Whadda dumbass.

We met a couple of guys who came up to us after the show and had a good old chat - Ed plays mean keys and wanted to throw some Rhodes on top of our song "Falling" - can't wait to hear what that's like.

So now we're gearing up for Songcraft. Should be a good afternoon/evening...

Howltearoa & Song Craft

2008-08-22T17:05:00.005+12:00

Three gigs: Acoustic Lounge, Howltearoa, and The Savage Club

2008-08-11T12:40:00.001+12:00

Good Lord. Such a long time between drinks and now a surfeit of gigs!
The one that broke the drought was Wednesday 30th at the Acoustic Lounge - once again graciously hosted by Pete Baillie, who also played first.
Pete has been a busy bee, he's currently in two bands and when we saw him was deep in rehearsal to unleash the awesomeness unto the world. Check out his MySpace Page for all the details.
Pete rounded off his set that night with a re-worded version of John Cale's whiny/long/dull/but made most famous by Jeff Buckley song "Hallelujah". A veteran of probably too many Open Mic nights, and thus having heard too many Buckley-wannabes sing that song, Pete got his own back, bemoaning the plight of the Open Mic host and mercifully cutting the song a lot shorter than the original.

Next up was a couple from the US, playing guitar and melodica - yes, I'd forgotten what one of those was as well until she bought it out and started playing. A melodica is a cross between an accordion and a harmonica that you blow into and play like a piano on your lap. It brought back memories of school for Darrel and I, as it seems every primary school music department has one of these tucked away among the recorders - at my school though the whole thing was handheld and played like a clarinet.
The couple didn't have a band name so I'm afraid I can't put it down here. Their music was sweet and simple, Americana Folk, and the sound of the melodica blended nicely with the guitar.

Darrel and I played last and whipped out all our new ones: I See, Thought of You, Some Day, All These Things, All About You, and If The Stars (I may have missed one, Darrel, help me out).
I was suffering from the fact I'd never actually played any of these songs standing up - Darrel and I practice and record sitting most of the time - so there were a few tense moments as the fretboard disappeared from view occasionally in the dim light.

We listened back to the recording Darrel made and despite adding about 5-10bpm to each tune, we did all right. You can always tell when you've made an impression (or that you're possibly too loud) when the audience starts off talking and then is silent at the end of the set. Yeah, wicked.
It struck me that night the fact that I do all the talking on stage and Darrel does all the talking off stage. When I get off stage I kind of need to decompress before I can start talking to people - it's a kind of embarrassment, I head off stage and through the crowd to my seat looking at people and thinking "Yeah, I'm the guy that was just up there, thanks for listening, really appreciate it, hope you liked it, sorry, not much of a glory-basker me, can I get past to get a beer please?" Odd sort of behavior for a show-off, eh? Darrel's great at that point (I mean the dude is so relaxed on stage anyway) as he can chat to the punters or performers alike until I get my crap together. Most of the gigs we get are the product of Darrel's sterling efforts in this area. I guess we complement each other well.

Howtearoa was our next gig, at the Southern Cross Bar on the 4th August. This is a monthly Open Mic night hosted by the Word Collective. We turned up to find ourselves (initially) the only ones with guitars. The format was the same but there were just more spoken words than sung which, for us, was a bit of a novelty. The audience were attentive, respectful, and appreciative, and that's all the really matters to any performer. As the performers before us had only been on about five minutes a slot, we cut down our repertoire to just two songs, feeling a little self-conscious. We performed entirely acoustically, which I've come to find most liberating. If I don't have to worry about making sure the mic is picking up my voice I feel a lot more relaxed and can move around a bit. Maybe I need one of those awful head mounted mics... The downside is always the balance between voices and guitars - you have to belt out the singing if you want to be heard.
I think we did well though, so much so we were invited back as special guests for the next session on Monday 1st September. We'll keep you posted about that one.

The special guest that night was Glen Miers, a poet with an impressive command of te reo in both language and performance, and a collection of thought-provoking (and a little dark) poems and stories. What a blessed relief from what might have been on any other Open Mic yet another rendition of "Hallelujah"!

The most recent gig we played was a family affair. Once again we played at the Savage Club in support of the Manawatu Overtones' celebration of Chartership (Chartering? Charterdom? Encharterfication?). We played a short set in between choral/a capella sets from the Overtones and their small group Fine Blend. Our mat Tim brought along a video camera and filmed us, so stay tuned for some actual footage of the Deevs carving up the toons... All in all a thoroughly enjoyable night and a great end to a great couple of weeks gigging.
We've got a couple more to look forward to in September and will be back in touch with more details soon.

Gee it's great being on holiday....

New Tune!

2008-08-08T21:28:00.005+12:00

Yeehaaa! A new tune!

We've posted our new recording of "I See" on our MySpace page for your listening and downloading pleasure.

Please have a listen and let us know what you think, share it with friends, and maybe slip a copy in the pocket of an A&R person (do they still exist?).

More to come... yes I know you've heard that one before... but it's TRUE (promise).

Woohoo.....Gigs!!!

2008-07-07T23:54:00.006+12:00

By the Way, here are The Gracious Deviants shown on our first ever Simpsons episode! As long time fans it was quite an honour to be approached by Matt, Sam and James L...
I am about to surprise everyone (particularly Pete!!) and offer my first post on this blog since the moon landing. I have just had issues with passwords (my ICT achilles heel) but I have finally remembered what it is!
Anyway, as the title eludes to The Gracious Deviants have some gigs coming up and there are quite a few too I am very pleased to say. Firstly we make our long awaited (by us!) return to the Blue Note this Thursday followed up by an appearance at the San Francisco Bath House acoustic lounge on Wednesday July 30th. We are then performing in Palmerston North during August and at a Terry Shore organised event at the good old Adelaide on Saturday September 6th. So from sitting in the performing doldrums we have had our sails filled with a nice prevailing Southerly and things are looking much brighter.
We have taken this time away from performing to record and to write creating 3 new tracks that we are looking forward to trying in front of an audience. It doesn't matter how busy Pete and I are we always seem to find time to write new material. Even if its 12:00am and our fingers are tired from playing guitar for ages if we come up with a new hook or idea its a case of "drop everything.....did you just hear that??"
But it sure is good to be back playing live again and its great to be back on the blogging front too. I'll try to better sort my act out from now on!!

Yikes

2008-05-12T22:03:00.002+12:00

I wrote a song this evening, tentatively called "I See" - it's the first time I've written anything entirely by myself since extraordinarily abortive attempts in my teens. Shocked and stunned.

Darrel and I will be thrashing it into shape next practice.

New tracks on the way!

2008-05-05T21:27:00.003+12:00

A few things have happened since we last spoke.

I got married.

And I'm SO happy! (Though I look a little pained in this shot)

Also, Darrel and I started recording some of our newer material in the hope of putting out another 4-track EP (gotta have merch). We've been recording in "The Garret", or "Attic Studios", or "Bulance Central" (we haven't decided on a name for Darrel's studio yet) and mixing at "Snifter Heights Studio" (my place).

I have never in my life felt more in need of RTAS plugins than I have over the last few months!

My wife (YES!) did a little digging on the Internet and we've found a few avenues as yet untravelled that we might explore to try and promote ourselves more.

Now that the Winter is setting in, it seems the Open Mic Night situation is becoming a bit thin on the ground, with regular weekly slots becoming fortnightly, and some venues giving up altogether.

Hats off as always to the sterling efforts of Pete Baillie, Jessie Moss, et al who take their time and energy and direct them towards the fostering and care of new and upcoming talent. As you know, Darrel and I owe our start to Open Mic Nights, and we really appreciate the support and experience we have gained from these nights. We hope they may continue beyond this current mire of audience apathy.

Tell you what, why not head over to Cuba Street and see what's going on? Start at the Southern Cross and work your way down, there's bound to be something to your taste before you hit the waterfront. Go on.

In the meantime, stay tuned for some new tracks. We will be posting them on MySpace, BroadJam, GarageBand, and anywhere else we have material. Watch these spaces...

The Savage Club gig, Palmerston North

2007-12-11T21:48:00.001+13:00

Here are The Gracious Deviants playing at the Savage Club in Palmerston North, late November.

Yes, I realise that as I write this is is December, but blogging has rather taken a back seat over the last couple of months due to work and family.

The Savage Club gig was in support of the Manawatu Overtones, a women's choral/a capella group that lists among its members my very talented mother (music runs in the family - I'm so proud!).

We only played two songs, as we were one of a number of other acts performing that night, but they went down very well and we were able to sell a couple of CDs as well.

The Savage Club Manawatu is located in a wonderful old converted church on a side street in a light industrial/commercial area. On the outside it doesn't look like much, but stepping through the doors is like stepping back in time to New Zealand in the early 20th Century - the walls are all old, dark wood or painted hardboard or plasterboard in faded green - it is what much of New Zealand looked like from around 1940 until as late as the early 80s. This is probably a little exaggerated, but photos of New Zealand small towns between 1940 and 1979 don't tend to show marked changes over the decades - it's as if it was about 1953 for a good ten to fifteen years and then suddenly it was 1970, where time stopped again for another ten or so years. Being a small country at the bottom of the globe does that, I guess.

The venue was a fantastic slice of Kiwiana, a collection of souvenirs in cabinets and photos lining the walls commemorating past presidents (or rangatira as they were known - the Savage Clubs of New Zealand adopted many Maori words and phrases in the beginning but the practice has gone out of vogue these days, sadly). The Savage Club began in England in 1857 as a kind of gentleman's club for artists and bohemian types. The link takes you to the official Savage Club website which has a great deal more information than I care to put down here.

As Britain expanded and created the Commonwealth, Savage Clubs began popping up in each "new" country, each club taking on aspects of the "natives" to make their branch of the club stand out: in Canada, the Savage Clubs adopted Pacific Northwest Indian icons and customs, the New Zealand clubs used those of the Maori. To our Politically Correct sensibilities in this modern age we might look upon this as part and parcel of the aggressive expansionist tactics of the European, branding the indigenous people "savages", but this was not so - the Savage Club was so named because its members comprised free-thinkers and artists, often at odds with "civilised" society - adopting the icons and customs of an indigenous people helped celebrate their uniqueness, at a time when many indigenous people were having a hard time convincing people of their very existence as fellow human beings.

The Manawatu chapter of the Savage Club was known for its musical prowess. While the original Savage Club became exclusive and elitist, the antipodean clubs welcomed in all they could, amateur or professional. The Manawatu Savage Club could at one time or another host gatherings and concerts where the standard of musical performance was indistinguishable from a similar concert at a professional venue - they became famous around the Manawatu and nearby districts when they went "raiding" other clubs and wiping the floor with their competition on the stage.

