Tad Dreis

Wow, this year is coming rapidly to an end. Looks like my last shows will be this weekend – tonight in Chapel Hill, NC at Harry’s Market out on 54, and tomorrow in Charlotte at Common Market’s Southend location on Tryon St. All this is, of course, barring some sort of snow apocalypse, but it doesn’t look like any of what’s fallen so far is going to stick, so I’m pretty sure these shows are going to be as scheduled.

It’s been quite a year for me. I released my first new CD in a few years – and if you’re still doing your holiday shopping, all my CDs do make fine gifts – and I went to the Kerrville Folk Festival for the first time and worked staff, camping out in the Texas dust for almost a month and breathing folk music. This spring, I also played my first webcast show, and ended up doing three or four of them, both from home and webcasting on location from clubs where I was playing. That’s really kinda neat. I’d like to do more of that this coming year.

In 2009 I began teaching harmonica lessons and I’ve enjoyed rethinking the rudiments of another instrument and doing some research as to how best to present them. Ukulele also entered the scene this year, and while it’s really similar to guitar, it has its own quirks that I’ve had to take into account when helping people get started. All this started from guitar for me, and I’ve been teaching guitar for going on ten years now, if you can believe it. Wow.

My year-end project is to set up new websites just for my teaching. Not sure if it’ll be one site to rule them all, one site to find them, etc – I’m leaning towards having individual subdomains for each instrument I teach, to give them each their proper due and hopefully help drive search traffic by doing only one thing at each site.

In other computer news, I’ve also been enjoying working on my computer using the Linux operating system. So far, I can do everything I need to do, although sadly, Netflix doesn’t have Watch Instantly support yet for Linux because of DRM issues. Drat that DRM.

Dunno if this will be my last posting for 2009. I’m pretty spontaneous with most of my web stuff, but if this is it, happy holidays and see you in the new year!

I’m playing this Wednesday at Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter, Florida, where the projected high temperature tomorrow is 84 degrees. That show’s in their student lounge, which is named The Burrow after their school mascot, the burrowing owl. I played there two years ago and had a blast, even if I didn’t believe at first about the owls. They are real, though. Very real.

Then Friday, I’m playing in Duke University’s Page Auditorium, contributing music to a benefit concert for CASA, which advocates for abused children. The cover there is $5, I think, and I’ll be on sometime between 7:00 and 9:00 pm.

And on Saturday morning, I’m back at the Eno River Farmers Market in downtown Hillsborough NC, behind the courthouse, where my patrons will tip in leafy greens, edible and spendable. Fingers crossed that it will be warm enough outside to cross my fingers [knock on wood]. See you!

Live Video streaming by Ustream

This streaming thing is pretty cool. I set up a webcam for Friday and Saturday night’s shows, and then archived the video for playback on demand. So we’ve got the entire second set from my Broad Street Cafe show up (with trio) and BOTH the first and second sets AND an encore up from the James Joyce solo bar gig. The Broad Street show was awesome, we were on our game, people were listening, and the band played well.

By contrast, my solo pub show was…a little chaotic. It’s a different beast. I mixed up lyrics, hit a few bum chords, and the noisy crowd and TVs and laptop were all kinda distracting to me, but that’s a bar gig for you. Whattya want?

Ok, yes, I unintentionally switched two of the seven verses of “Tangled Up In Blue,” and in “Advice For Ladies,” I reversed a lyric accidentally and said that male friends are much closer to each other than are girls and their gay best friends, which, as everyone knows, is false. Have a drink. Music in a bar is not about lyrics, people. Or about “music,” when you get down to it.

As a footnote, the audio was distorted for the first James Joyce song, but I adjusted it and it comes through better after that. Enjoy!

Kind words for “The Reluctant Hook” came in this week from Americana UK! Reviewer Paul Kerr gives the album 7 out of 10 stars and calls it “an oddly engaging look at everyday life.” He goes on to praise its “sly humour which is slightly surrealistic in the sense that John Lennon could be,” adding, “His lyrics do not simply tell a story but are opaque and require close attention.”

Thanks, Americana UK!

I just updated my “About” page and thought I’d excerpt this part about music I love. Who are my influences, you ask? I came of age listening to The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and yes, Phil Collins, and through my friends I got into various 80s alternative groups, especially R.E.M., The Cure, and The Smiths. Later on, I fell in love with several artists specializing in quirky character studies: Freedy Johnston, on the roots-rock side, and The Magnetic Fields, on the lo-fi, orchestrated, indie-pop side. Let’s not forget Jack Logan’s masterpiece of tape hiss and novelistic comic book detail, Bulk, either. High school jazz band gave me a whole new genre to explore, and I was on the Columbia House jazz plan for awhile.

Jeff Buckley was huge for me, and I was lucky enough to find much of Tim Buckley’s catalogue in the bargain bin when they reissued it around ‘94, including his best rock record, “Greetings From LA,” though I prefer his chamber-jazz-folk and experimental stuff. I’m a big Joseph Campbell fan and Tori Amos’s first two records document an entire self-contained mythological universe, as do most of Prince’s. Liz Phair’s “Exile In Guyville” is all kinds of playful, sexy, sad, open-ended inspiration, and “Whip Smart” ain’t bad either. A college DJ job interview resulting in rejection did have the positive outcome of turning me on to John Fahey, and I basically learned how to fingerpick from his first few records. Also Ani DiFranco. I got into Hawaiian slack key guitar from George Winston’s liner notes to “The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death.” Also Leo Kottke. An aborted Rykodisc internship netted me several Nick Drake albums, and I found an amazing Nick songbook in Ireland while studying DADGAD accompaniment of trad fiddle tunes. Warren Zevon’s first two albums are my favorites of his. While studying abroad, I collected used copies of Serge Gainsbourg and Joni Mitchell CDs.

In recent years, my big discoveries have been Kelly Joe Phelps and Richard Thompson, plus Southeast regional folk inspirations Don Conoscenti, Jonathan Byrd, and Daniel Lee. Oh, and David Garza is totally jive and totally heartfelt at the same time, and combines Paul Simon, Prince, and David Bowie into one 130-pound Mexican troubadour. He also does that thing of creating an entire universe within his ridiculously extensive body of work. Pre-war blues from folks like Robert Johnson (of course), Charley Patton, Skip James, Blind Willie McTell, and Bukka White have also been revelatory to me, and appeal simultaneously to my folk tastes, my inner guitar geek, and to that lo-fi-indie-snob inside me who finds validation in these recordings for the idea that tape hiss does indeed convey mystery and authenticity.

You read all the way down here? Wow. Thanks :)