Not Bad For A Girl: Katie Marie gets to grips with her stomp box

By Katie Marie, on Thursday, July 1, 2010

It’s lovely to see the sun sticking around for another week, no rain at Glastonbury or Wimbledon – can this be possible??

My week has mainly consisted of writing new tunes and wandering up and down various town centres… no before you ask, my financial situation hasn’t got bad enough that I’m now finding work on the streets of Exeter (well not yet anyways ). I’ve been on a mission trying to find an acoustic stomp box and it wasn’t quite as easy as I thought it might be. This was partly due to shops not having things in stock and the other part was me wanting to find a stomp box that sounded like a nice deep thud and not like some-one booting a mic stand!

My plan was to find one and hopefully use it with a few of the tunes I already play, ready for when I head off to Germany in a few weeks time. I’ll be gigging at a few festivals over there and they have all asked for a more ‘upbeat’ set.

For those of you that don’t know what an acoustic stomp box is, put in simple terms it’s a lump of wood with a mic in it. Sounds a bit pointless but I can honestly tell you that with acoustical type arrangements they add a *huge* amount to the overall sound and in live situations they provide a simple but effective rhythm.

Here’s a clip of Seasick Steve showing us how it’s done.

After missioning it round various music shops without much success, I came across Vibes in Plymouth. I had a go on a Logarhythm Mk II and through the Line6 guitar amp they had in store it sounded nice n beefy, yay! So I bagged me up one and hurried on home to do some experimenting.

in the studio with Katie Marie

Katie Marie's stompbox

Katie Marie getting to grips with her new stompbox

Katie Marie explores her new stompbox
This is my first time using some thing like this and having hopped onto my drum kit many times over the years I naturally thought putting the stomp box under my right foot would be the best idea, as this is my kick drum foot that you’d think would be well versed in this sort of thing. But it really didn’t feel very natural at all and I was very surprised to see it’s actually easier to tap it with your left foot than your right.

I had my acoustic tuned to my fav tunning (open B) and I’ve come up with a few tasty bluesy/funkey riffs that also feature my new stomp box, hopefully I can let you have a sneaky listen soon.

As mentioned earlier I’ve been trying to write some new tunes this week, but I’m going through a horrible phase that I call Verses and Choruses, which can be *even* more frustrating than not being able to write at all. Basically what happens is you get a really nice verse going, a good strong chorus… and then when you think everything’s going really well, WHAM! It all stops and you can’t seem to think of what to do next. I’ve got about five songs on the go at the moment that have V1 and a Chorus and that’s it, grrr.

On the gig side of things I had a wonderful time at the B-Bar with Nicky Swann last week. I’ve never been there before but it’s on the side of the theatre and it has oodles of character and charm, well worth a visit if you’ve not sussed it out yet. (Plus they do nice noodles.)

Talking of gigs, I’ll be playing at an evening called the Acoustic Cafe which is held at the Redannick Theatre in Truro. I’ll be there this Saturday along with lots of other lovely musical people and I’ll hopefully be able to give my new Logarhythm a test run. For more info check out the Acoustic Cafe Myspace page.

I talked a little bit last week about re-recording some of my older tunes and this week I’ve been recording various parts to one of my songs called ‘Change’ that I wrote what seems like a life time ago (it’s only seven years in reality). Mr Paul the keys man popped round last night and played all the strings and piano parts for me and the wonderful, but slightly painful process called ‘mixing the bloomin thing’ has now begun! So far so good, although the birds that are nesting in the studio roof made themselves know on the vocal takes which sounds quite funny. I’m hoping I’ll be able to upload a ruff mix for you to check out before next week swings round.

And talking of mixing, I guess that’s what I should head back and do some more of! Hope you have a great week