Tom Coerver - Wood Wire Vibes & Slide

Incubated in Baton Rouge Blue Room Studio by Tom and a few select guests over the time frame of 2008-2010 and expertly tweezered, mixed, mastered, and generally glossified to a shining lustre by Devon Kirkpatrick at Sockit Studio, this Album represents the cumulative shape of everything that ever stimulated the cilia along my cochlea's length to vibrate and reward the brain with a soothing bath of endorphins. A summary of Southern stylings from the East Coast to the Gulf Coast to the West Coast flavors in soulful rockin' jazzy fatback funk with all manner of slide guitars from the Firebird (both white (as pictured on the front cover) and Dachshund/Doberman (back cover)), Les Paul, Stratocaster, Telecaster, Pete Andersen, Flatroc (my new fave...) solid and semi-hollow electric families and the Dobro and Martin acoustic families. I started this sonic sculpture as a solo endeavor while recuperating from surgery and then got tired of myself, so I invited a few friends over to sing along (Patty Houk and Debbie Landry) and/or inhale and exhale over vibrating reeds (Dave 'The Tube Guy' Long on harmonica and amp repairs...) while the stereo stew of Hammond C-3 organ thru a spinning Leslie speaker and several sorts of synthesized waveforms in both real and imaginary instrument incarnations thickened the roux in this gumbo while the percussive parts pounded a fatback funk in the foreground (please pardon the potentially annoying annihilated alliteration...). Track tales: track 1. 'You're The Star' - I always like to start off with a bouncy, fun vibe and this is yet another of my Little Feat-influenced groove things (RIP Richie Hayward... a huge influence on my drumming!). Patty and I do the Slim Harpo tune "I'm a King Bee" and it's her fave blues tune and that playful lyric style stuck in my mind and I wanted to get some of that spirit in here, hence the hive and the honey jar. The Reverend Pete Anderson guitar gets a workout in open G slide in a little tip of the hat to George Thorogood sonically and Johnny Winter melodically and Lowell George methodically... Bill Payne's Wurlitzer electric piano stylings (... all hail the 'King of Wurly"...) weave their way in and out here and there in combination with a couple cheap tricks provided by yours truly... track 2. 'Gotta Get You By My Side' - a bit of daydreaming about what it might be like to be involved with a 'celebutante' and be pursued by pesky paparazzi while living the 'reality-show' life and then waking up from the nightmare. No Stone left unturned here - Keef chords in open E, Charlie's Gretsch kit with the signature tom-tomming and press rolls, Bill's bouncing basslines that jump registers, MJ's 'outlook' and chicken neck, and occasional Nicky flicks of the wrist on some barrelhouse piano thingies... and some Duane-ish slide thrown in for 'good measure'... ;) ... track 3. 'Gimme Back My Bullets' - Lynyrd Skynyrd cover - I got to meet Gary and Allen when I lived in Jax and we opened for them and it struck me how funky their interaction was with their guitar parts, and I always liked this tune, so I tried to put some of my funk side forward on this re-casting of the tune. Kudos to Carmine Appice for the displaced ride cymbal bell accents that found their way down from New York to Florida and to Artimus Pyle for the 'ruffage' (gotta love a bad drumming pun....) and Jack Bruce for the displaced bass syncopation and Leon for the bass foundation. The percolating sounds that abound around the edges are from my slide guitar run thru the Pigtronix Mothership (ring modulation in a LS cover... yeah, baby) and a Roland/Boss Slicer pedal (instant Baba... get it? LS opened for The Who ... it made sense to me....). I tweaked a few words to personalize the song as I was recovering from prostate cancer surgery, and it was a theme of rebirth and restoration for me at the time! Track 4. 'Chevrolet / Chevrolet' Medley - 1st Chevy is a Robben Ford & The Blue Line cover and the 2nd Chevy is a ZZ Top cover - I've always loved both Robben and Billy and these two tunes, so I decided to mash them up and put the funky groove from the 1st one under the 2nd one. This one also features my Gretch drumkit and the fat tone suggested the Zigaboo meets Charlie twist that steams the tune along. This one definitely makes the trip out west for the LA / L.A. and points north thereof connection in my mind and the electric piano with Hammond organ vibe comes from that school with more Bill Payne references along with Billy Preston and Billy Powell tricks sneaking along for the ride - I brought all 3 of my favorite B.P.'s along. White Firebird slide is beaming thru the ring modulator and a Fulltone Ultimate Octave box (yes, I have a bad case of 'pedalitis'... all you purists can line up to throw stones on the left...) and I was not thinking of anyone on this one... for once, I tried not to think of anything at all, and just slide the slide up and down until my ears were unbound by the sound. Track 5. 'Gonna Live With It' - This track came about after hearing and seeing the "Jeff Beck Live at Ronnie Scott's" DVD and just falling in love with the sound of a Stratocaster all over again for the quadrillionth time - JB has that effect on lots of folks and I'm certainly a disciple. Vinnie and Tal also had me spellbound with their crisp, intricate rhythms so I wanted to get that tight tight right vibe going on this track with the dry clicking hats and the punching bass that Devon ran thru his nifty Distressor to make it even more insistent in it's' simplicity. Jason is a new fave of mine and his throbbing clusters of electro-retro piano made me pull out the phase shifter and put on a Weather Report to get the forecast for which route to take thru the progression. The story is a top-secret reference to an early 'aughties' party that may or may not have occurred in or near my house and the name(s) have been erased to obscure the guilty. Track 6. 'Backwoods BBQ' - A trip to Tabby's Blues Box 'round midnight with a busload of Japanese tourists taking snapshots on my retina while flashing back to Siegen Lane at Perkins Road at my grandma's house hiking in the woods with cousin Johnny and dealing with spiders and snakes while riding horses in the woods around the bayou. It's now a concrete parking lot, subdivision, rest home, shopping center and YMCA and it's such a strange sight... ahh, the future is present, the past has left the building - it's blues time! Hats off and on to Canned Heat (and the Muffler shop for using their tune in the ads....) and to Tabby Thomas for the mental images that his swamp blues conjured to form the foundation of this tune's vibe while John Lisi was sliding around his Dobro and stomping double-time on his wonder wah wah funk that I took to outer space with some quarter-speed Mike Stern licks played on slide in open G while in the key of D (long a favorite trick of mine...) to make this a true 'fusion-blues' thing (once again, all you purists can line up to the left to throw those stones again...). Long live the spirit of Oklahoma in the form of one Leon Russell and the spirit of Memphis in the form of a Howlin' Wolf... track 7. 'All Down The Line' - Rolling Stones cover - This song came booming out of the speakers during a Dennis Hopper (R.I.P.) movie in the early 90s and I just about fell outta my seat it hit me so hard! I was a bit late to the party for 'Exile On Main Street", and it became my co-favorite Stones album with Sticky Fingers after that movie (I think it's called "Flashback") and we had so much fun with "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" on the 'Thirds... & More' CD that I went back to the well for this one. I tried to get the vibe with one guitar part instead of six or so and I was hoping that would let the brilliant slide work from Mick Taylor pop thru a bit more while keeping the Keef in the mix between the piano and the Tele in open G chording while the organ covers for the horn parts and car parts that make the