Fender Excelsior tone pod mod

  I've been on a bit of a tone search trip lately. I always had almost as big interest on the tone of guitar as I did in the playing of it. Also in the nature of this blog and just plain simple restrictions of finances, I am always aware of how much I spend on my equipment. But even more so I am always looking for something new in tone, something you just can't buy from your local music store. You see, there are these musicians who have the best of the best equipment and all I say is good on you. But I find if our goal is to buy the Gibson Les Paul Custom and Mesa boogie triple rectifier (you can replace the guitar and the amp for any top end make here), more and more things will start to sound the same.
 I know I am not alone in this search and for those of us not too impressed by the perfection of a €2000 off the shelf amp are left with few options. You can go the vintage rout, look for that magical 30 year old amp or guitar, which in many cases is over priced. I personally like the idea of actually customizing my tone.

  So earlier this year I came across a new amp from Fender that got me bit exited (we've all been there). The amp in question is Fender Excelsior. Amp made in style of 1950s catalogue amps. It is a simple amp, with three inputs. Volume and tremolo controls and single dark to bright tone switch. It is full valve (tube for our american friends) design 13 watts and projects the sound from a single 15 inch speaker. The thing about this amp is that it is not trying to sound like any other amp, it has a tone of its own. But also it is designed to be a great platform for modifications.
  After doing my usual research that I do before purchasing any new equipment, I got a great deal and decided to purchase the amp. On my purchase I was very impressed with the amp, but still I knew I was going to alter the amp to get a tone that is more what I had in mind. The first short fall of the amp is the dark to bright tone switch. The bright is pretty shrilly and piercing tone and the dark is lacking in clarity. It was clear from the beginning that the ideal tone from the amp would be some where between the two. So I decided change the switch in to a tone pot. I do need to say here that any one doing this will straight away cancel
out their warranty on the amp. But I had run the amp through it paces and knew it was working fine. If something was to go, it would be something that could be fixed by any good amp tech (also another beauty of the simple design of this amp). I used to have a Fender blues junior, a great little amp. But I was never impressed with this amps internal design. I had a problem with the input jack and one of the valve sockets, which were bot attached to the circuit board that was very tightly designed. To be honest with you, I actually had one look inside and decided the blues junior. But the Fender Excelsior's insides are much more modification friendly. There is loads room inside and the power and pre amp sections are housed separately. If you are more interested in the inner workings of this amp, I recommend you take a look at Billm's website and especially his page on Excelsior

  Anyway, so I had a spare 500k pot in my spare parts, and decided to open the amp up. As I mentioned earlier the pre amp part is separate from the power amp part, so opening the amp was very easy. Two screws on top of the amp and I had the pre amp chassis in my hands. Few more screws and I had it opened up. Inside I could find the dark bright tone switch that has three cables attached to it. I carefully desoldered them and attached them to the pot exactly the same order as they were in the switch. It took little bit of filing to fit the pot in to the hole of the old switch. I also had an old control knob, that nicely covered the screw holes that held the switch. It's not exactly the style of the other two knobs, so I might look for some new knobs, kind of like the idea of cream colored chickenheads. When I started opening the amp, stuck the Black presidents CD on, and by the time I had it done, the album just finished, so just over half an hour it took me and the difference with the tone control is amazing! It really makes this amp very flexible for its three control design.
  Just a small warning here. I would not call my self an expert in electronics, but I knew what I was doing before I opened the amp up. There can be potentially lethal charge in a valve amp. So make sure you know what you are doing! Once again Billm's website has been a wealth of information for me, so check it out at www.billmaudio.com and especially his page on discharging capacitors. This is an easy modification, but you can potentially do permanent damage to your amp, so don't tell me I didn't warn you. As mentioned above, if you do this the manufacturers warranty is gone! So if you are worried about this, either don't do it, or wait until the warranty is out. Personally for me I bought this amp as much for playing and gigging as to learn the insides of an simple valve amp, so I wasn't worried about this.

    So there it is. The first mod on a journey to my own tone. I am also tinkering with the oldest and cheapest Boss distortion pedal DS-1. The results so far are great! So I'll be sharing some of these with you in the future as well. Great tone on a shoestring ;-) and best of all, my own tone.
  J.P.

