 Hello everyone. I'm James Milan. Welcome to this ACMI Music Special. We are in ACMI's Studio A with some old friends of ours in fact, veterans of appearances in this studio, going back a number of years. They are Bees Deluxe and they have agreed to be guinea pigs, which I hear they have been in the recent past at other venues, for us with a return to Studio A and live music for your listening pleasure and ours. So I had mentioned that this is not their first rodeo here at ACMI. You know, Bees Deluxe was involved with Blue's Apocalypse, an annual fundraiser for the Arlington Center for the Arts for several years and we got them into the studio as a promo for some of those appearances. And then they also went out on tour a couple years ago. Pandemic be damned or maybe it was before, was it? Just before, right? It was in 2019, right? Yeah. And we had them in at that time too. They play Acid Blues and they play it well. So we're delighted to have you guys. Thanks so much for joining us again. We really appreciate it. I'm going to ask you just to introduce the band members please, sir. Thanks, James. On keyboards, Anne Harmonica and vocals, Carol Band. From Arlington. On drums behind me, Paul Giovanni. And on bass and vocals, Jim Gilday. And my name is Conrad War. I'm from another country. Yes, and you know Conrad just mentioned, or Carol did, that she is from Arlington. That is our Arlington connection, but we feel like given the fact that this is the band's fourth appearance at Studio A, they're all honorary Arlingtonians at this point. So what we're going to do is we're going to ask the band just to play a set of music, probably nine songs, I think, divided into little subsets of three and we'll take little breaks between those subsets. But let us not delay any further. Well, actually I've got a question or two for you first, if you don't mind. So one thing is, what have you been up to in the pandemic? How did that affect your ability to play together? Have you been able to? Well, one tactic we had was we would record at home individually and swap files, and then each player would add their part to it. So we could go on composing and recording that way digitally, crossing that way. And then last year, we were the first band to open up City Winery in Boston. Getty pigs, as we said, right? They said, you can play, but you can't sing. Right. So we put out an album called Speechless to celebrate that. Instrumentals. Right, of course, because obviously with the pandemic conditions, the singing was what was the problem. They did a big hole in our schedule. But we're back. And since then, we've been down to Florida. We just got back from Pennsylvania. And then a week or two, we're going back up to Maine, to Rockland. Great. So you guys are back in action in a big way. And we've got Boston City Winery May 6th. Great. And let me just ask one more thing. And that is, I think folks might be curious, you all have been doing this for quite a while. But you probably have some day jobs in there as well, I would think this is not yet your full time gig, right? So how is it that you manage the commitment to the band with the other things that you have in your lives? Well, I think we're all freelancers. And Paul's boss is very forgiving. And we'll let him out for a week at a time. And Jim's in charge of himself. He's an adult. So he can get away too. So it's just juggling with freelancing consulting, that kind of thing. Now that everybody works at home, no one we slip out. They didn't before you announced it to the masses here on ACMI. And Carol's a copywriter, so she can write in the tour bus on her laptop. And nobody knows that she's moving at 70 miles an hour while she's billing. Well, I'll tell you, there's a lot of things that people didn't know before. Now they do. So hopefully that works out well for you. Alright, I'm going to get out of the way and ask you to do your thing. Thanks a lot. It said deeply in the West, in a letter, on me on the phone. The next tune is called Homework. In the studio with bees deluxe second set upcoming one question before this is what this is the cost of getting to play at ACMI I got to say. So I had mentioned I had mentioned that that you guys you know, your your self identified musical genre is acid blues as I recall. Tell me, you know, again just very briefly and and I'd love to hear from all four band members if possible. What draws you to what drew you to this music? How long has it been the case? Life long, recent? Tell us a little bit. I was looking for something different. And Conrad five years ago now, almost six put out in the Craigslist with a picture of Bernard Purdy on it. And said answer the ad if you know anything about her. So we ended up looking up through that went out and saw them play a toad one night and forced my way in. I have been here since showing up as long as I'll have me. And who is pretel? Bernard Purdy. He's one of the world's most famous drummers used to play with stealing down among others. Oh, is that right? See, and there's actually a drum pattern called the Purdy shuffle. Named after Wow. It's tough, man. And how about the rest of you? How about you, Jim? I know I've known Paul for a while. And I've always thought highly of the bees. And one point he said, you know, we probably use somebody else to help out here and there. And I jumped for the chance to play with these guys and haven't looked back since. All right, well, these two make it sound like the two of you guys, you know, were there at the at the outset. No, no Conrad was there when dawn began, but right now we're the senior citizens in the band. But just again, briefly, like what what draws you to this particular music? Well, you can go. No, you go. Well, for me, it's, it's that it's based in the blues. But the acid part of it makes it more exciting because you can veer off. I think we incorporate a lot of jazz and some funk and some rock and roll and some psychedelia. And we never play the same thing twice. And that creativity is what makes I think different than your average blues band. Cool. And Mr. there at the dawn of creation. Well, for me, I try to explain to new band members that what we're playing is comprised of islands and streams. When you're on an island piece of land, that's a piece of music that's been written, that we're trying to play. But then when you jump off the island, you're in the water, you can play anything until you reach the next piece of land. So we stretch and contract according to how the audience is behaving. If they really like it, we'll stretch that tune because they're dancing or they're enjoying it. And if you feel them get intense and go into the bathroom for a cigarette, we might curtail that song and move to the next one. So it's very elastic and we are organic. Yeah, it's really made up on the fly. Great. Otherwise why play? It is it is one of the great joys of live musical performance, isn't it? Yeah. All right, let me speaking of which let me get out of your way. Set number two. This next tune is called imaginary conversation between Björk and Buddy Guy. It's an instrumental that we wrote. This next tune is called a quarter never wins. It was written by Tinsley Ellis. It seemed like nowadays. Nothing's meant to last. One day you have it all. Then it disappears so fast. I'll know you want to quit me. You want to leave after all that we've been through on an off again. No, you want to quit me. Next song was written for Freddie King by Don Nix and Leon Russell with respect to him playing in England, which he didn't like doing because he didn't he didn't like the Queen of England. What? We're gonna take another very quick break. And welcome back. We are here still with bees deluxe in Studio A at ACMI. All right, guys, time for the last set. Thought we might tell me when to count that. Alright, let's go in five, four, welcome back to this session with bees deluxe in ACMI's Studio A. Alright, guys, so just one set left and one question left. Just wondering, let's just do a thought experiment and assume that things go the way we all desperately want them to go and we're back to normal life or normalish life now and forward. What are your hopes, your ambitions, your plans for the next little while as a band? Tour some more, do some more festivals, do some recording. Maybe we could play in England. We could play in England for the Queen. Yes, don't tell Freddie, right? But okay, well, good luck to you with that. And, and, and, you know, good luck to all of us with the with what lies in front of us. I do want to say, before we get back to the band, that I said at the outset, this is the kind of thing that we just love to do here at ACMI and haven't been able to for a while. And so we are really grateful to bees deluxe for being here, but also to our crew, to our interns, our volunteers and our staff. It is a nice combined crew that we have here today, fully staffed on all the cameras and back in the control room. And this is really the fun stuff of what we get to do. So if you are listening and watching, and have a band yourself or know of a band who might be interested, have them reach out to us here at ACMI and we'll see if we can't work a little of the same magic as we did to get bees deluxe into the studio. We would love to have that happen. Alright, so I'm going to get out of the way. Three more songs from bees deluxe. Thank you, James. And thanks everybody at ACMI. It's great fun to be back here again. Here's a song by Michael Burks called I smell smoke. What can a man do when good love interns? What can a man do when good love interns? This song is written by J. B. Lenoir called talk to your daughter. I got a song by Bobby Bluebland. Treat a dog the way you treated me. Special treat today. Really appreciate it. These things are so much fun and we can't wait to do welcome the next band bees deluxe being here. Also, as I mentioned, our excellent and stellar crew out there today. We appreciate their efforts and of course those of the band and thanks you for joining us here at ACMI. So we will see you next time. I'm James Milan on behalf of bees deluxe and our crew here at ACMI. We'll see you next time.