Malcolm "Papa Mali" Welborne-Guitarist and Bandleader Extraordinaire

Here's the Papa Mali Homepage: http://www.papamali.com/

News of the great 2009 ACL performance of Malcolm Welborne, better known to his fans as Papa Mali, was hitting the cable Texas tv news shows today, and they were mentioning that Papa Mali's new band has Greatful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann. Indeed, this band has done a couple of gigs together, as Relix magazine said last month:

Papa Mali spent the past week in Colorado, playing in a band that also includes Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann, bassist Reed Mathis and keyboardist Matt Hubbard. The band headlined Boulder, CO’s Boulder Theater early in the weekend, offering a set that mixed Dead covers and songs long associated with the group like “Mr. Charlie,” “Turn On Your Love Light” and “I Know You Rider” with New Orleans standards and a few originals. At the start of the group’s second set, Anders Beck (dobro) and Paul Hoffman (mandolin) of the Kalamazoo, MI-based Greensky Bluegrass also took the stage with the group for “Friend Of The Devil.” Papa Mali will play a free show in at Austin’s Waterloo Park on August 12 as part of KGSR’s Blues On The Green.

I've been a follower and fan of Malcolm since the mid-80's, during his work with the reggae band Killer Bees. In the late 80's and early 90's, you could often find him jamming around Austin with a marvelous ska band that was aptly named "House In Orbit". Both Chris Thomas [King], who fronted an Austin HQ'd band in this time period, and Papa Mali would often sit in with HIO, and the results were always explosive.

Like so many Austin acts over the years, it's the live gigs with the guest artists, who often burn as players, leading to gigs with special intensity and feeling that is rarely able to be captured in the studio.

Next up for Papa Mali was his band Papa Mali and the Instigators. The original lineup featured drum wunderkind Barry "Frosty" Smith. The lineup of this stage of his bands often varied, but as long as Papa Mali was at the guitar helm you could be guaranteed rocking and swinging and bluesy guitar playing, with vocals to match.

His originals are rocking. His covers are simply devastatingly rocking and bring new life to old songs. Witness his 2005 and 2006 treatment of "When the Levee Broke", originally by Led Zeppelin, which he began doing when playing with the one of the hurricanes displaced Neville brother's in Austin.

During the early 2000's, he was also producing CD's for various folks. My favorite was Big Delta by Omar and the Howlers. Of course, Papa Mali also played on the CD as well, joining Omar and the "legendarys" Frosty and Terry Bozzio, who shared drum duties. Roscoe Beck rounded out the band on bass.

About that time, Papa Mali began playing as Papa Mali 3, a trio with guitar, bass and drums. I've got some of the live shows on CD that he was doing back then, and they are excellanto.

Malcolm can soulfully play the guitar. His slide work is masterful, and he skips between styles as effortlessly as an eagle in flight. Much of what he does is what I call Gulf Coast blues tinged music, heavy on the NOLA contributions and sprinkled with a lot of what can only be called soul.

My favorite Malcolm CD is the one pictured above, called Thunder Chicken. That is some soulful stuff. Featuring Frosty on drums, you can't go wrong with players of this caliber, but the originals and few covers are so soulfully executed that you would think you were in a NOLA Quarter bar on a cold, rainy Sunday night in a small bar listening to a stellar band.

I've seen him in the French Quarter when it was raining and cold and mostly empty in the clubs. I've seen him at the downstairs Fitzgerald's in Houston on another cold and rainy night where there was a crowd of about six. He played his heart out then like he does now when he plays festivals now for thousands.

I've seen him at now defunct Austin venues like The Liberty Lunch, The Black Cat Lounge and the legendary Mercado Caribe. When in Austin now, you can often find him at The Saxon Pub. I suspect he sometimes plays Antone's, but I'm not so sure of that. He's been doing lots of road work the past few years, and I'm always reading about his stellar performance at some far away festival.

The one word that I have not yet used to describe Papa Mali is the word "FUNKY". And he is all that when it comes to being funky.