The auditorium where we played was festooned with coloured incandescent bulbs crisscrossing the ceiling and a very odd-looking homebrew disco ball made from a lump of what looked suspiciously like concrete covered in a rather small number of shards of mirrored glass - a mirrorball by Gaudi, perhaps. As you can see in the photo on the right next to Darrel, the Proscenium (such as it was) was decorated with Maori tiki and koru designs painted on hardboard. A short walk backstage led to a long hall where trestle tables held plates of food for the audience (and would have done for the last seventy years in the same places), and at the back of this hall a store room containing a bunch of possibly antique theatrical costumes as you are wont to find in many old theatres in New Zealand towns. As an ex-thespian it embiggened my heart to see it all.

If we can scrape the money together Darrel and I want to do a music video there, it has a fantastic atmosphere that we think our music would fit right into. It would also be great to acknowledge the musical history made there over the years.

Bodega gig and beyond

2007-10-23T20:36:00.000+13:00

The Bodega gig was about ten times better than the last time we played there. For starters, we played earlier which meant some of the regular drinks-after-work crowd were around to hear most of our set before they headed off for dinner.
We also got to the venue in pretty good time so we weren't rushing about trying to get things going - we even ducked out for dinner beforehand!

Typically, the crowd was not large, we hadn't advertised locally (that really worked last time, didn't it? See the post about the previous Bodega gig for the answer to that one) except to tell friends and workmates, and chose to do most of our advertising through MySpace, Facebook, and the other social networking sites where we have profiles.

I can bemoan the fact we don't get the audiences we feel we deserve for hours on end, but a lot of it has to do with the way we market ourselves, and who we market ourselves to.

Let's not put too fine a point on it: we don't play
avant-garde art-rock, we play music that isn't too challenging to the sensibilities, we're not entirely middle-of-the-road, but pretty close to the median strip on occasions.
If you like Crowded House, you'll probably like us.

Trouble is, our target market in New Zealand doesn't tend to go out much. They're usually at home with the new baby or, having worked until 6pm, commuted for an hour and a half just to get home, are unlikely to want to jump back into the car and make the trek from the burbs to the big smoke to spend an evening with a band they know very little about.

In the UK and Europe you have a lot more people living in the city, a lot more people wanting entertainment and therefore a lot more established live venues. You can go and see a different band almost every night if you like, and, because promoters can guarantee their clients at the very least a fair turn-out, you can catch blokes wot you mighta saw on't telly music shows playing live.

Now...

Hopping off the swing and getting on the roundabout, if you're a new band, how do you make yourself stand out when there will be so many others doing the same, competing for attention?
Personally I wouldn't really care as long as the audience regularly outnumbered the performers, but it seems like it's hard to be heard wherever you are.

So what's the answer? Well, more gigs. Haply we can oblige:

Island Bay School Fair
Saturday 3rd November

The Gracious Deviants play from 11:15am until noon.
Come any support us and the school, Clyde St, Island Bay, Wellington.

Free Downloads

2007-10-09T21:47:00.000+13:00

You can download some of our tracks for free from the following sites:

MySpace

or

Muzic.net.nz

And while you're at muzic.net.nz, check out the wealth of Kiwi talent on their site. Practically everyone who is anyone in the NZ music scene is represented there - a brilliant resource for those of you who love Kiwi music, or those of you a long way from home.

Of course, we'd like it if you buy our music too (you get the cover art and production details and everything), but most of all we'd love to just to LISTEN. And we'd love you to love us too. And come to Bodega on the 18th October.

See you there!

Acoustic Lounge Gig

2007-10-04T19:18:00.000+13:00

The first gig Darrel and I have played for several weeks went off well.

Darrel had been suffering with a nagging flu which had kept him coughing at inopportune moments for the last two weeks, so the singing duties were largely on my shoulders that night, but we came across pretty well I thought.

We played two of our newest songs: If the Stars and The Mountain, together with tried and true oldies like Lay Your Love, and We Could be Good, and concert favourites Song to Remember and God Knows.

It's always difficult to tell how well you did in front of an audience who were not there specifically to see you, but we did seem to grab everyone's attention away from their beer at least once during the night.

Darrel recorded the show buut discovered later that our foot-stamping shook the recorder and left farty noises across the performance but, hey, we weren't going for gold with this recording - it was enough of a joy to be up on stage again after so long.

We have a few gigs lined up, Bodega on the 18th and a couple of other gigs in November including the Island Bay School Fair, which should be slap bang in the middle of our target market.

Our CDs sold out at Slow Boat, which was gratifying - though there were only five to begin with and we can probably account for two purchases from family members, but at least three people came in off the street and bought it. Yay. This weekend I'll knock off a few more to replenish the supply.

Gigs!

2007-09-20T20:05:00.000+12:00

Acoustic Lounge
Wednesday 3rd October

San Francisco Bath House, Cuba Street, Wellington. From 6pm.

Bar Bodega
Thursday 18th October

Cnr Willis and Ghuznee St, Wellington. From 8pm.

Come along!

Long and winding road

2007-09-18T20:45:00.000+12:00

Sid Meier has a lot to answer for - his brilliant game Pirates! has intruded somewhat on a few of our practices lately. "Choobang!"

It has been difficult to find the energy to keep going, both of us have been fully-occupied at work or at home, so our weekly jam sessions have not turned up new material as often as we're used to.

I've re-jigged my studio, and now everything is a lot closer to hand when I'm mixing stuff (or playing Pirates!), which should make it easier to keep the creative juices flowing. In a way it does, I've been revisiting some of the STL sessions, trying to thicken up the sound and tweak the mixes a bit. I've added a few bits to Not My Angel, double-tacking the vocals, adding a slight slap echo, and filling out the solo a bit.

Post production on a recording is a fine art - it takes a skilled engineer to realise a lot of effects we take for granted. For instance: how do you make an vocal echo appear only on the phrases you want, and present yet unobtrusive in the rest of the vocal? How do you achieve the effect of a $1000 mastering plugin without the $1000 mastering plugin? How long, indeed, is a piece of string?

Oh, to be Roy Thomas Baker! Actually, given our material, we'd probably be better off being Steve Lillywhite, Hugh Padgham, Mitchell Froom, or even "Mutt" Lange.

We have nearly 20 original songs - only 4 have been recorded properly, and a few haven't been recorded at all. We've got a lot of work to do.

On the live front, we've got a gig coming up soon at Bodega (details to follow later) and a couple of free community gigs in November, so we're definitely still getting out there and playing - the music's still great, and I guess that's all we need really. Although a few more people to think so too would be nice.

Where am I now?

2007-08-09T21:02:00.001+12:00

Ah, the Internet...

In the old days promoting a band was all about word-of-mouth, posters and touring, touring, touring. I guess it still is in a way, but most people are using the Internet for greater exposure.

Now, instead of a poster lost among a myriad of others on a wall somewhere in a blind alley, you can have a profile among a myriad of others on one of the many social networking sites. Or many profiles.

Sigh.

It's kind of tempting - you think you're actually getting somewhere because you're going global - but a global market is a hell of a lot bigger than your hometown, or country. "Well, duh!" comes the cry. But surely, surely someone's listening... Is anyone listening....?

We're trying our hand at Internet marketing, trying to get the music out as much as possible. The difficulty is keeping the content fresh, but we've only got so many songs recorded and so many photos. It takes one hell of a lot of time and effort too.
However, every little bit helps - now a Google search for The Gracious Deviants brings up at least three separate sites with our stuff on them, and we don't get that "Did you mean Gracious Deviantions?

Minor victory... but everything counts, right?

Review

2007-08-07T20:57:00.000+12:00

Thanks to Charlette Hannah (www.wellingtonlivemusic.blogspot.com, www.myspace.com/charlettehannah) we have another review!

http://wellingtonlivemusic.blogspot.com/2007/05/review-gracious-deviants-and-tommy.html

Ok, so it was for a gig we did a while ago, our ill-fated Bodega gig, but it's great to know someone was listening!
Thanks again Charlette, and for everything you do to keep the buzz going for live music in Wellington!

2007-08-05T18:22:00.000+12:00

Here goes...

2007-06-07T21:26:00.000+12:00

Taking a leap

2007-06-06T21:46:00.000+12:00

Our Bodega gig was a bunch of arse not as successful as we would have liked. There were a few reasons for this. Firstly, it's obvious that putting a gig on with less than two weeks' notice and on a Wednesday night will not exactly draw the punters in droves. Secondly, due to a double-booking our mate Tommy couldn't open for us, so we had to play first, and with Darrel's cold lingering he was not up to full power until late on in our set. Having said that, Darrel did pull out all he could for the set and we came away from the gig satisfied that at least we had turned things around and redeemed ourselves by the end. Thanks mate.

When we turned up to the venue we realised that without at least one other person it is impossible for a duo to get up and perform with a PA and be confident that they can be heard. We can't afford to emply a sound technician because we're not making any money from the gigs. In the past we have relied on friends being around to help out, or at least be a set of ears. On that nIght, however, all of my friends were busy in the final stages of a film mix, and all of Darrel's friends were teachers whose evenings and weekends are more precious to them than thorazine to a psychotic.

Every performer needs an audience, and it really showed in our performance when, inexplicably, ten people decided to grace the venue with their presence just as we were doing the last couple of songs. Up until that point we were despondently (and embarrasedly - if that is a word) running though our set, making changes where necessary to suit Darrel's ailing pipes, for the two MARVELLOUS people who had turned up to see us. Thank you, you guys, we're glad you enjoyed the show.

If we are going to keep playing gigs things are going to have to change. We need a third person who knows what we do and how we do it, who can be in the centre of town while Darrel and I are in the far flung suburbs where we work during the day, and who can start to market us to people we don't know.

However...

Now that the EP is out, we have begun looking for ways to get it on air and into the hands of some influential people. We have sent copies to a few radio stations and will be pulling in a few favours from friends to do so elsewhere. We're also going to start touting our wares among the record labels - the four tracks on the EP are a good indication of what we do, but we've got another 16 songs equally worthy to be heard.

Basically, we have nothing to lose.... (dramatic sting)... and everything to gain. And it's.... allaboutthemusic.
Mbeas.

Next Gig

2007-05-25T21:47:00.001+12:00

Short notice this one, but come along! We'll be selling the new EP there on the night for $5.

EP On Sale Now!!

2007-05-14T12:09:00.000+12:00

The
GraciousDeviants EP
is now on sale!

Slow Boat Records, Cuba Street, Wellington.
$9.50

Limited copies available. Drop a comment for this post if you would like to order a copy.

