UPDATE FROM JASON RICCI (02.2008)

Hello readers and welcome to the second installment of the New Blood Diaries this issue has been written from the road in beautiful sunny Florida here’s the News. Jason Ricci
                                              
THE GOOD NEWS:

1.) The Day after Valentines day I will be flying out to L.A. to Record as a guest artist on Walter Trout’s new CD “The Outsider”. This will be my first time playing on a worldwide release of someone of Walter’s significance. As many of you know I am a huge fan of Walter Trout as player and as a person. “TOO MANY NOTES TOO LOUD!”  Walter is a kindred rebel who has paid more dues than I ever hope I have to and I can’t wait to hang out with him much more record with him. Walter Trout was playing in some of my favorite bands when I was only around 8 years old so obviously I’m humbled and flattered by this incredible invitation. I am stoked to be working with a REAL guitar hero and I only hope I can find an amplifier out in California to compete with that amazing Mesa Boogie Trout sound. Additionally I will be reunited with John Porter once again, who is producing Walter’s record! How many people get to work with John Porter twice in six months on two amazing projects! I couldn’t be happier about all this!

2.) We are currently in the beginning of a totally grueling tour schedule (www.jasonricci.com) that will span some six weeks and I don’t know how many states, so there tons of opportunities for all of you to see the band. Intrepid Artists (our booking agency) is keeping up the pace for the band with no end in sight. Wherever you live in the U.S. we will be there soon.

3.) The band is currently selling tons of copies of Rocket Number Nine; Eclecto Groove is an amazing “Boutique Label”. Our publicist Karen Leipziger (also procured by the Boutique Blues Boys) is a press pit bull and thanks to everyone’s efforts were enjoying record numbers of ticket sales from “Boutique” fans young and older alike. We’ve had more articles, interviews, radio play, and general buzz about the band the last three months than in our entire seven-year history prior to signing with this “Boutique” label. Thank you Randy, Robert, Jeff, Frank, and Josh and all the others at Delta/Eclecto Groove for a great “Boutique” start.

THE BAD NEWS:

So I turned 34 on February 3rd this month. Brady and I did nothing special and that’s how I like to celebrate these days when the bands not on the road which is almost never. I hate getting old and a whole bunch of people will read this and say to themselves “That ain’t old.” O.K. so it may not be, but let me put it this way: I get fat easy now, and it hurts to move in the morning, so I have to calorie count because exercise (skateboarding) is painful. Apparently sweating my ass off and jumping around constantly in a nightly, onstage, aerobic, rock and roll frenzy that would leave Olivia Newton John in cardiac arrest is not quite enough exercise anymore to keep a measly 20 pounds at bay.

Last night we ate at Steak and Shake...It’s impossible to stay thin on the road because we eat garbage constantly metaphorically and literally, the metaphoric garbage will be described later. So one morning I awoke in beautiful Tallahassee Fl, and decided to take a leisurely Mark Gonzales (Artful Skateboarder) inspired, improvisational skate around the Motel 6 parking lot to work off the fast food from the night before. I strapped on my new Ipod holder (Birthday Gift from Brady) and started warming up my muscles, soon I was sweating to the oldies (Pixies) and feeling young and free again until I hit one of those patches of oil that stains so many parking spaces and was instantly airborne sideways until I plummeted sideways onto my face, knee and ribs...My face is O.K., my knee is just skinned and my ribs are KILLING me. Playing and singing with bruised maybe broken ribs sucks musky ferret tail but I did the gig tonight all the same as usual and was some how fine for the most part.

I think most the things I write about are kind of funny even though I’m whining and crying...You might be thinking Jason’s got it made and all that jazz but let me assure you pain is subjective and that’s what Albert king was talking about in his “Everybody got the Blues” monologue in the song. Blues is Blues. These are mine. I’ll keep the bitching down to a minimal seeing as how I already cried about feeling fat, old and injured.

1. I am back to smoking and off Chantix entirely, I cannot breath as well, I feel more tired, and I’m now once again regularly coughing up horrible colors of DNA, additionally I feel dehydrated all the time am and well on my way back to my previous health destination of lung cancer I like to call “Flavor Country”. In short I am much happier and feel like my old self again.

