Little Man Produced By John Fields - New Music!

I am super happy to announce that Little Man will be releasing new music this year! On top of that it's even more exciting to have John Fields a well known top producer collaborate with me and take the reigns as producer, engineer and mixer.

John has worked with Soul Asylum, Jonas Brothers, Jimmy Eat World, Miley Cyrus, Pink and so many more artists you've heard of. You can expect a good mix of rock, acoustic and psychedelic rock with these new songs keeping the classic Little Man vibe yet nudging a little more modern here and there and interpreted through John's lens. John is taking these songs to new heights further than I could have expected. Things are sounding amazing so I can't wait for you to here them!

 
Finding someone to record your songs can be a difficult thing. As an artist I find it difficult to trust my songs in another person's hands. The albums Little Man has put out in the past sound fantastic and I wanted to keep moving in that direction and give these songs the treatment they deserve. I've got an album's worth of songs demo'd out and it was a matter of finding the right person to interpret these songs in a bigger way. I wanted more than just the band rocking, these songs need more realized elements and those production tweaks and additions are important especially for some of the more laid back songs. While trying to spread the word that I was looking for someone to record our upcoming album, a few people recommended John Fields. I wasn't too familiar with him but I had heard his name before as a top producer here in Minneapolis. We met up and had a great meeting talking about classic rock and bringing in more modern aspects to my music. Fields brings in an element that is all his own in a creative way that bumps these songs up so many more notches. It's so fun being in the studio with Fields working out the new material. He has great recording techniques and is very creative in the process which makes it a joy to be involved with all that. Below is the first track we recorded. There's so much more to come plus the BLVD video so sign up on the Little Man Mailing List and we'll keep you posted!

Are you ready?! Here's the first single!

Send us a reply, how would you describe the new song? 

Click the cover below to get BLVD from your preferred music source

Chris Perricelli - Vocals and Guitars

Sean Gilchrist - Drums

Brian Herb - Bass

Mark Mallman - Keys

John Fields - Synth

It's fun to mock the rock: Stonehenge!

As the kickoff to 89.3 The Current's 11th birthday, the radio station hosted a screening of the movie "This Is Spinal Tap" the classic music mockumentary from 1984, at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. Little Man got to open with a half hour set. What a blast!!

I figured to live it up, play the part and have fun with the opportunity. We played our own songs, deciding not to cover any Spinal Tap but played it up in a Spinal Tap kind of way. From my previous posts you know that I'm into glam rock and the fashion of the genre. I wore red satin pants with furry boot covers and had a leopard print long sleeve shirt. I decided to cut off the sleeves to make it a tank like Nigel wore in the movie but botched one side accidentally. So now I didn't have a shirt but saw these cut sleeves on the floor, so I put them on backwards on my arms and they became glamorous glam rock wings! I loved it. I made a necktie scarf out of the rest of the shirt's remains. In addition, my wife helped me with some great make-up. And oh yes, I did have an armadillo in my trousers.

Two days before the show my wife and I brainstormed how we could do something special for the show. We thought it would be hilarious if we lowered a mini Stonehenge onto the stage just like in the movie. Watch the scene HERE. We didn't have much time though!! Brigid said she could make one and thought she could get it done. I really didn't think it was possible in the amount of time we had. The night before the show she got stared while I was at rehearsal with the band. She kept sending me updates but I kept it secret from everyone including the band.

It was looking great. I contacted the theater to see if it was possible to do what we wanted as far as rigging goes and they confirmed they could. (Yes!) The day of the show Brigid was completely determined to finish the monument by the time we had to leave for load in at the theater. She cut, sanded, painted, glued and glittered what would become the greatest stage prop ever! It was to specs too, 18"! She attached it to a base to make the rigging easier, plus we didn't want it to fall apart while it was hanging there. The paint and glue weren't even dry yet. Although if it did fall apart it would have been a classic Spinal Tap moment regardless.

You should have seen the look on Brian Herbs face when he saw the mini monument in the van when I arrived at the rehearsal space. Completely bowled over. Sean too laughed in disbelief. "We're going to lower this down on our last song!" I said and we had a good laugh. It got us really excited.

Sound check photo by Sean Gilchrist

The Fitzgerald Theater is a really beautiful, old opera style venue. Last time I was there was when I worked with Ike Reilly in 2001. Everyone was surprised when we showed up with our prop. Alan, one of the theater tech's, rigged and hung it way up in the rafters. I made sure to tell everyone not to post to social media about it yet. Sound check went very well although it's a little different playing in a theater like that but very fun. Also, it's a little bit of a maze backstage just like the Spinal Tap scene. They provided delicious food from Cossetta's in the green room area. I was a little worried we'd be provided with coldcuts and miniature bread ;). 

