The Chris Johnson Band

Had a great 4th performing at Summerfest this year.  Jet was the headliner, along with Royal Bliss, Billy Boy on Poison and then us as the evening line up.  It was a bit hectic getting loaded in and out, but turned out to be worth the effort. The crowd was excellent, and the weather was good.  Lot’s of old friends came out, and we met some new ones as well.

We spent a little time with the musicians, wives and girlfriends of Royal Bliss.  Very cool folks, and hard working. I caught their show after ours, and liked their music very much.   They played much of their newest CD, Life In Between.

Performed at the 28th annual Miller Lite Ride for the Arts last weekend. What an amazing event. Over 6400 riders showed up to ride up to 75 miles in an effort to raise money for the performing art organizations in southeastern Wisconsin.

I, of course, did my 75 – feet that is, from the car to the stage. This was my first gig with the new band line up. Great warm up on a great day. The band donated all of our proceeds to the event. You can view pictures of the gig here, courtesy of Joanne.

Played this past Saturday night at the Rubicon Ranch in (you guessed it) Rubicon, Wisconsin. All in all a pretty good gig, though it was really loud. It was the drummer’s birthday so we got him a gift of some stick holders – he seemed to appreciate them.

Got a chance to play my 08 strat with the new pickups installed. Wow! They are fantastic. The neck and middle is loaded with Dimarzio Area 58s, and the bridge has a Dimarzio Area 61. The dynamics are outstanding. Every nuance of picking attack or freting technique pulls a new sound or harmonic that I had not heard from the stock pickups. Of course the Area series is noiseless, so I was able to explore most pickup combinations of the 5 way switch in all amp settings: clean, crunch and contour. I found the bridge a little bright with the Delta switched into bypass, but overall the pickups performed excellent.

I also chopped down my pedal board again – most of the stuff is on ebay right now. I’m getting much closer to the guitar->cable->amp construct every day. This weekend’s gig was the strobostomp tuner and the BBE Boosta Grande – that’s it. I normally use the boosta for the clean channel input to my Mesa Boogie F-30 (the only complaint I have on the f-30 is a lack of clean headroom)but this gig I found that the pedal really fattened up the strat in the overdrive sections. I can’t wait to explore some more live sound with the new pickups!