2. Check this one out! Sharon PA, it’s the end of January, the band and I are playing this club there (undisclosed) that we have been playing for many years. In my world: It’s a solid Monday night gig and we have a ton of great fans there.  I am pleased to say the bands popularity is expanding so much that we are actually out growing many of our old venues. A negative/positive byproduct of this growth is that I was under some minor, understandable pressure from our booking agency to let this particular club date go the way of the past. The job is not the most financially lucrative (despite the always packed house) venture and the lack of any stage, house PA system, mics, or stands,  which we bring from home especially for this place (Rare) makes the gig a professional “No No”. However again, the fans are great, and it’s a gig on a Monday, enough said right? I assured our wise agency that I was wiser and to allow us keep this gig in our calendar rotation. They succeeded. So we showed up after a six-hour drive and set up our P.A. system. The owner has always been very cool in the past. He always said: “hi” and he gave me hot sauce once to take home which was an endearing and rare form of courtesy for a club owner. However, this evening he was in rare form. When we arrived he was buzzed, by the time we got going he was wasted, and here’s the rest: So he has this brass stripper pole in his hands on the dance floor. Yes, an unattached, free range, mobile, 9-foot tall, brass, stripper’s pole in his inebriated hands. The fifty something year old man dances precariously about the small ten square foot dance floor in front of the stageless band. We are crammed into a corner usually reserved for dining tables and diners with a taste for bar food at it’s finest.

In the Movie “Bird” about the life of Charles Christopher Parker, I believe it’s Morgan Friedman’s character who is lecturing a young Charlie Parker when he say’s: “I’m worse than a prophet...I’ve seen it!” What this means is I have played literally thousands if not tens of thousands of gigs all over the world in my young years, which has transformed me into a fortuneteller of sorts.... No, I can’t tell you your age, or if you will live a long time, sorry, I can’t even tell you if you’ll find MR. or MS right but I can tell you with deadly accuracy and impossible precision what really drunk people will be doing anywhere from 30 seconds to an hour in the unknowable future. It truly is an amazing gift. I can pick which women will wet their pants, which men will fight over them, who will fall over the monitors and on to our equipment, which dancer’s will knock the microphone into my teeth and who will approach me before during and after the gig with various forms of advice, such as: “My brothers better than you.”, “Yall are too loud.”, “Yall ain’t loud enough.” and my personal favorite the nightly “I’m going to make you a Star” routine among other valuable late night alcohol influenced offerings. So this evening I looked into my Crystal Ball and I saw that the 9-foot tall brass stripper’s pole was soon going to hurt me, one of the boys in the band, or our equipment.

For a moment I ignored my psychic powers and was actually overcome by the joy of making music long enough to close my eyes in musical creation and relaxation in the form of a harmonica solo, it was at that exact moment of temporary peace that I was struck sharply in the face with the top square bracket of the tall brass pole. The force of the blow was devastating, a full grown 6’4” man and a woman in tow provided the weight capable of delivering a blow so great I was knocked back four feet, lost consciousness for about twenty seconds, then saw stars until I quickly regained clarity. When I came too, the club owner was still on the floor with the girl and the back of the brass pole, they were oblivious and laughing as they rolled around on the carpet like anesthetized puppy’s waking from their chemical slumber. At this point we had already played thirty plus minutes over our contracted quit time for the night so I decided it best to stop at that point. I was of course persecuted for this very inappropriate buzz kill and I am still receiving angry e-mails from fans in Sharon who feel that by ending our show a half hour PAST our deadline was a gross over-reaction on my part to an accident committed by “a man who simply loves our music so much he couldn’t help it”. So there you have it kids: If your injured on almost any other job your entitled to compensation for dangerous work conditions, if a drunk driver kills some one we call it man slaughter, and if you strike some one randomly on the street accidentally or not you can expect jail time, an ass whooping, a law suit, or all three.... Not so in my line of work, at least not in Sharon PA, the town we had loyally defended against our wise booking agency. No sir the man on the floor laughing with the pole was the real victim here and the audience second. Yes they were short changed, no cover charge, and the three and a half hours of non stop free music was not enough for them, and no one could understand why a silly little brass pole smashing the singer in the face was a show stopper.... That’s right, I was the villain and still am to some for quitting playing after a preventable injury, all were punished so riteously by me. I am only sorry to say: I’m not sorry Sharon PA; the real smack in the face came from all your dismissive emails days and weeks after the injury.  To the few Sharon fans that actually wrote me concerned for my condition, I AM sorry to you, and I AM sorry I won’t be returning anytime soon and I appreciate your empathy and understanding and hope we can find another venue where care is taken to provide a safe environment for all who patronize and work there. Is this illogical?  

JASON RICCI SINGS WITH HARP GEAR HARMONICA AMPLIFIERS!

