Shameless video post. Please excuse the vomit face I make when I play…. I’ve spent years trying to stop doing that… trust me, it aint’ going away (though it has gotten better)… I think I inherited it from my dad.
Expect something cooler / plugged in later this weekend when I have a moment to do that. 
This is a couple months old now, but I was just watching it, and thought it might be nice to post it here. I believe this is us playing in Saskatoon when we were on our opening tour for Mishka. Good times!
I was playing my old telecaster that had a bigsby on it. Missin’ the bigsby!
The thing I remember the most about this gig, is that it was in this wicked restaurant that gave us the pick of anything we wanted. Naturally, we all chose various meats, Nachos, I think I actually had ribs.. mmmmmmm..
So my drummer Ben has a blog (its not very good, but it has potential, since he updates it more often then I do this one). He’s also a very talented sound guy/recorder/mixer/producer/drummer/musician and he releases an annual Christmas CD featuring his friends bands, and bands he’s playing in at the time. This year, Birds of Wales are featured as one of the tracks.
Please download the CD (3 tracks) here. Enjoy!
NXNE hasn’t even officially started (I know the opening party was last night but as you’ll read in this post, I didn’t get to go) and i’m already exhausted… Something about music festivals tires me out. When I went down to SXSW all it was every day was drink drink drink. NXNE is proving to be different this year.
I’ve agreed to help out my drummers other band (The Hots) with their show on Saturday night, since their regular guitar player will be out of town the night of the gig. This means learning 7 new songs with minimal rehearsals, and a pretty tight timeline (I only learned the 7th song last night). Last night I spent 2hrs rehearsing with the Birds of Wales, and then another 2hrs and a bit rehearsing with The Hots in the singer’s living room.
I don’t have a problem with rehearsing a lot, its just really freekin’ tiring focusing for that long (mind you, I only ate a bag of chips, and a bag of pretzels for dinner- so i’m sure that didn’t help).
Either way, i’m already exhausted, and have another 3 days of music to be playing – tonight is the first show, at the Kool Haus in Toronto. I’ll try and get some photo’s of the event – should be a good one!
Well, I got a chance to try out the Mule last night.
First off, the first thing I usually do with pedals, is compare them to ones I already have, just so i have an idea of what sounds it most mimmics… I could look up the specs, and the circuit design, and probably figure it out, but its better to do it with the ears.
First thing I noticed, at low gain levels, it sounds VERY much like my Gaspedals CARB that I got last month when I was in Texas for SXSW – BUT – it sounds like the CARB, when the CARB is turned up to half gain, I had the Mule at about 8o clock (barely on).
This surprised me – as I didn’t expect it, i’m used to fuzzes being too harsh sounding (which is why i’ve stayed away from them).
So then, I started comparing it to my Cusack Screamer Fuzz (the only fuzz pedal on my board). I was shocked at how good it sounded. It actually made me HATE the screamer fuzz to the point where I removed it, and replaced it with the mule.
Well, anyway.. after playing around with it for a bit, I noticed the Mule sounds really good stacked with my HotCake and even the Carb… they both add a bit more mid drive, which is nice at times… The Mule also doesn’t freak out when i’ve got the Tone Press on (something i’ve noticed about Fuzz pedals, is that they don’t usually play nice with compression pedals).
Either way, in all, i’m very happy with the Mule, I can see it staying on my board for a while.