Inspiration Cafe

There's a coffee shop on South Main Street in Washington, the Inspiration Cafe, that is starting to host performers on pretty much of a regular basis. It's not the biggest place but can hold quite a few people to enjoy music and beverages.

Sandee Umbach, who runs the shop - the proceeds benefit WashArts, which has the mission of serving children through free instruction in the arts - sent along a notice about a coming show that merits attention.


I saw Brad Yoder play a couple of years ago, and I can say he's one of the more entertaining performers and talented songwriters in Western Pennsylvania. (I've tried writing even a half-decent song. It's not easy.) He'll be at the Inspiration Cafe this Saturday, Feb. 2, at 7:30 p.m.

Jordan Umbach will open for Brad. I've seen Jordan perform here and there for the past couple of years, and he's developing into quite a singer-songwriter, himself.

Better Time

All right! Decent audio for the reggae-infused "Soon You'll Be Mine" by One Gig at a Time on Saturday. If you checked out the set's opener and weren't impressed with the change in sound quality halfway through, this worked out much better.

Watch "Soon You'll Be Mine"

'Very first gig ever'

I posted a video of the Patti Spadaro Band performing her composition "Tonight," as I really like the song and captured decent audio of it during her show Friday night at P.D.'s Pub in Squirrel Hill.

During the set's opener, a rendition of the Grateful Dead's "Franklin's Tower," I spent most of the song fiddling with the input controls, trying to get them to record properly. As I result, I pretty much just had the camera pointed at the stage.

I had pushed the record button just as Patti was announcing, "Our very first gig ever," so I figured I might as well post "Franklin's" as a piece of history. I managed to clean up the sound by stripping off the problematic channel, which was full of static, and playing around with the other to give it a little bit of depth.

As far as editing the video, I thought I'd leave it pretty much raw, since I wasn't doing anything with varying camera angles, etc.

I'll tell you that Patti said she had a cold that night, but her guitar playing didn't suffer whatsoever!

Click here to play "Franklin's Tower"

Kicked again

OK, here's a good song performed by Kicked on Saturday night that's about half as long as "Babylon." It's called "Mary" and features the lead vocals of acoustic guitarist Justin Thompson.


There also is an live audio rendition that plays automatically when you visit Kicked's Web site.

Again, thanks to Josh at the Hard Rock for the soundboard patch. It's an adventure every time I try to set up a good audio feed, so any help I can get is much appreciated!

Click here for "Mary" video

Kicked in the Hard Rock

Last summer, I helped organize the annual Rock Off during Peters Twp. Community Day. In a change of format, we awarded two prizes: one to the best "under-21" band, and the other for the best "over-21."

The winner in the latter category was Kicked, which bowled over the judges with the interplay between lead guitar, acoustic guitar and saxophone. The musicians showed they know how to play together and feed off each other, the sign of a tight band.

A highlight of their repertoire is the epic "Babylon," written by guitarists Chuck Dressler and Justin Thompson. The song culminates with a guitar-saxophone duet in which Chuck and sax man Jarod Wachtel match each other note-for-note.

I filmed the Rock Off version of "Babylon" on a JVC Everio recorder with built-in stereo microphones. It sort of captured the energy of the performance, but I felt I could do a lot better with more advanced equipment. So I was happy to try again on Saturday at the Hard Rock Cafe at Station Square.

Thanks to Hard Rock soundman Josh, who helped me tremendously with patching my audio from the board, I was able to capture a stellar take of "Babylon." Even though it clocks in at more than 11 minutes (I love long jams) and I realize that might stretch the limits of many a computer, I'm posting it here for your enjoyment. I'll mix video of some shorter Kicked tunes when I get a chance.

In the meantime, here's "Babylon"

Audio 'gremlins'

On a positive note, the opening of One Gig at a Time's show Friday night - "our first gig in that configuration," says band leader Steve Cunningham - came through the video camera's sound inputs fairly well, as the players grooved on a major/minor riff reminiscent of Grace Slice's "White Rabbit," or the "Spanish Jam" the Grateful Dead often performed in the '60s.

By the time the jam segued into the original composition "Chasing Sunsets," various clicks and pops had begun to overwhelm one of the input channels. That wasn't good news.


To beat the "gremlins," I ended up switching the audio track from stereo to mono at the start of "Sunsets." The quality takes a dip, but it's preferable to hearing all the interference I was getting through the connection to the soundboard.

Anyway, here's 11-plus minutes of the start of One Gig's performance. Just be prepared for the audio adjustment in the middle:

Click here to play video

First time around

The Patti Spadaro Band made its debut Friday at P.D.'s pub in Squirrel Hill, a pretty good venue with an area off to the side where an audience can gather to enjoy a performance a little bit out of the way of the rest of the patrons.

Patti previously had a band when she was in Los Angeles, simply called Spadaro, which released an album, "Short Stay," featuring her original compositions.

One song that isn't on the album is one I particularly enjoy her play. In fact, we filmed her playing "Tonight" last summer on lower-grade equipment, and I was hoping to capture a better version with her new band.



