Yeah, I know it's been a while since I've made a blog posting out here (about 5 months, actually). For once, though, there's been a good reason for the length of time between random bilgy thoughts. I been working hard on the new DVD! For those of you who haven't really been paying attention on the site recently, our new 2-disc DVD, entitled "Sail! Everything Must Go!" is now released on the world and available on our Treasure Island page. (One shameless plug among many, I'm sure). The making of this DVD has been an odyssey in many ways for me. It's been a ton of hard work labeled with a whole bunch of pitfalls waiting in the wings to snag the unwary amateur filmmaker. I'll give you the cliff's notes here on what it's taken to get it done.

The first thing I had to do was go buy a new sound board with digital recording capability. I wanted to be able to isolate each track of the DVD show recording and be able to adjust the mix accordingly. I settled on buying a Korg D3200 board that allows up to 12 tracks to be recorded simultaneously to it's 40GB hard drive. These tracks I could just export out to .wav files and edit/mix them on my computer. Easy-peasy, right? Well, yes and no. The recording of the tracks worked perfectly. The biggest problem we ran into at the OU Medieval Fair (that graciously allowed us to record there) was the lack of microphones from the sound techs at the festival. In a way it's my fault for not just bringing my own mics regardless, but I told them of the 11 mics we'd need for the show and I was assured they would have us covered. Unfortunately, they only had 10 mics, so I couldn't record the audience as I'd like to have and 3 of the mics were wireless mics that would cut out periodically and poor Squeegy's guitar mic turned out to be a wireless lavalier mic strapped to his guitar. That's probably OK for a live show, but for a recording? Not so much. There were also no windscreens on any of the mics and any Okies out there know that Norman in April is always going to be windy. So, it took lots of time and effort to try and bring out the best sound possible from the audio recordings of the show. There are still some rough spots in there, but all in all, it turned out well. Sharkbait had to take Squeegy's guitar track and put it through a ton of processing to get rid of the fuzz and rattling that came from being recorded on a lavalier mic, though. This process of getting the sound mix done took probably about 2 months of work (in my spare time, which I have little of) And it was just step one! Still no video edited at all! Yeesh!

One thing I knew I wanted to do with this DVD was get all of the footage I could scrape together from the past 9 years of the band's existence and make a history of the Bilge Pumps to video kind of thing. To that end, I started ripping down footage from mini-DV tapes and old VHS tapes with the band on it and selecting and editing a ton of songs from our storied past. I ended up settling on 41 songs and over 2 hours worth of footage from all of our past shows. Eventually, due to space limitations on the DVD, this list ended up getting pared down to 23 songs and a little over an hour of footage, but it does a pretty good job of capturing the ever-changing lineup of Bilge Pumps from the band's first gig at Mardi Gras Galveston in 2000 to Galleon O'Galleon's last show with the band at Louisiana in 2007. Some of the footage wasn't great due to it coming from old VHS tapes I still had, but it's a nugget from the past that showed what the band was like back then.

Next off, I knew I still had a ton of footage to dig through because I wanted to do a montage of funny city name rhymes that have been caught on tape during Donkey Riding. So, here I go again, downloading every mini-DV tape and old VHS tape I had with show footage to my shiny, new, big-ass hard drive to have plenty of choices to sift through. After all was said and done, we picked out 73 city name rhymes collected together that lasts for over 30 minutes. I tell ya. If you're not sick of Donkey Riding by the end of watching all of those put together, you've got a cast iron stomach.

Then it was time to edit the video for the main show itself.. and that went well enough. The four cameras were easy enough to synch to the audio track that I had created from the raw sound files. It took a while and there ended up being about 250 edits or so during the show including the end credits and all seemed to be doing well.

After the main show was edited, I began editing the Beneath the Music feature for the DVD. If I thought the main show took a while, then I was in for a rude awakening when it came to editing this monstrosity of a video. Clocking in at about an hour and forty-five minutes long and with hundreds and hundreds of edits, it was rapidly becoming my preoccupation in life. I spend countless hours digging through all the old pictures and video interviews to find ones that helped tell the (real and fictional) story of the band. Not to mention compressing about 4 hours worth of band member interviews into about 90 minutes. If anyone knows anything about this group of pirates, they know that we can tend to ramble on.

