I recently played sideman on a new CD of original music written for kids, and my Kalamazoo Model 1 (refurbished by Greg Heumann) was used on one cut. The band is "Twang Bang Fiddle", and the CD is titled "Shake Your Pants!".
The music crosses several styles and is written by a good friend who works as artist-in-residence at a regional center for early childhood education. Doug works with the kids daily and incorporates their play and ideas into the songs he writes. But he's a professional musician and determined to write music that the parents could listen to without cringing. The result is a unique view into the way the kids see the world and the things that are important to them, carried along on music that isn't childish.
Fortunately for me, Doug really likes harp, so I got to play on nearly half the tunes. There's a gritty up-tempo number called "Lost Shoes Blues" with lots of harp going back and forth with the fiddle. iTunes has the longest previews:
One of the incentives in our Kickstarter campaign was this video of "Holy Moly, Pants on Fire", which tells a true story about a boy who lived through hurricane Katrina. The song led to a dance, and Doug promised a video with the dance lesson to contributors. This is true hit & run film-making, we made it up as we went along.
In this tune you'll hear my Heumann-ized Kalamazoo Model One. Note to Greg: I have another very good all-tube amp with similar power, but our fiddle player/recording engineer has a strong preference for tone of that Kalamazoo.
