Knuckleheads Saloon
Knuckleheads Saloon is a music venue in Kansas City, Missouri. The facility is a complex of four stages: a large outdoor stage with a converted caboose to one side as a VIP seating area. Live music can be presented on all four stages at once; the venue presents live music Wednesday with occasional Tuesday concerts. The original building was built in 1887 as a railroad boarding house, across the street from the original location of early Kansas City amusement park Electric Park. A active train track runs close by the outdoor stage and performers have had to become accustomed to train whistles blowing during shows. Singer-songwriter Joe Ely was performing his song Boxcar on the outdoor stage when a train came by, blowing its whistle at the right point in the song. Ely said he had "...waited 20 years for a train to come by at the perfect timing". Knuckleheads Saloon is owned by Frank and Mary Hicks, who owned an auto body shop called Mid-City Collision Repair, they opened a Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership across the street from Mid-City in 1997 called F.
O. G. Cycles, sponsored street parties as a promotional tool, giving away free beer. In 2001, Hicks obtained a liquor license and the bar opened as Knucklehead's Saloon in homage to a trio of his cycling friends, calling themselves The Three Stooges. In 2004, Hicks closed F. O. G. Cycles to concentrate on the club. Mid-City has a mural painted on the wall facing Knuckleheads featuring rock and country icons Elvis Presley, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hank Williams Sr. Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Buddy Holly and many others; the location in the East Bottoms on Rochester Street is bordered on the east by Montgall Ave, on the east by the North Chestnut Trafficway overpass and the south by railroad tracks. The size of the smaller indoor facility limited the venues ability to present large concerts to temperate weather. On January 12, 2015 Knuckleheads launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $35,000 to outfit the former Mid-City Collision Repair location as an additional indoor concert venue to be known as Knuckleheads Garage to hold 800 to 1000 guests.
The campaign was successful, raising $38,490 on a $35,000 goal, the venue premiered with an open house on April 11, 2015. The New Song Christian Fellowship church started holding church services in 2009 on Wednesday nights in the smallest of Knuckleheads' performance spaces. Zydeco band Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band recorded their live album Live at Knuckleheads, Kansas City and an accompanying DVD in 2007, as did Cadillac Flambe in 2010; the venue hosts several hundred performers every year, with concerts five nights a week, with two or three stages operating in a single night. Well-known acts who have played Knuckleheads include Sam Bush, Leon Russell, Nick Lowe, Edgar Winter and his brother Johnny Winter, Keb' Mo', John Doe, Ian Moore, Ray Price, Billy Joe Shaver, Dale Watson, Kinky Friedman, Rodney Crowell, Samantha Fish, Amanda Fish, David Lindley. Advance tickets are sold for concerts by most of the national and international acts playing the venue via eTix; the venue hosts no-cover open jams on weekends, allowing amateur musicians to play on stage with professionals.
Knuckleheads was given the Blues Foundation's "Keeping Blues Alive" award as Best Blues Club in 2008, calling it "...the place to see live Blues in Kansas City" and "...a premier stop for Blues artists traveling through the Midwest". Starting in 2005, it has won Best Blues Club from the readers of the Kansas City alternative paper The Pitch, has won that award for each of the following six years. Bill Brownlee of the Kansas City Star, in a review of a concert by Leon Russell, said "Knuckleheads is Kansas City's premier roots music venue of the last 30 years."
Extended play
An extended play record referred to as an EP, is a musical recording that contains more tracks than a single, but is unqualified as an album or LP. Contemporary EPs contain a minimum of three tracks and maximum of six tracks, are considered "less expensive and time-consuming" for an artist to produce than an album. An EP referred to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play and LP, but it is now applied to mid-length CDs and downloads as well. Ricardo Baca of The Denver Post said, "EPs—originally extended-play'single' releases that are shorter than traditional albums—have long been popular with punk and indie bands." In the United Kingdom, the Official Chart Company defines a boundary between EP and album classification at 25 minutes of maximum length and no more than four tracks. EPs were released in various sizes in different eras; the earliest multi-track records, issued around 1919 by Grey Gull Records, were vertically cut 78 rpm discs known as "2-in-1" records. These had finer than usual grooves, like Edison Disc Records.