Although Papa Mali and Bill K from the Dead have been jamming together for over a year, here's a press release from Bill's website talking about the ACL gig. Bill mentions the awesome Robb Kidd, who is a tremendous drummer as well.

Monday, September 28, 2009 ~ Press ReleaseBill Kreutzmann with Papa MaliPapa Mali will be performing at the Austin City Limits Music Festival in front of his hometown crowd on Oct. 3, 2009. This will be his second appearance at the event which drew a crowd of over 218,000 fans last year and was ranked #5 on Billboard’s top festivals of 2008. This time around, Papa has pulled out all the stops and invited his musical compatriot Bill Kreutzmann (Grateful Dead, BK3) to play drums on the set. Performing alongside Papa and Bill will be longtime Papa Mali drummer Robb Kidd (look for some double kit action), Matt Perrine (Bonerama) on sousaphone and Matt Hubbard (Willie Nelson and Friends) on keyboards, harmonica and trombone. A surprise guest wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities. This year’s ACL fest will also feature Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Beastie Boys, Kings of Leon and numerous other monsters of the scene.Papa Mali, Bill Kreutzmann and Matt Hubbard will then head directly into the studio to record their new CD along with Reed Mathis (Tea Leaf Green) on bass. The sessions will be made up almost entirely of new material that has been co-written by Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan lyricist) and Papa Mali. The new CD is expected to be released in early 2010. Papa Mali featuring Bill Kreutzmann’s next gig will be October 31 and November 1 at the Las Tortugas Festival in Yosemite National Park. If you are looking for something to do on Halloween, come get your freak on in one of the most striking locations in the country.

More Devil's River and Kayaking Musings

I've been wondering why I have not gone to the Devil's River for a fishing trip. I've known about it for the past 20 years, yet for some reason another trip becomes more desired.

First, I've got a problem interesting anyone other than Billy Ray in making a fishing trip that involves hiking. Billy Ray and I both have issues about white water kayaking. The issue is, we won't do it. At all.

And to fish the Devil's River, you've either got to Kayak it or find one of few very expensive and very hard to get to cabins to rent.

Billy Ray and I, in separate incidents back in the early 90's, both had near death experiences while running the Guadalupe at flood stage levels. In the driving rain. Cold April Rain. It's a bro binding experience.



We both took separate kayaking trips with the same group of friends, taking our trips about a year apart. In 1992, Billy shows up at my house in West Houston, battered, cut and bruised heavily on his back and lower torso, resembling someone who had been beaten with a baseball bat. At least that's what he said he felt like.

He had lost his glasses in his accident, which involved him slamming into rocks both above and below water.

Those injuries contributed to other conditions that Billy Ray's kayaking injuries greatly aggravated, leading to a painful lumbar disc rupture. Endoscopic back surgery a few months later was the remedy for his kayaking bravado.


So obviously I learned nothing from Billy Ray's mishap, for a year later nearly to the day, I went kayaking with the same group of folks. I rented the SAME EXACT KAYAK (without knowing it) from Abbott's that Billy Ray had wrecked out in the year before.


It was rainy, and pretty cold that weekend. The river was way up and running fast and hard. I'd run the river many times before, in canoes, tubes and rafts over the previous 15 years, and thought I knew it pretty well. I found out on my first run, on a Friday afternoon, that the river had changed drastically with the increased water flow.


I was using a tiny extreme whitewater kayak called a surfing kayak, designed for tricks and surfing rapids. Nonetheless, I did very well in it, and ran the river well, not dumping or having to eskimo roll once. It was fun. Big fun.


The next day, a Saturday morning, we set out on the river about 8 a.m. As I entered one notorious rapid, I surfed momentarily at the entrance to a chute that ran around the right side of the main rock in the rapid. The chute was newly created due to the high water, and had only partially been submerged the day before. I surfed right up onto the side of a rock, and ended up flipping upside down as I entered the chute, surrounded on both sides by rocks.



