I recently found some videos of live performances from my time playing keyboards with Freekbass.
One of the highlights of my musical career was playing music with Freekbass. I was part of the touring band for nearly two years, from 2004-2005.
At some of our shows, I’d place a miniDV camcorder on top of my equipment rack at the start of our set and hit record. This one — a complete 40-minute set from The Empty Glads in Charleston, West Virginia — turned out pretty good!
I had been diagnosed with severe RA by this point — but had my symptoms relatively under control. I didn’t drink a drop of alcohol back then, because the drugs I was taking could cause serious liver damage (I make up for that now…)
This lineup was TIGHT! With Freekbass on bass/vocals/percussion; Josh Knarr on guitar and vocals, Ry Stephenson on drums and percussion, and me on keys/vocals.
The audio is surprisingly pretty good, too! The synth sounds you hear are coming from my Korg 01/Wpro routed through an Electro-Harmonix mini Q-tron pedal. The Peter Frampton style “talkbox” and vocoder effects are from my trusty Digitech Talker pedal. (If you look closely, you can see me switching back and forth between my vocal mic and my “talker” effect mic! I usually had multiple sounds split across the keyboard for different songs. The Hammond B3 sounds are coming from my old Oberheim OB-3(2) keyboard (the one on top)!
I loved playing with these guys. Hope you enjoy watching and listening to this as much as I enjoyed playing it!!