BDL Winter Tour, Mid-West and Rockies!

Hello All You Big Bus Lovin' Daddios!

We are a little over halfway through our winter tour through the Midwest and Rocky Mountains.  We've driven through 2 blizzards and made some really great friends along the way.   Here's a little glimpse.

We started off by hitting some of our new favorite places in Ohio: Dayton and Columbus.  We've started seeing some familiar faces at these shows and they are bringing friends.

Our first show in Chicago was great as well, as we had some family from Possum Holler show up!  Todd Pettit and Lynn Bryan were in Chi-town visiting friends so they brought a big group to our show.

Possum Holler Rules!!

One of our favorite places to play is in Evansville, Indiana, and it is the perfect example of a passionate venue owner who is able to create a music scene from scratch.  Amy Rivers-Word has done such a great job in building a venue that bands just love to play! 

Any venue that has a skeleton riding a deer head with bras hanging from its knees is going to be awesome!

Lamasco Bar and Grill

As we were heading out west a car pulls up to us at 70mph on the highway and a guy just hands a Grateful Dead CD out the window to Ashley!  We have no idea why this happened!  But in a strange occurrence of synchronicity this album was recorded in 1970 on the exact day as he handed it to us!  Did he know this?  We'll never know. 

Scott gets some great shots from the van

We miss our doggies and families when we travel, so we find some foster doggies to give some lovin' to. 

We had a special guest for part of the trip, the famous Mrs. Karen Moss!   She's super badass and works security for us when we need.  She'll straight knock a sucka out!

A van full of MOSS!

As we were leaving Wichita KS we experienced our first blizzard, as we basically tried to drive out of it all day.  I heard Wichita got as much as 2 feet of snow.  We made it to Aurora CO before we just had to pull over and get a hotel room.   

The next morning the roads were clear and we drove to Nederland CO.  Most people know this cool little mountain town as an early home base for the great jamgrass band Leftover Salmon.  

We love to find local coffee shops to hang out in, and this one was one of the best.   It was 3 caboose cars all connected. 

Nederland, CO

We had a really great show at the Pioneer Inn (the locals refer to it as the "P.I.")  We've always had a feeling that CO people would dig the BDL sound, and we were right.  The crowd was amazing and boogied their tushes off, and a super nice couple invited us back to their house for the evening, which was really great since hotels there were very expensive.


Here's a shot of new BDL family, The Colorado Chapter.  

Nederland has a famous "Carousel of Happiness" run by a guy named "Bigfoot."  Wook had to try it out.  We think it works. 

Happy Wook!

So let me set this scene up for you.  We met some great people, but one of the funniest was a guy named Bud.   He found this kids toy that borders on hilarious and freaky.  Here it is:

So Bud decided that he would take this toy and wear it around his neck to the Further Concert (surviving members of the Grateful Dead) that night in Denver, and only communicate to people with his new toy.  Nederland people rock!

We headed to Keystone and played at a famous venue called The Goat.   Every now and then we get put up in super nice places and this was one of those times!   Here's a view from our hotel. 



We left Keystone for our 7 hour drive to Santa Fe NM.  This has to be one of the most amazing drives we've ever had in the 3.5 years of the band, for the sheer drastic change of the scenery.  We went from snow covered peaks to prairies to desert.  It was unbelievable.  Here's a few shots.

 

As most of you probably read on our FB post, our Santa Fe show was really amazing.  A friend described Santa Fe as "A little pocket of coolness, much like Austin, Boone,and Asheville."  We totally agree.   We also got a taste of the power of radio, as people knew who we were already. 

We left Santa Fe yesterday and drove straight into a blizzard.  I guess you might call us lucky, but Chicago experienced its coldest temps of the year when we were there, and Denver just got its biggest snowfall!   It's how we roll.  

 

After we got the van into a hotel parking lot--barely--we walked about half a mile in the blizzard to a Chili's that was still open and found out they had a two-for-one beer special. Small consolation prize for a rough day.

Thanks for hanging with us.  To all our friends, old and new, we hope to see ya soon!

Brian and BDL.


Upcoming shows (visit our Facebook events page for show details):

2/28      Durango, CO                 The Summit
3/1        Manitou Springs, CO     Ancient Mariner
3/2        Denver, CO                   Quixote's True Blue
3/8        Wilmington, NC             The Whiskey
3/9        Beaufort, NC                 The Backstreet Pub
3/14      Raleigh, NC                    Berkeley Cafe
3/15      High Point, NC               Blue Bourbon Jack's
3/16      Dobson, NC                   The Coffee Bean
3/17      Boone, NC                     Murphy's

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

Holiday shows and a NYE weekend festival in NC!

Howdy all you Big Bus Lovin' Daddios,

Upcoming shows this weekend;
Thursday: Newport News VA, Hoss's Deli
Friday: Baltimore MD, 8x10 Club
Saturday: Williamsport PA, Bullfrog Brewery. 

We've been really busy the last few weeks, with shows all over NC, SC, and Virginia, in addition to a run to OH and IN! That's too much to try to cover here, so instead we'll talk a little bit about our first Love Bus Costume Ball that we held on October 13. Love Bus in Wonderland was (obviously) Alice in Wonderland themed. It was also a book drive and fundraiser for the children and youth library at Winston-Salem Industries for the Blind. We had a great time dressing up and seeing all of the creative costumes you all came up with!

BDL in their Wonderland costumes

We want to take some time and let everyone know about our holiday plans this year.   Unfortunately (beyond our control)  we are unable to play our annual Thanksgiving show in Sparta, NC, but it is OK because we want everyone to come to our Ziggy's show the day before Thanksgiving (Wednesday, November 21st).  We will be recording and filming the show for a live album, and we want all our friends to be a part of it!  The one thing that we consistently hear the most is "We want an album with Scott singing!"  So we've decided that this is the perfect opportunity to make that happen. There are a few other big reasons why this show will be amazing: BIG SOMETHING and Winston-Salem favorite THE HERITAGE, featuring our very own Mr. Cass Copsey. AND the Ziggy's show will be a Love Bus event: a food drive for Second Harvest Food Bank. Bring canned food, soups, peanut butter or even toiletry items (such as shampoo or toothpaste). Help us fight hunger in Winston-Salem, especially in these colder months and the holidays. Here are details for the Ziggy's show on November 21st.

We LOVE playing Ziggy's!

A pic from our CD release party with Jim Lauderdale. 

We also have some great events coming up for the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve.  We start off by playing at two of our "home-away-from-home" markets:  Raleigh on Thursday, December 27th, and Rutherfordton on Friday, December 28th. Finally, we are hosting our very own New Year's Eve party at the Ten O One Club in Winston with our friends The Deluge!

On Saturday, December 29th, we are part of The NC Music and Arts Festival, which our favorite venue owners, Chris Phelps and Brittany Wilson, are putting on in Lexington, NC.   Check out this lineup, all for $30:  Holy Ghost Tent Revival, Big Something, New Familiars, BDL, and Barefoot Manner, and The Broadcast.  This mini-festival runs two nights, and you can get details and buy tickets here.  Come celebrate local NC musicians in the beautiful Edward C. Smith Auditorium. 

Here's some video from one of our shows at High Rock in Lexington NC

Would you like to be a part of our "street team" and help us put up flyers in your market for free tickets to shows?   Email us at bigdaddystreetteam@gmail.com.

We hope everyone is having a great week, and we hope to see you soon.

Thanks so much,
BDL

New BDL Merchandise!

We are really excited about our new t-shirts, which we just got last week! Here's a sneak peek, but be sure to come check out all the new merch at any upcoming show. NC folks, you'll have TWO chances to grab one (or all!) of these tomorrow, as we play the Dixie Classic Fair at 7:30 on the Clock Tower Stage, followed by a late show at Ten O One with our good friends the Wyndy Trail Travelers.

First, we have two t-shirt options with the new BDL logo! We're really thrilled by how these turned out. We also have the design on a black tee. These are all $15 each.

Next is another design from the logo contest that we really loved, and it looks awesome on a tee. It's also $15.

Finally, by popular demand, a long-sleeve shirt! The moose design looks great on this one, too; it's $20.

Before I sign off, here's a video of the Wyndy Trail Travelers. If you've never seen them, you're in for a treat tomorrow night! See you down the road!

Brian and Big Daddy Love

9/12 - 9/18 Our trip to NY, PA, MA, and beautiful VT so far!

Howdy all you Big Love Bussin' Daddios!

Upcoming Shows:
9/19  Harrisonburg, PA,  Appalachian Brewery
9/20  Washington, DC, South on South Capital show
920   Washington, DC, Bayou on the Pen
9/21  Richmond, VA, The Camel
9/22  Hot Springs, NC, French Broad Fall Festival

We are sitting in Williamsport, PA.  If you're a baseball fan and that rings a bell, it is because this is the home of the Little League World Series, along with the Little League World Series Hall of fame (of course!).   It also has some really great hiking trails close by, we hear; we don't know for sure since yesterday was our day off and it rained almost 3 inches.  I hear that NC had a lot of rain as well.

The trip has been good so far.  It's always fun to see people experience New York City for the first time, and this trip was Scott's.

We met up with Big Something to play Sullivan Hall, which is known as one of the best small venues in the whole city.  We had a whole slew of NC boys in NYC that night.

Outside Sullivan Hall in NY.

After the show, we found out that we were on the same block as the place we visited last time we were in the city, a place called The Red Lion.  On that trip, the house band let BDL (sans banjo) get up and play a few songs.  We had a blast that night and couldn't believe we were so close to it again.