I couldn't roll or bail while in the chute as there was no room, and left only the option of running it upside down. My helmet and the left side of my face made much contact with the highly abrasive limestone rocks, leaving me with a serious 3" diameter abrasion on my left cheek and some bad rips in the helmet. I was lucky I didn't hit a rock head on, or face on.



After I exited the chute, I bailed upside down, and was immediately sucked into a "strainer", a group of rocks at the end of a rapid. This caused numerous cuts and tears to my shins, knees and thighs, and dangerously, my feet got sucked into the rocks. This is a bad way to drown.



Fortunately, I had my vest on, and was able to hoist myself over the rocks and into the shallow calm water at the end of the rapid. My kayak had been grabbed by one of my buddies. I swam to a nearby rock ledge, surrounded on all non-water sides by a towering cliff. As I exited the cold water, a wave of pain swept over me from my injuries.

The cold water had numbed the injuries, but as soon as I exited the water, they began hurting and the lower extremity cuts started bleeding profusely. There was no way to take out at the spot I was at, absent an ability to climb vertical cliffs. I got my first aid kit and bandaged and wrapped my injuries as best I could.

Although I didn't want to, I got back on that proverbial horse and ran two more rapids until I reached a takeout point. We were only halfway throught he trip, but I was done, well done. I took out at a bridge with my kayak and waited, bloody and battered in the driving rain, until a kind soul in a pickup offered to drive me to the outfitters.

After paying for the damage to the helmet, I drove home, hurting badly. By the time I reached Houston, I couldn't hardly walk. My face looked like someone had attacked it with a sander, and I'm lucky it didn't scar at all (I used aqua-vera ointment to prevent scarring). I was hurt so bad I couldn't go to work for over 2 weeks and had to get several of the cuts sutured at the ER after I got home.

So that's why Billy and I don't whitewater kayak anymore. We've both done lots of canoeing and rafting since then, and I've run both the Guadalupe and the Medina at high water since, just in a canoe or a raft. At least in a canoe or raft, you can jump out when danger strikes, and not be trapped as I was.

SO that's why Billy and I are not interested in kayaking the Devil's River. I'm trying to get a price for renting one of the few cabins available for a couple of days of hardcore fishing.

POINT BREAK ROCKS!

I've posted my feelings recently about the movie Point Break here R.I.P Patrick Swayze and Why I Love Point Break and tonight PB happened to be on. I got to watch the whole thing uninterupted, just like I used to do in the old days. What a rocking movie and what a rocking soundtrack.

Swayze, of course, was a convincing surf guru and criminal mastermind, lost in his own quest for inner peace. What a fantastic acting job.

Gary Busey was at the top of his game in this movie. He should have gotten some kind of an Academy award for his performance in this flick. Or something. I need to go buy this DVD.

THE FRUGAL GUITARIST MAGAZINE

I stumbled upon this website today looking at reviews of the Vox AC4TV in the preceeding post, and it's a very cool website. Frugal Guitarist dot com is located at, amazingly enough, http://frugalguitarist.com/Contents.aspx.

For the person who is picking the guitar back up after an absence, for the kids whose parents can't or won't spend big money for musical gear, or for the person who NOW wants to learn to play guitar or bass, it's a great find. Most of us can't or won't spend thousands of dollars on gear with which to jam at home, learn to play, do home recording or informal jams with friends and the like.

I say this in spite of the phenomenon referred to on various musician (and other hobby websites) called G.A.S., which stands for Gear Acquisition Syndrome or Gear Accumulation Syndrome.

Alot of the more inexpensive stuff coming out nowadays is pretty cool. For example, for a little more than $100, you can get an excellent bass or guitar from SX guitars at the Rondo Music website. A friend gave me a gift of one of the SX fretless jazz basses in Lake Placid Blue. It is perfect in every way. The pickups are actually excellent as are the tuners. The bridge is a little lightweight but for a guy like me, it really doesn't matter.

I'm not playing the bass live, I use it for songwriting and for recording on Garageband.

