Hi, thanks for stopping in. I am Big Red, your gracious host.
The Big Red Solo Tour includes all musicians living and dead, playing songs by me, Grateful Dead covers, and a scattering of classics. I had played for years with a band of family members, and when that ran a course I broke off as my own act, and audaciously called it the Big Red Solo Tour. But there’s nothing solo about it really, although I have done a few solo gigs. I am not that big, and though I was a redhead it was never that red really, and now it’s white. But I adopted the moniker “Big Red” for a friends newspaper we did in the early 90s, and I use it to humorously refer to myself in third person, and I introduce myself to people usually as “Big Red”, though people just call me Red. I like to call the act our “mission”, to roll into a place and do our thing and make it fun and comfortable. The Dead Rescue Mission. It’s a great challenge.
On this site there is a 90 or so minute recording that we did in a studio in February, where we mimicked a typical gig by playing all together in the studio’s big room. We went through the songs once, no over-dubs or final mixing. See what you think. As a live band we are currently a five man outfit. My brother Joe plays the bass, and his son Nate is our drummer. Two brothers, Dave and Alex Bitter play the guitar. Alex plays the lead guitar and usually catches everyone’s attention. I play the electric piano and sing most of the songs, but Dave and Joe and Alex are all good singers, and we all sing together, a key to our show. We play a Dead Show, with our favorite Dead songs, and usually about 6 or 8 of our own songs, mostly mine, and a few of Joe’s. We’re definitely proud of our own tunes, which helps identify us as an act, and that we can claim we do “a show”, which is different every night.
About 10 years ago Joe’s boy Nate took to the drums and I played a lot with him, and he really got the hang of it. A band is as good as its drummer right? So I thought we’d do a band of me and Nate and some millennials, and we actually auditioned a handful. We always knew Alex but he was younger, and his big brother Dave was Nate’s friend. As they grew up we would end up going to shows and festivals together, and gathered weekly at their friend Owen’s basement, on Tuesdays. Tuesday crewsday. There was a music PA set up in the basement with me and Alex, and Dave took up the drums while Nate hiked the Pacific Coast trail. It was there I began to realize just how deep and wonderful the Grateful Dead catalogue really is. I still am. So when Nate came back, Dave took up guitar, and now plays the electric guitar, and bass, and subs on Drums when needed. About 2022 we put together an act to emerge from the basement and used our old bassist Bruce for a few years, but he’s always so busy and we usually have a relatively short notice for gigs when they unfold, so Joe, a guitarist, took over bass duties to come full circle. His song “Barstool” is a real gem.
We currently play in bars and small venues here in the Northern Kentucky area, the all-time coolest place to be and be from. Technically this is “The Big Red Solo Tour presents The Heart of Gold Band”, which is quite cumbersome. So for bars it’s “The Big Red Solo Tour”, and for public shows it’s “The Heart of Gold Band”. I have no idea how many Dead cover bands out there go by the Heart of Gold Band, and even some of the Dead themselves did one called that for a short time. But it’s this: my favorite people and my favorite songs. I feel so lucky. And, even though jamming is essential, people want to sing along, so we focus on songs that are the most fun to sing along to. It’s the most fulfilling thing at live music performances, and that’s all there is to it. And it’s therapeutic. So, for the other covers we do, you’ll probably know the hook.
When we played those gigs in the 90s and 2000s as “The Elite Band”, I caught onto songwriting. I was in my early 30s. I have written about 45 of them now. We made a record of my first 10 in 1996 at a studio called The Stork over in Highland Heights (KY), owned by an OB doctor. In three weeks we made “This Elite Band”, and it was a surprise how much people liked it, especially young kids, like teenagers. It remains a great listen all these years later, and it’s right here on the site and you can see what you think.
Three years later we went into a studio and made the album “Songs For The Modern Age”, my next ten songs. It is also loaded here. The first album featured a lot of personal-themed songs, whereas the second, like the name implies, looks more at the big picture of the world around us.
Then there was a lull in the songwriting for a lot of reasons. But they still trickled out. And around 2014 or so I got this idea of assembling them all together as some sort of rock opera about these times we’re living in, The Modern Age. I had decided on two acts, of 11 songs each. The first eleven would be about personal themes of coming of age in The Modern Age, and the second half would be songs about all of us together as a society. So for maybe the last 8 years I have managed to record a project where I introduce each song, describe why it fits in this opera, then it plays, and I come back for a brief discussion, or to quote it maybe, and then introduce the next song. It is an epic effort, and addresses a number of pertinent snapshots of mankind in his “modern” age. Perhaps someday a would-be enthusiast will make a stage production out of it. I have a website dedicated to the opera (modernageopera.com) and there’s a link to it from this site. And it’s all there. There’s text that comes with the lyrics on the site, and click play and away you go. So easy nowadays.
On the rock opera, The Modern Age, five of the songs were recorded on This Elite Band, and 8 of them are from Songs For The Modern Age. There are eight that are demo-level recordings, and one is a Joe Song, “Barstool”. I had hoped to try to make a finished product as another album, but right now that’s not feasible. I mean, do people even make “albums” of songs anymore? I guess yes. But it’s so hard, getting everyone together for it, keeping the momentum until it’s done, and then what? One answer: gradually add them all to possibilities on the Big Red Solo Tour. Because it’s all about the moment now. The live performance. But still, if only for the sport of it, songs ought to be recorded as good as possible for posterity. I had decided on a name of the next ten (or so) anyway: “Images”. But there are about 20+ songs that are at the demo stage, and I’ve loaded as many here are I have. Hopefully some day I can achieve a finished project.
So that’s what I’ve got for you. At this point there’s no way to contact the site. I just can’t be real public. I will likely post upcoming shows at some point, and we average about one every 6 weeks. So thanks for stopping in and I hope you enjoy it.
Oh, one more thing. There is another link on this site to my third website, “bigredthemd.com”. There I have attempted to create an Emergency Room where people can go and look up any number of complaints at “Big Red’s ER”. I have covered a lot of ground on this site from my vast knowledge and experience with people from my day job, and it’s surely more helpful than any other site out there. And I have added a few recipes too, including how to make my grandmother’s Italian bread. And, like all three of the sites, there are no ads.