Me and my Telecaster

  On last Saturday afternoon I got back from my well deserved holidays all charged up and hit the ground running. Four hours with Sliotar in the Porterhouse and it did feel good to be back. As much as I was looking forward to my holidays, usually after a week I start missing my guitar and miss playing. It's kind of crazy... I start missing my guitars like people, my finger get itchy and I get fidgety. If guitars were a substance, I suppose I would have a problem ;-)

  Since my return, if I wasn't gigging with Sliotar my Telecaster has not left my side. Also I suppose refreshed from my holidays, I have been messing around with a sound a bit. So I thought to write a bit about my trusty friend, my Telecaster.

  My very first electric guitar was a East German Strat copy. It was rough and cheap, but it was mine and I played it until the frets were nearly down to nothing. One thing I do remember about it is that the pickups had these massive magnets under them and the output was very hot for a Strat. Since then, I have gone through dozens of guitars and I am sure I will go through dozens more before my days are done. I know for some players guitar is just a tool, but many of us are as much in search of that perfect tone as just hoping to play. I love sound, and for me sonic qualities of a recording is almost as important as the songs them selves.
On this on going quest I learn something new all the time. It's what keeps me exited. Sometimes just a great tone can inspire you to write songs.

  I had few guitars over the years that I just had to have. But the relationship with guitar and the player takes time to develop. Some guitars felt great in my hand from the first moment I picked them up, but after a while I started missing something in the tone, or playability. In other times I picked up a guitar and it was a struggle from the get go, but over time I learned to love the instrument . There was always the three legendary guitars that most players leaned towards, Les Paul, Startocaster and Telecaster. Now there are tons of more, but these three are the ones every guitar player has at some point. Also these guitars are copied more by other manufacturers than anything else. I have very nice Gibson Les Paul, that I will never part with. It is very nice guitar to play! It sings, sustains, and drives the right amp in to very sweet and full distortion. I've had several Strats over the years, one of them was a Fernandes copy that was excellent! It was one of the only guitars that I kept stock, as it was built great, the action was great, the pickups were great, the electronics were very good quality. This Strat was a proof that going for the big names is not always the best thing to do. But when I left Finland I got rid of most of my gear. Silly me... Anyway, apart from this Fernandes most Strats were no my friends, just the sound and feel didn't sit with me. I had an obsession about Telecasters for a very long time. I'd say it goes back to me being a big Rolling stones fan since I was a kid. I've had few Squire and few Fender ones over the years. My current Tele is a 2008 Fender highway 1, that I got as a trade few years back. I have now idea what the history it was before I got my hands on it. These Highway 1 series guitars had a mat paint finish that tends to wear off pretty easily, and one of its previous owners had put a varnish on it after the paint started wearing off. The pickups are Fender Texas specials at the moment, but I'm sure there will be many pickups in this Tele through out its life with me. But yeah, part from the varnish, it is very much stock for now. It sounds like Tele, and plays like one.

  Telecasters have been part of rock and roll music from almost the beginning. It has been in production since 1950! That's 62 years and still going strong. It has been played by so many famous guitar players in pretty much every sub genre of rock music. And if anything it is more popular today than ever before among the indie rock guitar players. It is a guitar that plays nicely in most hands. But I think its flexibility is still very under estimated. This guitar has twang, it has bottom end, it has warmth and clarity. It can be a smooth jazz machine, or it can scream like a monster! Very often I see players rocking the Tele, but I feel there is so much more you can do with it. This guitar likes to be treated roughly. It is like it has hidden gears, if you dig bit deeper you can get some wild tones out of it. It is definitely not the easiest guitar to play, but I find it makes me play better when I need to work that bit harder with it. If I had to choose one guitar to do it all, my Tele would be it. At the moment I would love to get my hands on another and put a Bigsby tremolo on it, but I think this has something to do with the fact that I have bit of a Gretsch bug at the moment ;-)

  All I can say is big thank you to Leo Fender for designing such a simple, versatile and strong guitar that has shaped rock music.

  It is funny how we build these relationships with instruments, and how they define us as musicians. What is your favorite guitar and what does it mean to you?


J.P.

And then there was four.

