BedLetter

Posted on January 24, 2012 by ~ Bill Ledbetter ~

BedLetter is a gang of musicians from the Ledbetter family. Brothers Joe and Bill Ledbetter grew up in a tight-knit musical family with their Dad, Bud Ledbetter who plays anything with strings or keys and is an encyclopedia of American music. After years of ‘arm chair’ music theory and endless pickin’ sessions with Bud and other musician friends, the brothers started jamming in and around the Birmingham music scene in the mid 80s. All this time, they have been hosting weekly or biweekly jam sessions in various locations with an array of talented musicians. These musical celebrations, which are now tradition, have produced gig-worthy bands with a focus on originality. In 2009, Bill’s son Wil joined the fray and has been the house drummer since. Keep an eye out for BedLetter gigs coming soon with some very special guests.

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Posted in Bands, Family, featured, Jam Sessions, Live Music Gigs, Music, Recording Studio, Songs | Leave a comment

Tis The Season To Be Normal

Posted on December 22, 2011 by ~ Bill Ledbetter ~

Audio MP3
Greensleeves
Wil Ledbetter – Drums | Bill Ledbetter – Guitars & Bass

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Silent Night
Bud & Bill Ledbetter – Guitars

As 2011 winds down, I’m happy that the sky has not fallen or the Earth moved in my neck of the woods, even though we live in “extreme times.” Everything is so extreme in the 21st century. There is no such thing as mundane or normal in the world of 24/7, instantaneous information overload where everything is measured in extremes. Every time you turn around there is a new and improved level of extreme, or for those who like to take extreme liberty with language, Xtreme sporting event, TV show, consumer product, or political movement, not to mention all of the extremely ridiculous crimes that captivate headlines with every passing second. Add a few more extremely tasteless reality shows and internet myths and maintaining sanity or a fleeting semblance of anything normal is almost beyond reach for the average human brain, which unlike all of the smart machines we’ve created, is physically limited by how much information it can process at one time; at least mine is! I haven’t been able to trade my normal brain in for a new and improved Xtreme model. A Google search for the word Xtreme brings up 22,500,000 results in 0.12 seconds! No argument there on Xtreme computing. One result of this extremism that really gets me down, especially this time of year, is how extremely divided our country and our citizens have become and how we accept hating what each other stands for as much as we relish a good meal or book. It’s really an extremely hostile situation made worse by extreme politicians and media machines that thrive on drama, controversy, and greed to make fortunes off of our normal little backs. Is there any solution to fix this mess in the near future? Probably not without lots of Xtreme Love and a little less worry about how to satisfy our own extreme needs.

This Christmas, I’m focusing on simple and normal things we may take for granted as we get caught up in the everyday swirling pool of lightning-fast, cyber-fueled endless information delivery systems, like family, friends, and music! Let’s all put on some cool Christmas music and be peacefully normal for a few days and forget about all of that extreme behavior that spawns extreme products for extreme shoppers racing to please that extremely picky relative on Christmas day. Instead, sing a joyful song, turn up the radio, or bang on an instrument to bring out your best emotional response to the season. Hug someone you love (or Love someone you hug) and feel how incredibly normal and good it feels to get hugged back.

In keeping of a normal Christmas, I’m offering some simple Homemade Christmas Music. Tis the season to be normal! I hope you enjoy this little gift and while you’re here, subscribe to Harmonic Rambling by entering your email address under the Follow Harmonic Rambling heading on the sidebar. I promise to do my best to not bore you and I will never, ever SPAM you with Xtreme claims about Xtreme life-enhancing medication that make everything in your Xtreme world normal!

 <<<<<<<<<For More Homemade Christmas Music From Years Gone By>>>>>>>>>>>>

Posted in Christmas, Family, Humor, Music, Non Fiction, Recording Studio, Songs | 12 Comments

Fun With Garage Band

Posted on November 22, 2011 by ~ Bill Ledbetter ~

One of the cool things about getting a Mac computer is that they come out of the box loaded with outstanding tools for all of your creative projects, including Garage Band, an app with incredible sounding instrument loops that cross a broad spectrum of sounds and musical genres. To start composing, all you need to do is open a project and start dragging loops to a timeline. If you want to dig deeper into your creative nature, you can edit these loops, add effects, fade them in an and out, pan left and right, change the pitch, key, tempos, etc… You can do this with as many tracks as you wish and then layer audio tracks recorded from a mic or instrument input on top.