With the bulk of the editing done, Patrick and I shot the footage of the animated menus featuring our new Bilge Pumps mascot, One-Eyed Willy which turned out to be pretty funny stuff. (BTW, be sure and let the main menu on the first run for a little bit, there's some good gags in there) With all the footage edited down, it was time to make the disc itself... and here's where the frustration really begins. You see, I was using Pinnacle Studio Version 11 to do the editing of the DVD and Pinnacle excels at doing edits. It's a good tool for that. Where it fails miserably is in the outputting of the material to disc. You see, the edits are only one portion of making a disc. You have to get all the menus linked up correctly and then all of the chapter links pointed to the right spots and all of that. Once that's done, you tell the software to make a set of DVD .VOB files that will get burned to the disc when all's said and done. However, this is when the crashes started happening. Pinnacle would crash out on the very last step before the burning of the disc, which meant it would go through the hours of rendering video, then would bomb out at the last bit. It was driving me insane! (as Sharkbait Simon can attest) Since it would take 4 hours a pop to see if the latest attempt at fixing the problem would work, I would only get about 2 cracks a day at getting the DVD done and this process ended up taking about 6 weeks or longer. This is why the DVD came out at the end of TRF instead of the beginning. Then, one day, magically, it worked! Don't know how or why, it just started working. Well, believe you me, I went to town in a hurry. I made sure not to touch the PC any more than I had to worrying about jinxing the process. I would manage to get a disc burned and then check it for problems, find some, and implement the fix. All in all, about 5 edit/fixes later, the final master of the DVD was done and ready to ship off to the duplicators. Hallelujah! It was finally done!

Well.... almost done. I still had to finish the artwork for the DVD discs and the cover. Dammit! Oh well, once that was done, the disc was sent off the the duplicator and all was right with the world again. I could finally take a nap... well, except for the fact that naps are gone for me as I've another child on the way. Well, I guess I'll get some sleep in 18 years once the kids have moved out of the house. At least the DVD with all of my pirate kids on it is done and that's one less thing to obsess about... until it's time to work on that Christmas CD.

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon

Some time ago a young man approached me and asked if I was familiar with the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). I assured him that I was, and he asked if I was a member, and I responded with this story:

In every genre of historical role playing there are always two differing styles of participation. The one group tries for historical accuracy to the point of perfection while the other views their participation as a way to share in the fun with a minimum of historically accurate discomfort. The SCA strives for a real Medieval lifestyle. They weave their own cloth, use only cotton thread and forge their own tools. Yes, I’m aware they combat with foam and duct tape and generally use port-a-potties, but for the most part, they strive for authenticity. Now, the other side to this coin-of-the-realm is the player who may range from a performer to a “playtron”. They love costumes and Celtic music, but they prefer “flushies” and hotel rooms.

More contemporary re-enactors also display this duality. There are the Civil War soldiers who load their own black powder, wear wool underwear and sleep in the rain. But again, there are those who put on Wild West accoutrement, carry blanks and fall off buildings for fun.

In other words, in any style there are the “purists” and the “players”. I assured my young inquisitor that I, for one, always fall into the second category.

Now, I say all of this to bring up one pressing issue that I continue to run headlong into at various Renaissance Faires. . . The Costume Nazi! This loving soul comes to the position usually with two major qualifications. They own a picture book of costumes, and they have the personality of a wet badger. Buttons, not zippers. Period footwear! No glasses! No paisley! And, God forbid, no metal shafted umbrellas. Their job is to keep the faire looking “period”.

This confuses me on several levels. I’ve never actually been to a true period faire [“How do you know he’s the king?. . . He’s the only one who hasn’t got sh*t all over him!”] Jousting isn’t Renaissance, Chinese umbrellas aren’t either. Neither are Goddamned foxtails! And, for the most part Royalty didn’t go to these market faires. I’ve never seen a flogging or a beheading. There aren’t any lepers in the street, and where did all the fairies come from? Oh, yes, can you say open sewers, beggars p*ssing in the streets and livestock. I knew you c o u l d n’ t.

Faires. All faires are fantasy faires. They are entertainments designed to provide patrons with fun while sucking money from their pockets. They don’t care about anything but a good time, and that’s the ONLY reason we exist at all! If you teach them a little history, it’s an accident. And while you did it, you taught them a dozen incorrect facts.