Part 83

  Our first concert of 2012 is nearly here. Upstairs in Sweeney's bar on Dame street on Tuesday the 3rd of April. This will also be our first concert with our new member Patryk Graczyk on guitar, so come along and give him a warm welcome to the band:-). Two weeks a go we did a photo shoot with www.music-shoots.com. Above you can see an example of the results. As I have mentioned before, your bands image is an important part, even though some of us like to think that it is lame to think that way... But it is important, and a good quality photos are important part of your press kit. I have been lost in the world of no internet thanks once again to UPC, who is really making it hard for me to stick with them at the moment... But that's another story;-). But we are working on our new website at the moment, which has temporarily slowed down due to lack of broadband, but when I get everything back working, we will have some of the photos from the photo shoot available for a download as screen savers on the site. But more on that later. We actually have quite few concerts coming up at the moment:-) You can check the detail on our website www.jpkallio.com and of course all the info will be on our Facebook page as well. So we really hope to see many of you in the next month or so at one of the shows.

  And now on to something completely different. Quite long while back we did briefly talk about mastering. A project I have been recording in the paste few months brought this subject to my mind again. It still surprises me a bit how many musicians don't really understand all the aspects of recording process. I think if you are thinking of making a career out of music, you should really spend some time learning about recording. I don't mean you need to become sound engineer or anything like that, but you should understand how the process works. We all know about going to studio and recording songs, and most of us know about mixing. This really is something to keep in mind while many of us end up using some of those studio days you might have won on a battle of the bands, or payed for with your hard earned cash. A very good sound engineer once told me you should spend as much time mixing as you do recording. I know things are much faster now with computers as you can save mixes. But still, serious album will take long time to mix. So if you do have one day in studio, and you want to finish tracks, you need to allow time for mixing. This is where you set the levels of all instruments, clean up tracks, compress what need to be compressed, EQ, add effects, etc. This is part of the recording process that requires quite lot of knowledge and experience from the engineer, but also becomes part of the creative process in the hands of a good studio engineer. When this is done, you will have nice sounding tracks, but to bring them up to the broadcast level you need to master the tracks. This is an art form of its own. Here you have just a stereo track of your mixes, that you worked very hard on, and you run them through multi-band compressors and sometimes an EQ as well. Here is where you get rid of any peaks in the signal and level everything in to a nice tight sound file, that you can then boost to maximum level without it distorting. This sounds simple, but it is very skillful art and requires very detailed high end studio speakers and an engineer with very good and experienced ears. There are studios, like the Trackmix studio that have the facilities to do mastering in-house. And there are studios that specialize in mastering. But lets just say this, don't just expect your tracks to come out of your Pro Tools, or Cubase at the level you hear most commercial tracks. You need to spend some money in good quality mastering to get to that level. And you will be amazed what a great mastering engineer does to your tracks. You will find much more detail and clarity, but still containing the warmth.

  So next time you are planning to spend money on studio, I would consider the mastering as well. Give your tracks a chance to stand up to their full potential.

   J.P.

JPKALLIO.COM looking for a second guitar player.

   In the past few months I haven't really talked much about what's going on with JPKALLIO.COM. Well, lot of stuff has gone down... But here we go.
    So the first bit of the news. Some of you might have been wondering what has been going on with us as we haven't played any concerts for few months. Over the Christmas Tomeks life once again turned upside down as his father had a stroke. So for the most part of the new year Tomek spent by his fathers side in the hospital. His father never recovered from the stroke and last week passed away. This has been a very tough time for Tomek and his family and we decided to keep this to private until his father was put to rest. These are sad events, that unfortunately are part of life, whether we like it or not. Our thoughts are with Tomeks family.
    But I had a chance to catch up with him earlier on the week, and now Tomek is more determined than ever to just get back on his feet and back playing. So you will hear lot more from us in the coming months. The fact is that life has to go on, and that's just what Tomek is going to do with the rest of the band standing strong by his side. That's what being in a band is also about, it is your second family and you stick together through thick and thin. So now we are back rehearsing and bag full of new songs on the way.
    Speaking of new songs here's another bit of news for you and bit more positive: Due to the wildly imaginative side of J.P.s brain having difficulties sticking to simple restrictions, he has ended up writing lots of new songs with two guitar parts. This has left JPKALLIO.COM in a bit of a pickle. After extensive look in to stem cell research and cloning, it turns out that J.P. can not grow another set of hands... So we have no other option than to look for a second guitar player for JPKALLIO.COM. So we are looking for another mad rocker.
They must be:
1. Based in Dublin
2. In possession of their own equipment
3. Aged roughly between 30-40
4. Willing to rehearse two to three times a week, weekday mornings (Yeah we know, pain in the hole...)
5. We take our little band very seriously, so we would expect you to do the same
6.We all have years of experience in music, so we would expect the suitable candidate have experience playing in bands, gigging, recording and organizing all the usual band stuff as a team.
We put lot of weight on finding the right person for this band and if some one just seems to fit the bill extremely well, we can overlook some of the above points. We are not looking for the fastest shredder/ guitar hero, but a solid player with a good understanding of what JPKALLIO.COM is about. Interested? So here is what you'll do: Send an email to jpkallio@hotmail.com, or contact J.P. through his personal facebook page: www.facebook.com/jp.kallio1 Tell us a bit about your self, if you have any tracks or video of you playing, would be great, but not compulsory. Then we'll get you to jam with us. And after all the candidates have had their go, we'll make a decision.
So if you, or some one you know might be interested, get in contact. We wanna hear from you:-)
   J.P.

How to make sure you won't get booked again

  So here we go, I'll get the rant out of the way first. In the past seven months we have done 15 concerts. In these 15 concerts we have done anything from battle of the bands to show case nights to organizing our own concerts. And as lot of you know through my experience with Sliotar and other bands I have played in over the years, I have done well over thousand concerts. So I have seen a lot and I know how hard it is to get band of the ground. Here is one thing that has been bugging me lately: when a band takes a part in any kind of show case/band night, I would expect them to stick around and listen to the other bands. And believe you me I know some of the music would not be up to every ones taste, I don't have much tolerance for out of tune guitars (get a tuner and get your guitar intonated!) and bad timing (Practice with a click), but suck it up, they are in same situation you are or were. Ok, you might have to get up the next morning early to work, but first of all you can talk with your band mates and some of you could stay, if some of you must go. Second, and do I have news here for you, if you seriously want to make it some day, I mean make your living out of music, you will need to learn to get by with very little sleep. Let's repeat that one just to make sure you got it: Being a full time musician, you need to learn to get by with very little sleep! Six hours is a good night sleep for me. Now in all fairness, about once a week I do pass out for nearly twelve hours... But You get my point. There is always some excuses and sometimes they are more valid than others. So just stop and think about it the other way around. Think what you would want the other bands to do while you play? Musician’s talk that's how the word goes around and to be honest with you, what I've seen in the past year, this is what separates the frustrated amateurs from the pros.

  Let's look at this from a different perspective. As I mentioned there above, we have organized some of our own gig nights, and helped other organizers to book bands as well. This is something I have big plans for, and will be doing more and more. From a gig organizers perspective, unless the band has a genuine reason, I mean if you have a important festival gig the next day and a long drive, that's fair enough. But if I just see the band come in, play their set and run off, because it's well past their bed time, you can be sure I won't be booking them any time soon. And if you think I am the only one who thinks this way, I've talked to few organizers and it is one of those things that register at the back of their mind. They will remember the band that stayed till the end and checked out every act. You might think here, what does that have to do with music? Everything! You expect other people to support your band if you don't support others? Anyway, enough of that ;-)

                                         Thanks to Will Bury for the photo.

  So we had a busy week :-) JPKALLIO.COM played twice in Sweeney's. Wednesday was the Music Medium Live night in the basement. As the regular readers of this blog know we've been there few times before. They are a small group of people working hard trying to do something for the music scene in Dublin and slowly but surely they are building momentum, once again proving that hard work and persistence does pay off in music business. They run a Singer songwriter night in the Sweeney's on Tuesday nights, Juke box slot showcase on Wednesday nights, FissionFriday once a month upstairs in Sweeney's and they are just starting another night in the Mezz on Sundays. So if you are looking for a gig for your band or solo act, get in touch with them, they are really nice people as well :-)

  On Saturday night we were back in the Sweeney's, upstairs this time. Weekend nights in Sweeney's are busy, so we had a hopping gig. This was number 15 in our 100 concert challenge, slowly but surely getting there ;-) Also on both gigs it was great to see so many familiar faces, we are making friends on the way.
The next concert at the moment is the Rocktober semi-final in the Fibbers on Saturday the 19th of November. The standard of this competition has been very high, so it will be a great night of music. I think we need to pull out few extra stops for this one ;-)

  In the mean time, we have decided to go and record few tracks in the Trackmix studios, so in few weeks time we'll lock our selves in there for few days and we'll see what comes out of it. We will be bringing camera with us and try to document some of the stuff while we're there. So before that we'll be rehearsing our backsides off. Oh yeah, and we need to agree on the songs we want to record...
So that's enough for this week. Hope you managed to get through the autumn with out a cold; I'm trying to shake mine. Have a good week and I'll be back for more next week.