Garage Band Screen Shot

Garage Band is a Great Tool for Musicians

When I got my first iMac in 2005 and a couple of years before he started playing drums, Wil and I would collaborate on Garage Band projects and take turns adding sections, with the unstated goal of trying to out distance each other in our genre-bending electronic compositions. Sometimes I would add guitar tracks to the final project. We both really got into these sessions and continued creating some of our own solo compositions as well for a while.

Garage Band Expirement – Part 1
Bill & Wil Ledbetter – Garage Band Loops | Bill Ledbetter -  Guitars

Audio MP3

Garage Band Expirement – Part 2
Bill & Wil Ledbetter – Garage Band Loops | Bill Ledbetter – Guitars

Audio MP3

For more Garage Band Weirdness

Posted in Family, Garage Band, Guitar, Jam Sessions, Music, Recording Studio, Songs | 3 Comments

Random (Low Tech) Guitar Noise

Posted on November 10, 2011 by ~ Bill Ledbetter ~

This low tech noise was recorded in 1994 using a Sure SM58 mic and a Tascam Portastudio 246 four track cassette machine. One guitar was recorded on one track. The tape was flipped over and played backwards, and more guitar tracks were added on top of the reversed track.

Guitar-O-Noizo Pt I – Bill Ledbetter, 1994 Get Adobe Flash player

Tascam-246-Portastudio

Low Tech Guitar Rig - 1994

The guitar rig was a Fender Stratocastor routed through DoD analogue delay and Wah/Volume Pedals and a Rat distortion pedal into a 70s era Fender silver-face Princeton amp.

The four track and guitar rig were all setup in a closet in the kitchen of a carriage house that I lived in behind Cliff Road in Forest Park.

Posted in Guitar, Low Tech, Music, Noise, Recording Studio | 3 Comments

Random Gigs – Do Dah Day, 2007

Posted on August 6, 2011 by ~ Bill Ledbetter ~

In 2007 Mojo Brothers had the great honor of playing one of Birmingham’s best festivals, Do Dah Day! We’d been playing once or twice a month in my living room and Troy’s wife, Julie suggested we put our name in the hat to play. I put together a demo from some crude homemade recordings and handed it off for our audition. Much to our surprise they asked us to play! We started working out our set list once a week for a couple of months, and had almost as much fun getting ready for the gig as we did playing it. A couple of days before the gig my friend, Nancy Boutwell, who was on the Do Dah Board, called and gave me the bad news that Topper Price had passed away and asked if we would we do a tribute to him at our set and then do the tribute again a few hours later at another stage. Wow, what a privilege but also more than a bit humbling to honor a member of the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and one of Birmingham’s best and most beloved musicians. After throwing around a few songs that Topper did, we knew that we’d never do him justice so we decided to do a harmonica lead in of Amazing Grace followed by an ancient blues tune called, “Diggin’ My Potatoes.”

This was the 30th anniversary of Do Dah Day and our great friend and talented artist, Kim Graham designed the Logo and T-Shirts and it was one of the best. Never one to miss a chance for irony, Kim used the year 2007 creatively to officially christen the festival after the now immortal characters James Bone 007 and Kitty Galore.

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Posted in Bands, Community Service, Do Dah Day, Family, Live Music Gigs, Music, Music Festivals, Songs | 3 Comments

Random Jams (Various)

Posted on July 10, 2011 by ~ Bill Ledbetter ~

June 26, 2011

Terraplane 1993 - John English, Chuck Knighton, Bill Ledbetter, Joe Ledbetter, & Spencer Lefell

My brother Joe and I first started playing music with John English in 1992, a couple of years before Wil was born. John provided a serious boost musically for us – his guitar playing took us to a new level and not long after we started playing together through a turn of events, Spence Lefell (Drums) and Chuck Knighton (Vocals) stepped into the picture, and a few weeks later we had our first gig as the Blues-Rock band, Terraplane. We played some memorable gigs around Birmingham for a few years and had a blast. Along the way, we had three different singers, including Charlotte Gill, who became Spencer’s wife and mother of their two beautiful children. We’ve been making music off and on in various informal jams since. On a hot Sunday afternoon last month, John brought his good friend, flute player, Michelle Reynolds over and we had a great jam. Michelle added a really cool vibe with her flute and we hope she will grace us with her talent again. Michelle is also a talented artist who designs and refinishes furniture (website)

Red House Get Adobe Flash player
Bill Ledbetter – Guitar, | Wil Ledbetter – Drums | John English – Guitar & Vocals | Michelle Reynolds – Flute | Joe Ledbetter – Bass

Stormy Jam Get Adobe Flash player
Bill Ledbetter – Guitar & Harmonica | Wil Ledbetter – Drums | John English – Guitar | Michelle Reynolds – Flute | Joe Ledbetter – Bass

