Cat Tracks with WildcatOne: The Seabrook Music Festival Experience 2003
With Tropical Storm Gracie moving in, this year's Seabrook Music Festival (SMF) was somewhat of a washout. Last year, and the year before that, Kim Van Zandt and myself, along with Rodger Weiss, ran the sound for the Bay Stage and performed one of the two years prior to this one with our band, Johnny B and the Wildcats. In 2001, we were rained out on the Friday night show. Last year, we played and the show went down in history as one of the best performances at the festival, ever. The SMF has been going on for years, and after last year's show, the SMF asked us to play this year on the Main Stage and be one of the opening acts for the Spin Doctors on Saturday night.

Well, things got screwed up at SMF's headquarters this year. They did not get insurance on the Main Stage. So there was no Main Stage this year. Then their scheduling got messed up, and they moved the festival up a month to the first weekend in September from the first weekend in October, then 2 weeks later, they moved it up another week to Labor Day weekend. That removed some of the bands, including the Wildcats, and Kim's and my sound system and lights and back-line of amps, drums and microphones. They were not pleased...hello? It looked to us like the tail was wagging the dog on this one. The main band that I play with, The Citykings, has played there every year since 2001, and we opened the show yesterday in light rain and some wind.

I didn't mind at all, since I had expected 100+ degree temperatures and the sun beating down on us for an hour and 15 minutes...they built the stage to face the sun all day long as it moves across the sky. The "roof" puts the shadow behind the drum kit, which is at the back of the stage. There is no shelter at all from the sun onstage at the SMF Bay Stage. Although my losses from not playing the Main Stage (my share: $125) and not running the sound (my share: $500) and getting Rodger's second set of drums out of hock to use for this weekend ($242) were staggering, except for the pawn shop money, it was money I never had, so life goes on as it was with or without those paychecks. The exposure and prestige of playing an opening slot for a big-time band would have been nice, and the management of the SMF was somewhat less than cordial to me when I showed up, even though I had nothing to do with any of their problems. That's the way it goes sometimes. I just shine it on. I was there to play guitar and sing with the Citykings at noon, and to play keyboards with Truth In Wine at 4:15.

When the Citykings played, the PA system went down three times during our set. The Citykings do something almost none of the other bands don't do at the SMF. We go onstage, plug in, and play for an hour and 15 minutes. There are no hassles no matter what happens. We just play. We played straight through the PA problems, we played straight through the rain, we played straight through the total chaos going on around us. We performed our album and almost got to "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" as a finale before time ran out, at which point we unplugged and walked offstage, packed up our stuff and split. The two years that I teched the stage while Kim ran sound from the booth, I had the most ridiculous situations come up with whining prima donnas that went beyond anything I could have anticipated....

"HEY! Why can't I hear my GUITAR?!?!?!" Try plugging it in. "HEY! What's wrong with this stupid direct box you told me to use!?!?!?" Unplug it from the "Instrument Out" hole and plug it into the "Instrument In" hole. "HEY! Why isn't the power on to my tuner?!?!?!?" It's on. remove it from direct sunlight and the LED screen will become visible. "No it's not!" Yes, it is. See? It gets yanked out of my hands and the ace steps up to the microphone and says "If we had competent sound techs here, this concert would be a lot better than it is!" Rodger had to step between me and the guy to keep me from registering my exception to his behavior, but that was just one instance of having to pamper and serve these small-time wannabes doing half-learned cover versions of mostly the same songs everybody else was doing.

So when the Citykings got up there, we did an hour and 15 minutes of songs we wrote that are going on our album that we're working on (and spending a small fortune on) and we did not utter one single word to the sound crew no matter what happened, and a lot happened. Play on. I sang into a dead mike three times. Just keep playing. The sound crew was apologizing and falling over themselves trying to get it fixed, and I just said, it's cool. We're gonna keep playing. And we did. I prefer not to talk about the business end of my music. It's a dirty, nasty business. It removes the spirit of why I play music in the first place...but sometimes it's necessary to point some things out. The backstage coordinators are two of the nicest ladies I've ever known, and they treat us with respect and kindness and we love them and they love us.

The Citykings' set, according to all who we talked to, was great. I couldn't hear anything but the amp they rented for the guitar players to use, a Fender Twin Reverb. It was not a good amp. There was no setting you could get on it that would allow for any "grit" in the tone. It was LOUD and CLEAN with tons of midrange and no sustain other than whatever you could get out of your guitar, in my case a 1979 Fender Stratocaster, run through a Boss GT-3 pedal board. They said the mix sounded just fine our front! OK, whatever. So after we did the set, my boy Nick and me went up the road to LaPorte and had lunch at Skillet's and dropped in on my old buddy Jerry Hawkins and I had his Citykings' T-shirt for him that I promised him a couple of months ago. He was delighted to see us, and we chilled out at his house for a while and then I took us back to the SMF for Truth In Wine's concert.

At the musician's meeting 2 weeks ago, I turned in a stage layout of Truth In Wine's set to the soundman. He told me it was all good and everything would be ready. When we got up there, he come over to me and said "I guess you'll have to sit this one out, buddy. I don't have enough stuff to hook you up..." I didn't say anything to him, but the guitar player, Wes, offered me to plug into his direct-box that his acoustic guitar was plugged into, and I accepted. Truth In Wine played an outstanding set. Lynn, the lead guitarist, played inspired slide guitar and his leads were excellent. His wife, Brandi, is the singer and the face and the voice of the band, and she sang her heart out and the crowd loved our music. I was very pleased with the use of the direct box, and I am thanking Wes for his thoughtfulness in giving me that connection in the middle of a hopelessly chaotic situation when we were setting up. The set got shortened by two songs by the SMF management, but it was OK; we'd made our point.

I was wet and tired after all that, so we didn't stick around much after we finished up. My friend the writer from Clear Lake told me to expect some excellent press from those two sets including pictures, and I appreciated him saying that. He backs up his words in print, too. Nothing he ever says is hollow. I got to see a kid play named Dalton that had just turned 13, and he can play circles around all of us. He was amazing. He put on a show that reminded me a lot of Stevie Ray Vaughan (who is still to this day the standard against which all others are measured in this region) and after he played we hung out and talked and he was asking me about my pedal board and we discussed which wah pedals are the best to use. I use a Morley Bad Horsie and he uses a Vox. The Boss wah feature on the GT-3 is not in my opinion much more than a token possibility. I use the pedal in a volume setting.

When we were leaving, Elijah and the Profits were just starting up. Elijah (Matt) is a profoundly gifted guitarist in his early 20's who does a 2-hour set of some of the juiciest, most compelling guitar lines I've ever heard. He is incredible, and he is a nice, down-to-earth kid offstage as well. It's funny to me how the most egotistical and self-absorbed rock stars are usually the ones who give you the most trouble and they cannot play up to the level that their personalities seem to maintain (and they manage to blame everyone but themselves for their half-baked performances), but the ones who are truly great onstage are the ones who are as humble and as friendly as you'd ever want to meet. I heard that with the storm moving right over us today, they're going to move the festival indoors for the last day to the Houston Yacht Club.

Would be fine with me if they had the whole thing indoors, anyway, but what do I know? I have not been able to quite define the purpose of having a Seabrook Music Festival, but I think it has to do with local sponsorships and charities that they support. The people running it appear to me to be ruling class. If they read this, I offer an apology if I am wrong about that, but that's how it looks to me. Let's have a little Woodstock. My involvement with it so far has produced some great music and some great friendships, as well as some people I have learned to avoid talking to and dealing with. So it's all been good. Today I'm supposed to record the Wildcats' first set at Park Grocery, an Ice House in South Houston. If the weather gives us a break and we don't get the 8-to-10 inches of rain this afternoon that they're predicting, I'll be there at 6 with my Les Paul and 12 original blues and rock songs to do and make a live album of our stuff. Kim's got everything we need to do this with, so it's gonna be fine, I have no doubt.

Thanks to Dangerous Bill for giving me the space to post these ramblings! Hope you enjoy it. See you there.

Wildcat