Kevin B. Selby’s Weblog

Hey gang.  Long time no writey.  Sorry.

Kath got me this way cool book for Christmas entitled: “1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die”.

Man…I LOVE IT.  It’s like a good music critic review of 1,000 different CD’s that you should hear for various reasons.  I have my little highlighter and I go through and highlight the ones I want to go listen to and then I fire up my web browser and go to Amazon.com and search for the particular CD.  Most of the time I find it but a few times I had to launch iTunes and search for it in their massive archives.

I just got done listening to some clips from James Booker - New Orleans Piano Wizard - Live! - see: http://www.amazon.com/New-Orleans-Piano-Wizard-Live/dp/B0000002VF/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1230866608&sr=1-1

Inspiring!!

A lot of history in this particular book (it’s nearly 1,000 pages…yum!).

Anyway…I’m getting two live albums from the Baja Blues Band up onto CD Baby, so look for that soon.

Other than that, I’m working on my own followup to Palouse and maybe some other goings on in my studio.

More later…

Peace!

Kevin B. Selby

Hey gang!  Out where I work (Battelle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), they created these nifty mid-week music breaks and asked staff who happen to be musicians to perform for our workmates.  

I volunteered for August 28, 2008 and had a blast.  Simple keyboard/guitar setup and I performed a whole bunch of 70s covers.

Jammin' on the keys

Flailing away on my Dean acoustic

Anyhoo…I had a blast, my workmates enjoyed the break, and it really kind of pushed me back into wanting to perform more of this type of music…so look for that in the coming months.

Coming soon: new sax player joining the Baja Blues Band for an out of town gig…see how that goes next time…

Kevin B. Selby

Hey gang.  Recently I had a HUGE scare regarding all 15,342 photo files (.jpg’s totalling 10 Gb of file storage) dating all the way back to before 2000.  I had stored them on a Netgear SC101 “Network Attached Storage” (NAS) device.  I quit using that device (it tends to overheat the drives, thus lowering their life!) and transferred one of the drives to another computer.  Long story short, I THOUGHT I had backed up all my photo files to DVD’s when I transferred the drive, but it turns out that was all wishful thinking.

 Sure enough…after a few days, for some reason, the drive in particular showed up in the operating system as “empty” and do I want to format it.  Soon after, it quit being recognized by the operating system altogether.

 After frantically searching the entire house for the mystery DVD’s (which didn’t exist) as well as my spindle of backup CD’s at work, I came to the sickening conclusion that I had NO backups of these files.

After much prayer, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, I tried different things with the drive and was just about to purchase some forensic software (recommended by my buddies at work who do that sort of thing), the computer recognized the drive and all its contents.

Needless to say, in the blink of a gnats eyelid, I had that data transferred onto a brand new firewire 350 Gb external drive, then onto another drive of another computer, then onto TWO sets of DVD’s (one is in the house, the other is at work) and I can FINALLY breathe easier.

Moral of the story:

1. Backup completely and backup often.
2. For photo stuff, establish a workflow.  Everyone is different, but this is what works for me:
a.  After copying the photo files from the camera or camera card, copy them to a “staging” area.
b.  From there, copy them to your main photo file storage area.
c.  IMMEDIATELY make TWO CD backups of the files (blank CD’s are cheap).  Store one in your house (preferably in a fire-proof safe) and store the other one at work, or at a relative’s house.

I have slowly started investigating some of the online “backup” services, and while they certainly look very good, they are still a hair out of my price range.  But not for long.  Once they get down to storing 10 to 20 Gb for $10 per month, I will probably bite and have one more backup option.

Don’t go through what I did.  Go back up your files right now, tuck them in, read them a bedtime story, and kiss them goodnight.

Until next time…

Kevin B. Selby

Hey gang!  Just performed a house party for a local lady and her friends.  It was a 60th birthday party for one of the hosts friends.

It was kind of funny because the host of the party thought it was going to be one guy with a guitar and maybe a small amp “serenading” the ladies. 

Well…Jan and I showed up with a van-full of equipment and we started hauling it into this house.  I think the poor host went from thinking it was a one-man guitar balladeer to a full-on 5-piece metal band.

We kept reassuring her that it would all be okay.  We setup everything in a corner of the room facing the kitchen and living room and we placed the rather large Yamaha A-15 speakers at opposite ends of the room.

While I kept at the setup (with wires and wires and WIRES to hook up), Jan entertained them with an obscure Jethro Tull song (that ends with “and I’m leaving you…and your mother too”…whatever THAT means).

Finally we were ready to go and we started with All Blues.  At this point they probably thought we were going to do all jazz instrumentals, but no matter, the sound was perfect (the two A-15’s on the floor on opposite sides of the room literally filled the room with warm, gooey, gorgeous sound!) and we started cranking out the solos.

Then we launched into the vocal stuff and took them on a tour of the 60s and 70s with “Let’s Get Together”, “Horse with no Name”, “Spooky”, “Black Water” and others.  Then we launched into some blues with “Stormy Monday”, and “Georgia” sprinkled with some old jazz standards like “Route 66″ and “Skylark”.  We took a break mid-way through to rest the voices and then powered through the 2nd set which had some country/bluegrass (”Drivin’ My Life Away” and “Man of Constant Sorrow”) and finished on “Last Dream” (slow jazz).  They begged for more so we gave them “I’m a Believer” and finished with a bluegrass number from my absolute favorite bluegrass band (Hot Buttered Rum) called “Take Me Home”.

The ladies (and a few husbands) totally enjoyed the evening and Jan and I had a blast.

Was it overkill with the keyboard, guitars, melodica, harmonica, indian flute and all the speakers,  mixer, amp and other assorted equipment we packed into that room?  Absolutely!  Was it worth every ounce of equipment?  Absolutely!

It would be fun to try to market house parties like this…so Jan and I will have to do some thinking along these lines.

That’s all for now…

Peace!

Kevin B. Selby

Hey folks!  Hope you like the new site.  Not really sure if this blog is going to “fit” inside my theme (and not look dorky), but we’ll give it a go until someone can tell me how to make it work better.

 Anyway…Palouse is DONE and uploaded to CD Baby (with iTunes, Walmart downloads and a myriad of other download sites coming soon!).

 Give a listen to the clips and purchase the CD.  It will relax your day just like my other stuff.

Palouse was literally 3 years in the making (on and off) and I finally just HAD to finish it this fall. 

Hope you like it!

Cheers for now,

Kevin B. Selby