Going Pro Bono

Well the band (One For the Road) (Oneftr on facebook ) ( shameless plug) made its debut at the North Side Improvement League this afternoon to support Laurie and Roger Flint. Laurie has bone cancer and is being treated in NYC where here husband (Roger) is staying to support her but is having trouble staying off the streets (NYC is bloody expensive). Hope we did them some good today.

Anyway the band was well received, though I don't think we were exactly what the crowd in the Front Row expected. This darling little old lady came up to us before the show and told us how much she liked the blues. I felt bad because we don't have nearly the blues in the set list that I'd want for a blues crowd. We actually pulled Sympathy for the Devil and Bad Company from the set list just to tone the mix down.

But the little old lady got into the blues jam we do to warm up... It's not any song in particular, just 'Blues in A' and whatever I improv. We bopped through a half dozen extra choruses just because she was dancing in front of the band. I'm hoping our photographer (my daughter Roseanne ) got some shots of her dancing. It was cool.

Other than that we did everything but drop our guitars on the first set... Zech forgot a verse to Born to Be Wild. I stumbled over intros and leads like I didn't know how to play guitar. We were sad.

The second set, where the lady was dancing to Blues in A, went off much better. People even applauded. My legs numbed up from my back problem. My left hand went numb and I forgot how to play Wild Thing

Don't know how I'm gonna handle a nights worth of music (though I really have played four and five hours straight at the blues club and at the Shoe in Montgomery Center.

But I had fun. Loved the old lady.

Saturday At Smokin Joe's Cafe

Saturday night I went to Smokin Joes. Brought the recorder but I didn't turn it on. Don't know why...

Ended up jamming most of the night. Played guitar with Isaiah and Halley. And Gary... Remember Gary? He was the blues vocalist in my first entry here. Quite a character. He was our band leader Saturday night. I was able to work with him because I came with the attitude I just wanted to play a little and learn what I could.

Gary's an 80 percenter. He's a hundred percent blues but only worries about getting 80 percent of the song right. He taught me a version of whipping post which only marginally resembles the tabs I've seen from Allman Bros. but it was close enough so everyone knew the song. And we could jam on it for a while.

Came out nice.

I was brought up on the idea a song was written and the player, if he was properly prepared and properly trained, would perform the piece as written, exactly with no mistakes (ie no notes not provided by the original arranger/composer). Even my days in the Jazz band in high school made me think improvisational music was still composed music. (Mr. Worden, may he play duets with Louis Armstrong forever, would no doubt shake his head at me and think I'd let him down.)

Gary recognizes a song as a moment of expression. If he doesn't happen to have all the tools in his tool box the original artist had, well that's OK, he's got his own set, and he's got the blues.

I dig the blues

The Blues is a musical form described as 12 bars in 12/8 (shuffle) time based on the progression I IV I V IV I which is fancy musician speak for root, fourth and fifth chords of any key. One of the other key elements of the blues is the use of only five notes in the major scale. This is called the pentatonic scale and is well documented elsewhere on the web.

I've been told these limitations make the blues boring to play. After all how much can be done with only five notes?

Guess the answer is in the blues.

Nothing is set in stone with the blues. You can play the most basic melody or a complex variation of notes and tonics and still get the blues. The blues itself is emotion in music. Whether it's sadness or anger or just the energy of life running through your fingers the blues touches the players and the audience on an individual level.

And on a good night a this connection can be with the line of a song or a single note held and pulled and mauled until every nuance is found.

And that's the blues.

Band Work

OK. When I started this blog I didn't have a band to play in and now I do. Zech and Ron and Mikey are some guys from Smokin' Joes I've played with. Zech asked me to play guitar for them and I was quite overwhelmed by their faith in my ability.

It's been an experience being in a band. I've never, in the 40 plus years I've played, actually played lead in a band. It's a trip. We've worked up a few songs and have played out at open mic nights. We're hoping to get some paying gigs for the summer in Alex Bay. That would be cool. I don't think we've got our song list together yet, but we've got some interesting tunes.