2007-05-08T20:52:00.000+12:00

Out very soon at selected stores in Wellington and available on order through MySpace

So what's next?

2007-04-29T15:27:00.000+12:00

Well, a new look to the site, and the MySpace site - can't really change one wthout the other, consistency, you see, is the key to a lot in this world from branding to parenting.
So, indeed, what's next?

The STL Audio sessions went well, as you've seen. Check STL out here. Thanks again TK for a very easy experience. Recording is a very different beast to playing live, and the show doesn't stop once the "tape" stops rolling either. I'm currently going over the sessions and editing and mixing them at home, and we've given them to JD, one of my friends and workmates who has his own studio, for his contribution too. I'm new to mixing, he is not, and I look forward to hearing his efforts. If they are good, I mean, when they are good we will take the completed mixes back to TK at STL (acronyms galore!) for mastering. Jeez, it never stops. You could just plug yourself into a 4-track and write a bunch of songs, but without mixing and mastering they'll sink without a trace if you ever send them to a radio station.

Which, of course, is what we are going to do.

Thanks to another good friend and colleague, Andy Hummel, we're getting into the business of releasing our music for sale on the Internet and "selected" music stores in the hope it will make it onto the public radar. May is NZ Music Month here in New Zealand and we should be in with a good chance of getting our stuff on the air somewhere.
We're looking for more gig opportunities too, and if things pan out properly, we should be supporting local band Nine Signals soon - thanks Morgan.

In fact, much of what we are doing at the moment has to do with the support and encouragement of those around us.
Since I can't wait for when Darrel and I receive our first APRA Silver Scroll and/or produce our first album sleeve, I'd like to thank those who have helped us out and hopefully bring some loving back to them.
In no particular order:
My partner and son for giving my otherwise amorphous life shape and definition and for keeping Darrel and I on course in many, many ways.
Tyree Robertson for giving us our start - we'd like to see you again soon, it's been too long.
Pete Baillie for his sterling efforts on our behalf and on behalf of many up-and-comers in the Wellington scene.
Tommy Pickett for singing our praises and then our songs with us, and simply because the world is a nice place with you around.
Strangelove for giving us our first support gigs.
The Adelaide, The Blue Note, Happy, Bodega, The San Francisco Bath House, Valve, and Katipo Cafe for giving us space to play.
TK at STL for the session, and my partner and family for getting us in there in the first place.
Andy, JD, Pete Mills, Mr. Winter for sound advice and support, Jill for The Water Horse gig, and those workmates and colleagues of mine and Darrel's that have made it to our gigs at least once.
And, of course, our first real critic venetic for his review of our first Bodega gig in February.

THANK YOU ALL

From deep inside the studio...

2007-04-18T22:10:00.000+12:00

Deep inside STL Audio, Pete and Darrel strive for that perfect sound where it's... all about the music.

Mbeas.

Darrel relaxes at the Steinway. (Actually, it probably wasn't a Steinway, but since neither of us play piano who really gives a...?)

"It's Christmas time..."

Seventeen minutes into Darrel's eighth guitar solo and he breaks a string...

"Fellas... I've got to have more cowbell!"

"Damn D sharp minor seventh... Greaney you bastard..."

BODEGA!!

2007-04-01T16:08:00.000+12:00

To the studio!

2007-03-19T15:32:00.000+12:00

The Kilbirnie Festival gig went pretty well - a lovely hot day, a stage near the food tents, a whole bunch of people passing through - what more could you ask for?

There were three stages at the festival, ours was the San Francisco Bath House stage, supported in part by that inimitable venue and Groove FM. Pete Baillie was in charge of proceedings and once again proved what a vital cog in the great Wellington Live Music Machine he is, nay, not a cog, a veritable drive shaft, an entire transmission assembly even, a turbo-charged component of such necessity to the smooth operation of said machine that, without which, said machine would be naught but a jumbled pile of inanimate and largely useless hunks of metal.

Look, he's just a really cool guy, okay?

The list of acts read pretty much like the Acoustic Alchemy gig with a few new and old faces. Mr Tommy Pickett was in the house, back from a (kind of) tour of the South Island and, as usual, in fine form. Tommy, Darrel and I had spent a great night jamming the night before, playing each other's songs, and Tommy called me on stage to sing the harmony part to his Run With The Ball I'm Holding.
Darrel and I played well - things are just getting easier the more we play and Darrel tells me the recording of the gig sounds good despite the wind.

The Stomps followed us, those crazy noisy cats and their punked up blues that made a few people take a nervous step back.
The sun (and possibly the few beers the night before) got the better of me so I missed the rest of the acts, but check out The Acoustic Lounge for more details.

So what's next?

Well, Tommy Pickett and The Gracious Deviants will be playing a double-header soon - where? Bodega, we hope, when? soon. Stay tuned.

Darrel and I have been busy since the festival and haven't been able to jam lately. We do have a new song in the offing - I have almost finished the lyrics, but am at the stage where I need to run them by Darrel while I still think they're okay. The last time we played the new song together, the bridge lyrics consisted of: "Now the bridge...../This is the bridge..../It's the bridge...yup it's the bridge". I still don't actually have lyrics for the bridge yet... what we've got's kinda catchy... hmmm. Too bad the rest of the song is about a mountain, and not a bridge, otherwise it could have been perfect.

We contacted STL Audio and have a couple of dates to choose from for our session. How does one prepare for the studio? I have asked some of my friends at work (all sound editors, most of them musicians) and besides knowing how to play our own material, and play it well, there's not much else. I put together a songbook with all of our lyrics set out clearly, so we can have a definitive record, but there is so much more to a song in the way it is sung and played that there's bound to be some variation. Troy, the engineer/owner suggested we find recordings that reflect the style and sound we want to achieve in the recording.

I've been looking through Suzanne Vega stuff for the way her voice was recorded (although much of that is in the performance itself - she has a very distinctive voice), and the way producers like Mitchel Froom and Tchad Blake arranged the accompaniment around her.

As far as the guitar sound goes, I just want to hear every bit of it - to be swimming in a deep warm pool of guitar. I've heard some recordings of folk artists like Don Ross (GoogleVideo search this guy if you want to see someone who can really play the guitar) that are just guitar and nothing else. I guess there is some sort of dampened reverb in there somewhere, but mostly all you can hear is wonderful wonderful tone.

I've tried to create arrangements for our music, with keys and drums, but it just doesn't sound satisfying. I'd really like to hear a great recording of Darrel's and my guitars entwined in our voices and to know without any doubt that there is nothing else needed.

One of my workmates, JD, said something that really stuck with me: he said that many a good song is ruined by a tacked-on arrangement - the Hammond B3 organ coming in at the tail of the verse into the chorus, or the string section, or the guitar solo coming out of nowhere and going nowhere. However, he said, a little shaker in the background can do wonders.
If we aren't going to hire a backup band for our live gigs, why should we put anything else on our tracks?

I would like to explore the percussive nature of the acoustic guitar though. Darrel and I have created some nice syncopated rhythms in a couple of our songs, but it would be nice, I think, to use the wood and the metal sounds to complement the tune.

Although... we have been toying with the idea of gansta rap - lose the guitars, and buy some gold chains. In stead of Darrel and Pete, we could be Scoop Doggie Dizzle and Pete Diddy, G to the muthafunkin' D y'all.
Word to your momma,

Gigs!!

2007-03-04T01:45:00.000+13:00

Mbeass!! We have been rather busy lately. Our plan (as of about a month ago) has been to play more often at a wider range of venues. At the time we were not sure how successful that plan would actually be but we needn't have worried. Recently we have played two significant gigs at the San Francisco Bath House and of course our debut effort at Bodega. These have seen us play to a whole new crowd of people and we have begun to feel more like 'real musicians' as opposed to bowl ups (with all due respect to open mic evenings!!). It has also been cool to see a number of friends and colleagues making the effort to come along to the evenings as well and this is always good for a little innocent ego stroking.
The Bodega gig was a bit of a marathon. Bar Bodega is a Wellington institution for musicians and music-loving folk in general. The previous night, the highly successful NZ band Goldenhorse took the stage - a bit of a tough act to follow, really. We found their set list... written on the back of one of our posters!
Thanks to Pete Mills, our last-minute sound tech, we managed to demystify the house PA set-up, find mic stands that weren't flaccid, and find a nice lighting state that didn't involve coloured chasers, and took to the stage ourselves.
In two sets of around 40 minutes each we played pretty much every song we have to a small collection of friends and colleagues, and hopefully strangers who will tell a quarter of a million other people to come to our next gig. This was one performance that, though long, we felt pretty relaxed in and consequently gave a lot more energy to the material. There were friendly moments, as there will be at a gig in front of friends, but generally the standard of the performance was streets ahead of our previous attempts.
The folks at Bodega liked our sound enough to promise us another gig in the near future. Stay tuned to find out when.
Last week we played a short notice invitation gig at the Acoustic Lounge (of which we are always fond of playing, cheers Pete Baillie!) With this gig we never invited any friends and we performed to a rent-a-crowd of one of our fellow musicians at the event. Fortunately Pete and I enjoy playing so much these days and we have such improved confidence with live events that it does not seem to matter if we know the audience or not. We played a half hour set and belted out a selection of our classics and a handful of very new songs. The gig was a lot of fun and it was refreshing to be finished by 8:30pm!! (It was light when we left).
We are now looking forward to our upcoming performance at the Kilbirnie Festival next Sunday. We are not sure when we will actually take the stage but we are really looking forward to playing to a big audience. If you read this blog come along and take a look.

Site Update

2007-02-12T20:39:00.000+13:00

Oh how hard done by are we Mac users in the greater Internet community!
I've just posted this with Firefox and discovered a whole bunch more options available than when I try to do the same with Safari, even the CSS stuff is different. Hmm. Nope. Still not enough to send me back to PC.
Anyhoo....
Darrel and I are gearing up for our Bodega gig, and I'm updating our new MySpace site, thanks to advice from a friend and a helpful site dedicated to pimping out your MySpace profile.
Pop by and see what you think!

Footprints

2007-02-11T16:05:00.000+13:00

We have a MySpace Music Page!

Check me out!

Right now you can listen to Falling on the site and even download it for your listening pleasure.
We will keep the track list updates as soon as new recordings come to light.
This particular version was recorded in our studio at Darrel's place using our AKG Perception 200 mic middle of last year. If you listen carefully you may hear the sound of the Wellington wind rattling the roof.
Richard took some great pictures of us last year at the Adelaide Bar and we hope to have them up here and on MySpace as soon as possible.
This is still fun, this marketing stuff, but you do get the feeling you're never doing enough...

