Nifty Noodles/ Voiceless In Seattle
Monday day four in Seattle…
Seattle area is downright irritating to maneuver though… traffic is awful here..and I’m from L.A.. I could never quite get my bearings. Monday I had almost no voice as a result of a weak sound system at the concert Sunday night combined with three hours sleep in the last 48. I decided we should do Bass tracks and have Phil finish the last basic track for the record.. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”…. Phil Curry has been working nearly around the clock to get this project in on time… I don’t know why things always seem to wind up this way for most of us… last minute scrambling. Of course I thought we had till end of August at least to finish this but, deadlines keep being moved up as we learn about what it takes to get the record in to stores.. like LIfeWay, Family, and Berean chains… we’ve also contacted Starbucks headquarters and we have a contact at WalMart stores.. but of course they want to hear what we’re delivering. And so all that must wait until we have it “in the can” as they say.

Day 5 I took the day off vocally to try to allow my voice to heal. One day turned into another.. as Tuesday rolled around and all we did Monday night was run through what the Solomon Sisters will do for background vocals… they are working on the arrangements Tuesday night. I arrived at the studio to sing Tuesday after dropping Ricky off at the airport and running errands.. shipping my Fat Tire Neon Sign home to my house. Had to buy a phone charger too cause I left the other one at Phil’s house on, what seems like the other side of the world from me. I spent two hours looking for an available hotel room for the last two nights I’ll be here. I’m just tired of driving an hour coming and going and losing all that sleep… but its vacation season in Samamish and LO There is No Room at the Inn for me either… I finally found a room in Everett some thirty minutes away. It’s closer at least.

I get to the studio… “Rain On Me” is the name of the studio… I’m thinking “Rain on My Parade” might be better as I arrive at five and Phil forgets a key piece of computer equipment AND has three flat tires on his truck from driving through the road construction here. Actually they’re not flat yet but they all have nails in em… and here we are at 8 o'clock and we’ve put nothing down… Nine oclock P.M. we’ve started singing “What a Wonderful World”…

Wednesday day six…. Still really struggling with vocal damage from the weekend…hadn’t sung four concerts in two days in several years… now I’m payin'.

I’m just barley holding on to notes and we’re cut and pasting lines together on the song "Peace"… it’s low and simple melodically so I think we’ll be o.k. and the raspyness in my voice will contribute to the sensitive feel of the song. This is where you realize that sometimes you’re in a key ball game and you have to find a way to win while you’re injured.

My voice damage is forcing me to approach the songs differently… I’m staying closer to the original melody and there are no “Vocal licks”… so in that way this record will sound different from past projects. By four o'clock we’ve started on "Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland"… It’s in too low a key… so we’ve had to modify the whole track… this is where it’s great to have programming on computer… rather than bring the band back in. And this song is absolutely funky in any key… it just spanks!

Six thirty… one coffee break and we’re done with “Little Drummer Boy”.. it’s mostly a drum groove… so that was easy… My voice is getting really thick… and I’m worried about having to fly to Nashville and fix vocals next week during the mix… Randy Thomas, my old band mate in Sweet C is gonna mix and master this project, cause I trust him to meet a deadline…

Day 7 with only five hours to do two songs… we’re blasting away…by one o'clock we’re ready to start the last cut… O Holy Night… I don’t have time to listen to all my vocal tracks and pick and choose.. I’m having to trust Phil and Randy to make it all sound good… Oh my … I’m not in control of my own future… imagine that… I’ll focus on singing from the heart..stay in tune and on the groove… and Let it Be…this is not a show off vocal record to begin with…

And with that said.. O Holy Night… will be startling! We’ve done it in such a low key it sounds like I’m whispering in your ear… “fall on your knees” is not the rousing crescendo we’ve come to expect in this song… and the first time I sung it from a position of personal humility… wow, it nearly brought me to tears in that instant… this is the lowest key I’ve ever sung in on record…. Singing a half inch off the mic…. Oh my this is cool!

I finished the last vocal five minutes before I had to leave for the airport… didn’t even get time to get rough mixes to hear back at my leisure… trust isn’t my strong suit for a reason… but I have no choice in getting this done on time… one thing is for sure… like my manager says.. “it won’t fall below a certain level” cause we’re talking about real talent on this record and If I have to trust people I like to pick the good ones! 8)

O.k. so I’m exhausted… and I can’t talk anymore… Bryan D

Nifty Noodles/ Northwest Adventures
7/23/05 Seattle, WA…
I’m up here for a week to put vocals on the NehoSoul Christmas record…and do a few shows to cover costs of the trip. I’m running a lot so I’ll just try to list the highlights…

Day one…an hour late getting in to SeaTac…airport.. and an hour and a half getting out on to the freeway….Immediately got a phone call from Phill Curry that we nearly lost the tracks in computer crash… he needs more memory… So now we’re at the Apple store spending a lot of money and I haven’t even seen the inside of the studio…

Phil calls 20 minutes later… “Go find somewhere to eat and hang out for awhile” he says “I got some problems to fix” . So me an Ricky stop at Iver’s Salmon grotto on the water…across from the Space Needle for fish and chips… and we hang around… for a long time… and we drive around down town… stop at Starbucks for coffee and the bass guitar store next door… hard to imagine we're “working on the project”. Call Phil … “still down” .. so we decide to go to the studio anyway and hang around… it’s in Samamish Washington… a studio called “Rain On Me”… It is truly out in the woods. Meet Sam Mathews and we hang…………………………..it’s now three a.m. next morning I’m finally trying to record something… can’t get used to recording monitors in this digital mode… “ I’m singing to a laptop for crying out loud”… left about 4:30 a.m. completely discouraged… drove to Ricky’s folks house where we’re gonna stay… it’s almost an hour from the studio.. sleep until 10:30 and go back to the studio

Day two… I’m calling around trying to find a Real Console where I can sing down things the way I’m used to. No luck and no money…I realize that “Red Road Records is here because I’m having to “REDefine” my realities… so I will forgo the wonderful sound of my own voice in the monitors and trust Phil that it’s being tracked… I will focus on the performance… as it will take to much time and money to sit here and take four or five tracks of performances and blend them together…. I’m gonna sing 'em down like it was live… and we’ll fix anything obvious but I’m gonna have to perform this as I would on the stage.

Suddenly we’re getting real great vocals on the tracks… we do “Christmas Comes But Once A Year “ and I come up with a new hook for the vamp… people in the background discovering they can sing “Christmas…. Comes But Once A Year”…. And you can hear people in the back ground of the tracks partying and laughing… hands clappin' and people making jokes… it’s really fun!

Silent Night goes fast… the new Hook vocal on the this vamp out is way cool… my favorite cut surprise…

"This Christmas" is nearly clock work vocal …as this is my own song and I’ve sung it for a couple of years..

And finally in the last ten minutes before I leave for the club date tonight… I say “I’ll just put a “scratch vocal” on the track of “Christmas Time Is Here’ as a reference… I do this and it’s a keeper vocal track… and the best performance vocally of the whole day… WOW… now I’m pumped… and we roll for Tacoma and Jazzbones… for our first ever official club date.. where the audience mostly won’t know us from Elton…. Sound check is at 6 and the gig is at 9:30. we’re opening for a local group .. the Mycle Wastman Project… another soul flavored white kid….

Lots of standin around at the club waitin' to go on… I take pictures order something to eat… and talk the owner of the club into giving me a neon sign that says “Fat Tire” on it with a neon bicycle on it… “I need that for the west coast office”… I told him and after a year of looking for that sign… he hands me one for free! A $400. value 8)

Jazzbones… at 9:30 the NehoSoul Band takes the stage… like we always do .. building the track, drums kicking in first and then joined one at a time by the other players…

Phil Curry is replaced tonight by Roger Wood… another phenomenal B-3 player… Phil is at the studio still working on the project. I sing down a solid 50 minute set… and the enthusiasm was immediate. The owner was worried I might preach so he was standing through the whole set… but at the end he was ready to book us at his place and recommend us to other local clubs. So we passed the “audition” to try something new in my career. Doing classy clubs known for their music…

Mycle Wastman… blew me away… he is Stevie Wonder meets John Mayer! He sings higher notes than I do and writes incredible songs on the guitar… he’s a white kid with the look of a Snowboard pro. Don’t know why he’s not signed to a deal. I listen to all three of his sets… and join him on one funky improvisational tune and “freestyle” the vocal.

I get a surprising response from an unsuspecting crowd. Oh and I danced a little bit during his set with my background singers…

We’re driving back from Tacoma to Marysville WA… oh around two a.m. and I have morning church services to sing at 8:30 … lets see…that’s not much sleep…

Day Three… no recording today.. I’m singing at a little Foursquare church… that doesn’t really need any extra talent in the music department… every one here sings quite well it seems..

The church is primarily composed of “interracial couples” . Just a unique blend you don’t notice too often. The pastor was interesting … a former singer he uses a lot of song lyrics in his messages…”with Christ” he says at one point, “your condition does not alter your position”… talking about our imperfections even as believers. I liked him.

By the second service ending I was beyond exhausted but now there is no time to go back and take a nap at Ricky’s folks… so we drive to Denny’s for breakfast at about 2P.M. And go straight to the church in Bothell for soundcheck and rehearsal with the choir joining us…

I choose to sleep in the car upon arrival for a few hours while the band sets up and runs a few things with the choir.

I come to and find the green room all set up with coffee and goodies… provided by the local Celebrate Recovery group.

There is a lot of excitement among the local participants and everyone is talking to me while I’m still not sure where I am…

Highlights of the concert: Heavy Metal Bass player Michael Bloodgood sits in on Blue Skies, Solo sections of Wheels of A Good Thing. And best of all was an impromptu version of Silent Night we played live as I read the lyrics from the church songbook and we gave them our surprise ending. The pastor takes up the offering and encourages people to put their starbucks gift cards in the offering… these guys are serious coffee drinkers he says… ( I got a full deck of cards for starbucks). I passed em around to the band.

O.k. That’s the tough part of the week so there’s That Bryan d

Nifty Noodles/ Go Directly to Jail...........
Tehachapi, CA 7/17/05
The Tehachapi State Prison is between Riverside and Bakersfield out in the wilderness. I went out there on Sunday with my friend Charlie Graham a recovery pastor with Celebrate Recovery out of Saddleback. “you can’t wear levi’s by the way” says Chuck. He probably remembers that I’ve been dressing pretty much like a biker these days as I ride Matilda now as primary transportation. Gas is 2.74 per gallon in Riverside. Nice to have something that gets 50 miles to the gallon. But I live in levis and leather now days and black slacks is not an option when the temperature is 102! And so I dig out an old pair of “Dockers”… they’re two sizes too big as I’ve lost some 35 pounds in the last ten months.

I wear white t shirts everyday… they are cheap and interchangeable with levis’! but if I wanna get out of prison when I’m through singing .. I guess we’re gonna go up there looking like the Beach Boys… dockers and Hawaiian shirts.

Man it was great to sing again after three weeks of nothing… my enthusiasm must have been evident too.. I got four standing ovations throughout the concert…of course these guys are deprived too… serving three to five years in medium security. I was surprised to find several who had attended my concerts on the “outside”…they responded very well to my comments about “refusing to define myself by who I used to be”… these guys wanna come out in a better place. And I do too by the way.. I was locked up for six hours this Sunday… and limited to pacing in a small confined office most of the time… I would not make it as a model inmate!! I was so ready to get out of there. In fact I was so glad to be free again that I left my guitar in the prison… and when they called to tell me.. I wasn’t about to turn around and go back for it… “ I’ll get it next month” I told the assistant Warden.

He’ll have someone bring it down to the Celebrate Recovery conference in Aug. “I’ll come back and play here again” I told him “ but I can’t stay as long next time”. I was never more aware of my attention deficit wandering physically as when I was in the compound and not allowed to float around. This was the same yard where we were to play a few months ago and they had a riot on the grounds out front of the sanctuary where I played today. Some fifty inmates were injured in that melee I believe.. most of those involved were immediately shipped out to various other prison systems but there were men here that were around the nightmare of that race riot.

All was calm all was bright this day though and the service was quite Pentecostal… which I survived as well.

On the way home I drove through an ice cream stand for coffee… and a chocolate dipped ice cream cone… ahh the freedom of doing as I please!!!..... of course it melted faster than I could eat it… still 90 degrees at 9 pm….

O.K. So there’s that…. Bryan d

Nifty Noodles/ Up and Coming
7/16/05 West Coast Office
I’ll be going up to sing the NehoSoul Christmas stuff this Friday. I’ll be up in Seattle for the next week doing what I love. If you are in the area.. we’ve also decided to play a couple of gigs to keep us sharp… first one will be a first for the NehoSoul Band… our first ever club date! We will be opening for Mycle Wastman Project at Jazzbones in Tacoma, Wa. It’s on 6th ave. we’ll be doing a short set at 9:30. The club owner is a little skittish of my Christian background so we have to prove ourselves that we’re not self righteous… they don’t want us to play anything with Jesus or the Devil in the lyrics!

And I thought churches were the only ones worried about their own agenda and what an artist might do to mess that up. Such is life I suppose… but being the non conformist type that I am… it kind of steams me.

But we’ll have a lot of friends joining us for this date and my hope is that it will open doors for us to play BB Kings and House of Blues dates… where I know I will be perfectly comfortable. My hope is to do more actual playing… full concerts.

The future of full concerts in church seems to be dwindling away… at least one third of my presentations are done between the offering and the sermon and frankly it is not much of a calling. I wanna take it where it is appreciated.

That said I will be playing on Sunday morning for the church services at Word of Life Four Square Church in Lynnwood, Wa. 9am and 11 am. … because frankly I’ll sing anytime anywhere.

