Dan Patlansky Blog #6: On the Road Again
Well, this is the first blog entry in many weeks, due to me getting married and being on Honeymoon. It all was a well deserved break from the road but back to business as usual. Tomorrow the Dan Patlansky band hits the road again for a mini summer tour of South Africa, which I look very much forward to. It’s amazing how when I’m on the road I can’t wait to get back home, and when I’m off the road I’m itching to get back. This tour will take us to many different places in SA, Bloemfontein, Parys, Durbanville, Grabouw, Stellenbosch, Paarl, and George (as I mentioned, a mini tour).
Last weekend I hosted my annual guitar weekend, which is pretty much 30 guitar playing fans joining me in the countryside for three days of guitar mania. I do four group workshops on how I approach blues/rock playing, covering improvising, licks and riffs, tone and gear, chords and harmony. It was a fantastic weekend with so many hot players attending. Often I get excited at home about a piece of gear or something only a guitar player would get excited about, and I chat to my now wife about it and I can see the pain in her eyes. So imagine how cool it feels to have 30 people around you for an entire weekend that live eat, sleep blues/rock and guitar playing in general. What an epic three days. Teaching is something I normally stay well clear off, but once or twice a year with some of my guitar crazy fans really does it for me.
It’s kind of a scary feeling not picking up a guitar in two weeks, it feels like a foreign object in my hands for the first few shows. So for the last couple of days I`ve been playing my ass off to B.B. King’s Live at the Regal album to regain a bit of that mojo one has after weeks on the road. After this very brief tour I join up with producer Howard Butcher in the Knynsa forest at his studio Peace of Eden to finish off the album we’ve been tracking over the last few months. This album is going to be a full acoustic record, the first time I’ve ever attempted this. The great success and feedback we received from our acoustic Stripped tour in September 2012 motivated us to get into the studio and lay down some of the tunes we were doing live. We are hoping to release this in Feb/March 2013.
I’ll keep you posted on the upcoming tour because there’s never a dull moment touring in a blues/rock outfit in South Africa. Chat to you from the road.
– Dan Patlansky
