I’m glad to see that I wasn’t the only one to draw the US invasion of ‘Mexico’ to Russian invasion of ‘Georgia’ comparison…Glad to see that America has learned from its past mistakes and is now focused on righting wrongs in the world…
…see….it’s funny cuz….

So a couple days ago I downloaded the CD of ‘Possessed by Paul James’. I saw this dude last year at Dreikoenigskeller with some friends. He was AMAZING and blew me away…Dude was super nice and hung out with us outside between sets. I even managed to invite myself to sit down on the side of the stage as he was coming back from the first set. He said something like ‘sure man, then it’s more like a living room’. He was so super nice I knew he wasn’t being sarcastic or anything.
He is the son of a mennonite (as in not quite amish – but backwards enough) minister. He plays banjo, fiddle, diddley bo (more on that to come), guitar, mandolin, stompbox etc.
So listening to the CD I am amazed again and forgot how great he was. I’m actually surprised by what a pure voice he has when he wants to, and how quite jazzy his singing style is in amongst the sort of traditional old americana musical instruments.

so as promised here’s a song with an instrument apparently called a ‘Diddly Bo’. The song isn’t that great, but interesting for it’s use of the instrument.
PossessedbyPaulJames-PossessedbyPaulJames-08-DiddlyBoTraditional.mp3

OK some dude giving us the ‘Norm’ – too detailed version of what this instrument actually is…kind of interesting if you’re into that sort of thing….though I think he’s attempting to play the wall at one point 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT5O6M-nWA8&feature=related
there are more of these types of clips on you tube if you search on it.

One other song from Possesed by Paul James (Paul James is a singer but the name of this dude in the songs is actually Konrad something…). Anyways I love this song cuz you don’t hear a lot of mandolin solo songs…The percussion you hear is actually him. If I recall he had some chimes attached to his legs which were also stomping on a box..hmmmm stompbox… 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCLqLBSb3gM
This was filmed in Frankfurt…the recording is the same one off the CD, and you can’t really hear percussion on the youtube version, but if anyone wants the CD you can buy it online, or ask me nicely 😉

Here’s the trailer of the movie he’s in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckOl7ddbDDo&feature=related