FREE GIG at Bar Bodega, Wellington

2007-02-09T20:56:00.000+13:00

Things that make you go.... holy crap!

2007-02-05T17:12:00.000+13:00

Two things have come up recently that have given me cause to pause and reflect:

The first thing:
Darrel and I recently celebrated our 30th birthdays (I was 30 on 25th Jan, Darrel turns 30 tomorrow) with a big party at Tug Boat on the Bay restaurant in Wellington. Unbeknownst to both of us, my partner Louise brought the family together to buy us possibly the best birthday present a couple of guys like us could have: an 11-hour session at STL Audio, a local recording studio. Not only is it an 11-hour session, it's a lock-out - we'll be the only ones there, with the whole studio at our disposal. Shocked and stunned I was, shocked and stunned. Darrel and I are determined to get ass much out of it as we can, so are making preparations (or, at least thinking about them - there may be some time before we can co-ordinate our workloads to book a time) that will enable us to hit the ground running when we get there. One of those preparations is the GraciousDeviants Songbook - I compiled all our songs into a single document, turning a bunch of odd pieces of scrap paper into something readable. Now all of the songs are in print you can really see the progress we've made since we started in 2004. Our current plan is to record definitive versions of our two favourite songs, at this stage Song to Remember and Not My Angel. Once these two are recorded we can go into our own studio to record the other three on our promo CD, and then start canvassing the radio stations. Exciting? I've been wearing brown trousers all week!

The Second Thing:
Darrel and I are playing at Bar Bodega on 18th February. Ahem... sorry, let me clear my throat -

DARREL AND I ARE PLAYING AT BAR BODEGA, WELLINGTON,
SUNDAY 18th FEBRUARY
More details as they come to hand. Stay tuned to local radio stations and look out for our posters in town.

Acoustic Alchemy II - San Francisco Bath House 20th Jan

2007-02-01T14:59:00.000+13:00

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It's been 3 weeks since my last blog post.

The Acoustic Alchemy gig went pretty well - we performed in a line-up of some very talented musicians indeed. The gig was on the main stage - the first time I had seen it in operation since the bar was refurbished.
The line-up featured both seasoned performers and young up-and-comers and the entry fee (which was miniscule) was money well spent for over 180 minutes of live music.

Here's who was there:

Pixie - a unique solo performance, technically brilliant on guitar (and piano too, I hear), warm and whistful themes and melodies.

The GraciousDeviants

Tony MacIver - solo performance, plaintive lyrics and melody in an acoustic rock/post grunge style.

Bill Hickman - a hard-working man playing hard-working music, natural performer, gracing the stage that night in the first of four other gigs elsewhere.

The Stomps - a couple of lads on guitar and drums from "up north" caught up in the grooves of 45rpm Delta Blues/American folk vinyl, with a chip on their shoulders about the police.

Darren Watson - a seasoned performer, bluesman through-and-through, and local legend. Took the stage, and it was his.

Lukin Marlow - popular with the ladies, but happily married (sorry). A performer with everything going for him in his chosen genre, and success well within reach.

The Thomas Oliver Band - a three-piece group of highly-talented and easy-going performers spearheaded by guitarist Thomas Oliver. They rocked.

Most of the people in the list above have MySpace pages - check 'em out!

Once again, Pete Baillie kept the night flowing nicely in his effortless fashion. Sound engineering was provided by the very capable James, and most of the night made it to MiniDisc and, thanks to me and ProTools, then on to CD. Visit the Acoustic Lounge's MySpace site (from where I nicked the image for this post) and see if you can get yourself a copy.

For Darrel and I, the Acoustic Alchemy gig was a wake-up call, a gig to really get nervous about. I'd been at my sons's 5th birthday party all day, having spent the last week or so organising it, and almost dreaded taking the stage that night. It was all there, the lights, the big ol' PA system, even a Green Room! Darrel couldn't quite get over that one - we got to hang out and chat with some of the others before we got up and did our thing.
The atmosphere was great - there was no competition for audience as we had our own different styles, and by and large those that turned up to the gig were looking for a good night out rather than anything specific.
Our performance was okay - there were some good moments, but overall it was not one of our best. Perhaps if we had insisted on a sound check to get the monitoring just right, and get a taste of what it was like to be on stage before the gig, some of the nerves may have disappeared. It was also pretty damn hot up there. It was also quite a while since Darrel and I had actually been on stage for longer than 15 minutes. It was also... okay, enough excuses.

Despite my misgivings the gig certainly lit a fire under Darrel's belly - he is definitely over just playing open-mic nights regularly (as am I) and looking forward to new performance opportunities. We've tasted the fruit of rock'n'roll and we want more, damnit!

It's Googleicious

2007-01-08T20:48:00.000+13:00

So far, thanks to fellow blogger, IT guru, drummer, photographer extraordinaire, and brother to Darrel, Mr. Richard Greaney's hard work we do indeed appear at the top of the list when you Google "gracious deviants"! We need to start playing more though, get those hits up past the thousand mark.
Luckily....
Come to the San Francisco Bath House, Cuba Street, Wellington, on
SATURDAY 20TH JANUARY
The GraciousDeviants will be playing alongside the best acts from 2006's Acoustic Lounge hosted by Pete Baillie.
Show starts 8 PM.
Come along and get some acoustic music up ya!

Next steps

2007-01-07T12:06:00.000+13:00

2007 is upon us, and by god did it start with a phut for me.
In this country, and indeed in this city, if you don't go somewhere else for your holidays, you have no holiday at all. I start work again tomorrow, having only been off work for about three weeks. The weather has been awful, the wind unrelenting, and things in general not being terribly relaxing.
However....
Darrel and I sat down recently and talked about all of the things we have been taking for granted until now. We spent a good four hours discussing where we are now and where we would like to be, our feelings about our work, the division of labour, what keeps us going, and how we feel about certain things such as copyright, playing covers, and what we should do next.
We played the Adelaide fairly regularly for a while but are now looking for new venues or, at least, other venues. An open mic night is a great opportunity to showcase new material, or satisfy the need to perform, and we will continue to play open mic nights for this reason, but it is about time we thought seriously about getting our music out to a few more people.
We have decided to create a 5-track CD that best represents our efforts to date. We have a number of recorded versions of our current set list, but they are taken from many sources and are of variable quality. Last night Darrel and I sat down during yet another fabulous curry (a key ingredient in our musical process) and shortlisted the following songs:

1. Spoke at the Same Time
2. We Could Be Good
3. Lay Your Love
4. Song to Remember
5. Release

When we got back to the studio we trawled through our recordings and found the best versions of each song, some from our live recordings, others from a studio session.
Over the next week or so, Darrel and I will be visiting venues around town and plugging this CD to try and generate some gigs - at this point we are as happy to play in a cafe during lunch as we are playing a headline gig. We have an hour of original material and can play covers if tortured, our style is pleasant to the ear, and we can provide our own gear - it's a no-brainer really.
Over the next few weeks we will go back into the studio and re-record some of these songs to create another 5-track CD which we will pester the local radio stations with.
I figure that if we can get on one of the student radio stations we can get on the BNet network, which is the nationwide student radio network that also has a fairly strong Internet presence. Darrel and I hold no illusions of breaking into commercial radio, we will just do what we can to get our music out to a wide range of people.
I am slowly creating an Internet presence as well, we have an email address for the band and, as well as this blog I have saved places on MySpace and the Ultimate Band List. Our goal in this regard is to have this blog appear as the first entry in a couple of thousand hits when you Google "gracious deviants".

Live News: We will be playing at The Best of The Acoustic Lounge, at the San Francisco Bath House in Cuba Street, Wellington on the 20th January. I will post more details as they come to hand.

Slow Down, New Songs Ahead.

2006-12-12T23:14:00.000+13:00

Just one night before we unleash another new song at the Adelaide Bar open mic night, this seems as good a time as any to discuss the 'joys' of a new song. New songs are great. They are a reflection of where our music is heading, they allow us to push forward and remain focussed in what we are doing and more than anything else they keep us busy on Saturday nights. Pete and I love to create. We are much better at creating than we are at practising our old songs! However, there comes a point where you must stop creating and take your new song to audience.

I don't get nervous when playing a song for the first time to a crowd, at least I don't get nervous about whether or not it will be well received. I do get a little apprehensive on the other hand about whether or not we will play the song skilfully! An old song is like an old friend. You know it back to front, you feel comfortable around it and you don't have to tidy up before it comes over for drinks. But a new song is another story. It is like having a new friend round for the first time. You are a little edgy, you're not sure what is acceptable humour and you clench your farts in for dear life. With a new song your fingers don't naturally fall into place on the guitar, you have to search for the next line of words as they approach like a steam train and often the intricate musical moments feel rather forced and muddy. I'm sure this will be the case at times for our new song debut tomorrow of 'Things Don't come any Better' but as always we will grit our teeth and play the thing as we know that the second time you play a song it is always about ten times easier.

Pete and I are obviously suckers for punishment as we continually crank out the new material. We forget the pain and put ourselves through the anxiety all over again remembering only how good it feels to be on the back end of the first performance of that new song no matter how uhhhhh the performance itself actually was. Right now we have another new song that is also up to performance standard. However, playing one new song is bad enough. Trying to debut a second song on the same night is about as sensible as walking through Otara on a Saturday night dressed wearing a bright blue shirt. So we are saving 'All the Time in the World' for next week and by then we will have been able to sort out the final touches to the harmonies which as yet we haven't actually been able to play with skills all the way through. Yet we know that we will get this matter straight, as will we once again hang on to the infectious roller coaster that is 'performing the new song'!

