Hey guys welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is
in the singing. I'm gonna go ahead and do a vocal coach
reacts to ZZ Top and I chose "La Grange". Now I've done a vocal coach
demonstration for Tush I'll put that in the description tag and I actually I
also sang this tune too for a compilation album called or a cover
album of compilations called "You Got You Covered" which I do a bunch of cover
songs and I did this song on there as well but with that said let's just rock
to ZZ Top.
First off this song is about a brothel in Texas. So I'm not a big fan of
the lyric at all. Fact there was another really famous song "House Of The Rising
Sun" was a song about you know there is a house in New Orleans they call the
Rising Sun right. It's in a lament of him going there and he's kind of
celebrating and romancing that. So like I said I'm not a fan of the lyric I am a big
fan of their writing and guitar playing. He actually was a huge inspiration for me
as a guitar player. As you know was my first instrument of getting good harmonics out
of your pick when you're playing guitar. (sounds)
That almost sounds like a juice harp sorry but anyway
you'll see what I'm talking about if he does it. Is that on, I think that's on
Tush maybe that's on a different song sorry but anyway but it was a big inspiration
for me so and by the way wasn't that the coolest beard ever. I tried growing those
suckers but they you know whenever I do that the only thing that grows is hair
coming out of other orifices cause I'm a Titan so I choose not to do that.
Anyway it's about as big as I wanna have it get but his is awesome. It's
rockin here we go.
Yeah it's this song with the harmonics.
Great part.
Now at this snapshot here right like a minute 13 seconds into that,
notice it's a three-piece band right so they've got all this energy and all this
wall of sound com.. coming out of only three instrumentalists. Think about that
I mean there's bands like Rush you know Van Halen right that have only three
instrumentalists. Pretty hard to do that to be able to carry out all night with a
whole bunch of songs have everything sound different
with only three instrumentation people.. three instrumentalists that's what I
meant to say. Say that three times fast.
Ah here comes the ZZ Top walk.
It's kinda like you know hey hey we're the Monkees. You know the monkey walk (sings)
They kinda did that, stole that a little bit.
Good sized audience.
Okay Billy I heard the lick I got it okay. Reminds me in the 80s whenever there called
wheedling right and we'd have these 80s metal flash god guys and they go (sounds)
and they play the same lick over and over again. So we actually had this term for it
little Italy you know Little Italy Little Italy Little Italy Little Italy
right. I'm Italian I can make fun of myself so give me a break here but anyway
so he's kinda doing the Little Italy right now.
Can you speed it up here so we can get onto some song here.
Blowing smoke rings.
Okay I heard the lick.
Here we go.
Okay so I had a brief brush with these guys a while back I used to do TV
commercials for this company out of Japan and I did a lot of them for them and
one of them was they called me up and they said hey Ken it was a car.. they're
representing a car company really famous car company and it was for Japan only
you know it was region specific and so they said you know do you think you
could get Eric Clapton to find out if he could do or do an appearance you know
just one day we'll fly into Los Angeles, we'll get our cameramen together and
whatever. We'll make it easy he can fly in from the UK but one day thing shoot
and then now you know here our fee is 150,000 dollars. Do you think Eric could
do that. So I call up Eric Clapton's manager I get him on the phone and so he
says you know okay how much is the fee and I says you know it's a hundred and
fifty thousand dollars and I get this silence on the other end and it's.. a
hundred and fifty thousand dollars you've got to be kidding me I'm looking
for Eric's fee not his road manager. You know I'm like
oops sorry right. Anyway I don't think Eric Clapton
would have appreciated that but because he's a really cool guy. His manager is was
a tough tough nut. So I relayed this information back to this company in
Japan and they said oh ow gosh did you tell them that it's not for the world
it's just for Japan. He shows up for one day collects 150 G's goes home that's it. I
said yeah I told them. So anyway he said well can you do you think
you could get you know um ZZ Top because the car that we have coming out is
called the Zed and that might even work out better. In fact I think you can
Google, go Google you know I think it's Mazda or it might have been Honda but
called the go ZZ Top car commercial Zed I think is what it is. You'll see it.