I’ve been going to hear other bands at bars and coffee houses… and I get anxious to play and sing again myself. July has been the slowest on record in my career. It’s been hard to relax in the last four weeks.. I’m holed up at the WCO to the point of distraction. I start to feel no purpose for living if I can’t sing. Of course I have friends who tell me about God removing your points of strength sometimes to get you alone… “no body grows in the spotlight” I heard from Rick Warren a few weeks ago.

Fine, whatever… but I don’t like this wilderness and I still fight to stay connected to a bigger picture and real purpose.

O.K. then…. Bryan D

Nifty Noodles/ NehoSoul/Christmas Update
7/10/05 Norco, CA
I’ve been off for weeks now as far as concerts go. But I got a call from a friend in recovery asking if I would come and sing at Full Circle Outreach in Norco.

Not a tough gig to set up. Norco is just a “meth lab” or two away from Riverside and the West Coast Office. So I agreed to a Sunday morning visit to the Full Circle Ranch..it’s a mens recovery facility with a tiny sanctuary converted from what might have been a feed shack. Everything was crisp and clean though and nicely remodeled. It maybe held seventy people and it was full. I felt really tall in this building.

I was in a horrible mood as I drove over in the early morning… imagining what I might have to say about recovery.. right now my definition doesn’t look too good on paper and I fought for an hour with my attitude before the meeting. I just got overwhelmed by the contradictions I was finding about what “successful recovery” looks like… it’s certainly not about going back to the way I was… Truth is they weren’t asking for a testimony from me! They just wanted me to sing a few songs… but I had to take it personal and make it all about me. It didn’t feel good either...after the service, I felt defensive about my recovery, found myself blaming others for the misfortunes of recent years and feeling very un optimistic about the future… I know we have these kind of days… but there is just no magic way to get out of em… Like I’ve said before… you can identify the valley of the shadow of death that you are in… but that doesn’t get you through it.

I hope my contribution was worth the effort… it felt like nothing … because I felt like nothing.

Bryan D

Nifty Noodles/ NehoSoul/Christmas Update
7/7/05 West Coast Office…
We are pushing hard to get “A NehoSoul Christmas” finished in time for this year… I listen to it three to five times a day…all the songs are set on and we are just two away from finishing basic track ideas…the songs (in probable order) are: Christmas Comes But Once A Year- Silent Night- This Christmas- Winter Wonderland- Christmas Time Is Here- Little Drummer Boy- O Holy Night- Peace- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas- What A Wonderful World…they sound great in that order just enough movement to keep you waiting for the next cut… man it sounds great… it sounds great…. I’m worried about doing justice to em with my vocals…which we’ll be doin that last week of July.

The Solomon Sisters are going to be adding significant vocals to this project. If you haven’t heard them… you’re gonna be knocked out…

In the meantime we’re working on the eleventh draft of the album cover… it’s gonna be Rich Red and White, I can tell you that…and it will look like “old school” on the front cover with a full color picture of the band on the back…the details are being refined even now. We are currently looking at who will mix the final product and mastering will come soon after

We have a very small window of opportunity to sell this record… and I pray that we will meet the deadlines…

O.K. So there’s That… Bd

Nifty Noodles/ Christmas Preview
7/3/05 West Coast Office…
I’ve heard from fans recently that they are anxious to hear something from A NehoSoul Christmas CD we are working on. We are up to eight basic tracks… and I will be flying up to Seattle on July 22 to start singing the vocals. This project is under the gun to get done. We have to have it turned in by the end of August roughly… at that time we will probably be able to put some clips of songs on the website for you to get the feel… right now … I believe it to be one of the most cohesive projects I’ve ever put my time into… This will be a project closer to my heart than the last Christmas CD I delivered some ten years ago….closer to the music style that I like personally and it over flows with happiness and gratitude just in the music.

Phil Curry just sent me the latest basic track for Michael McDonald’s “Peace”… and with “What a Wonderful World” coming to me soon we will have songs on this project that will bring the Christmas spirit home the way a real believer understands it. We have interest from Christian music chains including Family Bookstores that are wanting to include it in their catalog of new projects coming out…it might be next year before we can get it placed in Walmarts but we do have someone willing to listen to it that is a buyer for that chain… so it is likely that you will be able to find it somewhere as soon as it is available… of course we will offer it early to those who wish to order on line. But first things first… we gotta finish it to get it to you.

Phil Curry is doing an unbelievable job in arranging and producing these tracks…I carry the basics around all day and listen to it all day… it takes the edge off of the summer heat… this record is just plain easy to listen to even out of season!!!

Pray for it’s timely production and the mix and mastering and packaging… Oh it pray that it sells well 8) cause that will most likely determine how quickly we can start on the NehoSoul “Surprise” project scheduled for next year. Do I sound like a record company president yet?

Keep coming back… Bryan Duncan

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