March 4, 2008

Three years after playing their last shows together, the OM Trio reformed for a three-night run in its adopted hometown of San Francisco. Drummer Ilya Stemkovsky was kind enough to write down his thoughts about getting together with his old bandmates for a two-part edition of Tour Diary:

Friday, February 16th, 2008 9 PM
Fillmore Auditorium
San Francisco, CA

All photos by Larry Mills

Dust Up opened the second show. We love playing this tune because, simply, it’s badass and dispells any rumor that we’re “jazz.” Maybe a collection of our most epic tunes graced this night. Anew —- Bulbous>Mesh>Bulbous —– Phobophobe with Jake from Umphrey’s on guitar (something that worked well back in the day). We felt even more comfortable the second night. We didn’t want it to end. Read on for more of Tour Diary…

Believe it or not, Cover Wars was not supposed to be a Tuesday feature. The first one was supposed to go up on a Monday but due to some technical difficulties, we pushed it to Tuesday. Which is great because it allows me to make jokes about the Presidential election. Voter turnout was up last week, though we do not share the exact numbers and only percentages, I’ll say that there was a 24% increase last week, and Phish was the clear winner of the 2nd edition.

Originally written by Buddy Holly and Norman Petty, the song Not Fade Away (and Rock & Roll) owes a lot to what drummers call the Bo Diddley Beat. It’s obviously been covered a lot, we’ve got 10 versions here, and I omitted plenty of others. Read on for Dave’s song descriptions, and to place your vote…

If you’re a student of rock history you know the story of the infamous free concert at Altamont. If not here’s the quick 411: the concert was to be the

You may know Jake Krolick from many of the fascinating articles, stunning photos and beautiful illustrations he’s made for Glide and our many competitors. Now Jake is focusing on mashing

Keller Williams finally brought his WMDs to New York City, where the band performed two well-played sets for the crowd at the Nokia Theater on February 21. The WMDs is one helluva all-star unit with Gibb Droll (Marc Broussard) on lead guitar, Keith Moseley (SCI) on bass and Jeff Sipe (ARU, Leftover Salmon, Trey Anastasio) keeping the beat. While Keller always puts on a good solo show, it was really nice to see him surrounded by three ridiculously good musicians.

All photos by Jeremy Gordon

Keller and the WMDs played a fun mix of covers, KW originals and even a String Cheese tune. The show started with Keller on his Gibson SG playing wirelessly from off-stage. As the band took the stage Keller led them through a few originals including the dynamic Juggler, which quickly segued into Dee Lite’s Groove Is In The Heart and back again. Read on for more of Jeremy’s photos…