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.