The debut started with the Grateful Dead's "Franklin's Tower," during which I was trying to get a decent audio feed using one microphone pointed at the stage and a patch from the soundboard. The soundboard connection wasn't working, though, so I had to make some adjustments. By that time, the band was firing up "Tonight."

The raw tape revealed some "clicks" and minor distortion on one of the channels, but I was able to repair that for the most part. For some reason, the tape cut off in the middle of Patti's guitar solo, but the finished product is six-and-a-half minutes of a cooking jam.

Click here to check it out.

Putting some teeth into it

The video camera's tape had just about run out, and after the band One Gig at a Time performed a stellar version of Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing, I figured it was time to put my equipment away.

I'd gathered everything together and was talking with some people when I noticed the decibel level had increased significantly. Up on the stage, One Gig's Steve "pUNK" Cunningham was adding to the band's volume by taking a chainsaw to an old wooden nightstand.


I guess that's somewhere in between Pete Townshend smashing his guitar, Hendrix torching his and Wendy O. Williams sawing through a Cadillac. Whatever the case, I quickly grabbed the camera back out of its case in time to capture a few minutes of the epic display.

The result, with just a bit of tweaking with the sound, is on display at right in our YouTube player.

In the meantime, I'll work on editing some One Gig at a Time footage from earlier in the set. The band's music was even more impressive than pUNK's performance art!

Cure for the wintertime blues

Years ago, the thought of going out to a club at 10 p.m. wouldn't have fazed me in the slightest. That was before 10 o'clock was right around my bedtime ...

Over the weekend, I managed to adjust my schedule a bit to see some musical acquaintances do their thing. Hey, it beats sitting around the house, looking out the window and watching it snow.

I took my video equipment, of course, and when I sort through everything, I'll post performances by:

The Patti Spadaro Band. Patti (Amwell Twp. resident) is a terrific guitar player who recently formed her own group, which made its debut Friday at P.D.'s Pub in Squirrel Hill. We've featured Patti in our Living in Washington County magazine, and I've recorded her in an acoustic setting. But hearing her fire away with her four-piece band was a treat.

One Gig at a Time. I'd met band leader Steve "pUNK" Cunningham, he of the thundering six-string bass guitar, while he was playing with Fungus a few years back. His current band features a lot of original music against a colorful backdrop, in more ways than one. More on that later.

Kicked. Last summer, I helped organize the annual Rock Off during Peters Twp. Community Day, and Kicked earned the honors as the top band in the over-21 category. I remember being blown away by an original of theirs called "Babylon" (a lower-quality video exists in our library), and they're good guys, to boot. They played a rousing show Saturday at the Hard Rock Cafe at Station Square.

Stay tuned for the videos.

Why does a newspaper need a video camera?

When I started my career as a journalist, I used a typewriter. Everything in the newspaper was black and white. That includes the photographs, which were shot on film and needed to be developed.

That was back in the '80s, which didn't seem like so long ago. But considering the technological advances we've seen since then, it might as well have been the Bronze Age.

Well, here it is, the last few years of the first decade of the 21st century, and newspapers realize they'd better look past the "paper" part and start delivering the news to your computer along with your doorstep.



We at the Observer-Reporter (Washington, Pa.) have been working on multimedia projects for a couple of years now, learning as we go. Some of the early projects ... frankly, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. But you have to start somewhere.

Now that we have some much-improved equipment and (we hope) a better idea of what we're doing, we want to tell you more about our work and give you the opportunity to see and hear what we do.

The news certainly isn't black-and-white anymore.

Things get hairy

Most of the videos we take for the Observer are planned out ahead of time in conjunction with a story or profile. A reporter, photographer and videographer will travel the location of our subject and together, they all create a multimedia story like what you see in the paper and on our website.

However, some stories don't wait to be scheduled. On the 22nd, the Humane Society with the help of a police warrant entered a residence and took custody of several animals. There were many dogs, some cats, a few birds, and a single lizard. Multiple vehicles were required to transport the animals, some of which were in poor states of health and cleanliness.

The normal procedure for a video involves a long editing process. This sometimes includes adjusting audio for voice overs and possibly adding some ambient music. But a breaking news story relies on quick turnarounds, so this type of video receives little editing. In this case, the audio from an interview was laid over most of the video of the animals being removed from the house.

The advantage that comes from this is that the viewer feels the urgency of the situation. Cuts between clips are not transitioned smoothly, camera work may be shaky, and interviews aren't necessarily as smooth. This is because a breaking news situation is full of people moving in all directions with better things to do than talk about what's happening. Video captures this particular mood quite well. Watch the video and you'll see what I'm talking about. And read the story too.

Grateful Dead Night redux

Back in the late '80s, Peter's Pub in Pittsburgh's Oakland section used to have Grateful Dead Night, playing cassette tapes of Jerry Garcia and company.

I hadn't been there since then, but decided to pay another visit recently to see Fungus, a band that draws much of its repertoire from what the Dead used to play.


