Rattlebrained

search and destroy
clear and hold
ink spot theory

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Brushes are great with washboards! The only downside I can think of is that the metal ones can get stuck between the wood and the metal rubbing surface when you play which is a nuisance since that can damage the brush as well as screw up the song you’re playing. For that reason I’ve been using nylon brushes because they aren’t as fragile; they don’t sound quite as nice but close enough. I’ve also put tape along the bottom of certain washboards, covering that gap.

However once you’re playing with…

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Received this email the other day:

Dear Deep Blues Fan:

Maybe you’ve already heard, and if not, we think you ought to: the Deep Blues Festival is being revived this year with the blessings of the event’s founder Chris Johnson.

Deep Blues Festival 2011 will be held in Cleveland, Ohio, at the historic Beachland Ballroom on Saturday, July 16, featuring dirty roots music bands from across the country.
The bands, many of whom you already known, will play continuously on two stages from 5 p.m. until closing… etc… etc…

…so I’m passing it on and adding my two cents here…

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Since I wasn’t too satisfied with how my first electric washboard turned out I’ve been wanting to experiment further and finally got around to doing it. Since the frame of a Columbus washboard isn’t really thick enough to add much, I began by making a new frame out of beech wood taken from the legs of an old saw horse. The idea being that a harder wood will hopefully give a bit more focus to the vibration than the softer pine most washboards are made of. How will I know it it works? Obviously I wont unless I make an identical one with pine…

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This week I made a suitcase kick drum, something I’ve been wanting to do for sometime but kept on putting off since I didn’t have a suitcase. However just last week the art gallery I work with in Zürich asked me if I could come play for their open house (next week – more on that soon), and it seemed the perfect type of event since a drum set is pretty much out of the question.

I was fortunate to find a perfectly sized suitcase at only the second second hand shop I visited which gave me time that afternoon to figure out how to attach the old broken kick drum pedal that I had recuperated some time ago. The first step was to give it a decent batter since the synthetic fur of the original was worn through in 3 spots. I tore that off, exposing the cork interior but wasn’t that keen on how that sounded..l.

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Switzerland is a small country but still to get to our afternoon gig at the Hotel Alpina in Fiescheralp== I had to get up at 5h30, a way too early hour to go play the blues. At 7h30 I picked up Dominik where he lives near Murten, packed his bass and PA gear which means unpacking my stuff to get the weight centered in the car and off we were for our 9 o’clock rdv with the rest of the band at a highway truckstop near Martigny. From there it’s another one and a halve hour drive to Fiesch where we transfered all our gear into two large carts to roll them onto the teleferic (again!) that took us up the mountain. The cable car was pretty big but with the beautiful weather and it being a vacation weekend it was crowded…

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At first I had thimbles on all my fingers and also had made aluminum “whackers” for my thumbs, but when I started to play with brushes too, I had a hard time not losing the thumb whackers so they ended up remaining in the box. Then since thimbles on my pinkys never seemed that useful I gave up on them too. With three thimbles on each hand I can pretty much get all the sounds I want, plus I can still hold things between the two non thimbled fingers. I should add that I’ve never been that good at tapping and don’t really use each individual finger separately; I kind of rub and tap with one or more thimbles depending on how thick the sound should be.

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