Herring/Rodgers/Sipe with Fountain & Van Allen

Herring/Rodgers/Sipe at The Bank, St. Pete was the end of the first shows the band had ever played together. In fact, a woman yelled out "How long have you guys been playing together?" near the end of the first set.
"Three days" said Neil Fountain with a big smile on his face.

The songs are a mixture of Bobbly Lee's originals from The Codetalkers and some new/old stuff he has written. It's all original, and it really smokes. I think this stuff has some serious "legs" and is gonna be around a while.

The band is:
Jimmy Herring on lead guitar(and playing the 1965 Fender Strat Phil gave him). You know all about him, so I'll save it. :-) He's the man.

Bobby Lee Rodgers is the vocalist and songwriter for the group. He plays on electric banjo and an acoustic hollow body Gibson with tape over the holes. He plays the Gibson through a Leslie Effect Cabinet(not to be confused with an effects pedal like Warren uses), which makes his guitar sound an awful lot like a keyboard at times.

Jeff Sipe AKA Apt. Q258 is the man behind the drum kit. He was amazing at these shows, and shows a totally different style of play than with Phil. He's MUCH louder and seems very confident playing with his good friends from the south.

Neil Fountain from The Fiji Mariners is on bass. He likes to play "wide open" as he puts it, and you can certainly hear his thundering bass in the music.

Finally, you've got Mark Van Allen on the pedal steel. He's an amazing player, and totally has the feel of this music deep down in his bones. He knows when to come in and just tear it up, and he knows when to lay back and just add some texture to the music. Very talented guy.

The music is really hard to describe. The songs contain no noodles and it's very song based and song driven. I was very suprised that Jimmy seemd to be really hanging back during the first two shows. Not that he was not playing as well as always, but he seemed less dominant than I had ever seen him. As the tour progressed he seemed to be stepping up and taking more of the leads, but there is a nice balance between him and Mark on the steel that blends well.

A couple of the best songs IMHO are:

All We Wanna Hear, which is in my opinion a beautiful ballad lamenting people always wanting to hear "a familiar riddle" when listening to music. As Bobby Lee says "What we have to fear is already here" when we get complacent in our listening habits. That's just my take on the song since I cannot find the lyrics yet.

Blow My Brains is just what is sound like. A rockin' tune about some of life's not so happy moments. This song is absolutely the most hard rockin' tune I've ever heard Jimmy do outside of Dead music. You must hear this song..sounds like Seattle circa 1990.

See You is another beautiful song that some very smart folks think sould be the first single off the album.

and there are so many more.

The Bank show was spectacular in every respect of the word. The shows leading up to it felt like they had been warm ups to the main event. Jimmy was roaring, but with total direction and focus. The steel added the beautiful underline to the song and the bass and drums carried you into a groove. A very, very fun and exciting new sound!!