By 1949, when the 45 rpm single and 331⁄3 rpm LP were competing formats, seven-inch 45 rpm singles had a maximum playing time of only about four minutes per side. As an attempt to compete with the LP introduced in 1948 by rival Columbia, RCA Victor introduced "Extended Play" 45s during 1952, their narrower grooves, achieved by lowering the cutting levels and sound compression optionally, enabled them to hold up to 7.5 minutes per side—but still be played by a standard 45 rpm phonograph. These were 10-inch LPs split onto two seven-inch EPs or 12-inch LPs split onto three seven-inch EPs, either sold separately or together in gatefold covers; this practice became much less common with the advent of triple-speed-available phonographs. Some classical music albums released at the beginning of the LP era were distributed as EP albums—notably, the seven operas that Arturo Toscanini conducted on radio between 1944 and 1954; these opera EPs broadcast on the NBC Radio network and manufactured by RCA, which owned the NBC network were made available both in 45 rpm and 331⁄3 rpm.
In the 1990s, they began appearing on compact discs. RCA had success in the format with their top money earner, Elvis Presley, issuing 28 Elvis EPs between 1956 and 1967, many of which topped the separate Billboard EP chart during its brief existence. During the 1950s, RCA published several EP albums of Walt Disney movies, containing both the story and the songs; these featured the original casts of actors and actresses. Each album contained two seven-inch records, plus a illustrated booklet containing the text of the recording so that children could follow along by reading; some of the titles included Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and what was a recent release, the movie version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, presented in 1954. The recording and publishing of 20,000 was unusual: it did not employ the movie's cast, years a 12 in 33⅓ rpm album, with a nearly identical script, but another different cast, was sold by Disneyland Records in conjunction with the re-release of the movie in 1963.
Because of the popularity of 7" and other formats, SP records became less popular and the production of SPs in Japan was suspended in 1963. In the 1950s and 1960s, EPs were compilations of singles or album samplers and were played at 45 rpm on seven-inch discs, with two songs on each side. Other than those published by RCA, EPs were uncommon in the United States and Canada, but they were sold in the United Kingdom, in some other European countries, during the 1950s and 1960s. Record Retailer printed the first EP chart in 1960; the New Musical Express, Melody Maker and Music Echo and the Record Mirror continued to list EPs on their respective singles charts. The Beatles' Twist and Shout outsold most singles for some weeks in 1963; when the BBC and Record Retailer commissioned the British Market Research Bureau to compile a chart it was restricted to singles and EPs disappeared from the listings. In the Philippines, seven-inch EPs marketed as "mini-LPs" were introduced in 1970, with tracks selected from an album and packaging resembling the album they were taken from.
This mini-LP format became popular in America in the early 1970s for promotional releases, for use in jukeboxes. Stevie Wonder included a bonus four-song EP with his double LP Songs in the Key of Life in 1976. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was less standardization and EPs were made on seven-inch, 10-inch or 12-inch discs running either 331⁄3 or 45 rpm; some novelty EPs used odd shapes and colors, a few of them were picture discs. Alice in Chains was the first band to have an EP reach number one on the Billboard album chart, its EP, Jar of Flies, was released on January 25, 1994. In 2004, Linkin Park and Jay-Z's collaboration EP, Collision Course, was the next to reach the number one spot after Alice in Chains. In 2010, the cast of the television series Glee became the first artist to have two EPs reach number one, with Glee: The Music, The Power of Madonna on the week of May 8, 2010, Glee: The Music, Journey to Regionals on the week of June 26, 2010. In 2010, Warner Bros. Records revived the format with their "Six-Pak" offering of six songs on a compact disc.
The first EPs were seven-inch vinyl records with more tracks than a normal single. Although they shared size and speed with singles, they were a recognizably different format than the seven-inch single. Alth
Yep Roc Records
Yep Roc Records is an American independent record label based in Hillsborough, North Carolina, owned by Redeye Distribution. Since 1997, the label has released albums from North Carolina and international artists, including Aoife O'Donovan, Chatham County Line, Dave Alvin, Chuck Prophet, Gang of Four, Los Straitjackets, Nick Lowe, Paul Weller, Robyn Hitchcock, Ryan Adams, The Apples in Stereo, The Reverend Horton Heat, Mandolin Orange, Tift Merritt. Tor Hansen started the label in 1997, two years after moving to North Carolina to help manage a chain of record stores in the South. In and around the musical hotbed of Chapel Hill, he encountered bands making good music but not knowing how to get it out. Back in Boston, he’d worked at Rounder Records with his childhood friend and former bandmate Glenn Dicker. Tor had worked in sales, Glenn had worked in promotions, they made the decision to try and do both together with their own label and their own distribution wing, Redeye. It started with a few local compilations featuring some recognizable names and some names they hoped people would soon spot.
