Tauranga Jazz and Blues Festival

Well, the Tauranga Easter jazz and Blues festival is well and truly over, and it was - as usual - an amazing experience for Brilleaux

I personally really enjoy these festivals, for several reasons. The main one being that there are about 50 live bands in town - one in every pub, bar and restaurant, and to watch them it is completely FREE.

SO, if at ANY stage in the proceedings, people do not like what you are doing, they can quite easily move off to the next bar.

SO, when you are playing to a full house, you get the feeling you are doing something right, and they must like what you are doing, else they wouldnt be there!

And as we played to a full house on both days, - well - say no more.

We did a great trade in CDs, and sold $800 worth, which will all go towards pressing, printing and duplicating the new live album.

We have also sold out of our first album and we are in need of getting a new pressing of those also.

Not to mention half way towards assembling our next Studio album of originals, so you could say its all go for us.

Another of the highlights of these festivals is that you get to catch up with heaps of other musos, and Brilleaux were thrilled to get a visit from Midge Marsden on our Sunday show.

I spotted him in the crowd, and not one to let a chance go by, I called him up on stage and he played on a song with us, which gave the guys a huge buzz. - Thanks Midge.

Special thanks from Graham, Bruce, Beano and Brian to Tim Julian for jamming with us for the weekend, and adding his wicked keyboard skills to our sound - we are very lucky to have such a wicked player on call for these special occasions - we wont want to play without him now!

Thanks heaps Tim.


the fabulous, most groovy
brilleaux
maximum rhythm & blues
p: 07 543 0334
m: 021 2368800
e: brilleaux@xtra.co.nz
w: www.brilleaux.orcon.net.nz
blog: http://brilleauxmaximumrnb.blogspot.com/

How To Record an Album in a Week

After the after-match celebrations backstage on the night of the Hard To handle Reunion, and after all the gear was packed up and loaded into various cars and vans etc, the sound engineer - Dan Howard - ex click studio, Hamilton and I made our way back to my place where we proceeded to unload his van (again) and turned my office into a rather compact recording studio, where we collected all the relevant audio tracks and bounced it down (technical term) to a single file, so that I could have a listen, and make notes.
After packing down again and loading up Dans van, he hit the road back to hamilton at around 5.45am.
I had to be up at 8am (Rock n Roll and domesticity are not really compatible) I listened to the album several times through (its 52 minutes long) and made individual notes including the time - ie 2.09 minutes in Lead Guitar Solo - bring to front of mix. These notes were made of every instance something had to go up or down or mute from the recording - for example, as the guys were finishing Nadine, I put my guitar on, and hit a chord to get my levels etc - Dan was able to mute that out of the final mix. Later that day, Bruce came round and we went over it a few more times. I then typed out all these edits, and emailed it to Dan in hamilton. He had the album for 2 days to make 4 pages worth of edits, not to mention all the other stuff he does - like compressors, effects on the vocals, getting the overall rhythm section tracks balanced etc and all other stuff I dont even want to know about!. The Final mixdown arrived back to me at 4.30pm Monday, only to find that instead of a seamless live flow to it, the computer software had automatically placed in a 2 second gap between the tracks, so Tuesday night, Dan spent fixing this wee glitch. On the night of the gig, Bruces girlfriend, martine had taken heaps of photos of the night, so on Monday night Bruce dropped off a CD with all those images, and I started work on the album cover and track listing etc. After a couple of nights up till 1am, I had the cover whipped into shape, and sent it to the printers on Tuesday morning. I contacted local Tauranga resident and former keyboard player with the Narcs, Liam Ryan, who put me on to a chap to get the cds duplicated. Thursday morning and the Covers were all printed and ready to pick up. My wife Holly had to make an emergency trip to Hamilton to collect the new CD master, and return it to Tauranga before lunchtime, when I had arranged for the CD duplicator to collect it. At last all the pieces of the puzzle had come together - from now on it was all just sit back and let it come together. Bruce and I spent Thursday night folding covers and assembling CD cases. I a writing this on Friday morning. at 12 noon I pick up the duplicated CDs and put them all in the cases, and we are done! Just like THAT!!! An album READY FOR SALE in under a week! PHEW - what a mission There are some good things AND some not so good things about this album, and I will mention them here. GOOD THINGS: This album was recorded LIVE There are NO overdubs WHATSOEVER All that was done was the instruments mixed up or down in the mix This is the most honest representation of a band you could get - This is what we sound like, good or bad It was a really exciting, although nerve wracking experience - the pressure was ON BAD THINGS On the night, the harp was so quiet on stage I couldnt hear it, and at one particular point I was playing by BRAILLE, and going on instict, and consequently the accuracy of my playing suffered, hence a few dodgy notes here and there. To get the album out on time, there was no time to fix up the above, or the odd bass note missing, or where Tim, - the keyboard player on the night -who is not 100% familiar with all the songs shot the ending by a note (I know, big deal!) or cut and paste over where I sing the wrong words! Recording over one 50 minute set, gives you no room for error - If it had been recorded over 2 days, or 2 gigs, if you mucked up a song on 1 day, you could replace it with the same song from the next day, or maybe even a different song. This way it was 1 take and thats it! So now all we need to do is SELL IT, and with the Jazz fest almost here, lets hope we do just that! We have a couple of gigs at the festival in Harringtons Nightclub once again. THEN, on Saturday night, Beano is off to play for Kokomo, who are doing the support gig for Georgie Fame, and that is exactly where I shall be - and I cant wait. Happy easter everybody - enjoy the weekend. the fabulous, most groovy brilleaux maximum rhythm & blues p: 07 543 0334 m: 021 2368800 e: brilleaux@xtra.co.nz w: www.brilleaux.orcon.net.nz blog: http://brilleauxmaximumrnb.blogspot.com/

