Walter, Bryan, Sammy (in back) Ricky B, Phil
Nifty Noodles
Nifty Noodles/ NehoSoul Weekend
West Coast Office 10/24/05.. Saddleback Recovery/ BB Kings L.A./ Lakewood Life Center all with the NehoSoul Band
This was the big risk weekend…I sang seven sets in three days at three shows…I’m exhausted... lost my voice this morning and forgot to eat most of the weekend except for coffee of course…I’m absolutely spent. O.k. I gotta thank a lot of people here for helping me out… I had to book most of this myself to get the band some exposure and promote the Christmas CD. I took responsibility as a promoter, booking agent, travel agent, found accommodations, and arranged scheduling to pick up and drop off of the band members… it’s a long way from the days where I was just the “hood ornament on the Pontiac”.
The following people made me look like I might have known what I was doing though… Rich and Veronica Davis who drove out and then rented a van to drive the boys to all the gigs…(this is their weekend off time too) They also handled product sales for me and ran a lot of “interference”. Thanks. Then there is Kenny Metcalf who drove his big Korg keyboards around to all the gigs and helped set em up, all for free… his wife handled product sales as well… Thanks…Bobby Quintero and our friend Jesse helped set up stage at BB Kings and helped load stuff up late at night… Bobby ran Ricky to the hotel after midnight too…James Bowles drove Pete Muir to the airport and brought Ricky to the gig from my house as I was leaving a credit card at the hotel in Cerritos….thanks… Charlie Graham arranged a house on the beach in Newport for the band the first night…and thanks to all my friends who just came out to support a new endeavor… BB Kings in L.A. … we finally made that work.
O.K. the gigs: Friday night was a donated time to Celebrate Recovery at Saddleback Church… 600 people there all on the front of their seats… lots of long time friends here this night and new friends from Sober Living By the Sea that Charlie Graham introduced me to. It was a wonderful set during the meeting and all the songs tied so well to the recovery testimony and the things I have learned over the years as a result of working the 12 steps. It was my first chance to come back to the stage here since my divorce. They require time off while you are in that process to focus on the changes occurring in the hopes that their might still be an opportunity to change directions but as I said on stage… “Recovery is not the same word as Restoration” … if you don’t get that don’t worry. The surprise of the night though was the little “unplugged” gig we did in the same venue for “Solid Rock Café” …it’s the fellowship time for those in recovery to meet others and make connections to help.
The band started out playing cheesy lounge renditions of old tunes and then I joined em on my guitar and played a couple of interesting mellower versions of some of my own tunes…it was really fun… played Christmas Time Is Here… don’t help the devil… Loving You… Used again… and everything in the Garden.. all in a very low key swing style for the most part that actually worked… the guys switched off on instruments too just to play around for real… after the gig we met Charlie in Newport Beach 30 minutes down the road and he showed us to a house on the beach that is leased by “Sober Living By The Sea”…. A marvelous little mansion next to the sand and maybe a hundred yards from the breakers… it was beautiful … I sat on the sand barefooted after midnight and listened to the waves and laughed with the nehosoul brothers and some close friends… easy to enjoy one moment at a time in this environment… we had coffee and 60 bucks worth of pizza to end the evening…
Next morning I was off to pick up my own personal keyboard for BB Kings and do necessary detail work… banking and bookkeeping…discovered that the keyboard case I just bought for this weekend got misplaced somewhere while we were packing up last night so I still had to carry it open to the gig…I loaded up the truck, dropped Ricky off at Denny’s for late breakfast and picked up my date for the evening… a rare event and an odd experience as a divorcee. I drove to Cerritos to make sure the rooms were available for a late night check in for the band as they are staying near the last gig for the weekend…it’s an hour from my house and then another hour to BB Kings… maybe more with traffic… I arrived in Universal City in time to find that the club had booked another private party in front of us and they’d moved all of our reservations back to a later time… I won’t go into the snafu’s here just know that BB Kings has new management in the last five months and they have some issues to work out. We were initially treated like a new music entity with little or no respect…and that is to be expected I suppose but once they heard the NehoSoul Band they wanted us to book another date before I left that night… they also gave us an extra time slot to play to some of the regulars… this is what I was hoping for to begin with! A chance to reach a new audience…one with no expectations of what we were bringing to the table.
Nifty Noodles/ CSprings Finally
Nifty Noodles/ Thanks
Nifty Noodles/ The Way to San Jose
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10/15/05 Colorado Springs, CO
Finally after three tries we got this gig to happen with the NehoSoul Band…minus Phil Curry who can only play one weekend a month as he is employed by his church as the music director. Roger Wood is our fill in Keyboard player… and nothing is lost in quality with Roger in the line up. Sound was poor and the room at the Nazarene Church in Colorado Springs seemed more sound friendly than it actually was… a carpeted multipurpose room really. The stage was huge and it felt a little empty even with the whole band on stage. But they filled the back wall up with a projected image from the website… Bryan Duncan and the NehoSoul Band!... it looked good.
