The Waystation

'My One and Only Love'

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:50:00 +0000

Our very own Bobby Love is tying the knot this June. I was very flattered that Bob asked Nick and I, of all his musical friends, to play a song at the ceremony. Nick's thought was to do a version of 'My One and Only Love', which is one of my favorite jazz standards and a song that my Uncle Don played on the saxophone during my own wedding. We assumed there would be a fair number of 'jazzers' in attendance at Bob's wedding, so the idea was to turn something they would know into something unexpected. So, I worked on an arrangement using my Telecaster -- trying my best to mimic something Jim Campilongo might do.

Although Nick and I decided to write something instead, I've already spent time learning how to play a '6th chord' and putting the arrangement together -- so I recorded 'My One and Only Love' this weekend while my wife was out of town. Here's a link to download the track. And, here's a shot of my little home recording rig, where I spent most of this weekend noodling around on the song.

Download: 'My One and Only Love' by Guy Wood and Robert Mellin. Arranged, performed, and recorded by Dave McDowell.

Another Milestone

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:45:00 +0000

I would be remiss if we didn't mark the 10-year anniversary of our self-titled record, The Waystation. A milestone in our lives and our music, listening to this record certainly takes me places. Whether its recording thunderous handclaps for 'Following' that never made the record, shooting the album photography in the Charleston, or singing to a Pamela Anderson poster during 'Circle, Circle', the memories are quick to come streaming back.

It makes me happy that the record still lives, available for download at iTunes, generating spins from various licensing deals, and even selling a physical copy or two at CDBaby once in awhile. Heck, 'A Way Out' just won a semi-finalist award in a songwriting contest last week.

But, what makes me happier still are other people's experiences with the record. A couple that used 'Keeping Time' as their wedding song, a fan from Senegal who told us his favorite bands were The Rolling Stones, U2 and The Waystation (and sent us a dashiki to prove it), or just the look of surprise when new friends hear the record the first time.

It's these kinds of stories that make the words Nick wrote for the inside jacket of the CD ring true: "To those of you that have shared this adventure with us along the way, we offer a heartfelt thank you. And to those of you for whom this recording is your first introduction to The Waystation; welcome."

And in closing, as Nick said so eloquently said the other day, "It's Been Ten Years...would ya buy a freakin' record already?!?!?!"

Do you like Stevie Wonder?

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:44:00 +0000

Check out Messenger, currently available as a digital pre-release from Michele Thomas. The album includes selections from the one-and-only Stevie Wonder and features our very own Bobby Love as well as friend-of-the band and sometime-studio-drummer Darren Scorza.

'Perfect' is Track of the Week

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:00:00 +0000

After some enthusiastic reviews, 'Perfect' was selected as Folk-Rock Track of the Week at Garageband.com. For 7 days starting on Monday, the 28th of September, 2009 'Perfect' will be featured in the Folk Rock category on the site. It will also be featured in the Folk Rock Track of the Week podcast.

Great video from nikkos & friends

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:51:00 +0000

Theme song for Chicago 2016? You be the judge...

"Headin' To Chicago" from Nick Fryer on Vimeo.

Field Recordings Vol. 1: Music & Sounds Of Oaxaca, Mexico!

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:42:00 +0000

Download it here. Enjoy!

Bob's New Site

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:10:00 +0000

Check out Bob's new site, LovecchioMusic.com. I told him it was too bad Bob.com was taken. Don't they realize there can be only one?

"It's a Major Award. I won it!"

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Over the years, we have done reasonably well in various songwriting contests, picking up a semi-finalist nod here or an honourable mention there -- enough encouragement that I keep entering, anyway.

Well, I checked the mail after returning from a trip to London to find an unusual package, postmarked from Oklahoma. I opened it to find the Billboard World Song Contest awarded 'Perfect' an honourable mention as one of the top 500 songs entered. I'm not sure that's an accomplishment to trumpet about, but I did receive a Major Award as part of the deal.

Here I am wearing the Major Award. That's right folks, those are genuine BluBlockers.

Exciting, I know. Though I was really hoping for a bowling alley. Or at least a nice lamp...

The Balcony, Oxford, OH -- R.I.P.

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:56:00 +0000

According to Facebook, The Balcony, where we put in countless hours cutting our teeth on the stage, will be torn down following its last night of business on November 14^th, 2009.