My daughter taped us the other night at Smokin' Joe's doing Midnight Rider and Black Magic Woman. We also do a version of Come Together I really dig, but I haven't got that posted to u tube yet. (The one that's posted isn't very good... not like the new versions).

The biggest problem with the band is that it has an expiration date.

Maybe I'll carry on after Zech goes to florida and build a real blues band... "I'm Better off With the Blues."

Dog House Jam

Some times I play piano. When I play at the Blues Club sometimes people sit in with me. I try to record everything because these moments are unique.

A couple of weeks ago I played at the Blues Club with the boys in my band (well it's really Zech's band since he started it and directs it. I just play guitar....) but before we could play some other people were noodling around so I sat in at the piano. Ant, this kid who's a musician to the bottom of his feet, had a Strat he'd been working on. We picked back and forth trying to find something but I don't think the first tries were very good.

Really I only play one thing on the piano. It's a four chord walk down Em, D, C, B7 that repeats. Occasionally and unpredictably I add the Am in for good measure but Ant knows it as the walkdown. He usually plays base on it... Not today.

I really didn't get into it until Ronny sat in on the drums. Then we started burning up the place. I wish the piano went through it's own amp or the PA at least because it gets lost under the drums and guitar as the sound swells but the music was good. I like.

Posting it to www.youtube.com\writeman57 under piano jam....

First Set

I play the Blues.

What does that mean? The music is about improvisation within a few basic structures, about emotion, anger or hurt or joy, it's about being real with life.

If this thing allowed me to upload mp3s I'd give you a taste of the music.

Picture this. The club is dimly lit and usually cold when I first get there. The couple that runs it are sitting at a table having a private drink and chat after their separate work days. I walk in with my amp and gig bag.

"Hey Dougie Fresh," she says.

"Hey, man. How's it goin'", he says.

"It's going man. Play some blues tonight?" I say.

The bar's still empty. I set up my gear, bring in my guitars and warm them up. Get the tuning right. I tune standard because that allows me to play with most people. One or two players show up. Maybe a couple looking for some free tunes or just to hang in a laid back establishment.

I check the amp. I'm always too loud for the owner, but he grins at me anyway.

One night there were only a couple of GIs who wanted to play. Neither actually knew an instrument but one guy sat to the drums. The other picked up the house bass.

"Let's do something," I said.

"We don't know anything." They said in grunted unison.

"That's alright." I pointed at the drummer. "Use the hi hat. Tap out ; tah-t -tah-t-tah... Yeah like that. Keep it up man..." To the bassist. "Use the Low E. play the same rhythm then A and G... That's right." (Think here Led Zeppelin's You Shook Me which they stole from Willy Dixon)/.

The boys did a reasonable job of setting a rhythm, softly in the background. I turned up the amp, set the gain on the dirty channel, kicked on my overdrive pedal, and opened with the first sliding notes of Jimmy Page's riff to You shook me.

I can't sing it, and don't know every note Jimmy played on the album (it wouldn't be the same in the live show I don't think) so I riff in E minor pentatonic, like Page did, letting the notes scream against the slow, dark rhythm.

A skinny black man has come into the bar. I've played with him before and we had some differences. I was going to improvise around this song no matter what he wanted to do.

The man got on the mike and started chanting some lyrics to old blues songs. I wasn't following the standard progression since I didn't know how to communicate to the kids (who weren't musicians at all) how to change their patterns, so I just kept going.

He'd sing a line and I'd rif in response or move to the progression (TAHH d Duh, d duh, d duh) and he'd call out another line "I was born in a ghetto shack, cold and numb. I heard the rats tell the bed bugs 'Give the roaches some.' " I slammed out a screaming pattern repeating it as the room filled with sound of my guitar then stopped for him to sing again.

And so we went. Someone started playing organ, real simple, I don't remember if it was the guy singing or not, but I listen to the recording I made of that night.

Wild improv. Can't do it twice. We tried a couple of weeks later. Some guy gave me five bucks after I did a hokey version of Jimmy Page, but it wasn't the same.

I'm glad I've got that moment captured. I'm glad I bought the singer a beer. He earned it as much as I did.