  Oh nearly forgot to mention:-) The Halloween is on its way. I am taking few days off and going to Warsaw for the long weekend, but there are some great concerts around during the Halloween weekend that deserves a mention. Our friends the Pimps and Gimps are playing in the Harbour bar in Bray on Sunday the 30th of October, so head over there for some quality punk rock. Also the EHT promotions are running a fancy dress metal night in the Pint and our friends 9thlife will be on the bill along with loads of other great bands. Hmm... how do I get a feeling you might find Qra at the Harbour bar and Sebastian at the Pint;-)

J.P.

On a shoestring project part 34

  April just seems to be flying by. We have been busy working on our 100 concert challenge, now it is a lot of concerts... But I must say I am really happy how it is going :-) We'll get there one concert at a time.
  As you might have noticed, the technical advice here I tend to write about here, is always some how linked with what we have been up to. And this week is no different. In the past we talked lot about recording and sound in general in recording environment. This week I thought I'd share with you practical advice on live sound, and also with in conjunction with the Battle of the bands subject from last week. What I am talking about here is a situations where you have a sound engineer, not your own, but one for all the bands on the night. Now we all have heard bands giving out about sound engineers, bad sound systems and what have you. The way I see it is this: Everyone who plays in the venue with a house sound system, uses the same system. So lets for a second assume the sound system is not the greatest. We can moan about this all night, or we can just get on with the concert. We have played now 3 concerts with jpkallio.com, and I am blown away every time when people come to see us :-) It is just one of the greatest things in the world. So yeah we do want to give the people the best possible show. And moaning about the sound is not going to make it any better. So first of all, if you play in a small venue, go back to basics. Get the band sound balanced on the stage; bring the Guitar and bass amps to the level of the acoustic sound of the drums. Make sure you can hear everything spot on. And here is something I learned the hard way last week, if you are a singer, make sure none of the amps are closer to you than the vocal monitor. We played at a very small stage and there was a Marshall Guitar amp on a shelf pretty much right beside my ear. Sounded good, and when I checked the vocals in the monitor it sounded ok as well. But you need to understand that in the battle of the band situation you hardly ever get a proper sound check, it is a quick line check. And even when you get further in your career you will find yourself at festivals that only have quick line check as well... So there you go, get used to it. Learn to set up your equipment fast and train your ears to figure out what you need to hear. Well when the full band kicked in, I completely lost my vocals... It was guess work from there on... And I am talking about three or four song sets where you have only few minutes time to win the crowd over. So you do not want to be fixing the monitor levels between every song. And I must say here that with Sliotar I have been spoiled:-)

On the road we have our own sound system, and at the festivals the sound systems have been top class and the sound crews true professionals. Anyway, after the level of the instruments on the stage is ok, and be critical here. It's not about individuals here, it's about the over all sound. I know your dream valve amp has a sweet spot when it comes to alive, but the best guitar sound in the world wont win you any competitions if you burry the rest of the band. Also you should EQ the guitar and bass already at the amps the way they wont get on top of each others, Bit less bottom on the Guitar, bit less mid on the bass and they should sit nicely together. If you get this right, all the sound engineer would need to do is add some drums. Depending on the size of the room and sound system, this could be anything from Kick and snare to a full kit. Vocals on top clean and clear, and if needs bit of bass and guitar. But this is a job for the sound engineer. You will find that most sound engineers are good at their job. Some are miracle workers. But still if the band sounds Sh*t on stage, you will get a speaker load of the same stuff from the front of the house as well. And if the sound engineer has never heard you before, just explain him shortly what the line up is, what you need in the monitors and in the mix, and he will appreciate this, and you will straight from the beginning give your self much better chance of getting a good sound. Once again let me remind you: if the sound is not great, every one else who is playing on the night are in the same position, so suck it up and get on with it!