Love, Popular Music, and Hell

2006-12-01T16:07:00.000+13:00

We took last Wednesday off from performing as it is time to look back at what we have and press on with new material. Darrel pointed out quite rightly that a few things have changed in a few songs but we haven't codified them, that is, we tend to do things a particular way through an unspoken agreement at the time, but haven't actually sat down and said "Ok, so here's how it goes."
This fact is evident when we listen to our studio recording - the be-all and end-all at the time of all of our material. Obviously the live performance is going to differ from the studio performance, but a lot of stylistic changes have come up in live versions of our songs that I think are here to stay. I can't wait for the time and money to be able to tweak to my heart's content in a studio - things are bound to change then - but for now it is good to be able to refine and refine and refine.
We worked on two of the three new songs we have in progress at the moment:All the Time in the World and Don't Come Any Better.
The last time we played All the Time... we were agonising over how to finish it. It's a fairly simple song, two chords for the most part, but I think it has some of the more interesting hooks we've come up with (probably 'cos we can't just have a two-chord song and feel satisfied). The writing process of this song has been probably the most brutal and painful of all of the songs we've written so far - I threw out a bunch of lyrics and we changed a kind of Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme-esque phrase into something a little less complicated - but the end result seems pretty good. Long, but good.
It is another love song - a song about rescue from loneliness. There is nothing like love, be it requited or not. There is no other time in your whole life that you are ever so focussed on someone other than yourself. With the promise of a new love you feel ready, willing, and able to do anything to get their attention, to find out if they feel the same way, or to just pursue the impossible. In this case, give up all the time in the world.
Many of our songs deal with vulnerability - either the self-consciousness of the unrequited, or the crippling feelings of inadequacy at the end of a relationship. Hope is the thing that keeps us going at these times in our lives - for example, it can charge us with excitement as we read into signs that aren't there - "Was that a glance or a look?" "What did they mean by 'Hello'?" In All the Time in the World the hope is that, by coming together, the two people can save each other. I picture loneliness as a vast ocean or a crowd of strangers in a foreign land.
Don't Come Any Better is pure pop - it has a chord change in the bridge that I've dreamed about but never had the courage (or the skills) to put in a song. The Moody Blues did an album in the late 60's called In Search of the Lost Chord. Their lost chord was found in the word "Om", my lost chord was found by Darrel and is probably something Major 7th. Thanks Darrel.
The lyrics for Don't Come Any Better come from a conversation I once had with my partner. When things happen in life we react to them - cause and effect. We see something on the TV that makes us feel sad, for example. When we express our feelings about it, or even just report the fact, we tend to phrase it with ourselves as passive, being affected by it - "That movie made me sad". Yet it is possible to watch a movie with sad things in it and not be sad, isn't it? You could argue that every emotional response we have to the world around us is a choice - a split-second one, and too quick for conscious reflection - and it is one we make ourselves. Oncologists may see hundreds of cancer patients a year, complete with grieving families. What prevents them from burning out in an instant and succumbing to what must be a huge weight of tragedy? You could arge that, out of necessity, they choose not to be sad.
This is obviously a simplified example, philosophy painted with a 6-inch housepaint brush (by a monkey), but the idea is interesting. A break-up should not make you sad, you can choose how to react to it, and either look ahead to the future, or do a little self-indulgent wallowing for a bit until you feel better. Recognising your ability to choose makes you feel less like a victim, and can give you hope.
Another idea along the same line is that every day is perfect (perfection being the common bedfellow of philosophy and religion). If you are willing to accept that, and that you are in control of how you feel about things, would not therefore your life be perfect (he asks, rhetorically and possibly grammatically-incorrect)?
All this in a roughly 4-minute pop song. What is the world coming to?
Another thing I like about this song is it's nod to Leonard Cohen and his contribution to the contnued wellbeing (or continued depression) of heart-sick people everywhere. A flatmate of mine while I was at university used to have one of those then-new Aiwa 3-CD midi systems (wow, you could change two CDs while the third one played! Hot poop!). Thing is, she only had 3 CDs: Portishead's Dummy, Boney-M's Gold, and Leonard Cohen's Greatest Hits. Now I studied Classical Studies at university and came into contact with several philosophers, artists, and writer's visions of Hell. Dante's Divine Comedy talks about several levels of Hell - I'm pretty sure if you read between the lines, he talks about living in a flat with someone with a 3-CD midi system and those three CDs...

Landmarks

2006-11-24T17:30:00.000+13:00

We played two fairly landmark gigs recetly.
After week after week of playing the Adelaide, we managed to score a paid gig at the Wellington Zoo (thanks to Peter Baillie, who runs The Acoustic Lounge nights at the San Francisco Bath House about which you can find here), and a 40 minute opening set at the Adelaide for the Henrietta Ford Stagecoach Open Mic night (thanks to Tyree Robertson).
The gigs were landmarks for two reasons - one that pertains to the band in general, and the other that is more personal to me.
The zoo gig was a great success. We were essentially background music while people ate lunch but we got through to a few people (i.e. they clapped) towards the end, and heard nothing but good feedback from the organiser and a few of the punters who came up to speak to us. We supplied our own PA, which meant our studio setup had to be cannibalised, and played for about 1 and a quarter hours with a break in the middle.
All in all we had prepared 23 songs, 14 of our own and 9 covers. It was harder to play the covers than our own stuff - as it always is - but we pulled them off pretty well, adding harmonies in bits that never had them in the original songs. We played through the entire set and finished with a repeat of the first song, We Could Be Good. We were playing in the gazebo next to the Elephant House - the place where the public used to get onto the saddle for elephant rides around the zoo in the old days. Wellington Zoo's elephant died some time ago, and the buildings remain as a monument to it.
We've done a paid gig before, performing for the crew of The Water Horse earlier in the year, but this one was for actual money, not gear. The money will of course swiftly be turned into gear, but it marks a a fairly significant milestone in Darrel and my history together - our first gig for people we didn't already know. We're turning professional. Kinda.
Turning professional brings forth all sorts of previously hidden stuff. I've been an APRA member for some time now (Australasian Performers' Rights Association), but have never filed a Live Performance Return because I've never had to. I was recommended to become a member by the director of one of the theatre shows I was doing the music for a while ago so that I might benefit from return seasons of shows I've worked on. None of the shows I've worked on have ever had return seasons. Theatre is not a medium anyone in their right mind should expect money from, at least not in this country. Furthermore – I figured I had already been paid for the work I did and am rather uneasy about receiving money without lifting a finger. Call me crazy, but that's how I feel.
However, now Darrel and I may be doing more gigs for money we have to be sure everyone is getting represented – we have to register our songs so we can file our return, and we also have to make sure we list any covers we play so that the appropriate funds are channelled to the appropriate people. It all sounds like Income Tax to me and I'm not really happy about it. However, having never done it I have no idea what sort of a task it is to do, so perhaps I should reserve judgement until after our first return is filed.
I have major issues with money in my life – it seems you always have to pay someone else some part of whatever you receive. If I had a real salary all this would be done silently and I could quite happily not give a rat's arse, but as a contractor I see every slice taken from my paycheck and have a great deal of trouble accepting that due to some arcane magic I will see some of it back at some seemingly arbitrary date set by the Tax Department for reasons all their own. Work can be exhausting enough without having to expend more energy ensuring you get paid your due as well. I'm sick of it – it was precisely this that drove me from working in the theatre and thus away from composing music for almost two years.
I want to do the right thing, always, I understand the work and energy that goes into creating a piece of music and I believe in acknowledging artists for their work, giving them their due. Yet the current atmosphere in this crazy world, where on one side you have the studios and their Digital Rights Management systems, threats of lawsuits and fines of amounts I couldn't even begin to see myself having let alone paying, and the other an entire legitimate commercial industry devoted to the creation of ways and means of circumventing these systems and “laws” makes me feel like a criminal for picking up my guitar and playing. Can I write something without infringing someone's rights? Some people campaign for Fair Use, and Creative Commons over standard copyright, while others seek to either maintain the status quo, or worse, make money of people by purchasing the rights to material they didn't create and suing people for breach of copyright. This sucks, people.
I just want to play music.
Which brings me onto the other landmark (because talking about copyright just makes me sad, depressed and sick at heart).
During our 40 minute set at the Adelaide I reached Nirvana, albeit briefly, and it was wonderful. I want to go there again. It's what I want whenever I play, and it's every reason why I play.
Listen:
Darrel and I were playing pretty well, having recently come from the zoo gig confident in our ability to play our material, and confident that our material was good, and mattered. I can't remember the song we were playing when it happened but I know that it lasted a while before I came back in control again. What happened was this: It was as if I relinquished control of my body and became a spectator from inside my skull. I stopped feeling my fingers on the strings, dissociated myself from my voice and let go. I closed my mouth and kept on singing.
The feeling was only momentary – I came back to Earth for the next song, but that song, and the one after it were a lot harder to play as I found myself once more responsible for myself. And all this without drugs, kiddies (well, except alcohol – but not enough of that to really explain away this sort of thing).
This has got to be what it's about for me. No man upstairs, no fear. You could almost forgive the rest of the world as long as there was somewhere else to be and a way to get there doing the thing you love and not hurting anyone.

“...and they're all going: 'Ooh, fooking amazing! Ooh, fooking fantastic! Ooh, save the Morris Minor, man yeah!'”
- Alexei Sayle, The Secret Policeman's Other Ball†

Live Album -Out soon!

2006-11-05T16:12:00.000+13:00

With the purchase of the Olympus voice recorder a little while ago we have steadily been working towards completing a live album of all our material so far. After gathering material from five performances at the Adelaide Bar (and one crap gig which we all but ignored) the dream is finally a reality! All that remains is for us to edit the tracks and 'Gracious Deviants - Live at the Adelaide Bar 2006' is ready for the big launch (a.k.a we will be throwing complimentary copies in the direction of family and friends).
Yesterday Pete and I went into the area surrounding my place in Newlands hunting for the perfect shots for the album cover and inlay. The best stuff we settled on is featured in the photo shoot provided. Most of these are based around a large power supply pylon which is found at the end of a walkway behind the house. Today we have been doctoring up the photos to give them that album cover look and adding text. Pete has a fondness for spending long periods tinkering with details in both audio and visual work so this has been a joy for him to work on!! We have gone for the classic daytime shot on the front cover while the reverse photo features a very 1970's L & P looking photo which surely would contain an old Ford Cortina parked nearby if you were pan the shot lower down.

Our plan to record the final touches for the studio album didn't really turn to much last night as we seemed to be in one of those 'let's just arse about and fiddle round with stuff and not do anything too serious' frame of mind. But that's cool because the live album was the lucky recipient of all our attention. And it's great to have a complete record of all our songs at last. We are sure to finish the unfinished songs on the studio album in the near future as well.

It is possible that we will play the double header at both the Adelaide and Blue Note bars on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. We look forward to seeing some of you there and you can relax, we won't be ramming our new albums (available for $5 a pop) down your throat ad nauseum like what usually happens!

I hate the harmonica.

