Sketchbook – Page 38

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR MONEY

Friday, October 3, 2008

A napkin doodle for our financial crisis. This ~~was~~ is my old man’s approach to money, and thank goodness he passed it on to me.

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS ON AUSTIN CITY LIMITS

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Whoo boy, you need to see these guys live. GREAT show. I got almost too buzzed to draw. Just solid country-tinged rock and roll. You can listen to most of their new album on myspace, but it doesn’t quite capture the energy of the live show.

I have more nice drawings from the night, but they might be used for a secret project…more to come on that.

Thanks again to the ACL folks for the tickets!

UPDATE: Here are two other drawings that I did during the taping—the second was used by the Austin City Limits folks on a tote bag!

UPDATE #2: From Patterson Hood:

…our Austin City Limits show from last fall will be released on July 7 on DVD. The DVD will include the entire performance (only about a third of it was aired when it came on TV). This is by far the best live performance of ours ever caught on film.
We were on, the sound was excellent, and the production value top-notch. We loved playing on that stage and the crowd was fantastic. It also features one of the last ever performances of “18 Wheels Of Love”, featuring the full monologue and the sequel monologue.

AIMEE MANN AUSTIN CITY LIMITS TAPING

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The Austin City Limits folks were kind enough to give us a couple of tickets to singer/songwriter Aimee Mann‘s taping last night. She played a good batch of songs—a lot of stuff off her new album, like “Freeway” and “31 Today“, and my favorite performance of the night, the absolutely fantastic “Little Tornado“…complete with spaghetti western-esque whistling!

What’s interesting about her band is that its core is her on acoustic guitar, a bass player, and a drummer, and that tight unit is augmented with 2 keyboard players that provide coloring and atmosphere—altogether I counted 8 keyboards, including a MOOG synth, and a Hammond B-3 with a gigantic Leslie speaker. (Pity the poor roadies.)

She was nervous, so she told a lot of jokes. There’s free beer at ACL tapings, so people are constantly shuffling in and out to hit the can—”there go the pee-ers.” She called the camera a “weird, one-eyed monster” and told a funny story about trying to do a song for Shrek 3, before going into “Borrowing Time.”

There was a section in the middle where she did songs from PT Anderson‘s wonderful film, Magnolia, including “Save Me” and “Wake Up.” She also did a song she wrote for PTA, “Red Vines.”

Bass player Paul Bryan was really the secret weapon of the night: great backing vocals, McCartney-esque basslines…and a terrific solo on the Three Dog Night song “One.” (Used as the opening for Magnolia.)

Here’s what the studio looks like as people shuffle in:

Thanks again to Austin City Limits!

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME (SO I CAN DOODLE)

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Had some awesome seats and great weather to see the Rangers spank the Red Sox last night in Arlington, TX: Rangers 15, Boston 8. Ate a jumbo hot dog, a ton of nachos, and my first kolache at the Czech Stop in West, Texas along the way.

There’s a bunch of great stuff you see at a baseball game, so I always try to take my sketchbook and draw a little. Meg had the camera and caught me in action:

IRON AND WINE AUSTIN CITY LIMITS TAPING

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Weekends in high school, I’d stay up late playing guitar, and then I’d watch Austin City Limits. Though I’ve visited the KLRU studio twice before, last night was my first time seeing live music there. I couldn’t have asked for a better show than Iron and Wine.

I’ve been a fan of Sam Beam (who now lives in Dripping Springs, about 20 miles SW of Austin) since I was in college, when his first album came out. He sounded like a southern Elliott Smith, whispering hushed songs from his bedroom. Each album of his has gotten better and better, adding more players, more instruments, more rhythms and intricate parts. The band last night was a downright funky bunch of eight musicians—the core was Sam on vocals/various guitars (he’s a fantastic finger-picker) and his sister Sarah on backing vocals/violin, filled out with Calexico pedal steel virtuoso Paul Niehaus, a Rhodes/piano player, a bassist, a drummer, percussionist, and guitarist/vibe player. (I wonder how many of the musicians were local…if anybody knows, please comment!)

I didn’t draw too much or take down a setlist because I was having too much fun drinking free beer and enjoying the music and Meg and watching the people and the lights and the camera booms swing around. However, there is a funny story behind this drawing:

When I saw the pedal steel player come out on stage before the set to tune up, I doodled this little cartoon. I love the sound of pedal steel. Meg bought me a lap steel a couple Christmas’s ago, but I still haven’t mastered it (I’m a decent guitarist, but not great on slide). I didn’t recognize him as Paul Niehaus of Calexico (huge fan). Later in the concert, Sam announced that it would be their last show with Paul for a while, so for the rest of the show, people shouted “Paul!” and Sam encouraged us all to “give another hand for Paul.”

The pedal steel player was the most popular guy in the room!