  Now, back to the band news. It has been a week of mixed feelings. Tomek’s war wounds acted up big time this week, so he has been out of action with back pain. Any one who ever had it knows how horrible it can be. We can only hope he'll be back in fighting form soon. But on the good side of the news, our E.P. Has gone around a bit and has started having some Radio play:-) There are 3 stations in Canada who have given it a nice bit of spin, Dundalk fm is coming up next week as well :-) We are also been busy on our Facebook and twitter pages, so if you haven't done so, join the fun there at:
www.facebook.com/jpkalliomusic
www.twitter.com/jpkalliomusic
Also if you ever have any questions, or suggestions, Facebook is an easy way to contact us:-)
That’s all for this week and I will talk to you more next week :-)
   J.P.

On a shoestring project part 11

  The winter is really making its self known here, temperature dropping near zero and floods bashing the coast line. Also the winter bug is running wild all around me, we had to cancel last weeks rehearsals as some of the musicians were out of action. This just made me realize how much I have grown to love the project. When I got the call in the morning, my heart sank. But everyone is back in form, and we made up some time :-)
  The past week I was focused on research and song writing. I noticed I am writing songs more for the project now. It's like I have two song writing hats, and when the first few lines of the song came to my head, I get a feeling straight away if the song will be a song for my solo project or for Sliotar. I can't even say why or how but I just know... Anyway, as you know Sliotar keeps me busy on weekends and now we are talking to do some recording with Sliotar as well. So it will be busy few weeks a head of me. I might be wearing one hat in the morning and another in the afternoon.
  Its funny how in the beginning of this project I had an acoustic guitar and few songs, but as soon as we had the first rehearsal, I just knew the album was going to be very much a rock album. Now the rebel in me (yeah there is one in there...) is trying to see how far I can push the boat. But at the same time, as I mentioned last week, I want this to be very much an album that works as a unit, not only as individual songs.
  The research I've been doing this week has been about sound. I am working out a plan for the recording and this includes also what I want everything to sound like. So I am listening to lots of music and analyzing every instrument, also reading a lot about the big engineer’s tricks of the trade. These are all little things (actually pretty big things for me) that will speed up the actual recording process, and leave more time for the actual performance. Also my small office space will be where I'll be tracking most of the vocals and guitars ( I already feel sorry for my neighbours while I try to squeeze most out of my Fender Blues junior), and editing and mixing. Drums and Bass probably will be done in the rehearsal rooms, but we'll see). I have looked in to a little bit of DIY acoustic treatment and how to make the most of my limited space. As I'll be locked up there for days, week’s even months, making it a good sounding room and a pleasant environment to work in will be detrimental. My office really is a small box room, roughly about 1.5m by 3m, concrete walls, tile floor and probably too much stuff... and a pile of guitars. And even before I have got my studio monitors, I can see lots of reflection problems. I am not an expert on the subject, but as hiring a professional to acoustically treat my room, would blow a huge hole in my pretty much non existent budget. So once again I am left with the simple task of research, read and learn. And here is what I need to watch out for. If the sound from the speakers reflects from walls, this can exaggerate frequencies, or even worst cases cancel them out. If you have two guitar amps, and a delay pedal, set the repeat on very fast. When you strike a chord, you hear the direct signal and the delay signal only milliseconds later from the second amp, and you have massive sound. Now basically the same thing happens with the studio speakers, except the second signal is the reflection from the wall. On the guitar, this can be good thing, but while mixing track, not so good! And as to the cancellation, let’s break it down. If you have a guitar amp with an open back cabinet, put it against a wall and play a chord. Now move the amp away from the wall little at a time and play the chord again. Eventually you will hit a spot when the signal from the front of the speaker mixes with the reflection of the signal from the back of the amp that bounces back from the wall. And what you are faced without of face signal (Could not resist...). What this basically is the wave forms from the two signals are opposite and the result of a sound weakening, and in most extreme case disappearing (This is the theory behind noise cancelling headphones). So what I need to do is eliminate these reflections in my office. This is my simple explanation to a very complex subject, the way I understand it. If you want to learn more about the subject, there is loads of great free info on the net. I can recommend also a great recording magazine Sound on sound, and they also have loads of articles online.
  I know the past few weeks have been bit heavy on technical info, but all this is very important when you want to record a professional quality CD on a shoestring budget. So let me finish this one with some thing that really has cheered me up in the past few weeks. I stumbled upon a few good men, who do go to extremes with their time and hard work, who believe in the songs I have written and the music we play together. They get out of their beds 7.30 am on their days off, to head for the rehearsals. They rehearse four hours in the morning before going to work an eight hour shifts. Tomek and Sebastian, you guys rock!
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