Tue Nov 11 2014

In addition to being a little more conscientious about what I eat, monitoring my blood pressure, and following up on the matters suggested by my doctor, for the past weeks I have been endeavoring to get a full 8 hours of sleep at night. Evidently this is recommended. Who knew? As someone who has rarely slept more than 6 hours a night at any time in his adult life, it is a bit of a change. Partly a matter of attitude adjustment, as it makes me feel like something of a slacker. But I think I am getting at least a handle on it. One trick for me is to pick up the extra couple of hours on the “bedtime” side of the equation whenever possible. Sleeping later in the morning really doesn’t work for me. My inner voice chiding me for “burning daylight” kicks in, and then I’m in a bad mood for the rest of the day. The truth is that if I am home there is very little that I do after 11pm that is particularly productive. Reading, of course. But the chances are pretty good I’m just watching dopey TV, so going to bed early actually feeds my “what a good boy I am” predilections. Then, if I do stay up later, I get to query myself on whether or not it’s for a good reason. Sometimes it is, and so there you go.

The jury is out, but I think I’m slowly learning to like the extra sleep.

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January 2. Hmmm. Perhaps we should dub it “Hair of the Hair of the Dog Night.”

The Undercover Blues Band gig coming up on January 2 has me taking a more practical approach to practicing. Fewer scales, more tunes, basically. The gig is a good motivator, but to be honest what I am most looking forward to is the weekly rehearsals on Friday afternoons for the next few weeks. Although it is absolutely true that “rehearsing” without gigs to work toward gets old after a while, with this particular group that threshold it pretty high. So it will be fun to have a few weeks of playing largely for the joy of playing before we need to get down to more serious business. And if history is any indication, some material will come out of this playful end of the process that probably wouldn’t have happened in purely gig-prep mode.

Pulled up the recordings of the gig we did for friends and family down in Igor’s basement back in November 2010 (yup, almost exactly 4 years ago) and it remains remarkably listenable to me. No idea what its objective value is to the disinterested listener, but I hear a lot of good stuff, and I am not generally a big fan of my own playing. Yesterday, Mean Town Blues came blasting back into my consciousness. It goes back to my earliest days as a player. In the 2010 show it kind of came up spontaneously, as we had not been including it in rehearsals, and the performance has got a great feel and spirit. A little too fast (performance over-enthusiasm) and one fabulously excruciating moment where I knew exactly what I was reaching for but missed completely. More or less takes the wind out of my listening enthusiasm. But that is the hazard of playing music with an improvisational component. And the fun. Well, fun when it works. For the rest of the time you need to develop the skill of shaking it off quickly and moving on. I think it may be time to bring this one back into active service. It’s not Hooker, but it is a definite nod to Hooker’s boogie, without resorting to the more clichéd pieces. It is a piece I feel very directly, so it doesn’t have that sense of “here I am reminding the audience of someone else.”

Then there’s this approach. There is a recording of Dr. Ross performing Hobo Blues live in a club in Chicago, where he introduces it by saying, “I have another friend of mine, John Lee Hooker, he put this record out, but I do it just as good as he does.” And he does. Why not? Neither one of them ever hoboed anywhere anyhow. It’s all a matter of selling the song.