{"id":187,"date":"2020-07-23T23:38:40","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T18:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pocketfullofmumbles.com\/?p=187"},"modified":"2020-07-23T23:38:40","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T18:38:40","slug":"jamulus-pedal-steel-pockets-writ-larger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pocketfullofmumbles.com\/index.php\/2020\/07\/23\/jamulus-pedal-steel-pockets-writ-larger\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamulus, pedal steel & Pockets writ larger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
That’s our new hero, second from left, on lead guitar, circa 1979.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While the prevailing pandemic has wrought considerable havoc with pretty much every nook and cranny of the music scene, nationwide, Pocket Full of Mumbles has managed to emerge all the stronger \u2014 and 50 percent bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founding members Mike Conant and Hal Phillips are pleased to have welcomed Tim Howie on pedal steel and Telecaster. He joined the band in April, when all musicians could do<\/em> was practice. PFOM debuted the new three-piece lineup and its ever-evolving sound at a private party in Poland early in July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That gig felt several worlds away from the dark, secluded months of March and April, when Conant and Phillips could do nothing but practice remotely via the online application Jamulus, a quite marvelous technology that allows musicians from the around the world to convene and play together via a specific, remote, third-party server. Conant and Phillips actually stretched the technology one step further, using Jamulus to access each other\u2019s Internet servers directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the host, the delay was negligible because the server is right there next to him,\u201d Conant explained. \u201cFor the visitor, there was a latency of 40-60 milliseconds, which can feel like quite a lot. Try playing in a field with someone standing 25 feet away. But like anything else, you can account for that delay with practice. And if the connection is good, it starts to feel quite natural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne thing\u2019s for certain: It was great practice for us \u2014 especially all our close-harmony singing. After doing that remotely, singing together in the same room is a great luxury. It also sounds great because to us, it feels almost effortless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conant has continued to play via Jamulus with dozens of strangers spanning the globe. He and Howie were no strangers, however. For several years they have played together as contributors to the free-form, practice-averse jammers known especially to Grateful Dead mavens across southern Maine as the Kennebunk River Band.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAcquiring the twang of pedal steel has always been part of the plan for Pocket Full of Mumbles,\u201d Phillips says, \u201cmainly on account of all the Son Volt and Jackson Browne tunes we do. And those tunes really sound great with Tim on board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we hadn\u2019t expected was just how great the pedal sounds \u2014 along with his occasionally ripping electric guitar \u2014 on the Simon & Garfunkel songs we play, and our originals. A classic folky tune like Wednesday Morning 3 a.m<\/em>. is completely transformed. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a stretch to say Tim has totally changed the sound of PFOM, for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Howie is a multi-instrumentalist from way back, having played trumpet, drums and guitar with a succession of \u201crock \u2018n roll bands\u201d while still in his teens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI picked up the banjo when I was in Texas, playing with a country band,\u201d says Howie, who, in addition to playing with Kennebunk River Band, did a recent stint playing with Maine\u2019s own Rock Bottom Band. \u201cBut when I was relocated to northern Maine, in 1984, that\u2019s when I picked up pedal steel guitar and played with different bands in Aroostook County. I\u2019ve stuck with guitar and pedal ever since, when my family relocated to the central Missouri area, and after we returned here to southern Maine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the prevailing pandemic has wrought considerable havoc with pretty much every nook and cranny of the music scene, nationwide, Pocket Full of Mumbles has managed to emerge all the stronger \u2014 and 50 percent bigger. Founding members Mike Conant and Hal Phillips are pleased to have welcomed Tim Howie on pedal steel and Telecaster. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Jamulus, pedal steel & Pockets writ larger”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37,38,39,9,20],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jamulus","tag-maine-americana","tag-maine-bands","tag-maine-music","tag-pocket-full-of-mumbles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pocketfullofmumbles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pocketfullofmumbles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pocketfullofmumbles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pocketfullofmumbles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pocketfullofmumbles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pocketfullofmumbles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pocketfullofmumbles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pocketfullofmumbles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pocketfullofmumbles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}