There were no strictures or typecasts, no attempts to use the best bands in the vicinity to define a North Carolina sound or a Yep Roc brand. It was all stuff that Hansen and Dicker liked.“It has been a sort of organic growth,” says Hansen, “It wasn't like we just started a record label with all this money. There were roots to this thing, they start way back. Slow growth has been a good thing for us."After about its first 100 releases, Yep Roc entered one of its most indicatively taste-driven spurts, releasing, in succession, records by Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould, Springsteen proselytes Marah, drifting folk act Dolorean and rock ’n’ roll madmen The Legendary Shack*Shakers. Jump down a few more catalogue numbers, Yep Roc followed the debut of terse, tense post-punk act Cities with discs by alt-country progenitor Dave Alvin and Los Straitjackets, the masked surf rock stars whose sales a year earlier helped convince Hansen and Dicker that their personal and open approach to curating releases was a sustainable move.
The success of Los Straitjackets and the experience of working with Dicker on the Rounder-distributed Upstart helped provide the convincer to Nick Lowe to join Yep Roc. And after recording an album with a band named Wilco, Young Fresh Fellow Scott McCaughey knew he wanted to be on the same label as Lowe, so he sent it over to Yep Roc.“I’m a huge Nick fan, I figured any label, into Nick had to be cool,” McCaughey says. The label’s partnership with McCaughey has lasted nearly a decade, something he attributes to the openness of Dicker and Hansen to put their brand and money behind something they enjoy. “I’m surprised by the way they embraced my other bands The Baseball Project. I’m grateful that they support the Young Fresh Fellows occasional releases, with no hope of monetary gain.”In 2016, Dicker was elected to the A2IM Board of Directors. Yep Roc calls itself "the artist-driven label that refuses to be labeled."“If I’ve got on my Yep Roc T-shirt,” explains label co-founder Tor Hansen, “I’m not a part of one music scene.
I accept that, I think it’s pretty great. I like the idea that Yep Roc has the idea of an all-inclusive approach.”Both Dicker and Hansen like to joke that such a release-what-you-love approach might not always make the most financial sense. They’ve rarely pursued indie rock’s latest buzzing commodity or chased a trend washing through the industry; the label has never been about the micro-celebrity of its owners. That might mean that they’re not able to return to the same customer core for every album.“It’s a little challenging when we do a singer-songwriter, some blues guy, some garage-rock guy, some indie thing. It’s a little bit all over the place, it presents fun challenges, but the marketing of this brand is difficult,” explains Dicker. “It’s about the artist first- in fact, we’re driven by the artists. We're going to connect the dots for this artist. That’s always the way we’ve looked at it, never the other way around.” In January 2017, Yep Roc Records announced a partnership with the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
SFC is a large archival resource consisting of a collection of rare recordings of American southern music. As part of the partnership, Yep Roc Records will aid in producing and distributing rare archival recordings of which SFC will have created digital masters; the first three rare recordings to be released were announced alongside news about the partnership. The first release will be a remastered recording of legendary country music star Dolly Parton's first single "Puppy Love" and the original "B" side, "Girl Left Alone." The tracks were recorded in 1959 when the singer was just thirteen years old and released on Goldband Records, a prominent southern music label in the 1950s and 1960s. The reissue will be in the form of an exclusive 45" vinyl available only on Record Store Day of 2017; the second release is a compilation of classic Cajun music titled Swampland Jewels originally released on Goldband Records. The tracklisting includes songs from important Cajun music artists such as Jo-El Sonnier, Boozoo Chavis, Iry LeJune Jr. and Cleveland Crochet.
It is scheduled to be released on September 22, 2017. The last of the initial three releases will be a live recording of Doc Watson, a prolific guitar player and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient known for his "flatpi
Huey Lewis and the News
Huey Lewis and the News is an American rock band based in San Francisco, California. They had a run of hit singles during the 1980s and early 1990s achieving 19 top ten singles across the Billboard Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, Mainstream Rock charts, their most successful album, was released in 1983. The album, along with its videos being featured on MTV, catapulted the group to worldwide fame; that expanded. "The Power of Love" was nominated for an Academy Award and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The News combined a rock backing with Lewis' distinctive voice. In 1972, singer/harmonica player Huey Lewis and keyboardist Sean Hopper joined the Bay Area jazz-funk band Clover. Clover recorded several albums in the 1970s, in the middle of the decade transplanted themselves to Britain to become part of the UK pub rock scene. Without Lewis, they became the original backing band for Elvis Costello's first album My Aim Is True. Lewis worked with Irish band Thin Lizzy, contributing harmonica to the song "Baby Drives Me Crazy," recorded onstage for the Live and Dangerous album.