I remember hand-delivering our first press kit to Nes, who as The Balcony booking agent was quite an imposing figure for my 19-year old self. A few persistent follow-ups, and Nes booked us for a Wednesday night, where we met the inimitable Doug Patton, self-described “little ol’ sound man from Oxford,” who delivered our best piece of advice…“you guys need to get some tuners.” Fast forward a few months and we graduated to Saturday nights, playing four-hour shows that started with an acoustic set, followed by two electric sets, and finished with some kind of improvised, we-ran-out-songs-thirty-minutes-ago encore.

Artists from Buddy Miles to Kings of Leon played The Balcony, as well as countless local acts. After becoming friendly with the staff, I got to hear many of them for free, standing at the soundboard with a Jack & Coke in a plastic cup. But, one of my favorite memories was playing acoustic happy hour on Fridays, where a few friends would stop in, the sunshine would stream through the windows, and we would play for $50 and a belly-full of Ozzie’s food.

A few photos…

Live from the Mancave

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:41:00 +0000

nikkos posted some great video of a track he's working on called 'Song To The Morning', live from his apartment, affectionately known as the Mancave.

I am into the idea of posting work-in-progress. It's sort of like a mixtape for us acoustic dudes. Yet again, John Mayer leads the way by completely turning his website into a 'mid-action report' on the making of his next album, 'Battle Studies'.

Tracks: Live Video Performance

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Recorded live at Shirk Music & Sound, Chicago, IL in May 2009. Music and video produced by Steve Shirk. Written and performed by Dave McDowell. Read the story behind 'Tracks' here.

Recording: May 8, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:06:00 +0000

While I was back in the States; nikkos, Bobby, and I got together for a little pickin'. Hopefully we'll have a new tune or two to share shortly.

Here are a few photos from the session:

Red, black & blue: New Music From nikkos & the extraordinary renditions

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:12:00 +0000

Bobby and I just completed a little side project I call nikkos & the extraordinary renditions.You can download our debut record here. Enjoy!

The Future of Album Art

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:12:00 +0000

This article on designing for shrinking album covers makes some interesting points that we've experienced first hand, specifically how a smaller medium is driving album art towards "simplicity, bold color, stark imagery, and unadorned type." But, I also think it neglects some clear opportunities uniquely available in the digital world.

When we released our first proper album in 1999, manufacturing and distributing music was not easy. Our gold master was digitally mastered from analog tapes, our album art was printed with 4-color press, and it all had to replicated in a big CD manufacturing facility. Making CDs this way was expensive. As I remember, the minimum order was 1000 CDs, which cost over $1000. And, distribution was limited to consignment in records shops or what we sold at shows. Getting online distribution via the now-defunct Aware Records store was a huge step.

By the time our next release came out in 2007, the world had changed for the better. Between Discmakers and CDBaby, it was now possible to take an album from digital master to iTunes for a few hundred dollars. However, when it came to choosing the album cover, I was still thinking about a CD people would hold in their hands -- and learned some lessons about what works best in the new world of shrinking album covers.

In order to make low-cost, short-run duplication possible, Discmakers prints digitally, compromising on quality. To get the album in online stores and iTunes, CDBaby then scans the artwork from Discmakers. Convenient, but also another step down in quality. So, what begins as crisp, intricate design gets a little lost in translation. Combined with shrinking size, a lot of subletly and texture disappears.

For our most recent release in 2008, designing for fans buying on iTunes and listening on iPods was top-of-mind. So, we went with a stark, black-and-white image with simple, bold text, which represented much better at smaller sizes. The only thing I failed to learn from the last release were lessons of punctuation and capitalization. iTunes chokes on symbols like the parentheses in (slight return), capitalizes the first word in a title (downcounting becomes Downcounting), and appends EP with a hyphen. So, if you want your album title displayed consistently -- you have to play by the rules.

Anyway, for all the drawbacks of shrinking album covers, the advantages of both making and consuming digital music are many. But, I think there are some unexplored advantages to digital album art. First, however, let me state that including an awkward pdf version of CD packaging is an exceedingly *bad* idea. Other than portability, it doesn't play to any of the strengths of digital media.

My short-list for digital packaging would look something like this:

Meta-data. Lots, lots more: where the track was recorded, what instruments were used, what amplifiers, notes from the artist, engineer, producer, sidemen
Interactive. For starters, don't use a pdf, so I can at least copy and paste. But, also let me tag, comment, or add reviews. What about listening to snippets of the original music any samples are drawn from?
Searchable. Make the meta-data standard, indexed, and searchable. I would love to be able to search a database (whether online or sitting in iTunes) that would give me a list of songs in my library featuring Art Blakey on drums, produced by Dre, recorded at Electric Ladyland studios, or using the ProCo Rat pedal

"Atlas" Lyrics

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:26:00 +0000

Atlas

Lately I’ve been wondering
What keeps this world from falling
But when I start to think too hard
I hear reality calling

And I just realized
This world is awful heavy
And if Atlas should stumble
Then we’ve got to be ready

Atlas carries the weight of the world on his shoulders

So if this world of ours
Starts getting you down
You just got to tell yourself
Be glad you’re still around

Take it as it comes babe
And just do what you can
Become what you are
Then you’ll understand

Atlas carries the weight of the world on his shoulders

We’ve all got some weight to bear…

"Make No Mistake," Live At Lilly's, 12.29.99

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:48:00 +0000

Yes, I went deep into the archives for this one...I just knew we had to have a recording of our take on John Martyn's "Make No Mistake" (see Mr. Martyn's version below), and guess what? We do! All of the versions in Dave's possession are on cassette (yes- we're old!) and thus difficult to share, so it was a real shot in the dark to see if there was anything in my archives. I was thrilled when I found this take from our Wednesday night residency at Lilly's. Ah memories...if I could only remember them.

Personnel on this track includes Bob, Dave and myself, as well as Alex Rea on percussion, and this was recorded, I'm guessing, on Alex's portable mini-disc recorder. Folks, this is a live Waystation classic: an obscure cover of an obscure artist, a "cringeworthy introduction" (Dave's words) and overwrought vocals redeemed by fat bass grooving on your face, a swinging, lyrical guitar solo and pure, ethanol-fueled enthusiasm.

The other day, our friend Aimee told me she could still hear our version of this tune in her head. Well Aimee, I hope this version is as sweet as your memories. Enjoy!

To download, right-click and so forth: The Waystation, "Make No Mistake," Live At Lilly's, 12.29.99

John Martyn: We Couldn't Love You More.

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:40:00 +0000

You will be missed.

I am incredibly thankful that I was introduced to the music of John Martyn. Music producer Jim Tullio introduced me to his music, and, to my bottomless gratitude, the man himself.

I was in Jim's studio late one night back in high school (a good friend had an internship with Jim and I was merely tagging along, trying to soak up some knowledge) and the phone rang. Jim talked to whomever was on the line for a minute and then said into the phone, "Hang on, there's someone here that wants to talk to you," and then he handed the phone to me. Perpelexed, i took the phone and was greeted by the deep and gregarious Scottish burr of John Martyn himself. I can't remember what I said- probably nothing of much import. But the moment was thrilling- I was talking to John Martyn! All the way from London! (Or somewhere)!

Thank you Jim, for the literally once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

And John, I think I can speak for myself, Dave and Bobby when I say: thank you for the music, every glorious note of it.

(Sorry, but the really good performance of this tune on YouTube has embedding disabled.)

Semi-Finalist in Mike Pinder's Songwars

noreply@blogger.com (dm) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:45:00 +0000

Tom Browning Is My Guitar Hero

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:00:00 +0000

If you're anything like me, you have an insatiable appetite for information. This has led me to follow, oh, about 200 blogs in my Google Reader. A couple of those blogs follow the music scene in Louisville, KY, my hometown. Even though I recognize very few of the bands and venues these days, every once in a while something will pop up that sends me careening down memory lane.

Well, this morning, I happened across this post on "Backseat Sandbar," about the 'ville's very own "Merry Pranksters" band. They've been playing a Sunday gig every week for TWENTY TWO years, a truly epic accomplishment.

But what really caught my eye is the gentleman at the far left of the photo above. His name is Tom Browning, and he taught me how to play the guitar (or, in his defense, perhaps I should say he did everything he could to teach me how to play the guitar!). I guess I was about 14 or 15 when I first began taking lessons from Tom, in the unbelievably tiny back room of the music store where he worked (man, I wish I could remember the name of that music store).

I think Tom gave up pretty quickly teaching me the fundamentals of music- chords, notes, scales and such, because my method of learning guitar was to bring in a (cassette tape of a) song I wanted to learn (usually something a beginner had absolutely no business attempting, like the multiple, entwined guitar lines of "The Song Remains The Same"). Then, I would sit back and watch Tom listen to the tune once, twang a string or two, hit "stop" on the cassette player, and then proceed to play the holy shit out of the tune. No matter what the tune was, he could play it.

Perhaps more amazing, when Tom played his acoustic guitar, it seemed like he could make it sound like anything. If he was chugging through a meaty Zeppelin riff, the guitar sounded thick and heavy, almost electrified. If he was playing a flamenco passage (I remember wanting to learn The Doors' "Spanish Caravan") his beat-up acoustic sounded for all the world like the classical guitar of a flamenco master. To this day I can hear Tom in my mind, playing that descending Fender Rhodes line from "Riders On The Storm." (for some reason, I was always trying to learn songs with little to no guitar in them. See Hubbard, Freddie, below for confirmation of this pattern) Anyways, somehow, when Tom played it, his acoustic chimed and rang out like he was tickling the ivories on a vintage electric piano. I swear I could even hear the Leslie speaker.

My lessons with Tom only lasted for a year or so. Soon I would leave Kentucky for the bright lights of big city Chicago. But Tom, to you I offer my most sincere and heartfelt thanks for helping me discover and nurture what has become a lifelong love of music...even though I still can't play "The Song Remains The Same."

This aint no obit: Keep rockin' Tom!

The Wedding Singer

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:00:00 +0000

No, I'm not sad- I'm concentrating!

I was saying the other day that there are few things in life more gratifying for a musician than to have someone else learn/play one's songs. One of those "few things" is being asked to play in the wedding of one's dear, dear friends. A couple summers ago, I was asked to compose and play a tune in a beautiful, beachfront wedding (perhaps I'll share that tune in the future) and just this past summer, Dave and Lauren asked me to play the James Taylor chestnut, "Something In The Way She Moves" at their absolutely incredible wedding in France. Needless to say, I had a blast learning and playing the tune...and traveling to France to perform it in the wedding!

What Dave and Lo didn't know until very recently was that Lo's uncle was putting together a wedding video, and that I had recorded the tune in the studio for that very purpose (with thanks, once again, to Steve Shirk at Shirk Music!). I recorded this the same day I recorded "Oh It's Festival Time!" Not bad for four hours' work.

I will admit, it was hard keeping it a secret. Usually, Dave is one of the first people that hears my recorded work (Bob is usually right there in the studio with me). But in this case, I had to bide my time, and now that the wedding video has been wrapped, I can share with you my version of "Something In The Way She Moves." I hope you like it.

To download, right-click and 'Save Target As' (Internet Explorer) or 'Save Link As' (Firefox): Something In The Way She Moves

There's A First Time For Everything...

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:13:00 +0000

...in this case, it's the first-ever Waystation-related Facebook status update:

Doug is a long-time friend, fan, guitar hero and Soundboard Master, and I was happy to honor his request for some pointers regarding how to play our tune "Atlas." Really, there are few things more gratifying and flattering to a musician than to have someone want to learn their tune.

Now, I suppose a "real" musician might have responded to Doug's request with sheet music. That's not my style (or part of my skill-set) so I made this video instead:

Any other requests?

I'll Probably Regret This...

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:15:00 +0000

...what am I saying? No I won't. Having friends and fans on Facebook is awesome- they have all the best, and worst, photos. Thanks Carrie!

Custom

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:41:00 +0000

Reading about the new Eddie Van Halen custom geetar got me wondering: other than a secret JBC compartment, what features might your dream guitar have, Dave? Bob? What would you call your custom "axe?" (Gah, I hate that term.)

Mine, of course, would have little lights on the neck which would allow me to play solos- and this is totally unprecedented- outside the usual pentatonic scale. A man can dream.

Happy New Year From The Waystation

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:35:00 +0000

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."

- Jimi Hendrix

Freddie Hubbard (1938-2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Nick) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:25:00 +0000

We just lost another of the greats. Dudes, how many nights did we spend listening to Red Clay? I even seem to recall an ill-advised attempt at covering it- no small feat for a band with no horns and only one member that could actually play jazz! But such was the musical inspiration embodied by Freddie Hubbard. Freddie, thank you for the music.