As many of you know I have been offered many different “Boutique” amp endorsements over the past five years. Without mentioning any names I can say all of those amps were beautiful, well made virtual works of art, both visually stunning and great sounding in their own right. However, even though all these wonderful amps were offered to me for free or next to no charge, I just couldn’t get behind any of them (fine as they are) as none seemed to suit my particular needs the way my old Fender Bassman I nick named the “Egyptian” did. I tried many times with many different models to get that “Tone” I had with that old Fender. Fender did not consider me a worthy endorsement decision and would not offer me even the slightest discount on their amps or repair service despite the fact that I was obviously and inadvertently selling many Fender Bassmans for them each year. I really wanted to get behind a small “Boutique” company and back the little guy but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t find an amp I liked by anyone that sounded better than that old Fender, until now...

My friend Brian Purdy has been making small “Boutique” harmonica amps for years now under the name “Harp Gear”. I loved all those little amps and so did hundreds of other players although due to their small size, the volume of our band, and my dependence on that one tone from the “Egyptian” I just couldn’t find a practical use for a Harp Gear amp outside the recording studio and smaller gigs. The Popularity of Brian Purdy’s smaller amps took off and players pro and am alike could be seen everywhere with those little monsters. Eventually almost all the other “Boutique” amp builders took notice and followed suit in an attempt to sell a smaller harp Gear style amp. After that move Brian Purdy came back with the H.G. 50. A 4/10” 50 watt harmonica beast the size of a Fender Bassman but very different. I had been hesitant to try any Bassman style “Boutique” amp as I had tried many in the past only to be disappointed and return to the real thing (which was actually not made as well but sounded better), but Brian assured me this was not another point to point wired Bassman mimic. My friend Brian Purdy has been making small “Boutique” harmonica amps for years now under the name “Harp Gear”.

(Egyptian)

I loved all those little amps and so did hundreds of other players although due to their small size, the volume of our band, and my dependence on that one tone from the “Egyptian” I just couldn’t find a practical use for a Harp Gear amp outside the recording studio and smaller gigs. The Popularity of Brian Purdy’s smaller amps took off and players pro and am alike could be seen everywhere with those little monsters. Eventually almost all the other “Boutique” amp builders took notice and followed suit in an attempt to sell a smaller harp Gear style amp. After that move Brian Purdy came back with the H.G. 50. A 4/10” 50 watt harmonica beast the size of a Fender Bassman but very different. I had been hesitant to try any Bassman style “Boutique” amp as I had tried many in the past only to be disappointed and return to the real thing (which was actually not made as well but sounded better), but Brian assured me this was not another point to point wired Bassman mimic.

Additionally I was also worried about our friendship should I not like this amp as he told me the amp was built with me in mind. He brought the amp to a gig in Florida and before I plugged in I told him; “No matter how good it sounds I’m not using it on the gig.” I plugged in and after two or three minutes of knob tweaking I was wondering not if it was “as good” as my Fender but exactly how much BETTER it was. I played the next two nights on the HG 50 and then gladly signed an endorsement deal with Harp gear! I have never been happier with my sound, the HG 50 has everything my old beloved Fender had with a more balanced, clear, natural, and fuller sound! The H.G. 50 amp has quickly become an extension of me and I feel as close to in love with an inanimate object as a person can be. Stay tuned for our new you tube video coming out soon advertising the H.G. 50! Thank you Brian Purdy and harp Gear for doing the impossible and making THE BEST sounding and BEST looking and BEST ever HAND MADE harmonica amp ever!!!

HarpGear Amplification, Inc. - http://www.harpgear.com

HarpGear Amplification builds a full line of harmonica specific amplifiers aimed at helping everyone from the beginner to the most seasoned pro acheive their best amplified tone possible.  HarpGear amplifiers start at 5Watts and go up to 50Watts and include five different models covering the full spectrum of tonal and volume possibilities.  
  
HG 50 Specifications
Heavily Lacquered Tweed 4x10" Cabinet / 2 - Weber 10A125 Speakers / 2 - Jensen P10R Speakers / 1- 5AR4 Rectifier Tube / 2 - 6L6 Power Tubes / 2 - Preamp Tubes (5751 and 12AT7)

THE NEWS THAT MATTERS:                       

In closing, everything is actually very good, most all the clubs we play are very good, and nearly all our fans are unbelievably selfless, helpful and polite people who are usually more intoxicated by music then drugs or booze. All of you have made us what we are more than any booking agency, record company or awards and I know and mean this. I thank you all and God for continuing to make my dreams of music a reality in my life and the bands lives. The bright side is thanks to skateboarding and stripper poles I have two naturally rosy red cheeks this week! See you out there!

Your Fan,

Jason Ricci