I love starting the show with a one guy at a time start where the drummer comes out and starts alone and then he is joined by the bass and then the guitar and then the keyboards… it’s way cool and maybe the highlight of the night for me… I was watching from out front and I loved it…but It was a play the gig by faith night as I could not get an even balance of instruments on stage and I had a pretty sad sounding keyboard with a monitor that appeared to be blown. Some people talked about it being an awesome concert anyway… but really…we were flyin on a wing and a prayer. And the air was so dry I was checking the song list to see when I could sing something in a lower register. I did a little unplugged set in the middle and we finished with three Christmas tunes. Two on Track and one with the band. I desperately missed the horn section parts on “Christmas comes but once a year”… took my enthusiasm for the song straight into the toilet. We have work to do to put the Christmas stuff on the stage for real yet. Of course for a band that doesn’t get to rehearse often it still sounded professional and the bulk of the audience were long time fans of my music. There were good comments from most people and at least half the crowd hung around to talk to the band afterward. I look forward to the three gigs with the band next week now and a chance to get more into the groove and remember what we do best…groove!
O.K. So there’ s That. Bryan D
10/10/05 West Coast Office…
Hey thanks to all of you who have passed along your critiques of a NehoSoul Christmas. Seems that the big vote for favorite song has been “This Christmas”… (hope that’s not a sympathy vote cause I wrote the song) as opposed to “Christmas Time Is Here”… we just figured a new version of a familiar song would “Play” better to radio as the first single….
“What a Wonderful World” was a close second on the favorites list… My personal favorite is a tough choice as well… but I gotta go with the groove on “Little Drummer Boy”…
“Christmas Comes But Once A Year” is what I play for a great first impression though when I’m giving people a preview.
I hope to see many at BB KInGs in two weeks… it’s been up to us to promote this show…. And I really need the support. BB KINGS at the Universal City Walk is a great hang… and there are all kinds of shops on the City Walk that make it a fun hang… remember you can order food at BB Kings too… come out and make a night of it…. I’ll be next door at some point at this little toy store I like… just lookin for Christmas gifts for fun….
Thanks for helping us with new gigs that we have to promote ourselves…. So theres’ that Bryan D
10/3/05 San Jose, CA
Just finished a “Cathedral of Faith” Marathon. Two full concerts and four church services in three days. I arrived from Nashville on Friday afternoon for a Celebrate Recovery gig. About 40 people at this little anniversary celebration.
Maybe the smoothest flowing line up of songs and “commentary” I’ve ever done. Not many people got to see that winning ticket. Met a kid running sound, another preachers kid too… we hit it off and I hung out with him the rest of the weekend. My friend “webmaster James”…(does the radiorehab website) flew in to help out this weekend as I’m juggling sound engineers these days trying to avoid big airfare bills.
We stayed at the posh Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Jose… I walked out to the car on Saturday night next to Wayne Gretzky .. hall of fame hockey player… the L.A. Kings were in town. Later James spotted Densel Washington in the lobby. So the down time was pretty relaxing … tenth floor suite accommodations for three days. Wow I could get spoiled.
Saturday night was a small church service for about 300 people and I played two songs and it was done. It goes down as the quickest gig in history for me. I met some old friends who brought a couple van loads of kids from their ministry outreach… thinking that Saturday night was the concert… they were disappointed but there was not much I could do at that point… I did whip out the guitar though out front of the church building and play a couple of songs for em.
I was back at the hotel before dark! We hung out in the massive lobby and listened to a live band doing awful versions of Brian Setzer, Nora Jones, and original oldies from Broadway musicals till I couldn’t stand it anymore. I called friends on the phone to fight the boredom.
Sunday morning came at 6;30 though and the gigs were on… two songs per service which to me is mostly like Chinese water torture… it’s the waiting around between songs really. The presentations were wonderfully awesome… first service I opened with “Maybe I’m Amazed” and closed with “What a Wonderful World”… both secular songs that had a profound impact on the congregation. In a church setting these songs take on new insight… maybe it’s not so predictable, but some people jumped out of their seats on the songs.
Cathedral of Faith is a hard to peg church really… everybody claps a lot and all the pastors go by first name… “Pastor Bob”… “Pastor Kenny” and so forth times maybe twelve that I met. I’m always anticipating an annoying fundamentalism here that really never comes. Folks are down right enjoyable here.
The head Honcho is Pastor Ken as I recall. “I’ll be 75 in eleven days” he told the church in one service.. he’s a throw back to the old penticostal church roots I’m familiar with and I hit it off with he and his wife who joins him on the platform. We shared memories back stage about the days of playing in the sawdust at tent revivals when we were kids. They were surprised that I remember those even at twenty some years younger in age.
Second service time rolled around and the power went out to the whole block. This is where most people start praying for God to fix the obvious but me? I’m thinking “hot dog… lets sing accapella in the dark”. The church is completely without windows so it was pitch black in the sanctuary… and so they started without power but it came back on line before I got to “free style”… I did “Clap Your Hands” and “ Strollin on the Water” for this one… mostly to entertain myself.
Third service I did Joy is a singable thing and “I’ll always have Jesus”…which went over better than anything as I made of a dedication to the soon to be 75 pastor… it added a personal touch that the congregation seemed to enjoy.
After lunch with the loyal I had maybe two hours to turn myself around for the concert Sunday night. After singing to nearly 7 thousand people I found myself sitting in the back parking lot 15 minutes before service… I counted only six people in the auditorium but when I returned at seven there were 600… wow these folks have the timing down to a science. Finally I got to let er rip… played everything I ever loved had a great time… came back after a break and did 30 seconds of at least six songs from the Christmas CD just cause I’m so anxious to do the Christmas stuff…. I sold everything I brought this weekend … great vote of confidence for the new Christmas project.
OK so there’s That! Bryan d