Road Trip Pt. 3 - Entertainment

Recording wasn’t the only thing we did during our week in Georgia. Steve is tied in to the music scene in the area, so on one night we went out to see a cover band. Now I’m not a fan of cover bands, the main reason being that they usually play songs that were overplayed (for me) 10 years ago.  That being said, I was a little hesitant to go see the band. Steve kept saying that the band was made up of monster players, and that they were worth seeing so, that made it a little easier.

The band was The Mike Veal Band, and they were most definitely monster players. All of the members had played with either regionally or nationally “famous” bands, including Wet Willie, Boss Tweed, Gregg Allman, Ted Nugent, Derek Trucks, The Aquarium Rescue Unit, and Sugarland.

That alone was impressive, but the proof as they say is in the pudding, and in this case the “pudding” would be the music, and these guys definitely knew what to put in the pudding. They have this “schtick” where people give them requests, and they try to play the song, whether they’ve played it before or not. The night that I saw them, they tried “The Age of Aquarius” from “Hair”, which they actually pulled off, and “Girl” by the Beatles, which sort of crashed and burned, but was still worth seeing.  

Another sign of good musicianship is who comes out and sees them play, and if the night that I saw them was any indication, then they have fans in high places.  They brought up some people in the audience to play and sing with them. They brought up a keyboard player who turned out to be Wayne Famous from the 1980s Atlanta band, The Producers. Then at one point, the singer Mike brought up a singer, whose name I didn’t catch, to sing a couple of songs. That singer did a good job, but the next singer Mike brought up was a landmark experience in my book. From the stage, the singer, Mike, says something along the lines of “It’s humbling to be only the sixth best singer in the bar,” and then invites up William Bell.

 This, in my opinion, was a brush with greatness. William Bell is a singer-songwriter who has a long history in the music business. He has been described as one of the founders of the Stax-Volt sound, and while at Stax he wrote and recorded “You Don’t Miss Your Water”, and co-wrote (along with Booker T. Jones) “Born Under a Bad Sign”.

As I said, Steve is tied in to the music scene, and knows the guys in The Mike Veal Band. The guitar player, Barry, kept trying to get Steve to come up and play on a couple of songs, and the drummer, Sean, is putting drum tracks on some songs that Steve is recording.  We got to meet these guys, and for a music fan like myself, it was a highlight of the trip.