oh kee pah

Happy Holidays, phans! Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, hope you’re very much enjoying time off from work, relaxing at home with your friends and family. Another week light in news from our boys- only a few worthy items popping up this week to report.

Hidden Track, among many others, reported that Phish would indeed be touring this summer. Some thorough reading of the Press of Atlantic City revealed an article on a council vote regarding festivals coming to Bader Field in the summer of 2012. Dave Matthew’s Band Caravan 2011 made a stop at the 142-acre airstrip and we now know that the casino-beachside city will welcome at least two more festivals in 2012 slated for June 15-17 and 24-25. They are considering opening two more weekends in September for music festivals, though we have no evidence that Phish will headline or appear at any of these events. A Starr Hill Promotions representative, Ken MacDonald, did confirm that our favorite quartet “will tour next summer,” but the meager reassurance was very welcome considering Rolling Stone quoting Trey as having “a less busy tour year” in 2012.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, New Years runs are just around the corner and I’m sure everyone is getting geared up. Whether you’re hitting the Phish for Manhattan Mayhem at Oh Kee Pah MSG, Umphrey’s McGee for wild and unpredictable jams in Missouri, or Phil, Bobby, and Furthur over in San Fran, you don’t have to miss any of the action no matter where you are. You can couch tour-it by purchasing a Phish webcast for any of the 4 nights which will be available for 48 hours after the show, or hit up Sirius XM radio, who will broadcast a plethora of New Years Eve concerts for your listening pleasure. You can check out Furthur on Grateful Dead radio (channel 23), Widespread Panic on Jam_On (channel 29), Willie Nelson on Willie’s Roadhouse (channel 56), Little Feat on Radio Margaritaville (channel 24), or a wide variety of other acts broadcasting live that night. If you can’t make it out to any show in person, get your crew together and rage all these shows house-side.

In wrapping up a few other things for my last column of 2011, I wanted to publicly thank an Oh Kee Pah reader for hooking me up with a ticket. Marc S., you’re the man, I couldn’t thank you enough for making my Phishmas and New Years- thank you, thank you, thank you phriend! (Not to be greedy, but I’m still looking for a 30th if you hear of one, haha.) If you haven’t figured your ticket situation out yet, fear not. This week could be full of miracles for you. Pulling your hair out like I was? Check out these sweet after parties, for which tickets are much easier to acquire, including performances by Steve Kimock, 7 Walkers, Yarn, Twiddle, Wyllys and the New York Hustler Ensemble, and more. For a really good read check out PhanArt Pete’s The Night Before Phishmas for a really good read (or the Christwire article linked above), and as he says, Merry Phishmas to all and to all a good tour! ~ Carly Shields 

Late addition: Our friends at Headstash are giving away four MSG tickets via their mobile events guide! 

   

Having taught guitar and spoken with so many players for years, I've narrowed it down to one piece of advice: Forget about learning scales and theory, but try to play the melody to everything you hear: every song on the radio, every commercial, every nursery rhyme, the theme song to your favorite TV show. And don't just play guitar lines: try to play horn lines, vocal melodies, piano parts. Develop your ear. Guitar players are the most notoriously scale-oriented instrumentalists. I'm amazed how many guitar players I've met who can't play a C major scale up the neck-from C to C, not as part of a pattern. That's the first thing that you learn on any other instrument, but guitar players learn the blues scale as a pattern, so they end up playing stuff with their fingers instead of their ears.

Trey Anastasio, December, 1996 - Guitar World Interview By Alan Paul