Can’t Find My Way Jam Get Adobe Flash player
Bill Ledbetter – Guitar, | Wil Ledbetter – Drums | John English – Guitar | Michelle Reynolds – Flute | Joe Ledbetter – Bass

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Posted in Bands, Family, Jam Sessions, Music, Recording Studio, Songs | 2 Comments

Random Jam – Bud & Bill Ledbetter (January 2011)

Posted on February 24, 2011 by ~ Bill Ledbetter ~

Lay Down My Old Guitar/Been All Around This World Bud & Bill Ledbetter, January 2011 Get Adobe Flash player

Since way back in the early 80s, I’ve been organizing and participating in musical Jam Sessions on a semi-regular basis with family and friends. These sessions run the gamut from a room full of loud electric instruments and drums, to a couple of acoustic guitars. Along the way I’ve tried to record these gatherings if possible and now have more homemade music than I could ever listen to, including leaf bags full of cassette tapes. In the early days, I’d use cheap cassette players and boom boxes and as my recording gear evolved,  I took to overdubbing and mixing these sessions with a level of reckless abandon that seethed with amateurish glee and displayed my consistent, “just enough to be dangerous” audio engineering skills. As you can imagine, there are some pretty rough mixes and more than a few bad arrangements, as well as lots of chatter, laughter, and more than one occasion where someone is captured on tape having way too much fun! More than anything else, these recordings represent an enormous vault of memories and priceless good times for me. Welcome to the first in the series of soon to be infamous, Random Jams!

Bud Ledbetter in the 1950s

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Posted in Family, Jam Sessions, Music, Recording Studio, Songs | 3 Comments

Canned Jam – 2010

Posted on November 20, 2010 by ~ Bill Ledbetter ~

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Posted in Community Service, Family, Jam Sessions, Music | 1 Comment

Fool For a Cigarette

Posted on October 6, 2010 by ~ Bill Ledbetter ~
How many times have you heard songs about fools? There must be as many fool references in music as there are trains. Fool for love, fool and his money goes separate ways, foolish games, fool for your stockings, fooled around and fell in love, won’t get fooled again…you get the picture, fools and foolish behavior are good song material. One of my all time favorites is “Fool for a Cigarette.”

A year ago on September 14, 2009 at 5:36 PM I adopted Ry Cooder’s version of this old song as my new theme when I put down cigarettes for the last time. I decided that I would never again be a “Fool for a Cigarette.” No matter what else in life I did, smoking was not going to be part of the equation. Boy did I feel like a fool when the first few weeks turned into months of crawling out of my skin, jumping at shadows, and generally just hanging on every day to stay sane without that frequent nicotine buzz that accompanied me in every waking hour of my life for 35 years or more. Listening to this song I can relate when he says, Ahh mister I hope this ain’t no insult, but would you save me that old butt. When you finish choke it, cause I needs to smoke it. Mister I’m a fool ‘bout a cigarette.

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Posted in Non Fiction, words | 6 Comments

Round Tuit

Posted on January 15, 2010 by ~ Bill Ledbetter ~
Does anyone remember the Round Tuit? They came in all shapes and sizes, but the most common was either a wooden or metal coin-shaped object with the words Round Tuit cleverly printed on the surface, sometimes with other (usually motivational) slogans on the back. The implied message with this curious little object was  everything that you needed to do but were too lazy or too busy to complete, would somehow miraculously be achieved if you carried and/or displayed this magic token. For a while you saw them everywhere, sometimes displayed right next to a pet rock. Anyone ever bought a pet rock? I’d be willing to bet that if you bought a pet rock, you coughed up the money to buy a Round Tuit. At one time,  Round Tuits were popular items in the office, right next to that fake grenade with the note that says, complaint department, pull the pin to take a number. Sometimes, you’d see them on a book shelf next to the sign that said, This is not Burger King, You can’t Have it Your Way! I’ll bet you’re wondering where all this is going, huh? Well so am I!

It started around New Years when most people start talking about all of their resolutions and I was secretly wondering when I would make some resolutions that I could realistically keep without dusting off the Round Tuit I bought back in 1975. As it turned out, I couldn’t find mine so I did what most folks do in the 21st Century when they need information, turn on the computer and start surfing. I learned, for example, that the Free Masons sell Round Tuits! In fact, for only $4.95 you can get your official Free Mason Round Tuit complete with an ominous looking symbol as your Round Tuit’s background.

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Posted in Humor, Non Fiction, words | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments