Cheers,

Steve.

It is tuned just like a guitar, but has a sightly lighter, plinkier tone and sounds pretty good on some of the recordings.

I can’t actually remember how much it was – it was fair amount, but not the $849 price tag listed at the Melbourne Music centre site. The model I have might be a step down from this one I pictured, and the writing on the head is different. But it looks similar, otherwise.

Anyway I have just decided to get rid of get and get a regular guitar. The reasons:

• At live shows through a PA or amp, it doesn’t actually sound like a banjo at all. It sounds like a guitar. So why not just play one?
• The pick-up is wonky.
• It goes out of tune easily.
• It has intonation issues even when the open strings are perfectly in tune. There is some problem with the way the G string is set, so that if it is perfectly in tune open, it will be very sharp on the 2nd fret A.  That means you basically cannot get it so that open G and open A and D all sound good. You have to pick, or compromise. For a folk player, that is a pretty major issue because those are the main three chords!
• Basically it just sucks.

So I am selling it. Not here though, because I just told you how wretched it was.

I am gonna buy a hollow body electric I think.

Plans to do more stuff have been stifled by extreme business on both our parts, and also, I’m moving to Papua New Guinea in July, so, Luker and Southern is going to be on the back-burner for a while, like, three years. We might do another market show before I go, and then shows when I come back for visits.  WE’ll see.

So that’s what’s going on.

S.

The show was good. At one point the police patrol boat drove over and listened to us.

Here is a photo of me from Emma’s camera, looking kinda cool, but also a little haggard, like Dr Cox from Scrubs.

So far we have some shots from the market show last year and some shots from our CD launch.

S.

Exactly the same, except mine has a pickup.The tuning is in fifths so the chords are a little different from geetar or banjo, but you get used to it after a while.

Up til now I have been playing on Emma’s old one, which she got given in Mexico, but decided I needed one with a pickup if we are going to take it on stage.

So we’ll be featuring some madolin tunes in our upcoming shows in April, and on further recordings.

Happy Christmas to me.

Anyway it is, as one Mr Dylan Woolcock noted, something of a “gauntlet”. They have a front bar,  a games area, a pokies bar, a meals area, and as the fifth finger on the glove, a band room, which I did not previously know was there. It’s not too bad a space at all. I’d to pack it out, someday.

One of the characters playing before us was a guy called Little Hefty, who I had not previously heard of but who sounds a bit like Jack Johnson vs Bob Marley and has the same kind of “laid back beach funk” vibe as Johnson. I enjoyed listening to this guy, who can sing better than most. His quieter, finger picky numbers appealed to me more than the funkier stuff but generally it was all worth seeing.

Try his Myspace and watch the vids, looks like they are from a gig at the Wheatsheaf. The last one is the best.

http://www.myspace.com/littleheftymusic

SCALA has been at many venues over the years, but the current one is pretty good. SCALA is now at “Higher Ground” which is in the building of the old “Night Train” theater restaurant on Light Square. Do you know in the twenty years I have lived in Adelaide I never actually got around to going to the Night Train? Or, jumping off the Morphett Street bridge into oncoming traffic? Or, drinking bleach? Time just slips through your fingers doesn’t it?

Anyway we did a “banjo only” show which meant that seeing as we only did ten songs I decided to only bring one instrument. The crowd was generally appreciative and it was a good set up for our upcoming gigs in December.

You say you’ve not heard of SCALA? What do you think the name means?

hugs,

S.

You know that funny old-looking place on the corner of South Road and George St, just north of the Henley Beach Road junction, that you always drive past and wonder what it is? Well, that’s not the Folk Centre. That’s actually some church building. The Folk Centre is the building next door that looks like  an old RSL hall.

Basically playing there goes like this:

You arrive at sunset, and park in the spot reserved for the Rector, and then you go in the hall and the sound guy is already there setting up, and you say hello to him and he seems nice.

Then you muck around for a while with hard plastic chairs and old style trestle tables and you try to estimate how many people are going to show up, and you notice how big the place actually is, and you try not to imagine it full of line dancers.

Then you talk to the lady on the door who has one of those old fashioned cash register boxes with numbers on dials, and a grey plastic “ka ching” handle, and a float of two shillings sixpence in case a lot of people come.

Then you stand around for a bit looking at all the names of the past presidents of the SA Folk Federation, random banners from lots of community organizations, posters of famous people from Ireland who have also played here, etc, and those little pennants that tell you who came third in the local darts tournament in 1967.

Then, a couple of old people show up and ask you when the Bingo game starts and you have to tell them that it isn’t a Bingo night, it’s a folk concert. They seem not to mind.

Then more people show up, and you play. The stage is large and the sound is good and people sit quietly drinking wine and listening to you.

Then, they all leave, and you are left to pack up all the trestle tables again.

That’s how it goes.

(OK some of that isn’t true. Especially the part about packing up the trestle tables. The staff did that.)

We sold some CDs but there’s a few left. Check out the CD sample page.