Costuming should be unique, special, memorable, laughable, and . . . practical. When historical accuracy becomes a stumbling block to survival for cast and crew, the Nazi must be tossed in the oven! If it’s pouring rain and my crew backstage needs an umbrella, screw you! They get an umbrella. My shoes will have arch support and good tread, and they will be built on right and left lasts. I bet yours are too, Adolf.

Take a deep breath!!!

OK. This is supposed to be fun for me, too. And it will. You may be kept in the dark and fed bullsh*t like a mushroom. But me, I’m a fungi (fun guy)! Get it? I didn’t think so, it’s not period.

One thing about spending so much time driving from one gig to another is you really start to learn your way around the country, or at least the country as defined by the interstate. One of the tried and true traditions for the Bilge Pumps to give us some cheap entertainment for those late nights on the road is the playing of "claw games". You know what I'm talking about. Those games that charge you anywhere from 25 cents to a buck to operate the overhead claw and often repeatedly fail, causing you to spend $10.00 to grab those cheap stuffed animals you could pick up at Toys R Us for $2.50. Who knows how much money I have spent on these insane games since 1999 on these road trips, but I'm sure it's more than a little. After a while, it becomes an automatic addiction.

You walk thru the door to Joe Bob's Greasy Spoon and Gas Station, spot the claw game to your left and wonder if you can hold off going to the bathroom long enough to get in one try. Since you can't you go ahead and hit the head, grab some overprices Funyuns and a GD liter of cola and plant yourself in front of the game. First step you have to do (typically with the advice of the strung-out-on-monster pirates standing beside you) is to size up the tank of stuffed toys and see if there are any that's don't appear to have been packed in tight by a yeti jumping up and down on them. (On a side note, I think there's a fine artform these "packers" follow to cram everything in tightly and immovably while still giving the impression that the Underdog toy in a dress might conceivably be moved.)

Once you've determined your target(s), you feed in that money to the beast and prepare to move the claw over its intended victim in the 15 seconds alloted you. Beware! Some machines will only let you move in one direction forward or left and won't let you reverse course to fine-tune your adjustment. Leave those machines after your first attempt and don't give them any more money. They're only ripping you off worse. Once your claw is situated (again, often with the help of bleary-eyed, caffeinated, insane pirate friends trying to spot you from the side), you drop that sucker and see if it can snag that prize. More often than not, you get what I call the "jelly claw", where the claw seems to just slide over the toy like syrup without ever having a prayer of catching anything. I know these things are set to only have tension in the claw every so often, the trick is to make sure you're on target for the times it does work. Personally, my favorite times are when you can jam the claw tine into a belt or something on the toy and snag it when the claw doesn't have tension. MY own little way of sticking it to the "man". Uh... I guess the "stuffed animal man".

I've won a ton of goofy little stuffed toys over the years playing these games and previously they went to my wife or ended up toys for my dog, but now I have a baby girl and I must attack these games with a vengeance to win the prize to provide for my girl. Kind of a hunter-gatherer for the new millennium only instead of a bleeding gazelle, I bring back Curious George in a plane or some kind of freaky clown doll right out of "Poltergeist". I know she's just gonna love 'em. Whether she does or not doesn't matter, because at the time, I'm convinced she will. The first claw game I played after she was born, I was holding her in one arm while guiding the claw with the other and snagged a big fuzzy yellow duck the first time out. If that's not a sign, I don't know what is! She played with it (off and on) the rest of the multi-hour car trip. Daddy's mission accomplished. Poor girl's gonna end up with a closet full of these cheap-ass toys. hyuk hyuk.

Where are the best claw games you might ask? Well, I can give you a few right off the top of my head. The Citgo at Hwy 34 & I-20 in Terrell, TX has a good one. The Denny's off Hwy 69 in Muskogee, OK as well. A new favorite, the Station Grill in Lawton, OK has one. The best one of all, though, is the claw game at the Silver's Travel Center on the North side of 328 & I-10 in Breaux Bridge, LA. You guys have a favorite to let us know about?

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon

I knew that title would get your attention. This being my first and possibly only blog post I was going to originally make it a rant about Squeegy. We had actually worked it out so that we would rip each other apart on the board but we were too busy (read: lazy) for that. Oh well, the time has passed for that so now I'll just regale you with the tale of how I became a Bilge Pump and why the heck I still do it.