Thin Lizzy bassist/vocalist Phil Lynott introduces Lewis by name during the song. The band returned to the Bay Area by the end of the 1970s. Clover's main competition in the Bay Area jazz-funk scene was a band called Soundhole, whose members included drummer Bill Gibson, saxophonist/rhythm guitarist Johnny Colla, bassist Mario Cipollina. Like Clover, Soundhole had spent time backing Van Morrison. After getting a singles contract from Phonogram Records in 1978, Huey Lewis joined Hopper, Gibson and Cippolina to form a new group, Huey Lewis & The American Express. Although they played gigs under this name, in 1979, they recorded and released a single as "American Express." The single, "Exodisco" was ignored. The B-side of this record, "Kick Back," was a song, performed live by Lewis and his former band, Clover. In 1979, the band was joined by lead guitarist Chris Hayes and moved to Chrysalis Records, which occurred after their demo tape was heard by Pablo Cruise manager Bob Brown, who helped them land a record deal with the label.
Chrysalis did not like the name American Express, fearing trademark infringement charges from the credit card company, so the band changed their name. In 1980, the band released their first studio album, a self-titled LP, Huey Lewis and the News, it went unnoticed. In 1982, the band released the self-produced Picture This; the album turned gold, fueled by the breakout success of the hit single "Do You Believe in Love," written by former Clover producer Mutt Lange. Because of the single, the album remained on the Billboard 200 album chart for 35 weeks and peaked at No. 13. The follow-up singles from Picture This, "Hope You Love Me Like You Say You Do" and "Workin' for a Livin'", with limited success. Due to record label delays on the release of their third studio album, Huey Lewis and the News was back to square one in late 1983, touring small clubs in a bus to promote the record; the new album hit number six in the U. S. when first released. However, Sports became a number-one hit in 1984, went multi-platinum in 1985, thanks to the band's frequent touring and a series of videos that received heavy MTV airplay.
Four singles from the album reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100: "Heart and Soul" reached number eight, while "I Want a New Drug," "The Heart of Rock & Roll," and "If This Is It" all reached number six. The album has sold over 10 million copies in the U. S. alone. At the beginning of 1985, the band participated in the all-star charity single "We Are the World," with Lewis taking a solo vocal; the song topped music charts throughout the world and became the fastest-selling American pop single in history. Their song, "The Power of Love," was a number-one U. S. hit and featured in the 1985 film Back to the Future, for which they recorded the song, "Back in Time." Lewis has a cameo appearance in the film as a faculty member who rejects Marty McFly's band's audition for the school's "Battle of the Bands" contest. As an inside joke, the piece the band plays is an instrumental heavy metal version of "The Power of Love". "The Power of Love" was nominated for an Academy Award. Following the success of "The Power of Love" and Back to the Future, Huey Lewis and the News released their fourth studio album, Fore!, in 1986.
Fore! Followed the success of Sports and reached number-one on the Billboard 200; the album spawned the number-one singles, "Stuck with You" and "Jacob's Ladder," as well as the mainstream rock hit "Hip to Be Square." In all, the album had five top-ten singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified triple platinum. The band continued to tour throughout 1987, released Small World in 1988. After the previous two multi-platinum albums, Small World was considered "noticeably weaker," peaking at number 11 and only going platinum; the album had "Perfect World," which reached number three on the pop chart. At the end of the Small World tour in 1989, the band took a break from recording and heavy touring, parted ways with Chrysalis Records. In 1991, they released Hard at Play on the EMI label in the USA and Chrysalis in the UK, which went back to the R&B/rock sound of their earlier albums, released the hit singles, "Couple Days Off" and "It Hit Me Like a Hammer"; the album was certified
Dave Edmunds
David William "Dave" Edmunds is a Welsh singer/songwriter, guitarist and record producer. Although he is associated with pub rock and new wave, having many hits in the 1970s and early 1980s, his natural leaning has always been towards 1950s style rock and roll. Edmunds was born in Cardiff; as a ten year old, he first played in 1954 with a band called the Edmunds Bros Duo with his older brother Geoff. The brothers were in the Stompers called the Heartbeats formed around 1957 with Geoff on rhythm guitar, Dave on lead guitar, Denny Driscoll on lead vocals, Johnny Stark on drums, Ton Edwards on bass, Allan Galsworthy on rhythm. Dave and Geoff were in The 99ers along with scientist and writer Brian J. Ford. After that Dave Edmunds was in Crick Feather's Hill-Bill's formed in c 1960, with Feathers on lead guitar; the first group that Edmunds fronted was the Cardiff-based 1950s style rockabilly trio The Raiders formed in 1961, along with Brian'Rockhouse' Davies on bass and Ken Collier on drums. Edmunds was the only constant member of the group, which included bassist Mick Still, Bob'Congo' Jones on drums and John Williams on bass.