I can tell you that I absolutely loved this band.  They are called Days of Wild - be sure to check them out. The guys from Big Something met us there and we watched one of the most amazing shows we had seen in a while, and this is why I love NYC so much.  To survive in the city -where tiny one room apts are $2500/month- you have to be really good at something.  Here we have this house band that plays a couple of times a week and charges no cover, and they are better than almost any other band we see on the road.   And this goes for most of the people you'll meet in the city.  They are both very smart, and very good at what they do, which is the combination of things that make people extremely interesting.  I've loved everyone I've met in the city because of this, and I think it is why there is a palpable electric charge in the air that everyone notices when visiting. 

We see a lot of music on the road: some of it is pretty good, and some of it is just ok.  On this night we saw a band made up of people from all over the world (Japan, Britain, Brazil, and France were all represented here), and they absolutely rocked it.  We were blessed with the presence of the biggest BDL fan in CA that night, as Jenny De Guzman flew to NY with her friend Dennis, to hang out with us, and I remember standing beside her saying, "You know, this reminds me why I play music."  It doesn't matter what job you have, it can become mundane sometimes with the ins and outs of the daily grind, and this does happen to all of us, but I remember standing there feeling like I was falling in love with music all over again.  These musicians understood their craft on a very deep level, a place where the groove is a living and breathing entity that everyone plays a small role in, and no one controls.  We all agreed the trumpet player (not in this pic) was probably the best player we've ever seen, and he was there with his girlfriend who had a small board set up and literally took tap-dance solos with a super funky beat behind it.  It sounds weird, but it worked.   You can see the drummer in this picture, his name is Papa Guyo, and he was a character.  Full head of white hair and white beard, but he lived and breathed a funky groove, or a straight Latin-flavored beat, whatever they decided to play.  His drum kit consisted of a bass drum, snare, hi-hat, one cymbal, and a cow-bell (oh yeah!) and he played more on that minimalist kit than you'll see drummers play on a set of 15 drums. 

The next time you're in the city, find The Red Lion.

Our next stop took us to Wilkes-Barre, PA, to play a cool venue called the River Street Jazz Cafe with our new and fast friends, MiZ.  They first opened for us in Boone, NC, and now we get to open for them in their hometown.  We really like these guys a lot.  They are all super-nice and all great musicians, and we're proud to be sharing another show with them on October 20th at the Berkeley Cafe in Raleigh, NC. 

You can listen to our set at the River St Jazz Cafe.

Me sitting in with Miz.  Mike Mizwinski and Justin Mazer L-R

Our "anchor" for this trip, as we call it, was the Wormtown Music Festival in Massachusetts.  Here are a few pics from the festival.

You don't see this very much!  Tie-dyes beside a 19th century graveyard!

One of the stages at Wormtown

Here is the guitar player of a Grateful Dead cover band.  Yes, really!

Sometimes sleeping arrangements aren't what you would call "optimal" and we have to do the best we can.  The reason we call the van "the bus" is because it doubles as sleeping space as well.

Scott and Scotty showing how to properly sleep in the bus.

The next day we headed to the very scenic Burlington, VT, where our manager Tom Baggott lives.  He's worked with bands such as Phish and Railroad Earth when they were our size, and he seems to see the same potential in us, which is the type of person we want on our team!  He was able to get us into the legendary venue of Nectar's that is known as being Phish's home base as they were starting out. And no, we didn't play "Rift."  We talked about it and debated it but decided not to.

Tom has always told us the VT mountains will remind us of home and they really do.  I can see why people love this place so much, as it is one of the most beautiful places we've ever been.  This was definitely the farthest north I've ever been in my life.

The next day we had a very long 9.5 hour drive to get back to PA and play in Williamsport, at a great place called the Bull Frog Brewery.   We found out after our first set that quite a few people had driven over from Wilkes-Barre who had seen us 2 nights before for their first time.  We just thought that was awesome.  This was probably the best reception we've had so far, as everyone at the show really got it.  They were engaged with every song we played, and we could feel the energy and had a blast.   The owner of this brewery actually gave us the 2nd floor of his building, which is an empty banquet room, to stay in for free for the last two nights. 

Our accommodations for 2 days!  They trusted us with a stocked bar! 

That's about it for now.  Thanks for keeping up with us, and feel free to share this blog on all the inter-web tubes so we can get the word out!  We'll be back home in NC soon. 

Oh, and we've picked up some brand new shirts that we are very proud of.  Probably our favorite shirts so far.  So be on the lookout for them at our merch table.  We'll get some good pics of them to post soon.  

We'd love some street team help as well.  If you're interested please send info to:  bigdaddystreetteam@gmail.com.

Thanks so much and see ya down the road!

--Brian and BDL

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.