I was born a poor black child - no wait, that was The Jerk. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away - crap, Star Wars. It was a dark and stormy night - uh oh, Snoopy. Okay, fine, it all started one fateful day in October of 2005 at my day job where I have the misfortune of working with Maroon. As is our usual way, we were wasting time talking about anything but work. He brought up that Blue was starting to go MIA from some gigs because of other commitments. He asked if I wanted to join the band as a second guitarist to help take up the slack and if Blue decided he was ready to leave that I would be the man. I had played guitar heavily from 1988 until about 1995 and was in a hard rock cover band playing songs by Skid Row, Poison, Motley Crue, Metallica, Dokken, Warrant, Ratt...you get the idea. The playing of music like the Bilge Pumps stuff was never something I had considered and I rarely played on an acoustic guitar unless I was trying to appear sensitive to get a girl to...I digress. I had gotten to a point where I was too busy with my real life to try to become a famous rock guitar player so I moved away from my guitar. I picked it up an hour here or there a few dozen times a year but that was about all.

I told Maroon that I had not played guitar much in many years and that I was extremely rusty. He said that didn't matter because no one in the band was that good. I still tried to find any excuse I could to get out of saying yes but Maroon can really whine like an annoying girl when he wants something. I said I needed some time to think about it because if I was going to do it I wanted to feel like I could do it right - don't know what I was thinking there. I began mulling it over and even turned to my mom to help me figure out what I should do. I could come up with no legitimate reason to say no. I had worked with Maroon for years and been to several of his parties so I already knew John Crow, Phil and Galleon - at least a little bit.

I told Maroon I would do it so he passed me all the music on mp3 and CD, sheets with lyrics and guitar chords and said tell me when you're ready to come to a rehearsal. I spent a few weeks familiarizing myself with the cacophony of howling cat noises that is The Bilge Pumps and working from recordings of Squeegy's guitar. With my trusty sheets in hand I learned several of the guitar songs and made it to my first rehearsal.

Upon entering Maroon's house for my first official Bilge Pumps rehearsal I was introduced to Harvey. His first words to me were "you're not homophobic are you?" to which I replied no. He said I would be fine. He never asked if I liked being molested by creepy old guys though - now that would have made me run. Blue was busy that evening so he missed rehearsal which left it all on me. Maroon asked what songs I knew and I pulled out my sheets. As we played through the first song (no, I don't remember what it was) everyone seemed moderately impressed that I actually played it well. Granted they didn't say I was the next coming of Squeegy (disgusting thought) but they knew I'd work out at least musically. In my time playing hard rock/hair band stuff, I had developed a decent enough singing voice for that style of music. I had what one friend referred to as a "teen angst" voice where I could sing like Bon Jovi and get a good warbling vibrato going. I never had that much confidence in my voice regardless of the compliments I had received. I felt like my singing was limited to the hair band stuff so I told Maroon I'd be okay playing guitar for them but I was not about to do any singing. To his credit he didn't whine at this point but he did start planning to force me to sing - sneaky S.O.B.

We jump forward to January 28, 2006 and Scarlet's Mid-Winter Festival. I packed up my girlfriend and her son so we could make the drive to OKC to check out what the heck I was joining. No, my dear reader, I had never seen the Bilge Pumps perform live. Check out the pic on the Past Landings page. After sitting through a few songs I felt like I had made a huge mistake but need I remind you that Maroon whines? I thought I'd better at least give it a shot and I would probably suck so much they'd ask me to leave. Boy was I wrong...

February 18, 2006 - my first performance. Naturally I had little pirate garb at the time nor was any of it really good for the flesh ripping cold wind that was blowing around the Strand in Galveston for Mardi Gras. I had bought boots and 2 shirts at Scarlet's. My pants were a gift from John Crow and you will see them from time to time. I was allowed to borrow Maroon's cloak so at least I wasn't a Sharkbait-sicle. I somehow managed to play through the songs with frozen hands using my trusty book of sheets. At this point I had NO stage presence or had really put any thought into my performance beyond guitar playing - at least I had my pirate name. The feedback I received from the guys was that I played well considering and that it was my fault it was so damn cold. Blue missed the joy of this gig so it was all me.

The next 2 gigs Blue joined us so I didn't have to remember everything nor use my sheets as much until he left town and the band for work reasons - oh crap! I decided that if I was going to continue as the sole guitarist for the Bilge Pumps that I needed a little help getting things polished. I begged Maroon to bring in the illustrious Squeegy to help. Luckily he was on a break from touring as Barney so he had an opportunity to sit down with me to show me how he did things. My first thought was "I hate him" because he was a much better guitarist. I realized he was actually a nice guy and more than willing to help me figure out what I needed to know about the songs. I began getting a better handle on the songs even though I still referred to the sheets for many of the songs. Once I got to the point of knowing some of the songs enough to not use the sheets Maroon started to force me to join the singing. I resisted as long as I could but he started saying something about how everyone has to sing. He might have said did you know bees sting - I wasn't really listening.

One of the most often received comments about my stage presence was that I seemed to be upset. Fanny often gave me grief about not smiling. I began to think about these comments and realized by looking at pictures they were right. I knew it wasn't because I was unhappy it was just that I was concentrating so much on what I needed to do. I had gotten over my stage fright after about 5 or 6 gigs so I figured I would just play to my strengths and thus was born the Sharkbait Simon grumpy bastard school of piracy. I already had a reputation as being grumpy in my daily life so why not in my pirate life too?

Okay, so now you have the long boring story of my beginnings...Here's the quick wrap up because I don't want Maroon to start editing out all my stuff.

Galleon's departure left a lot of songs up in the air as well as hole in the lineup. I volunteered for singing some tunes and Maroon volunteered me for the joy of Harvey dancing all around me like some geriatric stripper. Being grumpy isn't always a good thing when it gets you assignments like that In order to fill the line up back out Maroon wanted to bring back Squeegy. For once in his life Maroon was a decent human being and actually asked my opinion on having Squeegy back. Naturally since I had put an effort into this mess he didn't want me to feel like I was being supplanted (who knew Sharkbait was intelligent?!). I made it clear that I had no issue with the return of Squeegy - like him and we play well together. Besides, he's much more cheerful so I can I stay the grumpy bastard that I am.

He has definitely pushed me to work even harder. I now rarely ever use the sheets since I can rely on him when my memory fails. Granted I was already getting to the point of only using sheets just before I went on stage to jog my memory or on the songs we rarely ever do. He has also pushed me to sing the songs more while I'm playing. It was something I had every intention of doing anyway once I got to the point where playing the songs was second nature. Now that I read this I guess Squeegy hasn't really made me work harder - forget I said anything.

I may smile more and appear to have more fun on stage now than I did in the earlier days but I will always be "by far the grumblingest guitarist to ever join the band". And lucky for me, you all love me for it...(yes, that's the reason I keep doing it)

Well, in a kind of poetic follow up to the last blog I posted about the price of gas, I have some sad news to impart. The Bilge Pumps will not be at the Louisiana Renaissance Festival in 2008. A weird scheduling quirk of the calendar this year is the cause. Since there are 5 weekends in November this year and the LA Ren Fest always starts on the 1st weekend in November, that puts its final weekend as the first weekend in December instead of the second. Since the Bilge Pumps are booked at TRF through the end of November, that would only leave us the last weekend of Louisiana to perform at. Unfortunately, that's the same weekend as Dickens on the Strand which always occurs on the first weekend in December. So, a choice had to be made, Dickens or Louisiana.

It's always tough to make a choice like that. Louisiana has always been good to us, both from a patrons and management standpoint. Last year, when we could only make the final weekend of the festival, Alvon was good to us and gave us the peninsula to play on (luckily there were no weddings that weekend) and we had a good time with everyone. The thing is, Hammond is an 8 hour drive from Dallas/Ft. Worth and Galveston is only 4 1/2 hours away. That makes a big difference when you're talking 3-4 cars hauling us mangy pirates down the concrete seas. We ran the numbers and it's really a no-brainer in terms of cost. The only thing was we REALLY hated to not do Louisiana due to our numerous friends and fans in cajun country.

It was a tough call, but one we had to make. We have many fans and friends in Galveston as well, so it's not like we're doing it all for the $$$ (no, really) and we hope that Alvon will give us a chance to come back in 2009 when the dates line back up again. We apologize to all of our Louisiana fans that we won't be there this year, but we're hoping and planning on it being a temporary thing. Since we began in 2000, Louisiana is the only festival we have performed every year and and we hate to see the tradition die. It's just one of those bad luck things that happens. If you're dying for your Bilge Pumps fix this fall, though, we hope maybe you'll get a chance to come see us at TRF or Dickens and say hi and throw gator meat at us in retribution. Squeegy's can still be alive if you'd like.

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon