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Mikey, Jason. (long)

I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Michael Georgian (some of you may
remember him as the bassist in Over the Rhine until June's introduction
of Wade) play on Saturday night at Border's Books in Tri County (Cinti).
He was a co-featured musician with Jason Dennie (some of you may 
remember him as a phenominal guitarist that has opened for OtR a few 
times; the long fingernails may jog the grey matter...)

Jason as usual was awesome.  Mikey as usual kicked ass.  He played one
song with an E-bow on his fretless bass.  Wow.  Even Mike's grandma had
to ask him about that after their set.

This was the first time the two have played live together, all of the
songs were taken from Dennie's catalog.  Ever the inquisitor, I pinned
Mikey down at the end of the performance to catch up.

Essentially he felt that with the four piece (Karin, Linford, Brian and
him) he was able to "roam" musically a little more.  He's not much of
a pop music player, and lately that's where the music is headed.  He 
signed on thinking that the way they were playing the GDBD stuff live
was the future direction, and it just wasn't happening any more.

He told Linford about three days before the Sawyer Point show in June,
and Linford understood and was pretty cool about it.  Mike offered to
play the rest of the scheduled shows with them and Linford told him
they had someone (Wade) that could take care of it, so he didn't have
to.  Understandably, Mike seemed taken aback by this.

He still seems happy about his tenure with the band, and said he misses
seeing some familiar faces etc.; he also said he was "amazed"* at watching
Karin and Linford on Letterman the other week.  *-amazed isn't the word
he used, I don't remember what it was, but he was really happy to see them
there.

Mike has copies of the demos of the new songs that were recorded awhile
back; he said that that "was the final straw" with Over the Rhine, but
then joked that off.  Later he elaborated that it was very obvious at that
time that he was just placing backing pop-based bass tracks onto the songs.
"You've gotta have respect for the songwriter, but there's an element that
gets lost when..." they're recorded methodically like it was being done.
Shades of Ric (anyone remember him?)...

He said the demos aren't that great, but will do the purpose for what he
thinks the band's goal is: to get signed.

Mike also noted that he thinks Jack is an amazing musician as well, but
somehow Jack is comfortable riding backseat in a pop band.  Mike (as I am)
are really impressed with his songwriting shown on his solo CD.  We didn't
talk about Jack's voice...

Anyway, Mike's recording at his home with Jason Dennie; I'm not sure when
they hope to put something out, but I'm sure it will be worth a listen.

Jason still has the two CDs out (the same for the last year) plus I 
enquired him about a low-print run of CDs he did with Noah Hunt (he is the
AMAZING vocalist that fronted Uncle Six, now he's the voice for the Kenny
Wayne Shepard Band).  Jason said they did 1500 CDs, still have 500 or so
but haven't really been selling them anywhere for some reason.  They've
started to get a lot of inquiries for them lately (probably due to Noah's
new semi-stardom) and he gave me a card to call and get some.  If anyone
wants this item, please e-mail me privately and I'll up my order by that
amount.

Bruce