Dottie Hill Music Fest Sat. August, 7'th Midland,TX

Sorry for the late heads up but it has been a busy week for me. Apologies all around nonetheless. Tomorrow is a great concert event celebrating the life of Dottie Hill and raising money for the American Cancer Society. This is the 5'th annual festival and will not disappoint. There is a chili cook off all day, a silent auction in the early evening, and of course great live music all night long. Starting things off is an acoustic song swap of some up and coming local talent, Next will be Jackson Lee Brooks Band kicking things off full band. Cody Hughes Davidson Band, that's us, takes the stage at 9(?), followed by the talented Emory Quinn. Capping off the rest of the evening is the always crazy life show from Mike McClure's Band. Come early and stay happy. I hope to see everyone out there.

($15 at the door 21 and up at The Hog Pit Midland, TX. Specific info on the Dottie Hill Music Fest Facebook page. All proceeds to the American Cancer Society)

Here Comes The Dottie Hill Musicfest & The Ranch Is Gone For Good?

First off, I just wanted to get everyone's radar going for the upcoming concert August 7'th at The Hog Pit in Midland, Tx. It is The Dottie Hill Music Festival and this year will be featuring The Jackson Lee Brooks Band, Emory Quinn, Mike McClure, and ourselves. (not necessarily in that order) It should be a wild show with possible surprise guest appearances and plenty of beer to get you out on the dance floor.

I know I'm late to the party on this bit of Midland gossip, but I thought I would address the rumor mill surrounding The Ranch closing their doors for "remodeling". There are various stories milling about and I thought I would just share what I have heard. You can choose for yourself what to believe or just mash them all together to make a brand new bit of gossip. Backtracking a bit for those of you from outside our goldfish bowl, The Ranch in Midland, TX is/was a bar that catered to the Texas Country scene and had a healthy traffic of the leading bands across its stage. One thing that made them such an appealing venue for the area was that they were one of the only places in Midland/Odessa big enough for the larger bands to come through while also being 18 and up instead of the staunch 21 and up at most other places. This let the fanatical fans who couldn't drink yet, stampede into the place with their black X'ed hands and fill the front of stage while buying every bit of merch the band had to offer. Anywho, one day The Ranch had a sign on its marquee "closed for remodeling" it was not planned as far as anyone knew and it seemed rather strange. 

One story is that the owners hadn't been filing the correct taxes for the place, got audited, fined, and then TABC jumped in and revoked their licensure to serve alcohol. (this one sounds the most plausible) Once that gossip was established there was a buzz that the Graham brothers were buying the place from the previous owners since the cost to reopen after paying the fines and regaining the licenses was too much of a financial burden. Seems to make sense considering Graham's is the only other competition in the area for their type of establishment. Someone had even said it will be renamed "Diamonds and Denim" and I have no idea how to feel about that. I'm not a big fan of Graham's (for those outside the know, these are large bars with different themed rooms attempting to cater to the whole demographic of the town instead of one type of club country, ghetto, dance, karaoke, etc) only because of the mash up of so many different groups of people in those places always, from my experience, end badly. If they keep The Ranch or whatever it is they'll rename it to under the same format as before I'm sure it won't be too rough of a transition. But then again this is all hearsay. 

A smaller whisper for their reason for closing was the place just went broke, and that I can't quite believe. We played there a few weeks ago for the Ranch Jam and they seemed to be doing just fine with headcount and door charges. Of course, you never know how the money is being handled and if in fact it's being funneled back to the right parts of the business. Still I doubt it....

Finally yet another reason I heard floating around was that it was because of a sting TABC ran on the bar for serving minors. There is no way that place intentionally serves to minors. They were always pretty serious about carding when I went, but teenagers are smart and they know how to wash a marker X off a hand. 

I really don't know what the real story is, but I just wanted to share the whispers and see if someone could set us all straight. It could be part of one of these stories is true or none of them. I had noticed that a few people were filtering into the blog looking for info on The Ranch closing so I thought I would address it. If you have anything to add please feel free to leave a comment.

LAST WEEKEND, CRUDE FEST, AND THE NEW DESIGN

Well if you've ever been to this blog you might have noticed I redesigned the site. I'm really not a huge fan of this design either but it's way better than what I had going on before.  Leave a comment let me know what ya think or do all the work for me and find a template you think would look better.

Crude Fest! Finally Midland has a worthwhile red dirt music festival.

Last weekend's shows were successful. We played our music. Friday at Woody's was fun but the crowd forgot to come. Had some old friends drop by which was great but for the most part it was a pretty slow night for our slot. It made me feel a little better when Ryan McBride, the headliner, got up on stage and it didn't get much busier. We can't blame the music then which made it a success.

Saturday night at City Limits in Stephenville was bananas. The crowd was rolling through the door in a thick stream and we made a few new fans and friends. The crowd of course, were getting there for Whiskey Myers and after watching them go through sound check earlier I understood. Go see Whiskey Myers the next time they are in your neck of the woods. Go drive to one of their shows even if they aren't in your neck of the woods. Their sound is heavy guitar southern rock and very fun to watch on stage. They reminded me strongly of The Black Crows and were really nice guys. After they got off stage and let their guitars cool off we all headed off to a fun after show party. They offered to cart us around in their van in an unfamiliar town, to an unfamiliar party, and then drove us all the way back past their hotel to drop us off at the RV in the wee hours of the morning. It was a fun night. Luckily we all get to tr and repeat the madness at this year's Crude Fest. Haven't heard of it? Look it up because it's going to be a really really great festival.

We are playing in Midland Saturday March 13'th for The Hog Pit's annual St. Patty's Day Bash. Our friends The Jackson Lee Brooks Band are opening up for us and I'm sure it will be a grand time. The green beer will flow like yellow beer and the clover will probably be of the four leafed kind. Me on the other hand, will be in New Orleans for five days celebrating my girlfriend's birthday. I win.

Friday's show

The show this past Friday was a fun one. Jackson Lee Brooks Band opened for us to an enthusiastic crowd and set a good tone for the night. A great deal of their songs remind me of early Cross Canadian Ragweed stuff. The lead guitar had that same fuzzy distortion tone, that is prevalent in Cross songs. Tyson Kerby is the lead vocals for the group and does a good job steering the band through songs. Also taking part in vocals occasionally is Jarrel Brooks who plays rhythm electric for the band. He sang a good cover of Mickey and The Motorcars' "Twilight". The band as a whole is fairly new to the stage, but I could see that they were comfortable performing and had few serious hiccups. I'm sure they have enough staying power to be gigging for quite some time and will easily carve themselves a niche here in West Texas.


Our two sets were pretty vanilla in the spectrum of all the shows we've had. No one forgot any words or notes and the crowd was having a good time. I personally felt off for most of the second set. Some kind of funk settled in on me and it was hard to shake the mental block. I played my parts and solos fine, but I was a little lost in my head and kept finding myself really not liking my tone at this part or my phrasing in that last solo. Mental hoodoo is always frustrating and I've had those demons bouncing around in my head before on stage. It makes an annoying cycle where you keep being too hard on yourself while you're playing and at the same time can't really improve because you're focusing so much energy on your momentary flaws. I shook it off finally near the end with the help of the band's collective stage energy and was able to hop off stage, for the most part, satisfied.

There was talk about playing a show up near Amarillo next weekend, but I do believe that it never got hammered out all the way. The weekend after that we will all be celebrating Cody's engagement to his girlfriend Sarah and not playing any shows. The rest of May is going to be a busy couple of weeks sending us on the road to a few different places. I'm excited to have some more time to practice on my personal sound which has been bothering me slightly. Hopefully by the time I find myself on the way to our road shows i'll have some of those tone kinks hammered out.

On a harp side note I was thinking recently about buying a Harp Attack Pedal made by the Lone Wolf Blues Company. It is a tube powered pre amp pedal that gives a great deal of warm crunchy tone when used with a P.A. and some amps. I threw some e-mails back and forth to, I think the owner and builder of the pedals, and found sadly that it would most likely not be the best purchase for me. What was really cool though was that Randy, the man I had been talking to, was very helpful in telling me the pro's and cons of using that pedal with my rig. He had no problem losing a sale and giving the advice to hold off on buying one of his products since he wasn't sure it would provide what I was looking for. I really appreciated his honesty and good ethics. I urge any harp players out there to have a look at his products because they are bulletproof and are backed by a man with better intentions than solely profit.

Jackson Lee Brooks Band and Cody Hughes Davidson Band at the Hog Pit

Tonight we are playing at the Permian Basin barbecue cook off at the Hog Pit. Jackson lee Brooks is opening up for us and I have heard a great deal of good things about them. On a personal note my sister and our good family friend are flying in for the weekend to say hi. It makes the show much more special to me to be playing for family that never gets around these parts. Hopefully the night will go off without a hitch and it'll be a blast. Look for a review of Jackson Lee Brooks after the show some time this weekend.

If you're in a more southern region of Texas and aren't planning to be roadtrippin your way to our show, you should go check out The Duck Jam in College Station, Texas April 25'th. Clay Walker, Bad Company, Kevin Fowler, Band of Heathens, South Austin Jug Band, Seth James, Brett Crenshaw, Dr. Zog Zydeco Swamp Band, and a ton of others are all jumping on stage. Also to boot, there will be a great deal of other festivities including a barbecue cook off, crawfish boil, dock dogs big air competition, and monster truck rides. I apologise in advance for the masses of Aggies you will encounter, but aside from them it should be a great time.