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I don’t recall a whole lot about the Dave Weckl concert I saw at the Alumni Theatre on October 25th, 1999 but I certainly remember being there. So let’s see what I can dredge up, shall we?
First of all, this show has my friend Wayne’s fingerprints all over it. I won’t say 100% that Wayne booked this concert but yeah, Wayne totally booked it. Wayne had been my guitar instructor at Carleton University and it was right around this time that he was in charge of the lunchtime concert series at the Alumni Theatre, and once he got his hands on the Alumni Theatre he went beyond the free lunchtime student concerts and started booking some pretty esoteric heavy-hitter evening ticketed jazz shows. Like, bass player Dave Holland for example, who Wayne brought to Alumni Theatre just six months after this show. And when I look at my ticket stub from that Dave Holland concert it looks and awful lot like this ticket stub from the Dave Weckl show.
So we can start there: Wayne Eagles booked this show. He might even have given me a free ticket; that was definitely a signature Wayne maneuver. Plus, as musician-poor as I was back then I’m not entirely sure I would have shelled out for this concert. Certainly not for Dave Weckl’s involvement anyway; I’ve never heard of him. Here, let me check wikipedia…
Geez, turns out I’ve been listening to this guy for years. He’s the drummer on Chick Corea’s Akoustic Band record, which I bought back in 1990 as required listening for a class. He also played drums on Simon & Garfunkel’s tour in the mid-’80’s (not that I saw that tour or anything), but other than that it’s all deep and abstruse jazz stuff, further backing up the now all-but-confirmed supposition that Wayne booked him.
Wiki further informs me that the other musicians in the band have played and recorded with a who’s who of awesomeness including (but in no way limited to) Elton John, Neil Diamond, Jimmy Buffett, The Eagles, Tom Petty, Quincy Jones, Sheryl Crow, and on and on.
I do, however, know one of the names on the ticket stub, and on the very off chance that I did purchase this ticket guitarist Buzz Feiten would have been the reason (though I still highly suspect that Wayne comped me in for free*).
And it’s not like I recognized Buzz Feiten from his work with any of an astounding array of legends such as Dolly Parton, Randy Newman, Bette Midler, Gregg Allman, Bob Dylan, Dr. John, Wilson Pickett, or Boz Skaggs, (Buzz has a very impressive wikipedia page). No, I knew who Buzz Feiten was because of the Buzz Feiten Tuning System, which is his patented method of compensating for the inherent out-of-tuneness that guitars suffer from due to the tempered musical system.
Sorry if I only breifly explain: Because a guitar can play in every key, it’s impossible for it to be perfectly in tune in any of them**. On most guitars that out-of-tuneness is particularly noticeable on the ninth fret of the G string. That note is supposed to be an E but if your guitar is set up “properly” it probably sounds noticably off. Buzz came up with a compensated nut to help alleviate this problem.
Again, briefly: The bridge is the part of the guitar where the strings attach to the body. If you look really closely at the bridge – it’s especially easy to see this on electric guitars – you’ll notice that each string can be adjusted a little bit forward or back. These tiny “compensations”, even if they are only by a few millimetres, goes a long way to helping a particular string to be in tune. Buzz patented a nut (that thing way up at the other end of the strings with the six grooves in it) that does the same thing.
Guitar geek that I was/am, the Buzz Feiten Tuning System was enough to get me interested in this concert, even though I’ve played a guitar that had a Buzz Feiten compensated nut and while it really helps that 9th fret G string problem think the whole concept just spreads the out-of-tuneness out across the fretboard a little more to make it less noticeable. But still, if just for the effort, I was interested.
Plus like I say, I think I got a free ticket.
And now that we’ve gotten all the way here together, let me say that I can still picture Buzz Feiten up there on that stage that was generally used for lectures and student recitals, and he was good, man.
No doubt, dude played with freakin’ Stevie Wonder.
*Thanks Wayne!
**It’s the same for almost every instrument, from the piano all the way down to the piccolo. Only instruments that are fixed to a specific key – like most harmonicas for example – can be fully completely in tune.
Todd Man Out 