The Raiders worked exclusively in the South Wales area. In 1966, after a short spell in a Parlophone recording band, the Image, with local drummer Tommy Riley, Edmunds shifted to a more blues-rock sound, reuniting with Congo Jones and bassist John Williams and adding second guitarist Mickey Gee to form the short lived Human Beans, a band that played in London and on the UK university circuit. In 1967, the band recorded a cover of "Morning Dew" on the Columbia label, that failed to have any chart impact. After just eighteen months, the core of'Human Beans' formed a new band called Love Sculpture that again reinstated Edmunds and Williams as a trio. Love Sculpture released their debut single "River to Another Day" in 1968, their second single was a quasi-novelty Top 5, a reworking Khachaturian's classical piece "Sabre Dance" as a speed-crazed rock number, inspired by Keith Emerson's classical rearrangements. "Sabre Dance" became a hit after garnering the enthusiastic attention of British DJ John Peel, so impressed he played it twice in one programme on "Top Gear".
The band issued two albums. After Love Sculpture split, Edmunds had a UK Christmas Number 1 single in 1970 with "I Hear You Knocking", a Smiley Lewis cover, which he came across while producing Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets' first album entitled A Legend; the recording was the first release on Edmunds' manager's MAM Records label. This single reached No. 4 in the US, making it Edmunds' biggest hit by far on either side of the Pond. It sold over three million copies, was awarded a gold disc. Edmunds had intended to record Wilbert Harrison's "Let's Work Together", but when he was beaten to that song by Canned Heat, he adapted the arrangement he intended to use for it to "I Hear You Knocking", producing a original remake; the success of the single caused EMI's Regal Zonophone Records to use an option that it had to claim Edmunds' album, 1972's Rockpile, the momentum from the single's success on a different label went away. Edmunds' only acting role followed, as a band member in the David Essex movie Stardust.
After learning the trade of producer, culminating in a couple of singles in the style of Phil Spector, "Baby I Love You" and "Born to Be with You", he became linked with the pub rock movement of the early 1970s, producing Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks Deluxe, the Flamin' Groovies, using a stripped down, grittier sound. In this time frame, Edmunds produced the 1972 debut album of the British blues band Foghat. Edmunds had bought a house in Rockfield, Monmouth, a few miles away from Charles and Kingsley Ward's Rockfield Studios where he became an permanent fixture for the next twenty years, his working regime involved arriving at the studio in the early evening and working through till well after dawn locked in the building alone. Applying the layered Spector sound to his own productions it was not unusual for Edmunds to multilayer up to forty separately recorded guitar tracks into the mix, his own solo LP from 1975, Subtle as a Flying Mallet, was similar in style. The Brinsley Schwarz connection brought about a collaboration with Nick Lowe starting with this album, in 1976 they formed the group Rockpile, with Billy Bremner and Terry Williams.