2006-11-02T20:38:00.000+13:00

Larry Adler (1914-2001) the self-taught harmonica virtuoso is the only person I have ever heard actually play the thing instead of just breathing through it as most other performers do, and yes, I admit my exposure to harmonica music is not exactly wide-ranging due to the statement I made in the title of this post. You can hear Larry Adler on Sting's Ten Summoner's Tales album, notably on Something the Boy Said. Stevie Wonder also deserves a mention for his work on the Eurythmics' song There Must Be An Angel. But what sets these two performers apart from other mouth-organ suckers is their ability to play individual notes distinctly, resulting in appreciable melodies.
Many modern rock musicians employ the harmonica to evoke a certain style, to try and lend some kind of rootsy-folk credibility to their songs. However, a badly-sucked harmonica phrase does not an original Delta Blues song make. Often the harmonica is about as superfluous as Incubus' DJ ("Who the hell is Incubus?" I hope you are saying. Yes, indeed), and adds little melodically or harmonically to the song. It just shows that they grew up listening to Bob Dylan or Neil Young (who couldn't play the harmonica either).
I'm not the first to hassle the harmonica-playing fraternity (which I shall continue to call it until someone can point me toward any female harmonica players), Paul Simon's brilliant song A Simple Desultory Phillipic (or How I was Robert MacNamara'd Into Submission) parodies these self-styled folksy pot-prophets twanging on their out-of-tune guitars and sucking on their mouth-organs positioned just-so on specially designed neck-holders. Toward the end of the song Simon blasts away some typically random honks (thankfully the harmonica he uses is in the same key as the song) then you hear a "clunk" and Simon's stoned protagonist calls out to his engineer "I've lost my harmonica, Albert".
When I was at University, I knew people with little other musical talent who would find a harmonica and count themselves among the blessed if they could honk out the opening blasts of Piano Man by Billy Joel or, better still, appear to show some improvisational talent by getting together with a guitarist around an open fire and playing "anything" provided the harmonic phrase was 12 bars long and in the key of E.

But hate is a pretty strong word. Do I really need to heap negativity on an instrument with its own long and colourful history bringing, as it did, music to those less fortunate, comfort to those in need, and the soundtrack to a whole gene pool?
Perhaps I ought to step back and examine this from a greater distance. Perhaps I don't hate the harmonica per se, perhaps I just hate blues jams in general that just happen to include a harmonica, and the harmonica being one of the more irritating elements (along with the gravel-voice affectation, the pooched-up face indicative of either the self-indulgent guitarist, or chronic constipation, and the incessant repetition of inane lyrics every two lines) stands out like an erection at Swimming Sports.
The Blues are a public expression of a very personal thing, be it poverty (material or metaphorical), loss, or strong emotion. The original bluesmen sang about what they knew, and influenced others by providing a conduit of expression for those feelings people find the hardest to express. Some enterprising musicians developed the form, when the form became recognisable as such, and a huge portion of popular music grew out of that. And we say thanks, thanks very much indeed with every new album we buy. The Blues came out of slavery, oppression, Depression, and poverty. These things, unfortunately, still exist, but one must ask: wherefore the grizzled white middle-income git with the gravelly-voice and his mates approaching the third hour of their interminable three-chord jam with about a much to be sad about as a fat man knee-deep in pies at lunchtime?
BECAUSE IT'S EASY. Masturbation is also easy, and has similar self-gratifying properties but, mercifully, people tend to do that in private. Anyone can play the chords and put on the blue face, but not many can really pull it off. Now I like a good jam, I like to be caught up in it. I will suffer a blues jam if sufficiently drunk, but I believe the only way to enjoy it is to be part of it. Like golf, it's not a spectator sport, or shouldn't be. Take note, Drunken Bluesman and get the hell off the stage.
Bit of vitriol- it's been a bit of a tough couple of weeks.

New Recordings

2006-10-23T20:40:00.000+13:00

Here's the mock-up of the sleeve insert for our demo CD.

Darrel and I spent last Saturday recording every song in our repetoire (although we very nearly forgot the two most recent ones!) over about 5 hours at Darrel's studio.

The usual quota of Bean Rock beer and Starburst sweets fortified proceedings as is customary at our practices, and we were both in fine voice and eager to make something of the evening (tainted somewhat as it was by the loss of the Wellington Lions in the rugby final).

We set up our AKG Perception 200 mic on a stand in the middle of the studio and played live without any other amplification or processing. We recorded directly to hard disk using Cool Edit Pro 2, and kept the mic open the whole time so neither of us would have to keep getting up and clicking record.

Things started off well with some of the oldest songs recorded first in, at most, two or three takes. Once we had checked levels and found the balance between ourselves and our guitars it was a real treat to just concentrate on the perfomance and not the recording. However, it's a strange thing playing when you know you are recording - often you can pull of a feat of brilliance in practice, but the minute you hit record your fingers turn into bratwurst! With our set-up there was none of the stopping and starting that usually messes things up in a performance, and the fact we knew the songs pretty well having practiced and performed many of them recently, there were few bratwurst moments and some very nice happy accidents that made it onto disk that night.

It got to 2am and we had recorded 12 songs. I stopped the recording and prepared to edit the massive file into separate tracks when Darrel and I realised we had both forgotten Song to Remember and Mary-Ann. I set the mic back up and hit record and we carried on until we had both in the can - luckily the levels and balance were the same.

The performances of those two songs is a little tentative as Darrel and I launched straight into them without really thinking "Now wait a minute, how do we play this again?" Song to Remember, for example, had us looking at each other silently wondering which lyrics fit the final chorus as we recorded it, but the performance came out well enough on the recording for us to leave it there (and it was 2:30am after all). In fact, I think the only casualty the whole night was Can't Help Loving You which was one of the last songs we recorded. We had only recently changed the ending from a rather nebulous refrain to something a bit more structured but right at the top of my range (translation: I'm screaming my tits off) and I launched into another repeat while Darrel stopped playing. D'oh. Otherwise the night was a complete success.

The next day I took the tracks home to my studio and threw them into ProTools for a bit more editing. The acoustic at Darrel's place is pretty good - you can hear the room (and the gale force winds outside) but there is no noticeable flutter echo or boom at certain frequencies. Darrel's computer is pretty quiet too, so I had a pretty clean recording to work with. The wind even lent tracks like 98-3 and Release a little more atmosphere.

As we were only using one mic we had to rely on the natural balance between our voices and guitars, and for the most part the vocal blend was pretty good and rested fairly comfortably alongside the guitars. I used the Joemeek Meequaliser plug-in to EQ the tracks and added a little reverb to a few of them, enough to sweeten the spaces between the notes without being too noticeable. I mixed with headphones, which may show up when we play the tracks on a decent speaker system, but they sounded great to me. I bounced the resulting tracks to disk and then to CD.

All in all I think we created a great record of our songwriting efforts, one I am very proud of and keen to pass on to a few people who might be able to take us a little further. From the start my attitude to this whole thing has been to put enjoyment above actual work - I spent a few years trying to mix my music and my vocation and nearly gave up on music altogether as the demand outweighed the fun. I guess it also had to do with the fact I was doing it on my own. Darrel and I can either create great music with pretty minimal effort, or we're working really hard but having the time of our lives at the same time. Either way, it's brilliant and I'm reluctant to change things. However, it's not going to take much more effort to go to the next step - and I'd rather do that than get bored and pack it all in.

Best of times... worst of times

2006-10-12T21:42:00.000+13:00

We had a great set at the Adelaide! The rest of the night was somewhat less exciting, but there were a few stand-out performances.
Mr. Terry Shore, fresh from the San Francisco Bathhouse (the old Indigo Bar)'s Acoustic Lounge played a high-energy set in his own inimitable fashion that even got some of the punters dancing!
Tyree Robertson played a few of her new songs, kinda country influenced by her own admission, in preparation for her upcoming South Island tour. If you're out and about (take that how you will) around the South Island and you see her name on a poster, go and see her play.
We played Falling, Angelina, and God Knows which blew away a few cobwebs for us, but felt and sounded really good on the recording. We may edit and upload a track for your listening pleasure in the next post. Darrel is in the process of compiling a collection of live recordings, so we are going to play a different set each week at the Adelaide if we can make it and try to get all 14 songs recorded. Or 15, depending on the outcome of tomorrow night's jam.
There were a couple of stand-out performances as I said, but the term stand-out should not in this context necessarily denote... er... good.
There were two performance poets, one good and funny, and the other one. Let's leave it there...
No, no I can't. We got a fairly dubious Spike Milligan impression and then an epic poem (epic in length rather than style) that began as a simple poetic response to a fairly forgettable news story about a couple of women who bared their breasts at Prince Charles during a recent visit and turned into a one man masturbatory mammarian musing that landed on the audience like the proverbial pungent caky log of excrement taking a somewhat greaceful yet inherently repulsive swandive into the communal fruit-juice based festive alcoholic beverage.
That night the audience was aso treated to a set consisting of four performances of essentially the same song in slightly different-- aw hell, it was the Blair Witch Project: {hysterical breathing} "I-it's the same descending chord progression! It's the same descending chord progression!".
But that is the nature of an Open Mic Night, and it is important (and not that difficult, really) as an audience member and fellow performer, to support everyone who comes onto the stage. The step up to the stage is often a much greater psychological journey than a mere physical one for many performers - especially if they have never performed on that stage before. And besides, if you don't get a good reception before you start your set (we stepped up to the sound of three people clapping half-heartedly) you feel a bit shit really. So do unto others...
There is a good reason these things are held in bars - alcohol is a key ingredient in the experience of performer and audience alike.
Darrel and I spent a great deal of time together in karaoke bars before we started The Gracious Deviants. Karaoke and Open Mic Nights are similar in some ways but do differ in one very important way: a good performance by an Open Mic Night artist can be extraordinary, original, and a musical tour-de-force; a good performance by a karaoke singer can be pleasant but is ultimately meaningless. Attending a bad Open Mic Night performance can be dulled with beer, enduring a bad karaoke performance will shorten life-expectancy. And please understand that this is coming from someone who up until fairly recently used to look forward to each Friday night eagerly awaiting his chance to try his hand at a new song from the beer-stained catalogue, a song that would inevitably be written in a key two tones above his vocal range and cause physical discomfort if not actual damage to the vocal cords, in a smoky, overly-loud, rotten old karaoke bar.
And we tell ourselves we're not show-offs.

Open mic night at The Adelaide

2006-10-10T21:04:00.000+13:00

We're going to be playing again tomorrow (Wednesday) at The Adelaide for the Henrietta Ford Stagecoach Open Mic night. If you're near Newtown, Wellington, New Zealand at around 7:30pm you can catch us along with a bunch of really good players from Welly music scene. Who knows, the rockin' metal nerd may even make an appearance again for your tinnitus-aggravating pleasure. See you there.

