BowieVision featuring AxeFX II XL

Sleestak

Sleestak

Power User
Here's a promo clip of one of my bands, called "BowieVision". We're a tribute to David Bowie with live music and video projection (mixed and processed on the fly by our live video technician!). The audio from this clip is direct from the board with no post-processing; all the guitar tones are from my AxeFX II XL. The video was shot at our recent Seattle performance at the Triple Door. This show was about two weeks after I received my system, and was my first public performance with it. With the AxeFX and MFJ-101 I'm able to reliably manage complex signature tones in a live setting, allowing me to pay tribute to the ferociously talented guitarists from Bowie's bands, including Mick Ronson, Earl Slick, Robert Fripp, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Adrian Belew, Peter Frampton, Carlos Alomar, Reeves Gabrels, and so on.

The AxeFX makes my experience onstage much more satisfying. I have more control than ever before, and love the gorgeous tones. My touring rig is compact and lightweight (can I get an AMEN from our stage tech?) and the FOH engineer always compliments how good it sounds as a direct feed to the board.

 
Thanks all! It *is* a lot of fun to play that music. Bowie had some incredible guitarists. As part of the process of putting the show together, I make a painstakingly accurate transcription of the guitar part(s) and then condense it into something that can actually be performed life by one guitarist. Sometimes I arrange parts for the keyboardist or sax player to help support an especially complex tone or chord stack, but most of the time I just wrangle it on guitar. We continually add new songs, so we're never "done" crafting the show. The hardest parts to transcribe are those wild contributions by Robert Fripp (e.g., Fashion, Scary Monsters). It's made me really appreciate how he plays.

Once I have the parts written out, I build my guitar tones in Axe-Edit and A/B against the recordings to fine tune my sound. It's become a fairly smooth process now. The first few weeks were a bit of a learning curve. I don't know how on earth I could have done this without my AxeFX. Best gear purchase in decades for me!
 
Fantastic post, Sleestak!!
Great tones & workflow.
I'd love to catch the band next time we are in your area.
 
BreadTooth said:
Fantastic post, Sleestak!!
Great tones & workflow.
I'd love to catch the band next time we are in your area.
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We may be heading to SF at some point. We're booking tour dates for the fall.
I have shows with another band for about a week, then the Bowie tribute will work its way back to Seattle again on August 2.
 
I love (almost) all Bowie stuff and most of the guitar players he had. Especially like the Eno and Fripp collaborations. But also the Reeves Gabrels stuff like Outside (one of my favourites) and Earthling.
I don't like tribute bands at all though. Seems like a real hype now and even some big festivals book them now. I don't understand this at all. Why book a tribute band instead of a good band with original material?
Anyway, don't want to sound negative that's just my personal thing and you guys do a good job. Main thing is the vocals which do not come close to Bowie. He has such an unique voice that is very hard to imitate.
 
You guys sound fantastic, you nail all of those tunes brilliantly. Quite a challenge for all the different eras of Bowie. Fantastic set list as well, I loved all those tunes you featured.
 
Bodde said:
...I don't like tribute bands at all though. Seems like a real hype now and even some big festivals book them now. I don't understand this at all. Why book a tribute band instead of a good band with original material?...
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No offense taken :) Although this project is two years old, I play in two other (original) bands, and have spent 30+ years being a live / studio professional musician. Working in a tribute is a mixed bag, and as a musician it's both a great challenge, and intensely constraining. For every song in our show, I've written painstakingly accurate charts for the band, transcribing difficult guitar solos by the likes of Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Mick Ronson, Earl Slick, Reeves Gabrels, Carlos Alomar, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. It takes a lot of work to recreate the tone for each section of each song; switching to the AxeFX made a huge improvement in my workflow. And finally, you have to be able to perform all of it live in one take. So, after all that work, what we deliver is essentially a live recreation of the studio recordings. As much as I'd like to do "put my own stamp on this material", nobody who attends our shows wants to hear me interpret these parts my way. Everybody knows how the solo goes in "China Girl", and either you paint the original masterpiece or you sketch a weak caricature. If I do my job correctly, nobody notices ME; they're experiencing one of those other guitarists in the context of each song being played.

It's hard work to dig into the little nuances of other peoples' playing. In the song "Fashion", Robert Fripp recorded two incredible frenetic solos. At one point, his distortion pedal (a WEM Project V) triggers a weird tracking glitch in the signal chain downstream. I notated that anomaly in my transcription and recreate it live. Why? Because in a tribute band you never know what tiny thing the audience will latch onto as being "the signature element" by which they define the integrity of entire song. If you miss that tiny thing, the song just isn't right and the spell is broken. Admittedly, I'm a little OCD about this, and I know my crazy attention to detail isn't noticed by 97% of our audiences. But, for the 3% that notices, this elevates the performance to something magical.

As a guitarist in a tribute band, I am a method actor. When playing original material on guitar / bass / Warr Guitar / banjo, I get to be me, and I have a very good idea of what I want. It's probably the same approach that makes my involvement in this tribute interesting to me. I build my live tones from a recording engineer's perspective, and when I'm writing / arranging music for my other bands, I'm deliberate in my note and phrase choice. When I have those "go for it" moments, I have a clear perspective of what my part will contribute to the entire mix. It's equally valid to me - whether improvised or recreated verbatim.
 
Awesome band and tones... but, how the hell do you manage schedule rehearsals with all those people. ;) I have hard time finding time with a three piece band :D
 
Sleestak said:
No offense taken :) Although this project is two years old, I play in two other (original) bands, and have spent 30+ years being a live / studio professional musician. Working in a tribute is a mixed bag, and as a musician it's both a great challenge, and intensely constraining. For every song in our show, I've written painstakingly accurate charts for the band, transcribing difficult guitar solos by the likes of Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Mick Ronson, Earl Slick, Reeves Gabrels, Carlos Alomar, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. It takes a lot of work to recreate the tone for each section of each song;
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although as a listener I am not a fan of tribute bands as I said. But I am sure it must be lots of fun as a performer to play the parts of these great guitar players. Good luck with your band!
 
MrGuitarabuse said:
Awesome band and tones... but, how the hell do you manage schedule rehearsals with all those people. ;) I have hard time finding time with a three piece band :D
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We only get together for rehearsals when we're adding songs. Because we're not attempting to compose music, rehearsals are much easier for us than it would be for an original band. There is a reference recording for anything we do, so most of the work is figuring out how to recreate the performance live.
It's a pretty disciplined and well-organized machine. There are eight musicians, a video technician, and show techs. Everybody in the band keeps their schedules up to date on Google calendars, and we use a master calendar to schedule rehearsals / performances. In order for this to work efficiently, we strive to be very prepared any time we get the ensemble together. Everybody has other obligations, jobs / gigs / tours, families, etc, so efficiency is the coin of the realm.
Every musician in the band can read music (most have music degrees). It's fairly easy for us to arrange charts and circulate them in advance for individual practice. I write very detailed charts for every song. We use email / skype / phone to make sure we have our vocal harmony parts worked out.
The keyboard player and I went to high school together (back in the late 70s!) and we're both gear nerds. As the band's only keyboard player, he's covering multi-tracked keyboard / synth parts all by himself. Likewise, I'm the band's only guitarist, and am covering acoustic / electric guitar parts all by myself. We always spend time discussing arrangements and programming our layered sounds on our respective toys. We help each other out, such as at the end of "Heroes" when I create that chattering rhythmic synth track as a second signal chain on the AxeFX, freeing up the keyboard player to handle the other parts. He helps me by playing one of the three guitar parts on "Fame", using a distorted guitar patch on his synth.
We record every show and individually use the live recordings to review areas where we need to address questions / changes.

My original bands rehearse on a regular (weekly) basis, but logistics are easier. as they're smaller ensembles and we have a standing practice night. Different kettle of fish, that.
 
Sleestak said:
No offense taken :) Although this project is two years old, I play in two other (original) bands, and have spent 30+ years being a live / studio professional musician. Working in a tribute is a mixed bag, and as a musician it's both a great challenge, and intensely constraining. For every song in our show, I've written painstakingly accurate charts for the band, transcribing difficult guitar solos by the likes of Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Mick Ronson, Earl Slick, Reeves Gabrels, Carlos Alomar, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. It takes a lot of work to recreate the tone for each section of each song; switching to the AxeFX made a huge improvement in my workflow. And finally, you have to be able to perform all of it live in one take. So, after all that work, what we deliver is essentially a live recreation of the studio recordings. As much as I'd like to do "put my own stamp on this material", nobody who attends our shows wants to hear me interpret these parts my way. Everybody knows how the solo goes in "China Girl", and either you paint the original masterpiece or you sketch a weak caricature. If I do my job correctly, nobody notices ME; they're experiencing one of those other guitarists in the context of each song being played.

It's hard work to dig into the little nuances of other peoples' playing. In the song "Fashion", Robert Fripp recorded two incredible frenetic solos. At one point, his distortion pedal (a WEM Project V) triggers a weird tracking glitch in the signal chain downstream. I notated that anomaly in my transcription and recreate it live. Why? Because in a tribute band you never know what tiny thing the audience will latch onto as being "the signature element" by which they define the integrity of entire song. If you miss that tiny thing, the song just isn't right and the spell is broken. Admittedly, I'm a little OCD about this, and I know my crazy attention to detail isn't noticed by 97% of our audiences. But, for the 3% that notices, this elevates the performance to something magical.

As a guitarist in a tribute band, I am a method actor. When playing original material on guitar / bass / Warr Guitar / banjo, I get to be me, and I have a very good idea of what I want. It's probably the same approach that makes my involvement in this tribute interesting to me. I build my live tones from a recording engineer's perspective, and when I'm writing / arranging music for my other bands, I'm deliberate in my note and phrase choice. When I have those "go for it" moments, I have a clear perspective of what my part will contribute to the entire mix. It's equally valid to me - whether improvised or recreated verbatim.
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Hi Sleestak

A really erudite analysis of your art - and I think you are spot on in your assessment. I am not a performer - rather a bedroom player, and recreating the original song be that Prince, Radiohead, Stone Roses or any of your favourite bands, is all about the tiny details of pitch, timing, effects etc which were internationally or unintentionally part of the original recording. Interestingly I find the great live acts are those that bring the original recording to life with new facets, new interpretations and combine this with unique energy of live performance. Now I have truly become an art critic psued I better leave it there before I get banned for being a pretentious idiot. ;)
 
Bodde said:
I don't like tribute bands at all though. Seems like a real hype now and even some big festivals book them now. I don't understand this at all. Why book a tribute band instead of a good band with original material?
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These sorts of critiques have never resonated with me...

Tell me, what is the distinction between a cover band playing Bowie's music (or that of any other seminal musician for that matter) and, say, a string quartet playing music by deceased classical composers? Is the performance of rock music somehow less of a legitimate artform due to its comparatively lower degree of complexity, or... ?
 
Bodde said:
although as a listener I am not a fan of tribute bands as I said. But I am sure it must be lots of fun as a performer to play the parts of these great guitar players. Good luck with your band!
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I think you're spot on with the question of "why are tribute bands playing big festivals?". It's a legitimate question and honestly, I don't take offense at it. Hiring a tribute to a well-known band sets up a clear expectation for both the audience and the festival booker, so that's probably a big part of it. The audience is also playing the part of a *tribute band audience*, having their own experience. Without question, we're a real band, and are really playing live. But obviously we didn't write this music, and we're just doing our best to play it well. No matter how good it might be, we're not the original artist and never will be. We're akin to really great counterfeiters, duplicating a Picasso. It takes enormous skill to paint a convincing replica, but it's not a real Picasso.

Participating in a tribute band can create a funny illusion, and it's important to maintain perspective. One of my favorite self-deprecating jokes (oh, and I have many...) is to respond to post-show compliments like "you guys sound awesome" with "thanks! wanna buy our record?". :)

While I enjoy writing my own music, my bandmates are also good songwriters. In most cases I contribute my own guitar part / harmony vocal to something they've sketched out, but occasionally bandmates write out complete charts to map out their detailed mental landscape of a song. In that case, I'm doing my best to interpret what they write / tell me is their intent. This is the same as when I do studio sessions, where my job is to perform what someone else has in mind. It's sort of "painting by numbers".

When I write my own material, I choose the crayon colors and scribble where I want. Then I tape it to the fridge. :D
 
The band and you sounded great in that clip. I go through the same thing with learning others solos, rhythms, and tones in my cover band.
 
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