Brett Cammack Folk & Acoustic Music

I am so fortunate to have such terrific friends. Last Saturday’s house concert at Trout Lake Nature Center in Eustis, Florida, opening for Steve Gillette and Cindy Mangsen was magical and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Such a warm and receptive audience! How wonderful to see my old friend Steve again!

They put on a superb show and the time passed far too quickly.

I have never met a gentler, more generous man than Steve Gillette. I feel so fortunate that I’ve known him for nearly forty years.

Now, unexpectedly, I have an opportunity to help a friend from Clearwater put on a show here locally as he is heading up to Jacksonville to perform on a Sunday. Well, now he’ll be our house guest on Saturday night, February 9th as we have managed to book the Java Jungle that evening for a house concert with Mr. Charley Groth! I’ll emcee and might play a song or two to open, but I’m really pleased to be able to help a friend and introduce all of my local friends to his music.

A week later, on the 16th of February I will be performing a set at The Farm in Brooksville, Florida at their “Charity Begins At Home” Benefit for The Farm concert. It should be a whole lot of fun. We need to help Frank Julian get some things fixed at The Farm so we can continue to enjoy it for years to come as a gathering place for musicians!

Drop me a note if you’re interested in attending any of these events!

Onward!
Brett Cammack
South Daytona, FL
386-843-3063

The year has already started off positively with my getting called back to work the week of Thanksgiving. The only downside to it is that I’ve far, far less time to devote to practicing the guitar and learning new songs! Considering how the past three years of unemployment have been, I’ll deal with it.

I am trying to practice as diligently as I can the two songs “Chilly Winds” from John Stewart and John Philips, and “She’s That Kind of Mystery” by Bill Morrisey.

Why? Because I have been allowed the honor of opening for my old friend Steve Gillette and his wife Cindy Mangsen when they play at the Trout Lake Nature Center house concert in Eustis , Florida the evening of January 19th.

Steve is not only an old friend, but a bit of a musical hero to me. He’s made a living as an independent musician and songwriter exclusively his entire life and has a rich catalog of songs to his credit.

I am looking forward to the opportunity.

The famous homemade PA system had an unfortunate meltdown last month while serving as a stage monitor at the Central Florida Folk monthly house concert at Villa ConRoy in Orlando. That even has precipitated a re-engineering project to make the unit even more professional in execution and less prone to bad things happening to it.

It should be a fun year.

Onwards!

Brett Cammack
South Daytona, FL

I performed three new songs this Monday evening at the Open Mic at Java Jungle in Port Orange, Florida.

“Good Old Boys Like Me” by Bob McDill
“It’s A Hard Life Wherever You Go” by Nanci Griffith
“Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold)” by Dan Seals and Bob McDill

They were very well received and I felt that I was able to “sell” them emotionally while touching all the bases musically, too.

I’m working on John Stewart’s “You Can’t Go Back To Kansas”, but it’s more musically challenging with quite a few chord changes, some chords I’ve not completely mastered, and a couple of longer instrumental transitions that I’ve not absorbed yet. I think it’s going to be November before I have that one in my back pocket, but it’s a beautiful, powerful song as John’s often are.

There are a couple more that I “sorta” know, but haven’t fully integrated them into my repertoire. “Four Strong Winds” by Ian Tyson, and “Last Thing On My Mind” by Tom Paxton.

On a different subject, I’ve been experimenting with my performance rig and learned a few things about using some equalization between the powered PA monitor I built and the mixer.

These old Minimus 7 speakers are known to have an upper mid “peak” because there built-in crossovers only block low frequencies from reaching the tweeter (simply to prevent damage), but don’t block the higher frequencies from the 4″ woofers which can reproduce higher frequencies than a more traditional, large woofer of 8-12″ in diameter, so you end up with a peaky upper mid-range. So, just for fun I grabbed my old graphic EQ box and rolled off the 2 KHz 2db and the 4 and 8 KHz a full 6db. Made a huge difference it the sound coming out of that box!

(Thinking back, I recall that’s why I bought this stereo graphic EQ some 30 years ago! It was to tune these Minimus 7s to the room back when I was using them for the home sound system! Heh.)

This whole PA head is becoming a conglomeration of disparate parts. I guess I need to start considering some sort of box to integrate and protect them in a safe and convenient fashion.

Ah well, the journey never ends!

Onward!

Brett Cammack
South Daytona, FL
386-843-3063

I seem to be helping my friend, Peter Fernandez, put on an Open Mic on Mondays at Java Jungle. I hope my friends will pay us a visit between 7:00 and 10:00 PM on Monday evenings.

There will be a signup sheet and acts will perform in that order. Peter is the emcee. I’m there to make sure that flames don’t shoot out of anything.

I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

Brett Cammack
South Daytona, FL
386-843-3063