Mid descent! Photo by Allison Wagner

Brian Herb, Sean Gilchrist and myself. Photo by A.Wagner

Brian Oak, who just recently became a Current DJ, MC'd the evening. They had pre-show Rock Band video game set up for the audience on the movie screen. Brian introduced us and out we went! Really fun to play that stage. The audience was great. I could see many of them out of their seats dancing. The set was a good rock'n  8 songs long. The last song was Sun from our last Original Face album. A perfect closer to accompany our descending Stonehenge. And then it descended on the opening chords of Sun, slowly lowered from the rafters and the crowd went bonkers. YEAHHHHH!! The lowering of the Stonehenge piece turned our show up to 11. It gave us that extra push, you know?! Brigid gets the MVP for sure.

After a standing ovation (Thank you!!) we we headed off stage, with some big laughs. My band mates are awesome. It means a lot to share these experiences with them. Not easy to play such a short set sometimes though. It felt like we were just getting warmed up and wanted to play another. After the monument was unharnessed we got it out to the theater lobby during intermission and people gathered to take pictures with it.

Then "This Is Spinal Tap" started. I hadn't seen it in it's entirety in years. Just hilarious. See it if you haven't! So, so fun to be a part of this. Now what to do with our little Stonehenge??

This drawing by Eric Tretbar was given to me on the Zodiac scene!

Special thanks to Gretchen Webber for the video. If you have pictures or video from that night, please feel free to share them here with us!

FUZZ WAHD™

This is the Fuzz Wahd ™. It's a guitar pedal I made and it's my first creation from conception to the physical box. I love the sound of the Fuzz Face and I wanted it to be a little louder and with more gain to be used as a lead pedal for solos. I also wanted the tone to be able to cut through so I combined all of that with a wah-wah like filter. All this makes a cocked wah sound (like a wah-wah pedal set in one position) with Fuzz Face like tones that's boosted. It's juicy like a big wad of bubble gum. The fuzz itself reminds me of Jimi Hendrix sound from the Isle Of Wight show (listen to Red House from minutes 6-8). I LOOOVE that. The cocked wah tones are like that of Mick Ronson on songs like The Man Who Sold The World and Ziggy Stardust. Super glam rock. (Ronson, by the way used a Tone Bender with wah-wah)

It was actually a DIY Premier Guitar Magazine article that got me off in the right direction in building something like this from scratch. I've been building pedals from kits for a few years now but wanted to try to create one my self and learn more about that process.  So with research I combined three circuits to pull this off. I ordered the parts and bought what's called a breadboard to attach them on to for testing circuits. I drew out a detailed schematic and tried to make it all work on the board. A major challenge. This took me quite a while.

I built each circuit separately and adjusted and swapped out components that I felt made it better and the way I liked it with my amp (Marshall 50W JCM 800). After that I hooked them all together in the right combination. In many instances Fuzz Faces and wah-wahs don't play nicely together. In this pedal they do. When I first got signal I was so amazed and happy with my accomplishment!! It sounded so killer! Now I knew how Zachary Vex must have felt when he built his first fuzz.

Getting them onto the breadboard was one thing, getting them off the board and onto something that will fit into an enclosure is another. I had it sounding so good I didn't want to have to take the components off of there. Another hurdle of a challenge. I got a vero board to do this. When you by guitar pedal kits it comes with a PCB board that has everything laid out for you like a map and you just put your components on and solder it up. Here with something like the vero board, you have to make your own map.

Again, my first experience with this thing. I read about how to do it and then drew out a vero board layout. For reference, I also drew out and took pictures of what my bread board looked like. I spent a lot of time checking and checking and checking my layout maps and comparing it to my bread board set up. When I thought I had it right, I added the components and soldered them on.

I ordered an enclosure and a page of decal paper. I added titles to the knobs and added someone blowing a bubble gum bubble to the top of it. Brushed it with Mod Podge. The next step was to put the populated board inside of it and wire it up. Another big challenge. Lots of research on this. Apparently there are many ways to wire up a fuzzbox. I wired it up to my best ability. The LED didn't work. I had to figure that out. Then I got signal and was super happy with that but the pedal didn't work how it should. There was fuzz but I was getting a constant tone coming through and none of the knobs worked. This took me weeks to figure out. Checking my work over and over and just staring at that thing. I got really frustrated at this point. I knew that I had a great sounding circuit but this was just not working. Taking the board out of the box and testing each section of the circuit still baffled me. I came pretty close to just walking this thing downstairs, laying it on the driveway and backing over it with my van. After that I would put it in drive and run it over a second time. Luckily it didn't come to that. I think I was just in a good state of mind when I was looking at it one day, checking my work and I found that I needed to drill an extra hole in the vero board to block a connection. Could that be it??

I took the whole board and tested it on the breadboard and.....IT WORKED!!!!!! Oh man I was so happy and thrilled. Wow, I did it!!! I wired it back up and plugged it in. Boy did I crank my amp for that. Loved it. This thing rocks. Have a listen.
What a cool project. Very proud of myself. Now lets see if I can duplicate it. You might want one.

Inquire at LittleMBD@gmail.com.

Special thanks to ZVEX for the inspiration. Chase Bliss' Joel Korte for the education and KJ Audio's Kris Johnson for the confidence. One small leap for a little man. One giant leap for mankind.

The Making of a Bowie Costume

I've been a part of an annual David Bowie tribute at First Avenue in Minneapolis for many years. Created by 89.3 The Current's DJ Mary Lucia, the show is called Rock For Pussy as it is a benefit for feline rescue. Local artists come together to play and sing their favorite Bowie song on the big stage. I've been a part of the band as a guitarist and I also get to sing some as well. So many people come out for this show and get dressed up in their favorite era Bowie styles and lots of make-up is applied by many of them. Getting glammed up can be a good time. Bowie fans and cat lovers unite for this once a year. It's a really awesome show!

This year I wanted to recreate one of Bowie's tear away costumes as well as a suit. If you've seen his show in London at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973 towards the beginning of  Ziggy Stardust he has two people on either side of him run up and tear away his outer layer costume to reveal a new one underneath. I thought one of his Japanese capes looked really cool. I also liked his suits that were made with just one patterned fabric. In addition I liked some of the styles that his guitarist Mick Ronson wore.

I can hem my own pants (I'm not that tall so most of my pants have to be hemmed) but this was way beyond anything I could do. Plus this was way more than just finding some cool clothes at the thrift store as usual. I wanted to do something I hadn't done or worn before but I'd need help making my idea a reality. I needed to find a designer.

With some sleuthing with a few phone calls, e-mails and postings I was able to be connected with two University of Minnesota fashion design students who were up for the task. Sarah Forsythe contacted me first and she thought she could team up with classmate Lee Tran to make some costumes. We got together and I showed them the video of Bowie's tear away and we spent alot of time looking at pictures of him and glam rock fashion in general. They took my measurements and were enthusiastic about the project. We decided on a couple of ideas. A tear away cape with buttons on the front and back and a two piece suit that could zip half way with a big collar and bell bottomed pants. Now out to the fabric store.

This place we went to was HUGE! It 's called SR Harris. So much to choose from. Luckily Sarah had some ideas for where we could start. We picked out materials and designs we thought would be best. It was a visually appealing experience plus I couldn't help but touch everything I saw, stopping here and there, getting lost and loosing my place with Sarah. After quite a while we decided on a red, white and black big floral print for the cape and a green and shiny gold almost paisley pattern for the suit.

Then we met up again at my place and Lee and Sarah had me try on a basic pattern and measured and pinned me up. It took a couple of fittings to get things just so. We were able to do a test tear away at my place, other than that, my final fitting was at the show.

Test tear!

My first costume for the night was a slim fit silver pair of pants with a matching silver long sleeve shirt along with my cool maroon side zip boots (see my "Vintage SHop Hop" blog post) I had just picked up at a local vintage shop called Up Six. I got my hair poofed out in all directions and some green and silver eye make-up as well as a gold star painted on my chest by a hair styling salon that sets up shop at the show called Moxie.

After the first set I had help changing into the green and gold suit, huge suede platform boots and finally the cape.

I had asked the designers to be the tear away helpers but Sarah couldn't make the show so my wife Brigid helped with Lee. She was so excited! The song I was going to do this for was called "Star" from the Ziggy Stardust album.

I took the stage and played a couple songs on guitar with my cape on and then it was my turn at the mic. As the chomping chords of  "Star" on the piano started the song, the background singers sang "ooooh aahhhh..." and the guitar strummed it's first chords, I raised my arms to full outstretched length (which was the signal for my helpers to run towards me) to show the full cape and Lee and Brigid approached me as fast as they could from opposite sides of the stage. They grabbed the cape and tore it off me before I started to sing the song. It worked!! It was great!!!! So so fun. The audience loved it and the song went on and I had a blast with it. I felt like Bowie, Bolan, Rod Stewart and Jimmy page all at once with that two piece outfit. Rock!!

Here's the video of the tear away!

It was so cool to have an idea, see it through and have it work so well. That felt real good to me. I'm sure it did for the designers too. Sarah and Lee did a great job and it was really fun to work with them both. More photos and videos of all the performers on Facebook.

photo by Charles Robinson

photo by David Tanner

With Reed Wilkerson photo by Amy Wilkerson