Success through practice

2006-10-06T21:38:00.000+13:00

The Adelaide gig went off!
We played the two tunes we'd played last week and replaced Release with Can't Help Loving You, which was a good way to round off the set. Both Darrel and I felt that we had put a lot of energy into the performance and enjoyed the whole experience immensely. Unfortunately the balance between the vocals and guitar is not that great on the recording Darrel made - we are still experimenting with where to put the voice recorder.
The weekend approaches and Darrel and I will be going back into the studio to work on a few things. We have the 15th song to finish, and may get down to some recording if things go well.
We're aboout overdue for a new recording on this site anyway.
Stay tuned.

On Computers and Music

2006-10-04T18:13:00.000+13:00

A little nervous writing this as we are going back to The Adelaide tonight to redeem our rather poor performance last week.
Darrel's been on holiday (and hopefully hasn't done any more amateur plumbing) and I've been pretty busy at work but have found time to sit down and practice for once, so we should pull out something a lot better this evening, I'm sure.

I've been exploring music composition software lately. I'm a tracker from way back, having cut my teeth on the Commodore Amiga MOD format using programs such as ProTracker. When I tearfully left my Amiga to go to PC I was overjoyed to find Fasttracker 2, by Starbreeze Studios THE tracker for the PC (unless you were brought up on Screamtracker or Impulse Tracker - there was fierce competition in the scene in those days).
The Internet brought me to the Kosmik Free Music Foundation and scene.org and to the wealth of material available for free download in MOD, XM, or IT formats.
Fasttracker 2 satisifed my every tracking need until I moved away from MS-DOS and Windows 95 into Windows 98SE and needed a more easily-accessible application that didn't require an MS-DOS window. Enter MadTracker 2 by Yannick Delwiche. Not only could I play all my old Amiga MODs and FT2 XM files and instruments, but I could add EFFECTS! MadTracker 2's MTM format included support for it's own FX plugins as well as (gasp!) VST plugins! (Here I go with the italics again).
There are literally hundreds of freeware VST FX and Instruments available for the PC on the Internet, and I amassed a modest collection that I never really got round to using. And why? Well, soon after I found MadTracker 2, I found Apple Macintosh, and fell in love/hate (as opposed to my hate/hate relationship with my PC). I also began using ProTools LE and working alongside professionals who were deeply entrenched in its arcane secrets. I started to expect higher quality out of my music applications and since I had shifted platforms to the Mac, I needed something that would suit my style of composition.
Thanks to Renoise, I have my cake and I'm eating it as we speak. Sorry for spitting crumbs. Renoise is a tracker with VST support for both Mac and PC and has just undergone a major upgrade (although still in Beta stage) which has added a bunch of cool features that had been in MadTracker 2 but not in previous versions of Renoise. The one thing that MadTracker still has over Renoise is ReWire support, which would allow me to run sequences directly into ProTools. Currently I have to render tracks to WAV files and import them, which is time consuming. I really like Renoise and, although I am a registered user of MadTracker as well, it's still not enough to take me back to my PC. I'm even convinced myself I don't care that all my VST plugins collected for use on my PC don't work on my Mac. Almost... (snif)
But as I said at the start of this rant... er ... post, I've been exploring music composition software. I've had a serious crack at using Reason Adapted that came with my ProTools bundle. Reason is a good example of the MIDI approach to music. I would add a Wikipedia link, but there are some things you just have to do on your own. I'm still getting to grips with Reason's sequencer, which scrolls from left to right instead of top to bottom, like a tracker. I'm also unused to "drawing" notes on a piano roll - trying to use a MIDI sequencer without a MIDI slave keyboard, you have no other choice. I do have a MIDI keyboard, but I haven't really used it with Reason yet. The great thing about trackers is that they map the piano keyboard to the computer keyboard, allowing you to compose your tracks on your laptop without any external gear. Find me a MIDI application that will do that and I may make the switch.
The MIDI approach to composition implies a certain financial status, age, or dedication to your craft. Put simply - you've got to buy a lot of gear, and to do that you need to be either rich, over thirty years old, both, or so dedicated you live on peanut butter and cigarettes to be able to afford it. If you're willing to part with the cash up front, Reason allows you to do away with the constant accumulative purchasing inherent in the MIDI world, and packages together a bunch of software instruments almost identical to the more common professional bits of kit you are likely to find in a studio. As Propellerheads are not paying me, they can do their own marketing so I won't go into much more detail. Suffice to say, Reason immediately caters for the dance musician, but with a bit of perseverance you can bend it to your will in other genera. This is also the case with trackers - a simple mindless dance track is a few clicks away, but more interesting things are not much further distant.

I miss my Amiga, and I miss it's predecessor, the Commodore 64, where I wrote my first pieces of music on a program the name of which I have forgotten. On the Amiga, besides ProTracker, I used Sonix, and Deluxe Music Construction Set. Where are they now?
I will, however, never forget the work of geniuses (genii?) such as Rob Hubbard, David Whittaker, Fred Gray, Tim Follin, Jeroen Tel, Martin Walker, Galway and others - those pioneers of electronic music created on the Commodore's amazinf SID chip. Visit www.sidplay.org and you too will be able to experience the pure joy of 8-bit game music on your fancypants modern machines.
Til next time: wish us luck.

Farewell September

2006-09-28T15:46:00.000+12:00

A whole month without posting is fairly inexcusable, so here's a round-up of the things we've been up to since we last saw you.
The cassette image is a view into the distant past of a parallel universe in which we released our fifth album Graciously Deviant with Roy Thomas Baker in the producer's chair. Dreams are free and so are mock-ups of cassettes from this website here.

We played a gig at The Adelaide, a re-vamped pub in my neck of the woods, as part of the Henrietta Ford Stagecoach Open-Mic Night that happens every Wednesday. The gig is run by Tyree Robertson to whom we owe our current status in the Wellington music scene. Check out her website from the link on the right.

Last night's selection deviated slightly from the singer/songwriter acoustic guitar-fest one would expect.

Quite considerably so, in fact.

I admired the guy who got up in front of the drunks, music students, lesbians, and bluesmen, whipped out his axe and laid Rock Canon on us at full volume accompanied by a backing track from his iPod. Not only was it incongruous as hell, but also a strange a-temporal (in style and, at times literally "without tempo") performance: A long-haired guitar-nerd playing a triple-humbucker Gibson Les Paul Studio copy (a la Ace Frehley) noodling out a piece of music so firmly in the "spandex and umlaut" 80s hair-metal era yet accompanied by the icon of the 21st Century, the iPod. Rock on, whoever the hell you were! Anachrony in the NZ!

We were also treated to a bunch of Massey University Conservatorium of Music students playing their original compositions on traditional Maori musical instruments, or nga taonga puoro (literally, "singing treasures") and acoustic guitar. They had a koauau, a porotiti, and a putorino and, together with the mumbling drunks and the clinking of 1970s-style tall brown beer bottles it was like a scene from Once Were Warriors.
Of course, you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, so look here for information on nga taonga puoro, and search here for Once Were Warriors.

The more perceptive may have noticed I have not yet made mention of our perfomance. It's not that we were shit - Darrel had just turned off one too many dripping taps that day, we were playing two very new songs, and I'm generally crap at anything but singing when going up in front of people with new material.

That's our excuse and we're sticking to it.

Darrel recorded the gig on his dictaphone and according to him it doesn't sound too bad. It felt like shit, but then we were under a bit of pressure, having not perfomed one of the songs in public before. Oh yeah, and we forgot to put the capo on for Release that night, which provided some interesting guitar moments but made it a little easier to sing!
Song to Remember and Mary-ann take our repetoire up to 14 original tracks, and there's a 15th in the offing, recycling a very old chorus of Darrel's from not long after we started writing together. More news on that one as it comes to light.
The newest song, Mary-ann is about a man finding his way back from a dominating relationship. He takes a stand and claws back his mana while she loses some of hers in the eyes of her friends.
Mana is the Maori word for spirit, power, gravitas, and since we're in te reo territory, why not? That's te reo territory, not to be confused with Te o Torriate which was a song Brian May wrote for Queen's Japanese fans in 1975 and appears on A Day at the Races - where the hell was I...?
Stay tuned and we will have a recording of the track up here.
Kia ora koutou. Haere ra e hoa, haere ra. And with your foodbasket and my foodbasket... we will have two foodbaskets.

Another track...

2006-08-27T00:45:00.000+12:00

Here's another track from our recent recording session:

We Could Be Good

Enjoy!

In the studio...

2006-08-20T15:54:00.000+12:00

The day finally arrived - a Saturday night that both Darrel and I had no other committments and we could get down to some serious recording.... and Darrel caught the flu. However - the will of the mind can overpower the weakness of the body, and Darrel, a primary school teacher (that rare breed of individual who can call upon seemingly unlimited secret reserves of energy to teach 6-7 year olds five days a week), staunchly yet politely told the flu to take a flying- er, to go away, and stepped up to the microphone despite feeling like the inside of a rancid marshmallow and unable to say the letter "m" due to a blocked nose.
Over the course of the evening we recorded 5 complete songs as well as a few tracks of "bonus material". We chose songs where I sing the lead part, as Darrel wasn't too confident in his vocal abilities in his flu-y state.

The track listing:

98-3 - click here to hear a lo-fi mp3 clip
Can't Help Loving You
Release
We Could Be Good
Woman

It was such a joy to use our microphone - it is a fabulous piece of engineering indeed. We recorded to PC (2-track analogue) using Cool Edit Pro 2 because I just couldn't face messing around for hours with my MBox, uprooting it from my studio and then trying to integrate it into our studio setup at Darrel's place.
We ran the two acoustic guitars directly into the mixer panned hard right, and ran the AKG Perception 200 and a Shure SM58 dynamic into it panned hard left. We did this so that we could adjust the levels before mixing it down to stereo. The Shure was there to capture the live sound of the guitars and retain some of the character that can be lost through DI. I had hoped we would be able to get some separation, but it turned out the Shure attached itself to Darrel's guitar and wouldn't let go - mine didn't get a look in.
The AKG also picked up a lot of guitar (which I had expected) but so much so that the DI signal from the guitars became almost completely superfluous.
The quality of the vocal sound was streets ahead of anything we have ever recorded - the AKG has a wonderful warmth and depth compared to the dynamics we have been used to. Darrel and I ended up ditching the Shure and performing to the AKG with DI and microphone channels panned centre once we realised the mic was doing most of the mixing for us.
The studio at Darrel's place is at the apex of an A-frame roof - the ceiling slopes down at about 45 degrees on either side. the acoustic is pretty good, but space is at a bit of a premium. With a bit more time I'd like to do some planning and experiments in mic placement and nail down the equipment setup, but all-in-all I was very happy with what we achieved.
I hope you enjoy the track we've posted for you. I have only 10MB of space on my freehost website so we have had to keep the quality low (40kbps) to keep the file size down. Luckily the original recording was relatively noise-free, so there is little distortion beyond the standard digital trash produced in the encoding process.
Stay tuned for more tracks from this session and we'll keep you up to date as new recordings come to light.
13 original tracks in our repetoire so far, and one more on it's way...