Because Edmunds and Lowe signed to different record labels that year, they could not record as Rockpile until 1980, but many of their solo LPs were group recordings. Edmunds had more UK hits during this time, including Elvis Costello's "Girls Talk", Nick Lowe's "I Knew the Bride", Hank DeVito's "Queen of Hearts", Graham Parker's "Crawling from the Wreckage", Melvin Endsley's "Singing the Blues"; the album Repeat When Necessary received a Silver Certification from the British Phonographic Industry on 20 March 1980. The single "Girls Talk" received a Silver Certificate from the BPI. Unexpectedly, after Rockpile released their first LP under their own name, Seconds of Pleasure, the band split attributed to tensions not between Edmunds and Lowe but between their respective managers. Edmunds and the band, including Lowe, performed
Harmonica
The harmonica known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, country, rock. There are many types of harmonica, including diatonic, tremolo, octave and bass versions. A harmonica is played by using the mouth to direct air into or out of one or more holes along a mouthpiece. Behind each hole is a chamber containing at least one reed. A harmonica reed is a flat elongated spring made of brass, stainless steel, or bronze, secured at one end over a slot that serves as an airway; when the free end is made to vibrate by the player's air, it alternately blocks and unblocks the airway to produce sound. Reeds are pre-tuned to individual pitches. Tuning may involve changing a reed’s length, the weight near its free end, or the stiffness near its fixed end. Longer and springier reeds produce deeper, lower sounds. If, as on most modern harmonicas, a reed is affixed above or below its slot rather than in the plane of the slot, it responds more to air flowing in the direction that would push it into the slot, i.e. as a closing reed.
This difference in response to air direction makes it possible to include both a blow reed and a draw reed in the same air chamber and to play them separately without relying on flaps of plastic or leather to block the nonplaying reed. An important technique in performance is bending: causing a drop in pitch by making embouchure adjustments, it is possible to bend isolated reeds, as on chromatic and other harmonica models with wind-savers, but to both lower, raise the pitch produced by pairs of reeds in the same chamber, as on a diatonic or other unvalved harmonica. Such two-reed pitch changes involve sound production by the silent reed, the opening reed; the basic parts of the harmonica are reed plates and cover plates. The comb is the main body of the instrument, when assembled with the reedplates, forms air chambers for the reeds; the term comb may originate from the similarity between this part of a hair comb. Harmonica combs were traditionally made from wood but now are made from plastic or metal.
Some modern and experimental comb designs are complex in the way. There is dispute among players about; those saying no argue that, unlike the soundboard of a piano or the top piece of a violin or guitar, a harmonica's comb is neither large enough nor able to vibrate enough to augment or change the sound. Among those saying yes are those who are convinced by their ears. Few dispute, that comb surface smoothness and air-tightness when mated with the reedplates can affect tone and playability; the main advantage of a particular comb material over another one is its durability. In particular, a wooden comb can absorb moisture from the player's breath and contact with the tongue; this can cause the comb to expand making the instrument uncomfortable to play, to contract compromising air tightness. Various types of wood and treatments have been devised to reduce the degree of this problem. An more serious problem with wood combs in chromatic harmonicas, is that, as the combs expand and shrink over time, cracks can form in the combs, because the comb is held immobile by nails, resulting in disabling leakage.
Much effort is devoted by serious players to sealing leaks. Some players used to soak wooden-combed harmonicas in water to cause a slight expansion, which they intended to make the seal between the comb, reed plates and covers more airtight. Modern wooden-combed harmonicas are less prone to swelling and contracting. Players still dip harmonicas in water for the way it affects ease of bending notes; the reed plate is a grouping of several reeds in a single housing. The reeds are made of brass, but steel and plastic are used. Individual reeds are riveted to the reed plate, but they may be welded or screwed in place. Reeds fixed on the inner side of the reed plate respond to blowing, while those fixed on the outer side respond to suction. Most harmonicas are constructed with the reed plates bolted to the comb or each other. A few brands still use the traditional method of nailing the reed plates to the comb; some experimental and rare harmonicas have had the reed plates held in place by tension, such as the WWII era all-American models.
If the plates are bolted to the comb, the reed plates can be replaced individually. This is useful because the reeds go out of tune through normal use, certain notes of the scale can fail more than others. A notable exception to the traditional reed plate design is the all-plastic harmonicas designed by Finn Magnus in the 1950s, in which the reed and reed plate were molded out of a single piece of plastic; the Magnus design had the reeds, reed plates and comb made of plastic and either molded or permanently glued together. Cover plates cover the reed plates and are made of metal, though wood and plastic have been used; the choice of these is personal. There are two types of cover plates: traditional open designs of stamped metal or plastic, which are there to be held
Walton-on-Thames
Walton-on-Thames is a market town on the right bank of the Thames in the Elmbridge borough of Surrey, England. The town itself consists of affluent suburban streets, with a historic town centre of Celtic origin, it is one of the largest towns in the Elmbridge borough, alongside Weybridge. According to the 2011 Census, the town has a total population of 22,834, it is around 15 miles from Central London, is served by a wide range of transport links. The name "Walton" is Anglo-Saxon in origin and is cognate with the common phonetic combination meaning "Briton settlement". Before the Romans and the Saxons were present, a Celtic settlement was here; the most common Old English word for the Celtic inhabitants was the "Wealas" meaning "foreigners" or "strangers". William Camden identified Cowey Stakes or Sale, Walton as the place where Julius Caesar forded the River Thames on his second invasion of Britain, which stakes the Venerable Bede spoke of remaining in his time. A fisherman removed several stakes about thigh-width and 6 feet made of wood, black and hard enough to turn an axe, shod with iron.
