Apparently this is my blog! It's our new website and there was a space for a 'blog' so I thought I'd better use it. In modern parlance, when I write something here, I'm actually 'posting' to my 'blog', but whatever you want to call it, it's basically me putting finger to keyboard to try to say a little something that you might find vaguely interesting, even occasionally funny, connected with life in the band, and therefore make you glad you visited, and perhaps make you want to come back. The only way I'm going to know if I'm not alone here is if you leave a comment, so please consider it. Think of Buckler's Reel as one of your New Year's projects for encouragement. You know, making the world a better place and all that.
What would you like to know?
Next week's Lottery numbers? The meaning of life? What made people vote the Conservatives in 4 times in row? I only have vague ideas about those things, so it's probably better if I just talk about the band here. The picture on the left is from 2012, featuring my 1972 Precision with Markbass 250 and Laney Richter cab. I couldn't get 250 watts out of the cab because it was the wrong impedance but it's still pretty loud. I'd use that for bigger venues, but that cab is heavy man, and with the onset of old age, I am glad I splashed out on a Fender Rumble 100 combo which is incredibly light and is ideal for most of our gigs. The Precision has only let me down once in all these years, and I had to replace the pickups, but that was a scare that made me go out purchase a backup, an Epiphone Thunderbird. I like to alternate between the two basses at gigs, so that I'm used to the new one, but my favourite is definitely the Fender. I use Flatwound strings on the Precision and Halfwound strings on the Thunderbird, so you can tell I like the mellow tones. Much easier on the fingers too. Active pickups on the Thunderbird give me more variety of tone but are not really essential for the Buckler's Reel sound. I really only have one effects pedal, a Boss chorus, which I love for more melody and sustain in a few of our songs.
What next?
It'll have to be a surprise. I always put a link to the website on our Facebook posts so that's an easy way to check in here to see what's going down. (See what I did there? Bit 70s I know)