Are you receiving me, over?

2006-08-15T17:14:00.000+12:00

Click here for a personal greeting. If your browser is set to automatically stream mp3s you should hear me straight away. Otherwise, download the file "greet.mp3" and play it with your favourite media player. If this works, we will be able to host recordings! (Finally got my password for my website!)

Hooray for new gear!

2006-08-14T16:47:00.000+12:00

More info on Darrel's new toy.

Hooray for new gear indeed. Ok, so the hyperlink function works and is easy to implement. Excellent.
Still waiting to get access to my damn website.... yawn.
I watched one of those "Classic Albums" programmes recently about Elvis Presley's Elvis Presley album and they talked a little bit about The Colonel's inspired merchandising ideas, putting Elvis' face on everything from lunchboxes to sanitary napkins (probably). My favourite, though, was the small metal badge emblazoned with the slogan "I Like Elvis". Kind of incongruous don't you think? Kinda nondescript? I mean, girls would come to his concerts, scream, wet their pants, and faint. "I Like Elvis"? And this from the hyperbolic nation...
So we're going to get badges with "I Like Graciouis Deviants" made. Well, no, not really. But it would be fun, although people probably wouldn't want their kids running around with the word "Deviants" in this wonderful safe world we live in.
So why are we the Gracious Deviants?
I'm sure every band goes through a bit of difficulty come up with their name (unless they are Emo, Metal, or one of the "punk" bands that just need something to go with the word "The" in their band name), and I'm sure the larger the group, the harder it becomes. A band name is a magical thing - if you didn't know the music of Pearl Jam you could be excused for thinking they were a funk outfit. Some names just seem to work, attaining classic status whereas others fall flat despite the fact both might look dumb on paper. Case in point: Echo and the Bunnymen, and Ned's Atomic Dustbin. The former, an influential new wave group (the Bunnymen) who replaced their drummer with a machine (Echo), and the latter, a bunch of largely talentless hacks riding on the coattails of the rock/electronica emergence in the late 80s early 90s (Jesus Jones, Front 242, etc) who borrowed the title of a Goon Show programme for their name. Both titles look dumb on paper, yet one is respected, the other derided. Okay, so obviously the effectiveness of a bandname has quite a lot to do with the talent and popularity of the band itself, but imagine if Queen had decided to go with one of their early bandname suggestions, The Screaming Ab-Dabs? The name of the band has a greater significance than you'd think. Incidentally, have a squiz at this site for some of the more bizarre names that have come to (albeit brief) light.
We found our name thanks to The Internet Anagram Server. "Gracious Deviants" is an anagram of "voices and guitars". We were originally going with "My Circumfusion Girl" which is an anagram of "Music, Minigolf, Curry" (these are a few of our favourite things) but abandoned it because we weren't emo enough to warrant a name like that. For those that don't know what emo is, it's just like Sesame Street's Elmo (whiny, irritating, bearable only with an icepick in the forehead) without the letter "l", and with hairstyles and make-up straight from the 80s New Romantic period (yes, it has been done before sorry kids). I'm sounding old. Oh dear. Moving right along...

Strangely enough there are websites out there that will find a band name for you, like this one for example.
Til next time...

More Cool Gear!!

2006-08-13T22:26:00.000+12:00

Hi there. This is Darrel creating a post on the site for the first time. I could well be described as the less "technologically aware" of the duo and this is rather satisfying being able to create a message and see it work. Hopefully the picture I add might even work as well!
Pete and I seem to be have an almost ridiculous inability to find Saturdays when both of us are free. The reason we desperately want one of these is so that we can finally start the live recordings we've been on about for ages. However, all we can find at the moment are free Friday nights which are still good but they don't really give us enough time for quality recording sessions. But they do let us get really distracted, drink copious amounts of Tui and write more songs. We have almost finished our latest idea 'A Song to Remember' and have begun working on a new idea which at this stage we have titled "Mary-Anne". I'm not really sure what it's about (you'll have to ask Pete who deals with 90% of our lyrics!) but it's sounding cool.
We also used Friday night to play with our new Olympus ws-200s voice recorder (shown in all its splendour in the photo that is quite possibly on this page). We recorded a few sessions of us working on the new songs and we will eventually put some of these as well as live concert recordings onto the site (once Pete remembers his website password!). The voice recorder has a really good sound and I have downloaded our best 3 files from last Friday onto my computer this evening.
Looking forward to posting some sound files soon hopefully and here's hoping for a free Saturday this weekend for some recording (after the All Blacks game of course!!)

Two gigs and a new song

2006-07-31T13:51:00.000+12:00

Okay, so I'm not updating this as often as I thought I would, but since my cable service has been down for the last week and a bit I have had no Internet outside of work. I should be at work now but am waiting for the cable guy to turn up. Thank god I kept my old dial-up account active.
Anyhoo...
This is the poster from our last gig at a little place called Happy. Yes I know it says Strangelove. And Drag-strip. But if you look a bit further d-- there you go! We were first up, playing for about 40 minutes. We played a bunch of stuff we've not played much in the past either because they were new (Falling, God Knows, Not My Angel) or because we had lost faith in them along the way (98-3).
It was one of the better performances we've given (in my opinion) although not as fun as the gig for the crew at my work. We're starting to get some dynamics into each performance now that we are getting more comfortable playing our songs. Darrel is itching to get out the mic and put down a whole album's worth of live tracks so that we have something to show for our live efforts. I agree, I think it's important to get a record of how we sound now because the only recorded stuff we have at the moment is from right when we first started. I still want to do full production numbers with keys and drums and multi-track vocals but we really do need the raw material first.
The week before we went back to the place where we were first discovered, The Blue Note, for a spot in the weekly open mic night. This was the first time Darrel and I had played together in about a month. It was a terrible night, raining and cold. We didn't expect there to be much of a crowd, but it turned out everyone we had ever met in the scene was there that night, pretty much. Usually the Blue Note open mic nights are hit and miss (as are many open mic nights) but that night we found ourselves among 10 other performers, only one of whom was pants (and it wasn't us, we rocked). It was great to come back to a supportive crowd after a long time away. We did four numbers and hung out to watch a couple of friends do their thing. Great night.
Last weekend I set up my studio in my new house so that I can work on mixing stuff we record at Darrel's place in my spare time, and come up with ideas for new material. I'm running ProTools LE 7.1 on a Mac PowerBook G4 through some TDK Tremor speakers that are surprisingly good for their price. Darrel's got all the good gear at his place, but I've got enough with me to produce some pretty good quality recordings if need be.
Speaking of new material, we got together last week the night before the gig to work out the set list. In typical form Darrel came in with an idea he had been working on that blew me away. Again. We threw the set list aside and hammered out the idea until we had a really nice tune. Darrel tends to find melodies first and wraps them in throwaway lyrics to get his phrasing sorted out. Thing is, in most cases we tend to integrate these throwaway lines into the final lyrics - not because I'm a crap lyricist (which may or may not be up for question) but because one man's trash is often another's treasure. The new song is called Song to Remember, which was the throwaway line, and it's about a couple dealing with the death of a relative.
We eventually got round to doing the set list... ten minutes before the gig.
I've just spoken to my ISP and we should be able to host some tracks on my website www.peteredge.orcon.net.nz. Stay tuned for links to our music!

moving

2006-07-13T21:13:00.001+12:00

Tomorrow is moving day for me. I'm getting out of a horrible house and into a bigger, cheaper one. How does that work? I'm trying not to ask that question too loudly...
Once moved I intend to do a few things:
1. Teach Darrel how to post to this blog
2. Get to the bottom of the (grrrrr) MBox2 issue - I've had some advice from friends in the biz, so things could soon work out
3. Lay down some decent vocals and post a track here or on my website
4. Organise some more gigs - getting rusty and pining for the spotlight

mic-y goodness

2006-07-03T22:39:00.000+12:00

Well here it is:

The AKG Perception 200 Condenser mic. Darrel and I got this mic in exchange for a gig last week. It's recordin' time! We've made a few live recordings, hanging a MiniDisc recorder off the mixer at a gig, but always stopped short of putting vocals to our studio recordings because we've never had anything other than a dynamic mic to record with. A dynamic mic is great for ...er... dynamic stuff, but it doesn't always capture vocals clearly - there's usually some colouration (or coloration if you're American), or "boxiness", or the character and tone are lost because the frequency response from the pickup isn't wide enough.
Not so with this mic.
This mic is solid, high-quality and, perhaps most important for us, multi-purpose. It has a large capsule with good frequency response between 20Hz and 20kHz. Best of all, it was REALLY good value for money. We've built a studio in Darrel's loft room, cobbling together gear accumulated over a couple of years and are almost there - my dream is to have a studio set up that is just effortless, you can go in and work on
an idea the moment it appears. I've spent too long in unfit spaces with piles of dodgy gear and spaghettic cabling. I want a space that fosters creativity, not somewhere you have to spend hours trying to find it, or bring it together from a jumble of parts.
We're almost there. Almost.
We have an MBox 2 and ProToolsLE 7.1 running on a Mac and Cool Edit Pro 2 (I didn't believe in Adobe enough to fork out the extra to upgrade to Audition Pro) running on a PC. In the weekend we introduced the mic to the studio ("Studio, this is mic. Mic, studio.") and hooked it up to Cool Edit Pro. It sounded great, but would sound better thru the MBox if it weren't for the awful latency when monitoring audio recordings- wait, I'll rant about the shortcomings of the MBox2 in a later post.
It was such a breath of fresh air to have a mic in the studio that could accurately, colourlessly capture the sound of our voices, that completely out of the blue we got a little Doo-woppy on the harmonies of one of our tracks, "Angelina." Perhaps not authentic doo-wop, perhaps closer to Sha Na Na. The Sha Na Na revival. In the 80's. Completely the wrong style for the song but hilarious (to us) at 1 a.m. after a few
beers and Starburst Gummi Soakers (our secret recipe for creative thinking...damn, not so secret any more).
Like I said before, we're almost there with our studio - there was an awful lot of pricking around before we could get started, what with the awful latency when monitoring audio on the MBox 2... sorry.
Anyway, I think I've cracked the way we can work until we get the gear we need to just plug in and play.
Unfortunately, however, we won't be playing gigs together for a couple of weeks. Darrel is a primary school teacher and is on a well-deserved holiday, and I'm moving house. It's not all glamour and stardom yet.
Stay tuned.