Aaron Traffas

April

What….a productive day. Nothing like throwing up three shows to the calendar with the possibility of a fourth in April alone.

Putting ducks in a row in preparation for my yearly week-long excursion to Bloomington, Indiana. Headed to Indiana University on Saturday for auctioneer education as I have every March for the last five years. Then it’s back to focus on music – it’s going to be an exciting April full of shows, both acoustic and with the band.

Saturday's show

Proceeds from Saturday's Junefest show will benefit Relay for Life

The details have solidified for Saturday’s Junefest show. The show will start at 8 p.m. at the Peace Treaty Pageant Grounds east of Medicine Lodge on Highway 160, south of the golf course. The tickets – available at the show – will be $5 and will directly benefit Relay for Life.

The show will feature special guest Anthony Farrar. Anthony opened our last show at Mike’s in Medicine Lodge and demonstrated that he’s a very solid performer with some good originals.

On an unrelated matter, as I was investigating the exact layout of the pageant grounds, I checked and was surprised to find that Google Maps is now sporting high resolution satellite imagery of Barber County. I started looking for our fields and as I was panning towards Sharon, I found the following image.

Now I’m not criticizing – I’m sure the farmer (a friend) had good reason for random-looking patterns. He was most likely preventing the dirt from blowing or trying to find a place that wasn’t too wet to work. The point is that no longer is the way we work fields a private matter. Google’s incorporation of this kind of imagery means that our farming habits are now available for all to see.

Still in Fayetteville

Played a good show last night at the Perk in Fayetteville
Not a huge crowd
Not a drinking crowd
Sometimes these shows are fun
You can play 100% originals
No drunk guy asking for Carney Man
Or worse…Luke Bryan…Eric Church…

Reese Neal played last night with us at the show
Very talented songwriter with a completely different style
A master of his falsetto
He’s a vocal dead-ringer for Ryan Adams
He gave me his CD
I’m looking forward to actually listening to it on the drive home

G and I are off to find some breakfast
Then it’s studio time at East Hall Recording Studio
Saw the proprietor playing bass in Hot Shot Karate
Last night at the Boom Boom Room here in Fayetteville
Probably not going to start recording before noon

Here’s a video for today
Thanks to Dream Not of Today for the Twitter-tip on this one

Arkansas and Jenny's song

Loading for Fayetteville
More studio time
Hoping to finish a few songs

Playing a show tonight
With people I’ve never met
Guess I’ll be playing defence again

Here’s a video for the weekend
Posted to the Amateur Scientist today
Pretty cute lyrics with a great point

Classical Gas

New music weekend

Aaron Traffas and Trevor Burgess, live at Bobby T's in Manhattan, Kansas, on Valentines Day, 2009

New music now available from the Valentines Day show at Bobby T’s with Trevor Burgess. Enter: The Wind has been available for some time, but today I’ve posted the rest of the originals from the show. They’re listed in the order they were played.

Archipelago
Fence Post
Singularity
What’s Wrong With Me
Enter: The Wind
Patronizing Smile
Red Dirt Farm
Getting Over You Again
Republican
24 Feet
200 Miles Away

Remember that you can find the lyrics, guitar chords and other information about each song in the songs section of this website. These songs and others can be found in the downloads section. Pictures from this show and others can be found in the pictures section.

Shows this weekend

We’ve got some exciting shows on the books, including two this weekend. You won’t want to miss them, as I’ll be breaking out a brand new song called “Enter: the Wind”. We’ll be posting the lyrics on the site in the songs section after this weekend, along with some recordings of it.

We’re going to try streaming the audio and video of the shows this weekend live on the website, so if you can’t make it to Aggieville tonight or Bobby T’s on Saturday, you can tune in to www.aarontraffas.com after 9 p.m. each night to view the feed. We’re going to be counting on a Sprint USB stick to deliver our 1s and 0s, so say a prayer for CDMA EVDO in Manhattan.