The Colosseum Gig

It was about 18 years ago (so they tell me) that Hard To handle were a regular fixture on the music scene around these parts. Around this time, John and I have a close afinity with each other as we both fronted high profile, hard working blues bands, and I don't know if it is a result of the kind of drugs around at the time, but I have quite often been mistaken as the singer from hard To handle.

This doesn't really come as a surprise, because if they were playing in town, and I wasn't, I was more likely than not to be seen on stage with them at some part of the night, playing harp, and singing with John, as that is the kind of band they were when it came to inviting friends and guests up for a jam, and when you work as hard as they were at the time, any variation on the normal was welcome to give a bit of a spark to the monotony of playing the same bar night after night.

So 18 years further on down the road when the opportunity arose to carry on where we had left off, I was as keen as mustard to jump right on in there, and when John approached me to do some promotional stuff for the reunion, I wasn't about to let the opportunity pass, and suggested that they could do with a support band, and make an even bigger night of it, and Brilleaux and Kokomo would make a legendary line-up of Tauranga bluesmasters, to which he agreed, and the plans were set for the night of 31st march, 2007 at the Colosseum, Harrington Street Tauranga.

Kokomo, or their alter-ego, The Self Righteous Brothers kicked of the night with a 30 minute set to get what must have been a full house in the mood for what was to come.
Wandering through the crowd, I had a constant smile on my face, spotting the ghosts of yesterdays bar scene who had caught wind of the show and who seemed to just vaporised themselves to the Colosseum for the evening for one more night of smoke and alcohol induced rock n roll (without the smoke of course).

Brilleaux kicked off at 10.15, introduced by Derek, who rarked them up sufficiently and informing the crowd that the night was being recorded and videod for an upcoming future cd release. Brilleaux played a 50 minute set of rhythm and blues played brilleaux-style to a pretty enthusiastic crowd, but to be honest, I think they were really saving themselves (a phenomenon unknown 18 years ago, but many now only surviving on limited stores of excess energy, do not have stores to be used up too hastilly lest they fail to see out the main event!) for the main event - the reunion of Hard To Handle.

Hard To handle kicked of about 11.30, and an intense feeling of Deja vu descended upon the crowd from the first two notes Tippy struck on his guitar. It was astounding how good these guys sounded after not playing together for so many years, it may well be a cliche, but it sounded like they had only been playing yesterday, even in the absence of their most recent bass player, Kevin Coleman. Willie (Wiremu) Priestly did an amazing Job - I salute him for that.
Jon was BORN to be the frontman of a band - it is his calling in life - It is what he does and what he is - aand this was confirmed on this night. Jon hasn't actually performed for a long time - not like THIS, and he was a pleasure to watch - he brought tears in my eyes with a brilliant performance.

Im sure I saw Tippy play just the other day! His playing on the night was as it has always been - astounding, passionate, inspired - all the things that have made him a local and international legend.

I have never really noticed before, but paul has a very distinctive style on the drums, and maybe its because I have a lot more experience myself now, that I am able to pick up on that, but Paul is equally responsible for the sound that Hard To handle were the band that you HAD to go and see on a Friday or Saturday night.

Now, I have the recollection of the very first incarnations of hard to Handle, with Jim on drums, and then later with Nick the Russian on Bass, and Derek Jacombs on guitar, alonside a "yet to find-himself" Tippy, right through to the powerhouse lineup with Paul, and the legendary Kevin Coleman on bass, and on this night, this line-up was as good as any of them.

I hope the recording does the band justice, and they deliver the public with the SECOND Hard To Handle album EVER.

Awesome night you guys - you gave a lot of people a lot of enjoyment

I thank everybody that made the night go smoothly, from Tim Cooper for all his effort before, during and after the gig. Dan Howard for making a great job of the live sound, and for recording the audio. To Mike Butler who video taped the entire proceedings on and back stage, and last but not least all the lovers of live music that PAID and had a night to be remembered for a very long time.