Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been playing bass with The Langers Ball from St. Paul MN. I worked on a couple of package designs with Michael Sturm and Hannah Rediske in the past; when they asked me to play bass with them in a new “full band” it was an easy decision. The music is fast and fun; I need to use two distortion pedals when we play live.

The set is a mix of speedy “trad. arranged” Irish songs plus Michael’s originals, with a few slower ones thrown in to give you time to refill your glass (including a beautiful cover of Greg Brown’s “Little Vagabond.”) Most of them are about one of my favorite subjects: whiskey. The trad. material is given a good working-over; for example the famine/emigration ballad “Fields Of Athenry” sounds more like U2 than The Dubliners.

In the studio with engineer John Wright (folk-rockers Lehto & Wright, also worked on the last two Boiled In Lead releases), maniacal drummer Derek Jaimes (ex-Wild Colonial Bhoys) and I knocked out all the basics in a three-day session. Michael and Hannah are finishing up their overdubs this week, and then Trevor Jurgens will be in to add some rockabilly twang with his hollowbody Gretsch. We’ll finish the recording with backing vocals, re-amping the bass for extra sludge, and perhaps a guest or two. The album package is going to be shot at a high level, too – we’ve already done two retro-futurist photo sessions with Steve Wolf / Other Side Images.

Yesterday, Michael came over to the office and we put together a new band site in just a few hours (yes, another WordPress site using Weaver). It’s early days yet for the site, but the Kickstarter project to fund production of the band’s new album The Devil Or The Barrel has just a few days remaining; we’re within reach of the goal and hope you’ll consider funding it.

Here’s video from my first Langers gig at The Wild Tymes in Saint Paul; stay tuned as the project goes forward: