BDL in early summer '13 - From Mountain Tops to Islands, BIG Festivals and Keller Williams

Hello All You Big Love Bussin' Daddios!

We just kicked off our big summer tour yesterday.  I know I'm more excited about seeing MT, WY, and SD than anywhere we've been so far.  We'll be posting pics, and I will do my best to get a travel blog posted on one of our days off.

If you have any friends in these places, please let them know we're on our way!
And don't forget our new album is now available on iTunes!

I wanted to give a recap of our summer so far, before we really get into the Western tour.  The highlight of early June was playing in Johnson City at the Blue Plum Festival with Keller Williams sitting in on the groovy disco Grateful Dead tune "Shakedown Street."  But for me, the behind-the-scenes story of how we got to that point is just as cool, and it is the perfect example of how one person can make such a big difference to a band like us.  I'm not sure where Teri Dosher saw us first, but several years ago we realized we had a new "super-fan," as we like to call them.   She would drive several hours with her daughter Zoe and come see us play, buy albums and t-shirts, and be generally very supportive, positive, laid-back and happy to be in the moment.  Teri started lobbying the owner of a great venue in Johnson City called "The Down Home" to get us a gig there.  It took a little while, but the owner, Ed Snodderly, finally got a date settled, and we came to play our first gig for him.  We had a small crowd that night, mostly all Teri's friends, but Ed just loved us.  Our manager, Tom, always reminds us that sometimes when we go to brand new places we're basically there to play for the owner.  Because when an owner of a venue gets behind you then it becomes much easier to build a crowd in the market.  That night Ed Snodderly became a new fan and then gave us a prime slot at the Blue Plum Festival, right before Keller and the Traveling McCoury's.  So as we're standing onstage with an American Jam Scene legend playing "Shakedown Street," in the back of my mind I'm thinking about how we got to this point, and how everything we do is an accumulation of everyone around us.  Never underestimate the passion of a single fan. 

In the middle of the month we headed to Goat Island off the coast of SC and played a party/celebration-of-life for a friend of ours who passed away earlier this year in a scuba accident.  It was a really beautiful day in every single way.  We've talked about Keith several times, and Joey wrote a really great fan of the week post about Keith.
**[If you're interested, I actually wrote a more detailed post about the experience over on Lonesome Banjo Chronicles.]

The Blue Ridge BBQ and Music Festival in Tryon, NC is another example of how much it helps to have festival and venue owners and promoters behind you.  Benton Wharton (think of all the huge shows at Pisgah Brewing near Asheville) has been a BDL fan from the very beginning.  This festival usually has very established and national names as headliners, like Donna the Buffalo and Acoustic Syndicate.  So to be able to jump up to that level in just a few years is really cool for us!

We also just had our first Ocracoke Island experience.  This place is just magical, especially when you have great venue owners like Red and Ashley of Gaffer's.  Could this be a possible NYE destination for the Love Bus?? Hmmmm.....we'll see!

All of this leads us to this past weekend, which I think might have been one of the most fun weekends in BDL history.  It's rare that we get to spend a full weekend traveling with friends and family, but everything worked out for this trip.  Scott and Joey's wives, Karen and Beth, were able to travel the whole weekend with us, along with our good friends Cassie Gold, and Travis and Jenny Viars.

We started at the Whitewater Center near Charlotte, NC.  This has turned into one of the coolest places in the entire state.  They've built a new festival-style stage on the "island" and are now hosting regional and national names in music on a continuous basis.  Once again we got to jam with Keller Williams.

As we escaped one of the two epic bursts of thunderstorm that day, we had one of the best backstage moments ever, as the girls decided to perform for us.

BDL friends and Family

In some ways it was a "Spinal Tap" weekend.   We went from playing for almost 8,000 people at the Whitewater Center near Charlotte, to driving high up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwestern VA to a tiny little mountain lodge and resort (some of the scenes from Dirty Dancing were filmed there) to play for about 40 people.  But sometimes the most random nights turn out the best, and we finished early and were able to just enjoy being together on top of a mountain for a full night of nonsensical ninja shenanigans.  Just one of those perfect nights with good friends. 

Then there's The Big What.....

I don't know what to say about this festival.  There are some experiences that are almost beyond words and this is one of them.  Our brothers from the band Big Something, along with Jeremy Bell and the Possum Holler crew, have worked their butts off to make this one great experience.  I don't know of any other festival that has tapped into the burgeoning NC music scene on such a deep level.

We wanted a BIG surprise for the festival, and we realized that covering a Big Something song in front of Big Something at their very own festival would be perfect.  So we learned one of their most popular songs, "Amanda Lynn," and the looks on their faces when we played it was priceless.   One of them came up to me afterward and said, "moments like that are why we put on this festival!"

Casey Cranford jamming with us

Our good friend Ross from the band Mama's Love played part of the set with us on keys.

Wild Wooly What in the Woods!  (Kevin James photographer)

We ended the weekend playing for our good friend Brad Edwards.  Brad was one of the first to sign up for our Sunday Afternoon parties that helped with our "Live At Ziggy's" project.   Of course, being the awesome guy that Brad is, he used the party to raise money for the Alleghany County 4-H.   If there was ever a couple that embody everything amazing about Sparta, NC, it is Brad and Susan Edwards (below).  They put community and family before themselves, and it is because of people like this that Joey and I will always consider Sparta "home," no matter where we go.   

Brad and Susan Edwards

Thanks to everyone for jumping onto this crazy adventure with us!

Brian and BDL

2012 - Year in Review for BDL

Right before our main stage set at Floyd Fest. 

Hello all you Big Bus Lovin' Daddios!

What a year huh?!

Our transition of gaining Scott Moss and Scotty Lewis is definitely the biggest story for us, and what a ride it has been.   I can't tell you how many conversations we've all had with long time fans who told us they were at first "skeptical," but after hearing the new line-up were amazingly surprised at how good the music sounds, and, of course, that is what drives us the most.  So to everyone that came up and told us this, we want to give a huge "Thank You!"  

Here's the initial announcement that introduced everyone to Scott Moss.

A month later we were joined by the dreadlocked powerhouse of a drummer, Mr. Scotty Lewis, from Richmond, VA, and we immediately took off to Colorado for an amazing tour.   I had to write about one of the nights deep in the mountains of CO, and looking back I think it was my favorite night of the whole year.   We are currently making plans to go back to CO in late February and hook back up with Jack Ten High, our  friends from this story.  

Scotty in his "happy place"

When we returned in June, we got to open up for a true musical legend, Mr. Willie Nelson! I tried to describe the experience here.  

A huge part of our summer for the last few years has been the incredible FloydFest.  Unfortunately we won't be there this year (I believe we might be back in CO during that month), but we can't wait to come back.  Here are some of our favorite pictures of this year.   It was here we learned that L Shape Lot were truly our "brothers from other mothers."  We had so much fun sharing sets and talking smack about each other from the stage.

Our view!

Our great friends L Shape Lot!

BDL at Floyd Fest with Andrew Hendryx of Yarn

A great shot by our friend Roger Gupta at the Pink Floyd Stage

Another memorable festival was The Big What? hosted by our friends Big Something and Jeremy Bell in Prospect Holler, NC.   We debuted our cover of the great song "Rift" by Phish at this festival.  I wrote about the process of learning such a complicated song in this travel blog post.   

This video starts at the last part of "Let it Grow" continues through "20 Acre Farm," and "Rebecca" -->"Up To You," and finally ends about halfway through "Circle Around the Sun."

We also had a blast at our Alice in Wonderland themed charity show at High Rock Outfitters in Lexington NC.   In case you're wondering, Scott decided to be "Alice COOPER in Wonderland!"  Pretty good twist on things.  

Love Bus in Wonderland

And then we get to our November Ziggy's show!  This was probably our favorite show of the year, along with the Willie show, of course.  The Heritage and Big Something absolutely killed it during their sets, and we ended up getting some fantastic video and audio recordings that we are working to release this spring as a DVD.  The video will feature some neat footage caught by a Go-Pro Camera that was attached to the headstock of the banjo and electric guitar for some up-close shots of furiously fast flying fingers.  We can't wait to get this live album/DVD out.  

With our friends from Big Something and The Heritage. 

The saturation of music festivals through the summer months only means one thing...we need some killer wintertime festivals to look forward to.  Our favorite venue owners, Chris Phelps and Brittany Wilson, have stepped up and started the NC Music and Arts Festival in a beautiful downtown theater in Lexington, NC.  We had so much fun here.

NC Music and Arts Fest

We'd like to take a second and list our favorite albums of the year.  We've been talking about doing this for some time now since we hear a lot of new music in our travels and some of it just really blows us away.  Two bands that aren't listed but have to be mentioned are Possum Jenkins and Folk Soul Revival.   We listen to their albums a lot while we are traveling.

Scott Moss -  Shovels and Rope "O, Be Joyful"

Ashley Sutton - Lucas Nelson and Promise of the Real "Wasted"

Brian Swenk - Aaron Burdett "Breathing Underwater"

Joey Recchio - The Kevin Maines Band "American Hustle" 

Scotty Lewis - Taylor Swift "Red"

In 2012 we started venturing up north, to places we've never been before such as Chicago, Burlington, VT, Massachusetts, New York, and surprisingly one of our favorite new states is Pennsylvania!  Our manager, Tom Baggott, had been telling us that the hills and mountains of PA are very similar to where we were raised and the people there will  really connect with our "Appalachian Rock."  He was absolutely right.  We also met another band that we were able to connect with, Miz.  A great group of guys.  

Through all the big festivals and shows we've experienced this year and were lucky enough to have documented by great photographers like Jenny Viars, Roger Gupta, and Milo Farineau, there were so many smaller shows that were just as much fun because the people there had amazing energy and loved the music.   One in particular that will always stand out to us was playing the staff after-party in a large covered gazebo for the Camp Barefoot Music Festival.  Everyone was exhausted and had just worked their butts off, but it was just one of those nights where the music got going and everyone caught a second wind and started boogying down.  We had so much fun at that party, which shows that the big stages and lights and sound systems are nice, but what really matters is just playing music for people who love it.   

So like I said before, "What a year, huh?"  So much change along with so many amazing experiences that we never imagined would be possible.   We'll be slam packed this coming year, going out west and up north more than ever before.  So we hope to see you soon, and thanks for everything you've done for us.  We couldn't do any of this without y'all!

Brian, Scott, Joey, Scotty, and Ashley

The Evolution of a Song...

A good friend of ours and one of the drivers of our charity team "The Love Bus," Stacy Jones, mentioned to me that she liked the "behind the scenes conversation" of what songs we were going to play with L Shaped Lot at Floyd Fest.  That gave me the idea of writing about how we came about playing the great Phish song "Rift."

First of all, Phish is one of those bands that live music fans typically either really love or really hate.   Musicians can approach it a little differently because the music those four guys make is on such a higher plane compared to what's out there these days.  The pure compositions can make even be-bop jazz, which is also a complicated style of music, seem simple.   One has to look to the likes of Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, and the composers of orchestral music to find compositions of similar complexity.  And even then you still are hard pressed to find anyone who flows deftly between genres of music while maintaining such a high level of creative output.  It is from these aspects of their music that BDL draws a lot of inspiration.  Joey has never even seen a live Phish show but has dug into Trey Anastasio's playing on a deep level.  On the other hand both Scotty and I have seen a lot of shows.

I can remember the genesis of the idea pretty clearly.  Joey was learning a couple different Trey solos, and one of them was "Rift."   I got my banjo and said, "You know, the intro and the piano solo of that song are perfect for the banjo."  I started playing it, and we laughed about how cool it would be to learn the whole song and perform it.  At that point it was nothing more than one of those, "Wouldn't it be cool if...." ideas.  (We have a lot of those.)  Throughout the weeks he kept learning more and more of the guitar solo (it's a very long guitar solo), and we figured out what chords were being played underneath; the two of us would play a little bit of it during soundcheck through the late spring and early summer months.

Around the middle of the summer, Ashley came up to us and said, "We should really figure out something special to play at the Big What Festival in late August."  As a lot of you know, this is a very small festival compared to the likes of Floyd Fest and some others that we play through the year.  But the difference is this festival is hosted and attended by all the people that we consider family.  Big Something was the host band, and we've developed a very deep friendship with these guys.  The land owner, Jeremy Bell, is one of our favorite people in the whole world.  And it's held at a place called Possum Holler!  It's the perfect storm of awesomeness.   And Wook was right, we needed something special.

So a few weeks before the festival, we met at our super secret Shelby shed space and started working on the song.  First of all, it's just a hard song to play.  One of the driving forces behind us learning it is knowing that if we could pull this off, it would blow some peoples minds.  There are very few bands that would even attempt it, much less be successful, and we loved this challenge. 

Let me give you an idea of what this song consists of.  If you play every note from one "C" to the next octave "C" you'll play 12 tones in all.   A majority of the songs we're exposed to will have chords based off only 3 of those tones, such as a typical blues song.  Most pop songs you hear will have up to 5 chords from the 12 tones.   But not this song: oh no, Rift has a chord based on every single tone, 12 different chords in all types of different combinations, which is almost unheard of. 

We discovered that Scotty can actually sing the second part while playing this incredibly hard poly-rhythm drum part.  It blew our minds, really.  We spent a few days working on the song, and started wishing each other "good luck" each time we started playing it (a habit that we're still in, actually).  It started coming together and we realized that we might actually pull this off.  After a little break, we met for one last rehearsal before going to the festival.  We knew we had it at that point.  As we were packing up from that last rehearsal, I can remember a moment when Joey was walking around in a dazed fashion looking at the ground and talking to himself, saying "I can't believe it...I can't believe it."  I asked if he was ok, and he just looked at me an said, "I can't believe I'm in a band that can play Rift."  I knew exactly what he meant!

So there we are, at the Big What Festival and we finally get to the point that we've been looking forward to for quite a while.  We get Jeremy Bell onstage to recognize him for all the work he's put into the fest and say, "This song is for you."  (He's a huge Phish-head too.)  And we played it...all of it.  I think we were just as surprised in the moment that we were doing it as the audience who had no idea.  It was quite an experience.

You can listen to the whole show here.  

We also just played the Camp Barefoot Festival near Bartow, WV and saw the most amazing light show that we've ever witnessed.  The festival actually had to get permission from the FAA (yes, that FAA) before they could allow it.  The light show basically consisted of the strongest lasers that we've ever seen.  I'll add some pix from our good friend Andy Cox.  You should "like" his page and you'll see amazing photos from the best festivals in the Southeast.   He's also the photographer that got the picture of us at Floyd Fest by the big "LOVE" sign that you see in our last album.

The owner of this festival, Scott McClain, is a huge BDL supporter and is one of those people that got behind us early, inviting us to his festival twice, hired us to play his sister's wedding, and most recently invited us to stay Sunday night and play the staff after-party.  Our festival sets were fun, but there's nothing like playing a party for a big group of people who just worked their butts off putting on a  festival of this size.  They were so appreciative, and we were happy to do it.

And so here are some pictures of lasers so strong that they are regulated by the FAA.  

Before I sign off, I do want to say congratulations to Joey, who got married in Costa Rica just a few weeks ago. Congrats, Beth and Joey!! We love you guys.

--Brian (with lots of help from Jenny Viars) and BDL

If you'd like to help us out with street team email us at bigdaddystreetteam@gmail.com

See ya down the road.