Tonight is the first Aaron and Lucas show at Pat’s in Aggieville. Tomorrow is the first Aaron and Trevor Burgess show since December 2005 – AND it’s on Valentine’s Day. All bets are officially off. Bring your girl, we’ll take care of the rest.

See the complete calendar at http://www.aarontraffas.com/shows

I hope to see you tonight at Pat’s or tomorrow at Bobby T’s.

Walking Douglass

I bought a guitar amplifier today. It’s a little Vox practice amp. I realized that I never, ever perform without running the amp through a microphone and, indeed, spend most of the time trying to figure out how to keep the performers on stage – including myself – from hearing the amp rather than the guitar signal in the ear monitors. With this regard, the purchase of the little – some would mistakenly say cute – amp made perfect sense for portability and price. Now I have to learn how to use it.

I purchased the device from Phil Uhlik Music in Wichita. I was distributing flyers for an upcoming auction of guitars, folk instruments and other like-kind items. I entered and was waiting to talk to Nick Uhlik when Phil walked out from the back. It was very good to see him – I hadn’t in the last several years. He’s always remembered my name since I started buying instruments and equipment from them over 10 years ago in high school, and it always felt good to be called by name when I walked into a store in the big city, even if it was by a guy who has a freakish ability to remember names. His kindness and friendly nature more often than not served to cause me to buy something more or something better.

New comments system

I’m finally installing the Disqus comments system on the site tonight, and it may be a a short while before the comments are processed and put back. Don’t worry, I didn’t delete anything.

I’m winding down after a long auction tonight and one hell of a past few months. Developer sprints are tough when you’re the only developer. We implemented a fairly complete overhaul of the way the Purple Wave bidding system handles auctions in order to accommodate some of the overstock auctions we’ve been doing recently. The work is finally winding down, and I sincerely hope to be more of a presence on the website.

Chris “G” Goering had one hell of a blog post, and I hope you take the time to read it. Mason and I are excited about the new year and what musical possibilities it may hold. Trevor Burgess is activated again after having been off the grid for the last few years. Look for an acoustic show with the two of us at Bobby T’s on V-day in a few weeks. Lucas Maddy moved to Wichita and will be playing with us as much as the schedule will allow.

I’ve been a blogging fool over at auctioneertech.com, and that’s where I’ve been doing most of my writing lately. My auction tech blog was recently featured in the January 2009 edition of the Auctioneer magazine. I also started a podcast where I discuss what’s new and exciting as well as interview auctioneers and industry experts about auctions and auction technology.

I’m getting ready to head to Wichita tomorrow to the Kansas Auctioneers Association convention. It should be a fun time. I’ll be doing a fair amount of tweeting during the experience. I’ve become a huge fan of Twitter. Sign up for an account at www.twitter.com and follow me at twitter.com/traffas. The real-time updates and picture postings from the phone is pretty impressive.

That’s it for tonight. Hopefully this post will go through before Ubuntu Studio 9.04 resets my DNS settings again.

New music for December

Aaron Traffas Band at the Plum Thicket in Kiowa on October 25, 2008 - left to right: Chris Goering, Lucas Maddy, Mason Powell, Aaron Traffas

Hot from the oven, here are 9 tracks from a live recording made at the Plum Thicket in Kiowa, Kansas, on 25 October 2008. The Aaron Traffas Band was Aaron, Mason Powell, Chris Goering and Lucas Maddy. You can

hear Lucas singing his song, Bottles of Bud.

• Aaron Traffas Band – Republican – 25 October 2008
  
• Aaron Traffas Band – Mirror – 25 October 2008
  
• Aaron Traffas Band – Bottles of Bud – 25 October 2008
  
• Aaron Traffas – Singularity – 25 October 2008
  
• Aaron Traffas Band – Getting Over You Again – 25 October 2008
  
• Aaron Traffas Band – Archipelago – 25 October 2008
  
• Aaron Traffas Band – 24 Feet – 25 October 2008
  
• Aaron Traffas Band – 200 Miles Away – 25 October 2008
  
• Aaron Traffas Band – Red Dirt Farm – 25 October 2008

You can find more downloads on the downloads page.