A couple of years ago, I saw Fungus at an outdoor festival in Nottingham Township, and I really enjoyed the show. So when I received an e-mail from guitarist Dave Gasbarro about the band's performance at Peter's, I decided to take along some video equipment and see what happened.

I recorded the first set with the audio patched straight into the camera from the soundboard. That sounded OK, but fortunately keyboard player Mike Tony informed me that guitarist Terry Callahan's guitar amp wasn't running through the board. So I positioned a microphone directly in front of Terry's Marshall and ended up with a nice sound mix during the second set.

Following the show, I edited three videos, and I've posted three more songs as MP3 files. Take a look to your right, and there they are, for your Sound & Vision enjoyment.

See what we see

Working with a newspaper affords all sorts of interesting opportunities to see how businesses get their projects done. Ever wonder how corporation X makes those little pieces of electronics that rest inside your TV or microwave? Well it may be even more confusing than you thought.

As part of our ongoing series of business features, I've been getting tours of what's behind the curtain at various companies and I'm getting a better idea of how certain industries operate. This has been true of reporters for a long time, but the stories your read in the paper or online don't always translate the details. Video is changing all that.

My most recent adventure involved local Pennatronics Corp. While witnessing the construction of circuit boards for various products, I got a better idea of the kind of intricate detail that is required to run my computer, my phone, and even that little timer on my exercise bike.

Machines get built by other machines now, allowing minute tasks to be carried out at much faster rates than in the past. Every now and then, humans still interact with the device, mostly in the testing phase, but sometimes in the more fragile stages of construction; it turns out we still have an edge on machines when it comes to finesse. Still, it's a good idea to leave the handling of half-millimeter sized chips and the molten river of solder to the robots.

Thanks to video, the enlightening experience I have described above can be shared. Hearing me tell you about lightening fast machines and nearly microscopic components is one thing; seeing it yourself is another. Watch for Mike Bradwell's article on Pennatronics this coming Monday, accompanied by our video feature.

AcoustiCafe

Open stage night provides the opportunity to enjoy a variety of performers in one sitting. Admittedly, you take your chances regarding what you might hear. But often, you'll be impressed by musicians you otherwise wouldn't have known anything about.

An open stage called AcoustiCafe returns for 2008 on Monday nights at Club Cafe on Pittsburgh's South Side. FYI: "AcoustiCafe is a volunteer promotional organization founded in the late '90s by Pittsburgh songwriters Mark Willson, Jerry Baum and Cherylann Hawk. During its heyday, it sponsored as many as five ongoing open stages, numerous concerts and other special events, and served as a hub of information and support for local and touring musicians. For the last several years, AcoustiCafe has been on hiatus, but January's open stage marks the first phase of the organization's re-emergence." (Thanks to Maree Gallagher for the background info.)

Anyway, the '08 opener was hosted by Pittsburgh musicians Paul Tabachneck, Heather Kropf and Joel Lindsey. I arrived in time for Heather's performance and was glad I did. She is a talented singer-songwriter-keyboard player who came to Washington last summer to play at the Main Street Famers' Market, and I had the opportunity to attend the release party for her CD "What Else Is Love."

Unfortunately, footage of her performance was marred by bad audio; apparently, I had the levels of my sound mixer up too high. I eventually fixed the problem, more or less, and was able to document four performances sufficiently.

I had it fixed for Sean McClorey, whose repertoire includes his 'Song for Sudan,' a commentary on how some of the world’s hunger problems are created by the implementation of certain economic systems. An eye-opening piece, to be sure.

I'd met Peace last summer when she was playing the djembe in accompaniment of her sister, the invigorating Joy Ike. It turns out that Peace is quite the singer, too, as she demonstrated with her original composition 'Walk On By.' (Joy played a bit later in the evening, but I had put the video camera away by then.)


Before I ran out of tape, Joel performed with a bass player, Jim Kurasch, whose regular gig is with the Metropolitans. Joel, a native of Britain, displayed a fine songwriting style with tunes like the swingin' 'Could You Love Me.'

AcoustiCafe was such a hit the first time back out that it will run until 10:30 p.m. every Monday. The starting time is 7.

Giving you the business

Mike Bradwell, business editor for the Observer-Reporter, has the right idea. Lately, he's been scheduling a videographer to accompany him on assignments.

For years, Mike has written feature stories about local businesses. Often that involves, say, describing a manufacturing process.

Wouldn't something like that be better illustrated in video format?

We hope so. That's why we've started a vlog, "Go Inside the Business," based on Mike's features. For the first episode, we visited a new manufacturing plant, Prime Plastics, that is particularly noteworthy because it's breathed new life into a Washington, Pa., site that best was known for a tire fire that raged out of control there in the '90s.

Company spokesman George Retos told us about the business, and we wrapped that around some footage illustrating what Prime Plastics does. So, if you never do make it inside there, and you're curious about what goes on ... check out the video.

And while you're at it, read Mike's story.