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Jim M.
Mar-09-2004, 11:47pm
Attention Bay Area denizens, Wake the Dead, which does great combinations of Irish/Grateful Dead tunes, will be in Dublin this Saturday for free, 3:30 - 5

You can see a schedule at Dublin Festival (http://www.dublinstpats.com/schedule.htm)

They are also having some other Bay Area concerts in the coming week, and you see their full schedule at
Wake the Dead (http://www.wakethedead.org)

Paul Kotapish, who has been posting some here, plays great mandolin leads, and Danny Carnahan does some great rhythm on OM. See them if you can.

Paul Kotapish
Mar-16-2004, 1:04pm
Thanks for the plug, Jim.

We had a good time at the Dublin festival, and we'll be doing a few more Bay Area gigs this week, too.

On St. Patrick's Day, we start out bright and early from 6:30 Am to 8:30 AM on the KFOG morning show. KFOG is 104.5 FM in San Francisco, 97.7 FM in San Jose. KFOG is our favorite pop/rock station in the area. They have reasonably independent programming, and they actually add all-acoustic music into the mix on a regular basis. They host a lot of live-in-the-studio acoustic and they've been done a lot to promote Nickel Creek in this area, too. Check it out.

http://www.kfog.com/

Wednesday eve, St. Patrick's Day, we share a bill with a fine Celtic ensemble called Molly's Revenge at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz. Should be a lot of fun.

http://www.riotheatre.com/html/event.html

Next Wednesday the 24th we play the legendary Sweetwater in Mill Valley.

http://www.sweetwatersaloon.com/eventcal.ihtml

Hope to see some of y'all at one of these events. Lots of mando and octave mando plus fiddle, pipes, bass, percussion, and guitar.

PK

Jim M.
Mar-16-2004, 8:10pm
And it was a great show, Paul. Hope you don't mind if I post a pic of you during the sound check, with that beautiful Gilchrist, I think.

Gotterdamerung
Mar-17-2004, 2:11pm
If I can be so presumptuous to ask, Paul, do you ever post tablature of your songs? I saw you play in Dublin and then, hearing you guys play "Ripple" this morning on KFOG, I was thinking how great it would be to have your version tabbed out. Lacking the musicial faculties for such a task, I thought that I would ask.

Paul Kotapish
Mar-22-2004, 4:55pm
Thanks, Jim. Yep, that's my "stealth" Gilchrist. I had Steve make if for me with black binding, smoked black hardware, and no inlay of any sort on the peghead or fingerboard. My idea was to let the form of the instrument speak for itself in the same way that violin-family instruments do. It's kind of plain by mando standards, but I love the way it looks, and it's got a beautifully balanced sound. I'm very happy with it.

Gotterdamerung,

Thanks for the request, but I'm afraid I'm such a lousy transcriber that it would be pretty much impossible for me to post anything other than the simplest of fiddle tunes. Our setting of "Ripple" follows the basic structure of the Dead's original in terms of chords and melody, but we use a Cajun-influenced fiddle tune that Danny Carnahan wrote called "If I Knew the Way" for the breaks, and our intro, outro, and fills are pretty different. I often play the first two bars of the intro in more-or-less the same way--a rough statement of the melody in the low register starting on a C#--but after that first phrase, all of the intro, fills, and backup are improvised, so I wouldn't know where to start on trying to tab it out. I'm not making it all up from scratch every time, but none of it is worked out in any detail, and I hope to make it a little bit different and--I hope--a little bit fresh each time we play it.

PK

Pete Braccio
Mar-23-2004, 12:17am
Hey Paul,

I saw you in Santa Cruz on St. Pat's Day. Fantastic set! You all were hot that night and really looked like you were having a great time.

Pete

Dagger Gordon
Mar-24-2004, 4:17am
Hey Paul,

Do you use a pick-up?

Paul Kotapish
Mar-24-2004, 3:44pm
Hey Paul,

Do you use a pick-up?
Hiya Dagger,

After decades of chasing down the perfect combo for live performances, I've gone back to a mic on a stand. In my experience, anyway, it's a better choice at least 93% or the time. A good old SM-57 almost always sounds at least a little better than the best pickup/on-board mic combo, and it gives me the flexibility to move in and out of the mic for a little more dynamic control and tone coloring. The trusty AKG C-1000 is another good workhorse on the road. Every once in a while I get a really excellent mic on stage, but in most instances the choice of mic is less critical than how the system is balanced, EQ'd, etc. If the room is perfect and the system is properly EQ'd and the audience is quiet, then a Neumann KM 87 is a luxury, but most of the time a great mic like that would be overkill.

When I was touring more, I had my Nugget A model rigged with a Mike Mills condenser mic paired with a variety of different Fishman or Baggs saddles. I wired these to a stereo jack and ran the stereo signal to either a Fishman Pocket Blender or to a Rane AP-13. It was a pretty good system, especially for big festival situations and really noisy conditions, but I still prefer a mic on a stand. And it's just less hassle. I'm playing mostly smaller venues these days and there's a lot less need for the whole pickup scenario. The single best feature of the pickup option is the opportunity to move around the stage at will. That's nice, but for me it doesn't trump sound.

I'm intrigued by some of the combos that feature the McIntyre Feather, though, and I might be trying that out a system with one of those one of these days. The saddle pickups are just too dang harsh, no matter how much signal processing and EQ you slap on there.

BTW, Dan Beimborn just sent me a couple of your CDs, and they sound terrific. Splendid playing. I'll pop a couple WTD CDs in the post for you this week.

Best,

PK

Dagger Gordon
Mar-24-2004, 4:50pm
Thanks for the reply about the pick-up and your kind words about my own stuff.

I would agree that a good mike is best for sound, ie tone,timbre etc, but I tend to find volume can be a problem, especially if there's a bunch of you in the band and it's a noisy gig.

I have an early Rare Earth-type soundhole pick-up in my 10-string Sobell. It was put in by Mike Vanden, who went on to sell his design to Fishman. (That's the same Vanden who builds Martin Taylor's guitars and Simon Mayor's mandolins. He lives in Strontian, in the North West Scottish Highlands.)
He also put one into my 8 string Sobell CBOM, which works very well.

The mandolin can sound slightly electric sometimes, but it's not bad if you roll the treble off a bit, boost the mid-range and add a wee bit of reverb.

What I tend to do nowadays is play through the pick-up and also use a Shure 57 or 58, which I use for speaking. It's pretty simple and seems to work quite well.

I've heard your playing in a variety of contexts. Excellent. The Wake the Dead stuff seems to me to be pretty inspired. I once met Danny Carnahan in the 1980's when he and Robin Petrie played Inverness Folk Club. I did a floor spot with a guitarist called Dick Clarke. I don't suppose he'd remember, but it was a good gig.

All the best to you.

Dagger.