Namm 2013 & The Legend of "Backdoor" Bob Owens

Wednesday night has us land in Anaheim, another city yet to be traveled by this troubadour.  So, i'm not sure if i'm more excited for Namm or to have a bed with only 1 other person in the room. The hostel was 6.
Wednesday night I hit the pillow, hard. Thursday would bring an early morning, ”Breakfast of Champions” they call it. It’s essentially a massive buffet for all the retailers in the music industry and tradeshow visitors with sleepy pump you up and go sell type of propaganda speeches. It has come to gather a reputation for the opening morning of Namm by bringing in a surprise music industry guest. The morning comes quick and we go register and take to the buffet. We load up and are entertained by a groovy instrumental duo. The speeches are exactly what I was expecting nothing really deviating from the typical tradeshow speeches. However the special guest was worth it completely in my eyes, Adam and his dad decide to leave early and miss it. It turns out to be Randy Jackson of American Idol fame with a cameo by Sarah McLachlan. Adam and his dad sort of shook off the star power of Jackson in a way that he was under qualified to be starting Namm off, I don’t think they really know what this guys about. So I sat and listened, see if you know Randy Jackson before American Idol, you know he is one of the greatest bass players to ever slap it, playing with Whitney to Janet and the list goes on and on. However the highlight was listening to him talk about Idol, talking about becoming an A&R and getting off the road, him taking a chance on the show, being blackballed by all the labels. If you think about American Idol from a music perspective, it’s the opposite of what labels do, you see labels feed you the product and music they want. Idol puts the power back in the musicians hands and lets the quality shine through, regardless what you think of the show, you see it gives the regular broke people working 2 jobs that have a genuine love for music a chance to climb on the ledge and jump off. It was a great speech and everything you would not expect Randy “dog” Jackson to chat about, he’s is brilliant and I admire the guy more for hearing that speech.
So the speech wraps and the herd fill out, its on Namm is about to start, as you walk up there are bins filled with ear plugs. The next 4 days are about to be turned up to 11. I will now be on a tradeshow floor with the industries top manufactures big and small, seeing demos of products new and old ready to be sent in the hands of musicians, engineers, tour managers, retail stores and the list goes on and on. The weekend will have guest appearances by the who’s, whos of the industry, secret parties, schmoozing galore and most of all live music everywhere. So I head over to the main building to try and meet up with Adam as his dad has his days packed with pre-arranged meetings. We meet up briefly to check out this area that basically the magazine rack at “Chapters” or “Indigo” except its all free magazines from the music industry , just a cache of reading material. So much so that we actually have to head back to the room later in the day to drop it as caring around 15lbs of extra paper in your tradeshow bag is a bit much after afew hours on day 1. The day is a typical trade show type of day, trying to cover as much ground well minimizing  your distractions. I give my first "day a 7 out of 10. I meet a really cool Country artist by the name of Kelly McGraph, engaged to a guy in Los Angles but living in Nashville, this would be pivotal to a friend in Venice as the days would unfold. The night would round off with dinner & a solo trip to the madness off the battle of the hotel bands. This is one of the best parts of Namm, i actually meet up with another great would be friend Angie, who at the time i was meeting as a potential roommate for the big place Les was working on, i was pulling for her as she has 2 great dogs, but the other 2 roommates had a no dog policy in place. However, we met briefly at the hotel concert in some sort of potential roommate interview thing. day 1 complete.