He sold these to John Montagu, 5th Earl of Sandwich, who used to come to the neighbouring Shepperton bank to fish, for half a guinea apiece. Elmbridge Museum requires definitive evidence of these stakes, the evidence at present limited to pre 20th-century secondary sources that conflict as to detail. Walton lay within the Anglo-Saxon quasi-administrative district, Elmbridge hundred, in the shire of Surrey. Walton appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Waletona"; the settlement was held jointly as overlords in the feudal system by Edward de Sarisber and Richard de Tonbrige. Its Domesday assets were: 6 hides, it rendered £28. The nucleus of the village is in the north, while development took place in the southern manors on all sides of the railway station. About half of the land was south of the South Western Main Line; this included, from west to Walton Heath, Burwood manor and Hersham manor. On a smaller scale, the majority of Oatlands village, to the south-west, was in the parish until its independence.
St. Mary's Parish Church has some Saxon material and an architectural structure of the 12th century, with additions; the square flint tower, supported by a 19th-century brick buttress, has a working ring of eight bells, the oldest bearing the date 1606. In the north aisle is a large monument by the French rococo sculptor and bust maker Roubiliac to Richard Boyle, 2nd Viscount Shannon, commander-in-chief in Ireland, who lived at the former manor and house of Ashley Park in the parish. In the north aisle is a brass to John Selwyn, keeper of Oatlands Park, with figures of himself, his wife and eleven children. An unusual relic kept in the church is a copy of a scold's bridle presented to the parish in the 17th century, mentioned in Jerome K. Jerome's classic Three Men in a Boat; the royal palace of Oatlands, built by Henry VIII in 1538, was a mile upstream to the west. John Bradshaw lived in the Tudor manor house in the 17th century, he presided at Charles I's trial. Under the Inclosure Act 1800 there were enclosed 3,117 acres of the Walton manors, which included holdings at Chertsey and 475 acres of arable common fields.
A School Board was formed in 1878. A existing school was enlarged in 1881; the infant school was built in 1884. The Methodist Church, with a spire taller than the tower of the Anglican Church, was built in 1887; the Baptist Church was built in 1901. A Public Hall, in High Street, was built in 1879 by Mrs Sassoon, who resided at Ashley Park House.. This is visible behind the present shopfront. During World War I, troops from New Zealand were hospitalised in the now-demolished Mount Felix House, they are remembered by a memorial in the cemetery, where those who died at Mount Felix are buried, one in St Mary's Church where an annual service of remembrance is held. They are remembered in the street name New Zealand Avenue, the Wellington Pub, a small memorial in the Homebase car park. In World War II, owing to the proximity of important aircraft factories at nearby Brooklands, the town was bombed on various occasions by the Luftwaffe. On 27 September 1940, fighter pilot F/Sgt. Charles Sydney, based with 92 Squadron at RAF Biggin Hill, died when his Spitfire crashed in Station Avenue.
He is commemorated today by a memorial plaque close to the crash site. Hersham and Walton Motors constructed its own racing car in the early 1950s. Stirling Moss competed in his first Formula One Grand Prix in an HWM. HWM was the world's first Aston Martin dealership that diversified into Alfa Romeo in 2009. Ashley Park Golf Club was laid out in the 1890s, but ceased to exist prior to 1918. Burwood Park Golf Club was laid out in the 1890s in the half-century-old breakaway bounds of Hersham, continues; the accommodation included 28% detached houses, 22.6% apartments. The proportion of households in the town who owned their home outright compares to the regional average of 35.1%. The proportion who owned their home with a loan compares to the regional average of 32.5%. The remaining % is made up of rented dwellings. For information on the 1851–1901 change in population see Transport below. In 2001 and after