Anyway and so we contacted them and they said yeah they could do it right. So we
get everything together and then all of a sudden like it was like three or
four days before everything was supposed to go down, their manager falls off the
planet. I mean falls off the planet and the next thing we hear through the
grapevine is he's on some boat like out in the middle of
you know I don't know the Bahamas or something and he's not returning
anybody's phone call. So finally like two days before this thing or three days
before everyone's supposed to fly into Los Angeles to do this event, he says you
know I've been thinking about it you know and he's like good.. one of the good old
boys right and you know 150 is not enough you know I need way more than that. We're
like oh my gosh this is full-on extortion right and so the you know they
reluctantly agreed. They you know he had him by the cojones and there was really
not much else they could do about it. I guess that's just the music business
where you know everyone's trying to get whatever they can get and it's a bummer
because I like these guys a lot but it's just I guess the nature of the beast of
the music business so let's get back to ZZ Top here we go.
There's that walk.
Ah you missed the guitar. Look at that after he did his little rolling arm thing listen to come back in.
He missed his cue coming back, you hear kind of like a sack of potatoes falling
down the stairs or something. Here we go.
You hear that.
Great guitars tone man.
Hey that reminds me.
Sorry fo all the stories, great guitar tone. So I guess..do you remember this song
"Money For Nothing And Chicks For Free" Dire Straits tune and it was funny that
they you know Sting did an appearance on that and as they were putting the song
together they said gosh it would be really cool to have ZZ Top's guitar tone,
you Billy Gibbon's guitar tone and so anyway so they called Billy Gibbons to
say hey we're doing the song you know money you know (sings) you know
think of the guitar lick in that right cause this will really drive home for it
to make sense. So they call up Billy and they say hey you know can you tell us how you got
your guitar sound, we'd really like to do something like that for the album. He says
go find your own guitar tone. Like okay so that's how that tone ended up sounding
like that and it was its own unique thing too anyway but yeah there was
definitely no you know sharing secrets in this camp that's for sure.
Kinda sped up the rhythm a lot.
The harmonic thing I told you about's coming up. I haven't seen this I hope he does it.
Not as cool as the record.
He missed he harmonics.
That's it. Same lick. I got it.
Alright some I'm gonna fast forward a little bit cause I have these long instrumental breaks are
probably driving you guys nuts. So I'm gonna cruise up here a little bit to what
is this like 5:20 I think something so quite a ways in.
Oh. Wow. Hold on.
They're gonna do Tush alright well what the heck let's grab them both you get
two for the price of one here today. Let's check this out well let's see
where this ends.
Alright so I'm back at 4:20.
Hey I'll hang out for Tush for a second. Why not.
The video wasn't labeled that it just said "La Grange" so.
For my Christian friends out there I actually produced a Darryl Mansfield album
where we did a bunch of these covers and this was one of the songs and we changed
the lyrics and okay you guys are gonna hate me for this is silly but I said
Lord take me downtown I'm just looking for a church.
You can check it out it's a good album. Daryl Mansfield's album.
Okay so again for my guitar player friends out there. You guys he does some
great slide but man the Allman Brothers. You got to check out you know Gregg
Allman some of the Allman brothers stuff.. Duane whatever.
Gregg I got my turds worsted but who's even way more amazing than that in my
personal opinion is Derek Trucks. Holy Cow. If you guys haven't had a chance go
see the Trucks Tedeschi Tedeschi whatever band. Wow. Derek Trucks is like maybe
one of the greatest slide players that has ever lived.
Guitar players go check out Derek Trucks utterly amazing.
I'll get my beard to sway like that. I can do it with my hair.
Alright more guitar solos. Anyway guys I'm just here having a good time. Hope you guys are
having a good time with me. This is some old, classic stuff trying to introduce
again if I've got a younger audience out there to some older classics. Some of
these guys fell through the cracks and they didn't get the notoriety you know.
They were really big in their day but you know other bands that you
know got a lot of acclaim and these guys again just kind of fell through the,
slipped through the cracks so. If you like what you heard please like and
subscribe to my channel and until next time peace out.
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thanks guys peace out.