The Northland (2009)

Short Rambler this evening - mostly because I'm beat, but I guess I could say that I'm trying to preserve bandwidth on my little Verizon modem. See, Yesenia went to the Verizon store one day and picked up this USB gizmo (am I old enough to use 'gizmo' unironically?) that lets us go online through our cellphone account. Technically, it's a third phone line on the contract, but one that just goes online to the tune of $40 a month for 250MB. Which ain't dick.

Really, I could compose this Rambler offline to save bandwidth, but I also want to keep it short for the first reason mentoned: I'm fuckin' tired. Long, trying morning, then got on the road at around two and made incredible time to Portland, where I attended (and recorded) Putnam's album release show. The recording part turned out to be kind of unnecessary, because the desk mix that the engineer burn sounds really, really good - much better than any live desk mix I've ever heard, I think. Certainly much brighter and clearer than the two room mics I set up. At any rate, I intend to bounce the two together and see if the room mics add a little atmosphere, but, ultimately, I think the final mix will likely be the desk mix pretty much all the way.

I also brought my Rhodes, which really was necessary - sounded damn good in the room, I must say. Oddly, the house amp was the Roland Jazz Chorus, one of which I owned briefly years ago, but couldn't stand the sound of the Rhodes through it and exchanged it for my current Fender Blues DeVille. I say 'oddly', because the Roland sounded great, and I wonder if either my Rhodes has changed or my ears over the last fourteen years...

Anyway, I'll post more tomorrow - the show went late, and Putt lives twenty minutes North of Portland, so it's almost 2:30 as I type this. Hope y'all are having a good weekend, wherever you are.

D.