So if you're itching to learn to play the guitar, get yourself an SX strat for about $150 (these cost a bit more than the cheapest ones but have much better tuners and pickups) . Add one of these $250 tube amps and you're in bidness for the blues and for blues rock.

So go peruse the Frugal Guitarist online magazine. It's really custom made for me, and I spent several hours there today reading the various articles and reviews.

Yes, it's possible nowadays to have a very low cost amp and guitar arsenel that you can record onto Garageband with and have quite a selection of really cool guitars and amps for the price of a mid-highend Strat or Les Paul. In some cases, the sound of cheap guitars has rivaled or excelled that of the original brand.

And websites like the FrugalGuitarist.com help the normal guy have some killer musical gear on the cheap. I'm not saying that high end gear isn't cool. One of my friends has a Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul with an aged Pelham Blue finish and some of the finest HB pickups I've ever hear. PAF's.

But I won't be buying one of those anytime soon, but I could see an $100 SX or a Brice or Stagg or Hondo Les Paul in my mid-range future.

The Vox AC4TV Tube Amplifier: Cheapness and Coolness

When I was a young lad, tube amps were the norm for guitar players, from professional to garage to bedroom guitarists, tube amps were everywhere. Most of the most moving guitar work I've ever heard were done on tube amps. Most of the tube amps I've liked over the years were Fenders, but at various times there were some guitarists who I played in bands with that got some fantastic tone from Vox tube amps like the AC30 and the AC60.



One thing that always let you know that you were playing with a Vox tube amp player was the burning smell that these amps sometime eminate when being pushed into overdrive, particularly the AC30. I played in one Texas blues band earlier this decade where the guitarist favored a highly overdriven AC30 to do the loud parts, as he called them. The first time I smelled his amp, I went and looked to see if something was smoldering or melting in there. Nope, built like a tank.



Since then I've come to find that this burning smell sometimes accompanies Vox AC amps. I've never smelled that level of a burning HOT smell with other tube amps, even smaller amps like the 1960's Fender Princeton and Champ amps.

It's worth noting that a fellow named Steve T. that I went to high school with had one of the originals of these amps. Along with (a really excellent custom) homemade Stratocaster that Steve had made himself, including the neck and homemade/handwound single coils, Steve toted one of these 4 watt AC4's with him, an original from the 1960's.

I doubted that it could keep up with my drum set the first time he came to my house to jam. I actually questioned whether I'd be able to hear him over the drums and vice versa. He sort of scoffed and said that the amp had a rather unusually high output.

The amp had no problems competing with the very loud Ludwig blue Vistalite drum set I had at the time, with full complement of A. Zildjian "Rock" cymbals and New Beat hh's.

So here's a new (old) amp that got re-released this year from Vox, the British amp superstars. You can get it at the usual online dealers for $249 with free shipping. I'm sure that some calling and price beating could get the price down lower than that. But at the given price, it's a super bargain.

It has three available wattage settings, being 1/4 watt, 1 watt and 4 watts. It has separate volume, gain and tone controls with an on/off switch on top. The rear features a volume control for the headphone out, a headphone out and a speaker out.

These features are extra cool. The speaker out means you can hook this bad boy up to a larger cab with more speakers, and get a very big Vox tube sound.

There's no effects, but with an amp like this, you rarely want any. A reverb can always be added, as can any myriad of effects. But the basic Vox tube sound, for less than $250, can now be yours in a small package.

For guys like me, who are bedroom guitar players and home recorders, it's a great deal. By guys like me, I mean guys who like cool stuff but really can't justify the space or the expense of an AC30 added to what Mrs. El Fisho calls "too much stuff". I'm fortunate to have a music room, but a tiny and cheaper amp like this new AC4TV is alot easier sell than an AC30. Besides, the AC30 would be way too loud, even at it's lowest volume.

Because the ability to get "that Vox sound" means you have to get some interesting volume vs. gain adjustments going to match your guitar to get that " just breaking up" blues rock point, the sound we all know and love. So the wattage adjustments on this amp mean that you can be "cranking" your sound to this desired breakup point BUT AT A LOW OVERALL VOLUME when using the 1/4 watt setting. Although reviews I've read said that the 1/4 watt setting can actually generate some healthy volume.

Although I've got a Super Champ XD, I might be asking Santa to bring me this Vox. It's not handwired like in days of yore, but it's an authentic all-tube amp. And it's already been and this model is destined to be a classic for many years to come.

Every once in awhile, an amp comes along that has a great sound for a bargain price. This is one of those amps that I highly recommend for a practice amp for the experienced guitarist and as a home recording amp for the recording enthusiast. You can mic that bad boy right through your interface with a quality mic and get a earthy tubey sound that just can't hardly be emulated by a digital program.

Southwest Fly Fishing

One of my favorite magazines as of late is called Southwest Fly Fishing. You can view the table of contents of their latest issue at http://www.nwflyfishing.net/SouthwestFlyFishing/Default.aspx. It's a trio of magazines that covers fly fishing in the Northeast, the Southwest and the Northwest.

I bought my first one about 3 years ago, and it featured an article about fishing the Nueces River in South Texas. I've been reading them recently and started subscribing this year. The current issue is great, and it has a great feature on fishing the Devil's River in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas.

Although the Trans-Pecos is not much of a fishing area in general, the Devil's River is a fishing mecca, and it has some very large bass, both smallmouth and largemouth, along with catfish and the not often seen Rio Grande Perch.

You can download the issue for free, I believe, as a trial issue. Last month's issue had a great feature on Golden Trout fishing in the California Sierras, another dream trip of mine.

This month, they also talked about fishing in the Mission Beach and Mission Bay areas around San Diego. This article really spoke to me, because about 11 years ago I went there for a week and had a blast. I had perhaps some of the best fishing in my life. I took a deep sea trip back then, and caught more fish AND more types of fish than I've ever caught. It was non-stop fishing action and well worth the money paid for the trip.

I also did some bay fishing on that trip, and caught lots of unusual fish that I don't know the name of just fishing near my hotel at a small Marina.

So the article reminded me of another place I'd like to go back to do some fishing. During the middle of my trip, an El Nino storm blew in, and I was amazed at the huge waves that were coming ashore. It was quite a beautiful area and very fishy.

Surf's Up, or getting married at the beach

A few months ago in The Crazy Australian, I mentioned how my old friend Paul would be getting married soon. Well, we spoke tonight, and the wedding is on for December. On a nice beach near Sydney, the wedding will be a small affair. Sounds like just the ticket for fun.

And fishing. Although Paul is an extreme sports fanatic, much of his extreme sporting takes place on or near the water, particularly, the surf and the ocean and bays. He lives about an hour out of Sydney, about 15 minutes from the beach in a fashionable area on a bay.

So as I predicted, he will be getting wed on a beach, just not a beach in Fiji as originally planned. That's for the best, because I'd love to see Sydney and it's surrounds with my old friend Paul.

At my beach wedding, although I was in a Tux, Paul, as my best man, wore a nice pair of dark blue Birdwell Beach Britches short swimwear pants, a tuxedo t-shirt and a dark blue dinner jacket. And some of those flip flops made of rubber tubing. And we didn't mind at all. I might add he had a black silk baseball hat on. If he had worn suspenders, he would've looked like a younger Angus Young from AC/DC.

So if I go before the wedding, not only can I see his Mum and some other old friends but I can surely do some killer surf fishing. Paul's already trying to talk me into surfing with him (he has 5 boards) but I have to admit he's likely to be surfing in places this Texas Surf boy couldn't even handle.

I like Port Aransas surf. I grew up surfing in Galveston and Surfside, not enough to be called a surfer but enough where I could stand on a board and ride a lowly Texas wave into shore. Not fancy like, but not looking like an idiot either. Most times I go to Port A, the surf is a bit much for me to handle. Last spring, it was serious surf with some serious waves for Texas.

So I'm thinking I might not be doing any surfing in the "killer" waves they have down under. I'll just go fishing whilst he is surfing.