IAAD VII: EYE OF THE NEEDLE NOTES

Work daily

Remain open to the appearance of refinements and adjustments to the specifics,
including abandoning some of them, as the process unfolds

TO DO:

• Set up and keep up Eye of the Needle IAAD-specific diary.
  1/14: Done. Click here to link

AIMS:

Technical/Mechanical

• Reestablish accented picking
  o Ensure timing is consistent and reliable
  o Minimize overemphasis
  
• Identify and formalize pivot choices
  
• Work available tempo up to 72-74bpm reliably

Musical

• Restore competence and ease with all parts
  o Articulate musical intentions for each part

Bass: projection and singing quality, without overplaying 

Leads: flow and continuity, attention to position shifts

Okay, for the high lead simply achieving minimal competence in the upper octave Intro/Midtro sections will be a satisfying and major accomplishment 

Guitarist Inside

Not exactly sure how to go about this. Some ideas…

• Strengthen the connection between the form and the limb circulation
• Gain some understanding of what it is to hold good will in my breast and send good wishes to the other players and audience
  
• 1/16. Pay attention to the EoCaaD in the morning sitting
• 1/20. Practice it, no matter how inept you are
• What is contained in Lord Have Mercy? And how is an old reprobate supposed to understand it, let alone put it into practice in a meaningful way?

_________________________________________________________________________________

PRACTICE NOTES

1/20 – focus on intro

Accented picking: 3-3-3-2-2  (see 1/27)

Pivots:                 2nd inversion 2nd finger between strings 2&3

                                Root position first finger between strings 1&2

Attention to transition notes, especially doubled A between A and F#

Remember to practice the first 6½ tacit beats

1/21 – focus on G1 main body – A-D-A’-F#-F#

Accented picking: 3-3-3-3-4

Pivots:                  A: 2nd finger on G&C on strings 2&3

                                D: same for C&F

                                A’: 1st finger between A&C on 1&2
                                F#: same

Attention to attack on open string transition notes: match timbre and volume to the rest of the melody

Final G of D pattern:  abandoned the 3rd finger stretch because I simply can’t play it musically. Two alternatives: 1) open G string, 2) 4th finger pivot. TBD. 1/22: the 4th finger pivot wins. 

1/27 – focus on Guitar 3

Play more on fingertips to avoid accidental muting of transition notes

Care for transition notes – blend attack, timber, duration – flow

Accented picking adjustment: when playing main figures in 4/4, back to alternate picking on final 7 notes of each phrase. Basically, the second “3” will be the only place the picking is reversed. 3-3-3-7

2/3 – focus on Guitar 2

Accented picking: Same as Guitar 1

Pivots:       Same as Guitar 1 when unison/unison octave

                                Alternate A of Intro (bar 3): no 4th finger pivot between strings 1-2; use fingers 4-3

                                Harmony A and F#: 2nd finger between strings 2-3, 4th finger between strings 1-2

                                2/4 update: taking out all pivots above 12th fret except the 1st finger pivot on F#

Open string transitions: Review and formalize, incorporate into practice. If playing the high octave in the Coda, ignore the open G transition from final D – this l connects more musically/melodically to the first F# of Coda

Find warmup calisthenics to strengthen and smooth out arpeggios above the 12th fret

How the hell do I keep the open D string from sounding when I remove my first finger? 

 

 

Thu Dec 18 2014

The unbounded generosity of the people I am privileged to call friend is a constant source of wonder for me, and the reason I always have hope.

Melvin’s health remains my most pressing concern. Nights are particularly tough, and I am not getting enough sleep. Still no definitive diagnosis, and the specialist is recommending a pretty aggressive plan for a surgical biopsy, which would give us the answer. I worry about putting him through that. I’ll be meeting with his primary care vet on Saturday to review the results from the ultrasound. She is pretty practical, and knows Melvin well, so if there are reasonable alternatives she will be forthcoming.

So we’re on hold for a couple more days, but there is a decision looming.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Undercover Blues Band rehearsal this afternoon. A transitional day, as we turn the corner from workshop mode where we’re having fun reinvigorating existing material and making friends with new material, to more serious rehearsal, getting down to business on what will be in the set list for the January 2 show at Darrell's, and looking at how it might flow. I came in with a first pass at the set, and we simply went through it stopping as necessary to make observations. At the end we looked at a couple of changes, which I will incorporate, and agreed to meet again on Sunday afternoon to finalize the set. Next week we are all off in different directions for the holiday, so when we reconvene after Christmas it will be for the very focused work of rehearsing the set itself, and making sure we are hitting the mark on all of the little details of the arrangements.

I always dread this rehearsal. It’s just not a lot of fun, although with this particular collection of individuals it is the least un-fun I’ve ever experienced. But basically it is the moment when you realize that there is no way we’re going to get it together in time. The knowledge that we always do, and will do so again this time, is small comfort. All I could hear was how terrible my voice sounded, how bad my guitar playing was, and how I wasn’t really listening very well.

It’s inevitable. It will pass.

We played:

•    Don’t Go No Farther
•    Boom Boom
•    Sound the Bell
•    The Red Rooster
•    Deep Elem Blues
•    Walkin’ Blues
•    I Smell Trouble
•    Yonder Wall
•    Wang Dang Doodle
•    Built for Comfort
•    Mean Town Blues
•    Born in Chicago
•    First Train Home
•    The Same Thing
•    How Blue Can You Get?
•    Taxi Blues
•    Two Trains Running
•    Dust My Broom

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Two things I love...

Fri Dec 12 2014

Tough few weeks. Began Thanksgiving week with some tube issues with the amp. No big deal, just an inconvenience. One of the things that is pretty much part of the deal when the only amplifier that sounds like that is 50 years old; they just need a bit of pampering, and fortunately I’ve “got a guy” who is a rock star at keeping old amplifiers cooking. In this case, it was a Monday night, and I had a Tuesday noon rehearsal, so there was a certain urgency. But if that was all that was going on it wouldn’t even merit a note in the journal. It was the first in a series of things.

Melvin was really getting noticeably skinnier, so on Wednesday I called the vet to make an appointment for a weigh-in to see if my perception was accurate. They were taking the Friday after Thanksgiving off, so the earliest I could get in was Saturday at mid-afternoon. I was concerned enough to make the call, but the sense of urgency was pretty low, so that was okay. Mostly, in noticing and acknowledging that I was concerned, my worry level went up a bit. I just needed to wait a couple of days, that’s all.

Wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving celebration with the Wilsons, who make a practice of making a place at their table for us orphans on this holiday. Stayed late. Happy.

THEN, I got home. Thought all was doing was one last email check before heading to bed. What I got when I woke it up was a whirling pinwheel that never stopped whirling. Ever. You don't quite realize how dependent on technology you are until it is suddenly gone. Won’t detail the process here, but the bottom line is I was computerless (or, put another way, computer-free) for 10 days. The possible remedies swung from buying a new one for a couple grand to replacing a connector for about $100, before it finally settled on a new logic board, hard drive, and battery, in the $300 range. A bargain.

The biggest lesson from this experience was that I could easily live without about 99% of the stuff I depend on a computer for. But the financial records are just a huge problem. I am entirely paperless. No physical bills. No physical check registers. No physical bank statements. Nothing. If my phone wasn't basically a hand-held computer I'd be SOL. I had to use it to go to websites to find my bank and credit card balances, due dates, and then keep track of everything on paper. A huge time and energy suck. In the long run I was never going to lose the original data – I back up religiously – but the day to day grind was just unbearable.

Back to Mel. Saturday came and I took him to the vet. Sure enough he had lost another pound in the 2 months since his last check up. And since the vet considered his weight at that time a serious cause for concern, this was a real problem. Straight into the back for x-rays. It took a couple of days for the radiologist to review them, but the feedback was more or less what the vet saw right away. Something going on in the intestines. We talked about options. The next step would be going to an internal medicine specialist for an ultrasound, or possibly an endoscopy. Oh boy. Made the appointment. Last Tuesday we went in, after subjecting him to a 12-hour fast in preparation for the procedure (try explaining that to a cat). The doctor looked him over and agreed that an ultrasound was the best next step. This involved tranquilizing him and shaving his belly. Rather than make him go through this any more often than necessary, we went ahead and ran a number of additional tests at the same time.

Now we’re waiting for the report from one last test. The last couple of days have been tough, as he is having trouble keeping food down so we need to keep him on anti-nausea medication. Today is the first good day for him in over 2 weeks. Much relief for that, but I suspect in terms of my own anxiety it is just a lull in the action.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As always, Undercover Blues Band rehearsals are my island of sanity. Today:

•    Warmup: slow blues in A, which developed into I Smell Trouble
•    Going Down Slow
•    Sitting On Top Of The World
•    Taxi Blues
•    Deep Elem Blues
•    Don’t Go No Farther
•    Born In Chicago
•    Mean Town Blues
•    I Smell Trouble (redux)

Beginning to transition into Get-Down-To-Business mode. I’ll miss the free-flowingness of the process so far, but we do have a gig in 3 weeks, and there are a couple of major holidays in the interim. Next week we’ll put together the working setlist. The following week I’ll be traveling. The week after that we’ll finalize the set, and at the end of that week is the gig. I’m pretty excited. This band is always stretching, and sounds really pretty awesome. I was happier with my own guitar playing today than I’ve been in months. Dead computer/sick cat… maybe you just gotta actually have the blues to play the blues.

Fri Nov 21 2014

Spent a good part of my available energy this week being my own IT guy, and there is very little rewarding in that. You finally get it right, as you must, but there is nothing in way of a sense of satisfaction or having contributed anything of quality to the Universe. It’s gotta be done, so you do it. Then… nothing. Kind of a “now, where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?” feeling.

Undercover Blues Band rehearsal this afternoon. Definitely the highlight of my week. Had that great “second rehearsal” feel. Still loose and energetic, but beginning to find our legs again. We played (not necessarily in this order):

•    Warmup 12-bar blues in E
•    Don’t Go No Farther
•    Taxi Blues
•    Boom Boom
•    The Same Thing
•    Two Trains Running
•    Dust My Broom
•    First Train Home
•    Key to the Highway
•    The Red Rooster
•    Mean Town Blues

The warmup on a blues in E was pretty typical of this band. We arrive. We set up. While setting up and tuning and generally getting ready, we gab about whatever is current and relevant. Someone starts playing. Everyone falls in. Something no one planned happens. Lovely. Don’t Go No Farther was a review from last week. Tried a couple of variations, and then found our way back to where we began. The order after that is not so clear in my mind, but those are the pieces for sure.

Key to the Highway is new for us. It’s swingier arrangement than the Little Walter/Derek and the Dominoes version. More Broonzy-fied, including the Broonzy verses at the end. Felt good, and it suits my voice. The arrangement isn’t quite there, but it has potential. Igor made the suggestion that I play something more reminiscent of a horn section, in a call and response with the voice, rather than straight rhythm guitar. I’ll put a little time into this tomorrow.

I pulled out Mean Town Blues at the end of rehearsal. It has been out of the mix for some time, but I really miss it. It boogies hard, and really resonates for me. Took a few minutes to reassemble the feel and the arrangement. A couple of changes from the way we used to play it. I wanted the instrumental bash in between verses 2 and 3 rather than 3 and 4. It’s a small thing but it changes the flow. We also experimented with an idea I had the other day. The piece is very high energy right from the first note, and the solo section has always been up a notch from there, and for me that is a strain. So rather than kick it up at that moment, we worked with taking it way down. Igor and I let the tonic note/chord ring and Bill keeps the groove but takes it way down. I improvise with Bill beginning dynamically down, with lots of space, and then as it builds up Igor slides back in at the right moment and we push it up to a climax and back into the driving groove as we go back to the verses. This just made me incredibly happy.

Dynamics seem to be a theme that is emerging for this incarnation of the band. Very satisfying. The feeling as we packed up and went our separate ways was, “We’re back!”

Thu Nov 20 2014

At the beginning of their lesson yesterday morning, Mary Beth and Taylor showed me the ear training app they have on their iPhone. Very cool. And proof that at my essence I’m a blues guy. One of the tests was to identify what type of chord was played. It’s a vaguely piano-ish sound used, and quite clear and audible. The chord sounded. I immediately said, “dominant 7th.” Mary Beth looked at the display, and replied, “It says half-diminished.” I said, “Same thing.” I mean, seriously, why would I play a simple dominant 7th when a 9th chord is just sitting there waiting for me?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Had a conversation with Igor and Bill during the Undercover Blues Band rehearsal last Friday that I really wish a number of my students had been able to witness. I was introducing one of the new pieces I’ve been working on, so I needed to show them the form in a hurry.

I said, “It’s in D. At least I think it is, until I hear myself singing. We may have to change that,” and then I began playing the little rhythmic/harmonic figure that goes through the first half of the verse. They fell in. We just repeated it for a minute or two, giving the two of them an opportunity to figure out what the feel of the piece is, and to find their own way into it. Then I said (more or less) this:

“Okay, it’s the I chord for three bars. In Bar 4 we go to V for one bar, then back to I for two more bars. We stop on the downbeat of Bar 7, for 6 beats. There will be a vocal fill there. We come back in after the break, on IV for two bars, back to I for two bars, then V for a bar, stop with a IV chord on the downbeat of next bar, for 4 beats (another vocal fill), and then come back with a 2-bar I-IV-I-V turnaround. Two verses, and then a guitar solo. During the solo we just revert to a straight up 12-bar blues. Solo will be 2 or 3 choruses, and then we’re back for 1 more verse, in the original form. Out at the end of that verse.”

I showed them the intro I’ve been working on, counted it in, and we played it. Down in one take, except that I hadn’t told them about the specific rhythmic kicks on the final bar. We took a minute to work that out, I counted it in and we played it again. Bill said it was too short. Always better than the alternative. We’ll have to review it at tomorrow’s rehearsal, but basically we got it.

I am fairly certain that my students often feel my insistence that they learn at least a little something about harmony is kind of a bother. Why say “I IV I V” when “C F C G” is more specific. But it’s not. The beauty of that conversation was that I was able to communicate everything necessary to play the piece. For Bill, who is a well trained and experienced all around musician who happens to be playing drums in this group, the chord names are unhelpful. But the form is significant. I could have been specific about the chords. But if I had said that in Bar 4 we go to A7, it is only information. In a piece of music, going to the V chord has a very specific significance. In a blues tune, going to the V chord in Bar 4 is an unusual thing to do, so this is something that immediately stands out for us, and commands our attention. Bill doesn’t care that it’s an A7, and to tell the truth neither do Igor and I. But it’s a V chord where we wouldn’t ordinarily expect it, and that is something that is going to catch the ear, and we need to pay attention. Relationships are universal, names are transitory. In terms of understanding the song, this is informationally rich.

Plus, if after that first runthrough I had realized that the key of D was totally wrong for my voice and we had needed to transpose it on the fly, relationships are transferrable. In a chord name world, if we had needed to take it down to C for my voice, the conversation would have been, “Okay, instead of D7 play C7, instead of A7 play G7, and where we used to play G7s, make them F7s.” In my world the conversation would have been, “Okay, let’s try that in C and see if it suits my voice better. 1-2-3-4…”

Fri Nov 14 2014

First rehearsal for Undercover Blues Band in way, way too long. Lots of fun. No pressure, beyond the pressure we each of us puts on ourselves. Kept it loose and jammy, while we found our feet. Called tunes from the old repertoire, except for Don’t Go No Farther which I presented for the first time. It took off immediately. This is what we played. The order is my best recollection:

•    Wang Dang Doodle
•    It Hurts Me Too
•    Don't Go No Farther
•    Walkin' Blues
•    Deep Elem Blues
•    How Blue Can You Get?
•    Built For Comfort
•    Sound the Bell

I’m a little bit hoarse this evening, but happy and hoarse. Singing is one thing that I really cannot practice at home. Even though my neighbors would probably be understanding, and I would of course wait until I knew the place was pretty empty, it is kind of hard to cut loose in full out shout in my living room. Best I can do at home is work at memorizing lyrics, and then touch on matters of voice/guitar coordination and a bit of phrasing in an attenuated voice. So my singing was the weakest part of the music today, at least for me. Sometimes I hate hearing it. But it will get back.

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

Wed Nov 05 2014

13th Floor Elevators back in heavy rotation on the stereo. Not sure what it means when I find myself drawn back to this music. It certainly hearkens to a more innocent time, although that may be just the nostalgia of selective memory. There is also an element of melancholia associated with them. It is very apparent in the achingly beautiful Splash, but I wonder if my associations aren’t also colored by my familiarity with Roky’s life and circumstances. I do love the proto-psychedelic stuff. Funny, though, I am actually always a little surprised when Fire Engine comes on, as my connection to that song is more via bootlegs of Television at CBGB. Anyway…

Long time no journal, it seems. Most of the past week has been ordinary in a day-to-day sort of way. A lot of energy on non-critical but also non-ignorable medical issues following up on my physical a couple of weeks ago. I just scheduled one of those “procedures” that us old folks need to endure from time to time. The mood of these past few days has been the product, I think, of the arrival of my home blood pressure monitor. Getting into the habit of checking my blood pressure several times a day. This is a bit of overkill, and I’ll probably default to a daily check before too long. I just wanted to get the hang of the thing, as well as looking at how results might vary at different times of the day and under different circumstances. It’s basically all over the map. I was tempted to include the chart I created (Excel spreadsheet, to be precise), but convinced myself that not only would that be TMI, but also TDS (too damned sad). Add to this some experiments with dietary adjustments (oh boy, bland food) and making sure that I don’t fall into slackerdom on the exercise front, as the season begins to make the sedentary indoor lifestyle a bit more appealing, and I’ve been a little distracted.

Business remains good, so no complaints in that regard. Money concerns are largely transitory. Credit cards suddenly clogged with airline tickets for the February course in Mexico (reimbursable, so it’s just a blip) and a trip back east to visit the family. The cat’s health also is a concern.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On the upside, Undercover Blues Band accepted a gig for January 2. It has been over a year since we last performed. Bill is back from his touring duties, at least for now, so we’ll be able to rehearse once a week for the next couple of months. This will allow us to work back into performance trim without a sense of hurry. We have a more intensive schedule the week before the gig, where we will put together the set as a whole, and with this trio that would be sufficient if it needed to be. But with the extra time we will have the opportunity to really see where we are right now.

This is one of the great virtues of this band. We are very good at assessing what is working for us at any given moment, and what isn’t, and as far as I can tell we are utterly unromantic about the implication of those judgments. When something is working, it is abundantly clear. It is the same when something isn’t working. It doesn’t really matter who voices the observation. 99% of the time we all already know it to be true. And, speaking for myself, if I’m not noticing it, it kind of doesn’t matter. I trust Bill and Igor’s assessment. If a change might bring a piece back to life, we try it. If not, we drop it. I have never once felt any remorse or even a tinge of hurt feelings within this process. That is a truly remarkable quality in a group.

With the work I’ve been doing I’ll have a few new pieces to float, and see if they resonate for the group as a whole. So we have lot’s of options. I’m thinking that Don’t Go No Farther and Key To The Highway are definite candidates. We are looking to have an abundance of material available, so that if it turns into a 2-set gig (there are only 2 bands on the bill) we can do that.

Finished the Muddy biography. Moving on to John Lee Hooker. The only bio I found for him seems to get mixed reviews, but as long as the basic data is buried in there, I’ll find it. I think this will wrap up the Blues Dude Bio cycle. Of the ones I’ve read, Skip James’ remains the best, and probably the scariest: I’d Rather Be The Devil: Skip James and the Blues. Definitely recommended, but uplifting it ain’t.

Then there's this. Yikes. Howlin' Wolf unloads on Son House:

Tue Oct 21 2014

Flirting with turning on the heat today. The ever-so-slight chill is beginning to feel like the norm rather than just a dip. And the cat, whose weight continues to be a concern, looks like he’s cold. May begin by putting it on low in the bathroom and see if that helps to take a little of the edge off. Plus, if there’s one room in the house I want warm, it’s the bathroom. Don’t like heating the bedroom if I can help it. I sleep better under a pile of blankets than in a heated room. The office/living room is logically next, but the heat is so inefficient there that I generally opt for another layer of clothing until I just can’t hold out any longer. We’ll see. It’s not like it’s ever all that cold here anyway.

I wonder if I cause occasional blips on the homeland security radar. Specifically thinking about emails and social media postings that reference Afghanistan or “bicycling to Afghanistan”. In 1987 when the Soviet Union was enjoying their own little Vietnam there, I began writing a rock/funk tune with my then-wife that was called Be A Man In Afghanistan. It never quite came together. While that piece didn’t materialize, its elements and themes would not leave me alone. That year we moved to NYC, and in January 1988 these bits and pieces began to realign themselves into a trio composition for the Guitar Craft repertoire. Bicycling to Afghanistan was worked out in about a million performances in the dining hall of the Claymont mansion, got its public debut in a show at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, and then a few days later was included in a show we taped for VH-1 which ultimately aired on Easter 1988. It has been in and out of the Guitar Craft repertoire ever since, showing up on numerous albums over the years.

The upshot… to this day I receive a lot of electronic correspondence that references Bicycling to Afghanistan, sometimes shortened to the innocuous “Bicycling” or “BtA”, but often just referred to as “Afghanistan”. “Hey Curt, I have a question about the middle of Afghanistan”, “Hey Curt, my group is working on Afghanistan, is there a score available?” It seems logical that it would make the little HSA bots at least twitch for a moment. Back in the early days of email, my aol handle was “afghancurt”. That’s gone, but there are still a couple user names out there for pretty big companies that include a reference. I have often considered changing them, but then I realize that the one thing you can’t generally change is your user name, and so it would involve closing the account and recreating a new one, and so far my response when it gets to that point is “screw it.”

From some time in 1972 until the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 I had a couple of FBI agents that turned up everywhere I went. I wasn’t actually their assignment, I’m pretty sure. I made some noise at anti-war marches, but never crossed any serious legal lines. However I was often in proximity to their assignments, was questioned by them on several occasions, and kind of found myself on a “might-be-a-joke-but-it-might-not” first name basis with them. So I suspect there are now some digitized reports with my name on them.

Assuming “blogger” is monitored, perhaps today’s entry will give some drone something to do for about 2 minutes. In any case… NOW HEAR THIS: my first student of the day arrives shortly. We will be reviewing “Guitar 1” in the A and F# sections of Bicycling to Afghanistan, moving on to the Eb section, and probably even getting into the C section (that last phrase could get a different kind of attention if taken out of context).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Continued to work with Commit A Crime yesterday. I have a lot of blues-related music in my library, and for many songs this allows me to hear a variety of arrangements and treatments. I mentioned the other day that in order to avoid Stevie Ray Vaughn associations I’m already inclined to work with the “London Sessions” version, which is a little faster and more of a jump. Both the original Wolf version and the live SRV have that deep in the back of the pocket feel. Looking around for any other recordings I might consult, I came up with a surprise. James Blood Ulmer. Missed it earlier because it is understandably labeled “jazz”. It’s from a fairly recent album and actually has more of a familial relationship to the London version, but another notch faster. Fun. Yesterday working on the song I saw that if I’m going to take it on it is going to be another Wang Dang Doodle-style task. The words aren’t as twisted and difficult, thankfully. The trick is detaching the voice from the hands, maintaining the rhythmic figure on the guitar while singing with a natural and believable phrasing. This is going to take some time. We shall see. With the new arrangement of Wang Dang Doodle it was pretty much impossible, until it wasn’t. Hoping this will be similar.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As of bedtime tonight it is no food, only water or coffee or tea (with no milk or sugar), until tomorrow afternoon. I have my first physical in probably 7 years, and some of the likely blood tests require a fast of 8-12 hours. With a 2:30 appointment the cut-off will happen somewhere in the middle of the night. So tomorrow with be an interesting day. I am pretty sure that the Great Cholesterol Scare of 2007 was the result of no one at UW Medicine telling me I needed to fast before my physical. When they told me my cholesterol was high and started hinting that we might want to consider medication to control it, I rebelled. I did some modifications to my diet, and made sure that regular exercise was part of my routine, and when they rechecked it 6 months later it was right in line. A miracle! Maybe. Maybe not. When I scheduled the second blood test they mentioned the fast thing (to which my response was, “Hmmm, I don’t remember being told that the last time. I wonder…”). No harm. Resulted in a somewhat better diet and much better exercise habits, which can only be good.

Sun Oct 19 2014

Beautiful sunny day, and remarkably warm for mid-October. Upper 70s, which is kind of weird, but not complaining. Went for a long walk, and worked up a good sweat, which felt good. I've been a little sedentary of late, I'm afraid. The whole time I was out, I had this nagging feeling that it was getting late, even though I knew it was just early and middle afternoon, and I had no particular place I needed to be. After stopping at the library to drop off the Wolf bio and pick up the Muddy bio, I headed to a café in Ballard and sat outside facing south, enjoying the sun and the first chapter of the book. Only then did I recognize that at this time of the year the sun never gets very high over the southern horizon (and in 6 weeks it will barely make it). So the light has a perpetual “late afternoon” angle to it, and hence the feel.

This morning I jumped on the Howlin’ Wolf tune, Commit A Crime, based on the sweet version from the London Sessions. I hadn’t really thought of it seriously before this, in part because Stevie Ray Vaughn did a massively smoking live version of it. I try to stay away from pieces that are too closely associated with guitar gods. Especially Stratocaster slinging guitar gods. Too much distraction, and it tends to take away from the material. So now I’m listening to Wolf and Hubert to see if there is a way to make it my own, rather than a Stevie cover. Fun to play with no matter what. Even more than Killing Floor, I think this lick is Hubert Sumlin at his absolute best.

Moving on to the Muddy Waters biography, written by the same author as the Wolf bio. As I was walking I put early Muddy on my iPod, both the Lomax stuff from down in Mississippi in 1941 and the early Chess stuff. Whenever I listen to Muddy, especially very early and very late Muddy, I recognize where my primary blues aesthetic comes from. Somewhere in the middle he kind of loses me for a while. Not that he was ever under any obligation to me. I was listening to the recording from the 1960 Newport Festival, and this is the quintessential “Chicago Blues” band, the one that Butterfield and everybody else latched onto and ran with. But for me it loses a little of the emotional content. Then, of course, in his later years when Johnny Winter got hold of him, I think he may have surpassed even his younger self. I’ll take the version of Mannish Boy from “Hard Again” or “The Last Waltz” over pretty much anything he did in his entire lifetime.

We’ll see how this assessment holds up as I read and listen in the next couple of weeks.

Sat Oct 18 2014

When I was young, my initial introduction to the founders and pioneers of the blues idiom was through the rock bands I liked. The first Cream album alone exposed me to Robert Johnson, Skip James, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, and (though it took more than 40 years for this penny to drop) Isaiah Ross. I wasn’t looking for “The Blues”, I just liked what I liked and was curious enough to dig into the names that appeared under the song titles. I was also very fortunate to live in a place with a superb library system, where I could often find recordings by these mysterious characters. In many cases these LPs or reel-to-reel tapes couldn’t be checked out, so I would sit for hours back in a corner of the Arlington County Central Library hunkered down with headphones trying to memorize what I was hearing.

I bought the “London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions” when it came out, specifically because Clapton’s name featured prominently on the cover, along with Steve Winwood and the Rolling Stones rhythm section. In my maturing as a music lover, my interest in those kinds of collaborations has waned. It seems to be almost a cliché for blues giants in their declining years to put out albums collaborating with younger players. And it really doesn’t make any difference how genuine and earnest the intention, the result is generally kind of watered down and uninteresting. The 4th disk of the Hooker retrospective box set is full of these, and while they are not awful (at least most of them), it rarely feels like anything has been gained. So now I almost always go straight to the source, the earliest recordings I can find, so that I can plug into that energy, and then move forward from there.

Yesterday, after all these years, I went ahead and picked up the “London Sessions” from iTunes. The description in the Wolf bio was compelling enough to pique my curiosity after all these years. And I have been very pleasantly surprised. The music for the most part stands on its own merit, rather than just being a reflection of early glory. Wolf was 61 when it was recorded and had already had 3 heart attacks (including a small one in London during the project). A sobering thought for me as I type this at the age of 61.

From the description of the recording process in the bio, my esteem for Clapton goes up (if that is possible). First of all, Marshall Chess didn’t want to spend the money to fly Hubert Sumlin out, to which Clapton’s response was “no Hubert, no me.” Then, as things were a little testy and weird in the studio, as Wolf was trying to work out what his relationship to all the huge rock stars and this big name/big money production team was going to be, this:

The next day, the band was working on The Red Rooster when Clapton did something insightful. Dayron (the producer) said, “He handed the guitar over to Wolf and said, ‘Man, you’ve gotta show us how to do this. Could you play the basic lick so that we can learn the song?’ And Wolf looked at him like he was crazy. He was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And [Clapton] said, ‘No man. We want to get the feel right for it.’ And Wolf said, ‘Okay.’ And he took up a guitar, which was his own. If I remember correctly, it was an old Sears Silvertone guitar, and he started playing slide. The ice was broken. … At that point, the space opened up.”

When you listen to the recording, it is very clear that the intention of the players is to support Wolf and his music, not to imprint their personalities and style onto it. And it really kind of works. Clapton’s playing is wonderfully subtle and understated, and since all biographical information would suggest he was pretty much drunk 24 hours a day at that time, that much more remarkable. The record contains the strangest arrangement of Wang Dang Doodle yet. It is kind of a cover of the Koko Taylor version, but Wolfified. That would make it Wolf’s interpretation of Koko’s interpretation of Wolf’s interpretation of Willie Dixon. Kind of the way it goes, and part of the fun/frustration of searching for the origins these pieces. The timing of the vocals, particularly in the first verse, is completely baffling to me. If I ever did anything even remotely that fearless, I’d consider myself a success.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

What a funny and incomprehensible thing my personal state is. I never quite know where it is coming from, and even when I do know there ain’t much I can do about it. Yesterday, after the morning conference call, I had an open day. Oh boy! I can get some good solid practice in! Nothing doing. My energy and attention completely scattered, no enthusiasm and very little interest. I still practiced, and I still got a lot of good work done. I’ve been around the block often enough that I know that if I let my moods dictate what I do, or feel I can only work when “my heart is in it”, all hope is lost. It just wasn’t the joyful experience I imagined I was letting myself in for. Then this morning I had a couple of free hours before my students began arriving, so I casually sat down and picked up where I had left off. It was like someone flipped on the electricity. I was cranking away, feeling good, discovering with ease all the things that yesterday I had been scratching and fighting for, only to do badly. What had changed? No idea. I was secretly hoping my students would call to cancel. That didn’t happen. In fact, the lessons were quite good. Riding, I think, on the morning energy. Afterward I was able to hop back into it until I absolutely had to take a break.

What weird creatures we are.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So here’s a thought. Howlin’ Wolf’s mother was a religious zealot who wanted nothing to do with him because he played the Devil’s music. When, as a grown man, he tracked her down, she refused to him let him help her because his money was dirty. When Wolf was in the hospital dying, and his wife got his mother on the phone, she refused to talk to her, or to come to Chicago to be with him.

Yay religion.

Thu Oct 16 2014

Watched “The Search for Robert Johnson” last night. Twice, in fact; once while I was making and eating dinner, and then again because I saw that I was missing some details along the way. It’s a British documentary (yup, British) from 1991, with John Hammond (Jr) narrating, traveling around Mississippi looking for people who knew the man. Kind of hokey, a little contrived, and didn’t really do much to demystify the story, but some good stuff. Especially seeing the real Willie Mae hearing the recording of Love In Vain Blues for the first time. Nice to see Honeyboy Edwards and Johnny Shines in the flesh. Poor Honeyboy is pretty old and shaky, but still sings well. Not sure how reliable his memory is. Interesting that he doesn’t repeat the story so often attributed to him about Johnson's death, in which he supposedly smacked the bottle of whiskey out of Johnson’s hand, admonishing him never to drink liquor from a bottle he didn’t open himself. Still, the less dramatic version actually felt truer and sadder, especially the part where Hammond asked if anyone had taken him to a doctor, and the response was “no, because doctors need money.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

First lesson with a new student: always fun, and at the same time always a little nerve-racking. A good challenge. Interestingly, this one had seen The Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists at Washington Hall. Cool. So I went in with a certain cred, which probably helps. Her friend had found my postcard down at the café, so that was money well spent. It’s a dance. I need to swiftly ascertain what I have to work with, and what the student’s aspirations are. A lot of times I then have to deal with the gaping chasm between the two. Not so much today on that front, thankfully. While the particular aims vary from student to student, it is all the same basic ball of wax. I can’t just run everyone through the same routine and process, but in the end it is kind of like a room with a whole bunch of doors. Which door works for this student?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Suddenly sunlight, accompanied by a very friendly temperature. Didn’t see that coming. Had some errands that I had planned to drive, but the weather suggested otherwise. Walked up the hill for an overdue haircut, then down to the bank and the grocery store with a stop off at a café where I sat in the sun with an Americano and the Wolf biography. Pretty perfect. On a not unrelated subject, I came home and bought the “London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions” on iTunes.

Late afternoon Skype lesson and then an evening for myself. Why couldn’t the weekly blues jam be on Thursday?

Wed Oct 15 2014

Words I actually spoke in a guitar lesson yesterday: “That Pythagoras was a hell of a guy.” Interesting to watch pennies drop when working with music theory in the form of fretboard knowledge.

Now, about today… how exactly did Wednesday turn into a 14-hour marathon? I originally thought I might be able to make it down to the blues jam at Ould Triangle tonight, but it looks like I won’t be making dinner until 9pm. That’s not so unusual on Wednesdays. But this week the last hole in my schedule big enough for a meal before that comes at about 1pm, which makes that whole evening meal thing a lot less optional. If I have a substantial afternoon meal, then it’s easier to get away with grabbing something on the fly in the evening. Never say never, but I’m thinking “unlikely” this week. We’ll see. I really do need to get out and play more, as entertaining as practice is (I’m weird that way). Igor got a note from Darrell’s Tavern about a blues night they are setting up for the weekend after New Years, wondering about Undercover Blues Band. Waiting to see what Bill’s schedule is going to be over the holidays. But I think Igor and I might do it no matter what, with Peterson or someone else on drums.

Going back to the very beginning of this incarnation of the Blog/Journal on September 3, this is the question kind of started it all. If UBB isn’t really UBB unless all 3 of us are present, which is the way it feels to me, then what about putting together a band that can maintain its identity even when subs are necessary. Bill tends to go out on tour pretty regularly – he just has 2 weeks downtime after the King Crimson tour before he heads out again with Peter Buck. Igor is in about 10 bands, which means that scheduling is always going to be tricky business. That more or less leaves me as the linchpin. This is not a role I’ve ever been comfortable with. It kind of feeds my narcissism, which may ironically be why I resist it. Hard to fight the big head, so one easy strategy is to avoid situations that support it.

On the other hand I had a possible band name, if I were to use the “Curt Golden and ______” formula, appear yesterday and I am letting it digest today to see if it still sounds like a good idea. One virtue it has is that it comes with a theme song that would make a great break tune.

Pondering. But right now I have a long day ahead of me.

Sun Oct 12 2014

An interesting clash of my two selves this morning, the “up all night” musician guy and that other “up early every morning” guy. I was out late last night to see Urban Achievers in a very strange gig at a private party in a totally amazing venue in Burien. Feeling a little protective, I stayed to help roadie the band after the gig. Not that they were in any danger, in that sense, other than the psychic assaults coming from the very drunk audience of partiers. After making our escape we stopped off for tacos at what is evidently their go-to late night snackery in the south end. It was close to 3am before I got to bed. Naturally, I was awake at the usual time, c. 7am. It being Sunday, gave myself permission to roll over and go back to sleep for another hour or so. So, basically, not a boatload of sleep last night. I did have an unusual Sunday  lesson rescheduled from yesterday to 11am this morning, so I did need to be up, alert, and on the ball.

Began by sitting quietly, sending good wishes to the team beginning to assemble in Mendoza for the Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists. Then checked my email and found the official list of participants in the project, and responded with formal good wishes. Cup of coffee, and I had about 90 minutes before the student arrived. I knew more or less what I wanted to work with him on, so I just took a couple of minutes to review the material, and then got down to practicing my own stuff. Still early enough on a Sunday morning that I didn’t want to try my neighbor’s good nature, so I went for “barely amplified”, working on the material from the last week to make sure it is all solid. Sleep-deprived or not, I was on fire, to the point where when my student hadn’t showed up at 11:03am I found myself kind of hoping something had come up – not wishing for anything serious of course, but perhaps an errant alarm clock. I’m not proud of that. But then he came up the walk and I had to change gears. Very good lesson, for both of us, I think.

The sun made an unscheduled appearance, and I need to keep up with regular and preferably daily exercise. So I took a walk to the grocery store, running the Bill Broonzy lyrics to Key to the Highway as I went. Loud enough to be my real voice, but not so loud that it would bother anyone’s Sunday… at least not for long, as I kept up a brisk pace. Home as the sun again exited, in time for the home town team’s football game and a little clerical work.

Fri Oct 10 2014

I think the most difficult thing for me in my role as a teacher is resisting the urge to try to make the process easier (translation, “less painful”) for the student. I pat myself on the back for being compassionate, but in fact it is neither possible nor useful. There are times when a discouraged student needs a little cheering up, often accomplished in the form of a diversion, and I think that is fair. But wishing I could give them a pass on the work they clearly need to do and the resistances they need to overcome does no one any good.

Seattle Circle Guitar School conference via skype first thing this morning. Could easily have gone a second hour. Much to do. After that, a day of no external obligations. Housework and laundry in the morning. Not originally part of the plan, but the cat horked a big ol’ hairball on the bed, and so it was immediately deemed laundry day.

For the afternoon, guitar practice. Little Walter’s rendition of Key to the Highway popped up on the iPod in shuffle mode while I was out for a walk the other day, and I did some looking into it. Clapton has been doing it pretty steadily since Derek and the Dominos, which makes it a tad obvious for my taste, but I really like the song and it rather suits my voice. Listening to other versions I have, it is pretty clear that Clapton’s is derived from Freddy King, and that Freddy’s version comes from Little Walter. Each with their own personal touch of course. Don’t know about the chronology of the King version, but the artistic lineage seems pretty clear.

Then I pulled up Big Bill Broonzy, and that was an epiphany. A subtly different feel, both musically and in content. It still has a pretty bouncy feel and tempo, but it’s not the rocker that it has become. And there are two verses at the end that change things considerably. Had to call in my resident decoder of garbled lyrics, Barry Stock, to unmask one word, and he found some interesting history to go behind it. So my sense was that if I am going to bring this into my repertoire, that’s the version I’m going to move from. Eight-bar blues are fun, and I slip into and around those changes pretty effortlessly. Put in some time in the afternoon establishing the base-line melody I’ll work from, and getting comfortable with the lyrics, and by the end moved it up from the “potential” list to “current and available”. The fast track. We’ll see how ambitious that was.

Took myself out to supper last night at the neighborhood pub, where I continued reading the Wolf bio. My favorite bartender was working. I like his taste in music, which is pretty wide ranging, but thoughtful. Last night he had a blues playlist working (probably Spotify or Pandora or something) which was a nice bit of synchronicity. Some RL Burnside came up, which of course caught my ear. I said, “Robert, is this your playlist or an online channel?” He said, “sounds like Burnside.” Okay, a bartender conversant in Mississippi hill country blues singers. I knew I liked him for a reason.

Walking home, I pulled up Wolf’s version of Sitting on Top of the World. This is a song that has gone through so many changes in its history. Country versions. Bluegrass versions. Blues versions. I don’t know how you could pinpoint a definitive version. So I think all you can do is identify significant ones. I am back and forth with this one. In Undercover Blues Band we definitely jumped off from the Cream rendition. In this ongoing reevaluation I’ve been feeling as though if I’m going to play it I need to start afresh. I really don’t have Jack Bruce pipes, for one thing. The Wolf version gave me some ideas, which I think I’m going to explore next.

Thu Oct 02 2014

Made my decision about a new doctor. In the end, it’s all kind of dart board technology. But on the basis of a couple of recommendations, I called. And on the basis of generally good vibes from the phone call, made the first appointment. First physical for probably 10 years, so it’s about time. The sun was out and the weather lovely, and nothing on the calendar until the afternoon, so feeling full of myself for being such a good boy and actually taking action on the doctor front, I treated myself to a bike ride punctuated by a little reading out in front of the café and a quick stop at the grocery store on the way back.

Sitting in the sun, sipping an Americano, reading the Wolf bio where we are still pretty early in his life, I came across this sentence:

“Wolf’s unusual voice was a gift of nature that he worked hard to develop.”

Made a mental note of the page number (this is not a kindle book), and continued. It goes on to quote Wolf’s [cousin? Half-sister? In Mississippi in the 20s and 30s folks were often called upon to raise the kids of distant relatives, and it’s kind of hard to keep track] who said that Wolf “started with his voice – trying to grow it.”

This is more or less the thing that I have been looking at and pondering out loud over in the blog these last couple of weeks. On Tuesday I posed a question about whether [picture of a teenaged Jimmy Hendricks, best guess mid-1950s] was destined to become [picture of Jimi Hendrix performing in the Grand Ballroom of the Washington Hilton on March 10 1968]. A mistake to use the word “destiny” in that question. A little poetic license that introduced an element I have absolutely no qualifications in.

My friend Rick put up a comment on that post, averring that he was indeed destined to become what he became, and that you can see it in the photo of the youth. I kind of get that. But I have to wonder if that is something you can only see knowing what we know now. Every time the Seattle Circle Guitar School goes into a classroom of elementary school aged kids and straps guitars on them for the first time, we see this kind of pose being struck, and with genuine enthusiasm. I choose to maintain the attitude that any one of them could be the next Hendrix. Maybe this guy:

Or maybe one of them?

The thing about the observation that “Wolf’s unusual voice was a gift of nature that he worked hard to develop,” that rings so true for me is not the notion of a “gift of nature” but rather the fact that he worked hard. When you read the personal accounts of people who knew Hendrix before (and after, for that matter) he was that guy, one of the things that jumps out was that he practiced all the time. He was hardly ever seen without a guitar. I don’t know anything about destiny, but I am pretty sure that the kid posing in the front yard in Seattle, no matter what his god-given potential, would never have become what he became if he hadn’t been willing to put in the work.

I have known some amazing musicians in my life. Some of them seemed quite gifted. But every one of them was the hardest worker I have ever met. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

ps: Just in case I ever thought that Willie Dixon was just being gross in the last verse of Wang Dang Doodle, describing the jukes that he, Wolf, and Willie Brown were regularly performing at in the 1930’s, Son House said:

“Them country balls were rough! They were critical, man! They'd start off good, you know. Everybody happy, dancing and then they'd start to getting louder and louder. The women would be dipping that snuff and swallowing that snuff spit along with that corn whiskey, and they'd start to mixing fast, and oh, brother! They'd start something then!”

In other words, when the fish scent filled the air there really was snuff juice everywhere.

Tue Sep 30 2014

The sun has returned. So naturally today I have a solid teaching schedule from 10am to 9pm. Enough breaks for things like a little lunch, and a necessary run to the post office (which I intend to do on foot, as I’ve seriously shirked my exercise routine lately), but not much else.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Etymologically speaking, this may be a distinction without a difference, but I tend to think in terms of “aptitude” rather than “talent”. In a cursory check of definitions on several online dictionaries, one tends to be included in the definition of the other, and they often turn up as synonyms. Nevertheless, in my personal parlance/experience they are not quite the same thing. When people talk about “talent”, there tends to be an unspoken “natural” in front of it. The implication being that the ability to, in this case, play an instrument well was inborn. Talent is more of an observation of the result; he plays well, he’s very talented, I wish I’d been born with talent too. Whereas for me, “aptitude” tends to speak to potential, and the capacity to learn. When I recognize aptitude, it is in the form of seeing someone with one or more of the tools necessary for the task. This is something we can work with.

As I mentioned way back when I began this line of inquiry, rhythm is one pretty rudimentary indicator of what I think of as aptitude. I have 3 students aged 10-12 who can all pretty much mirror back for me any strumming pattern/rhythm I throw at them. They listen for a couple of repetitions, watch what I’m doing, and then they do it. Lovely. I have adult students who have played all their lives who couldn’t tap their foot while playing a Bo Diddley beat or a John Lee Hooker boogie if I held a gun to their head. Two of the kids are siblings, which really makes me wonder about that whole genetic thing. But this aptitude doesn’t guarantee they play well, it just means that they won’t be struggling quite as much with this particular element. On the flip-side, another kid I’ve worked with for several years shows a distinct difficulty with this part of playing guitar, but he works his ass off and the change over the time I’ve known him has been remarkable.

“I was born tone deaf with no sense of rhythm.” – Robert Fripp

Between you and me, I don’t actually believe that. Not quite, anyway. But as a stretch of the truth in order to make a more important point, it rings very true for me. Whatever we are dealt in terms of genetic and organic material to work with, “aptitude” in the context of this discussion, very little happens if we don’t work with it and build on it. But even more importantly, aptitude is not the prerequisite. Work is. We begin where we are, the aphorism goes. If where we are is pretty comfy, that could very well be as far as we get. I think anyone who has ever taught a musical instrument has had the experience of working with someone who has some musical aptitude, and been in that place where you are about to break into new territory, only to have the student right at that crucial moment snap back into something safe and reliable. Why would I endure the pain and humiliation of publicly sucking at something that isn’t coming easily to me, as I grapple for new possibilities, when the stuff I can do without working at it works just fine, thank you very much? The experience for me as a teacher is just heartbreaking. You feel all of the air go out of the room. And you are left with the sense that we didn’t just go back to where we started, but we took a huge step backward.

So, here’s a question. Was this guy…

…actually destined to become this guy?

Mon Sep 29 2014

Had meetings and lessons until midafternoon on Friday, and again on Saturday. Outside of that, made it a mental health weekend. Took myself out to dinner on Friday. Some guitaring Friday and Saturday for no other reason than my own enjoyment. Did a lot of reading, a mystery novel with no particular redeeming value beyond simple entertainment and diversion, watched some movies and tv. Rain most of the day Sunday. Made it a total do-nothing day off. Not even guitaring. In fact, forced myself to avoid it. Football. Reading in the back yard once the sun made an appearance late afternoon. Closest thing to labor was steaming vegetables and throwing together a salad to go along with leftovers for dinner.

I’m not very good at actually doing nothing. One of the things that happens is that in the void I start noticing all of the things that need doing, or have been avoiding, and over time I’ve gotten in the habit of addressing that sort of stuff as soon as I see it, lest I forget. So to ward off that tendency I put out a piece of paper and wrote down anything I thought of along those lines throughout the day. It was still an effort not to do them when I saw them. I did give myself leave to go ahead and take the garbage out to the curb, since the schedule for that isn’t really optional, but found that one of my neighbors had already taken care of it. Took that as an sign that I was on the right track.

This morning, then, was the resulting office day. Up with the alarm clock. Balancing bank account and credit card statements, paying bills, writing emails, answering email in my “for later” folder, looking into airfares for Christmas back east and the GC Intro/OCG Prep course in Mexico in February, following up on some self-promotional stuff (updating Craigslist ad and putting in bids on one of the online services I use), and beginning the search for a GP since I can’t remember the last time I had a physical.

It is now after lunch, and the only thing not crossed off the list is “practice”. Yay. Several hours before the lesson schedule kicks in.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Yikes, a couple days of laying off the focused practicing and my playing goes to hell. Settled in on holding down the basic guitar parts for Don’t Go No Farther, while working on phrasing and delivery of the lyrics, which for some reason get me a bit tongue-tied. Mostly I think I just don’t know them well enough yet, so I really have to think about what is coming up next, and that doesn’t really lend itself to a natural flow of delivery. Plus there are a couple of timing quirks. By Wang Dang Doodle standards, these lyrics are a piece of cake, so I know it is doable, but it has hit that “I’m not really having a lot of fun practicing this” stage.

Thu Sep 25 2014

Rain continues. I’m liking it. I’ll be tired of it eventually, but right now I’m liking it. It makes me want to hunker down inside, and yesterday I got a whole lot of practicing done. Breakthrough in being able to play the new Wang Dang Doodle arrangement and sing at the same time. That alone is good news. Also worked on Muddy’s Don’t Go No Farther and found my way to a great lick for the intro. Practiced it pretty relentlessly, in part so I wouldn’t forget it, but also because it needs to be dead reliable. I was maniacally practicing it with the metronome when one of my middle school aged students arrived, and that became a useful a discussion not just of the need to practice (even when you are old like me) but also a look at what we are actually aiming for when we practice.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At the last minute, two of my students had to reschedule for later in the week due to unexpected work commitments. I’m pretty easy going about these situations, unless they become chronic. And I’m not losing anything, we just found another slot in the calendar. This opened up a sizeable chunk of my afternoon. Good! More time to practice. Then, inexplicably, I felt the undeniable urge to do some overdue major cleaning in the kitchen. Hands and knees on the floor with a scrub brush-level cleaning. Not my favorite pastime, but I do love the result. Also took care of a few errands including a swing by the vet’s to drop off a little something for them to examine. The sun has come out. Temptation.

But now I still have time to practice.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Coincidentally, a reference popped up on my twitter feed about a BBC article entitled “Was Jimi Hendrix born a genius?” Obviously caught my eye, given the question on the table about natural talent. The part of the lead line that reads, “myths about his talent do him a disservice,” is what specifically got my attention. The article itself turns out to be pretty lightweight, and focuses more on the fact that he did his homework. The fact that he practiced all the time doesn’t really come up. Still, it’s relevant.

Moving away from Jimi and back to us mortals, because… you know… what am I going to say about Jimi Hendrix?

Quick sidetrack: Sometimes I’m blunt. I do my best to only pull that out when I think it is going to be effective in a positive way, but sometimes shit just comes out of my mouth. Like the time I was pointing out to a student that mashing his palm up against the back of the neck with his thumb waving around in the air was seriously slowing him down. His response was “but Jimi held the guitar that way,” and before the last word had completely left his mouth I heard a voice that sounded an awful lot like me saying, “you ain’t him.”

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“Myths about his talent do him a disservice,” is something that is applicable across the entire spectrum. The people I know, who I would describe as “talented” (yes, I do use the word all the time, the current discussion notwithstanding) are also the hardest working humans I know. So I always wince a bit when I hear one of them described in terms of their gifts or natural abilities. The implication is that “if I was born with their talent, I’d be that good.” No, but if you worked as hard as they do you’d be a lot better than you are now.

Between a student with aptitude who doesn’t want to do the work and the one with no particular gifts who is engaged, I’ll take the latter every time. Partly, because I am the latter.

Wed Sep 24 2014

Steady rain all night. A relaxing sound. By midmorning it had slowed to a drizzle. The kind of rain that could last for days, or weeks, or until spring. This one is likely to be days, but you never know. Turned in early last night (in my world, anything before midnight is “early”). I don’t usually read in bed because I tend to fall asleep, but the weather made cozying up under a pile of blankets with a book and a cat seem like the way to go. The only downside of going to bed early is that I then wake up early. The first time it turned out to be 3:30am. No problem rolling over and going back to sleep until I actually needed to get up, which on Wednesdays is about 6:30. It is only as I type this that I realize that the Tracy Nelson earworm did not figure into my morning for the first time in what seems like forever. Perhaps the focus on new songs yesterday filled some of that space.

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So, the Wang Dang Doodle arrangement that I’m working on is more or less derived from the Koko Taylor version, which she recorded at Chess with Willie Dixon singing backup vocals. It came out a couple of years after the Howlin’ Wolf version, and was actually a hit for her. This was in the early 1960’s, but I wasn’t aware of any of it at the time. All of my early-life blues exposure came through rock bands who covered blues material. Only later did I get serious about following those influences back to their source, and the life-long love of this music went to a much deeper level. The first time I heard the song was probably on a Savoy Brown record, or possibly the “London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions” (Wolf with Clapton, Winwood, Watts, and other British rock/blues luminaries). The two albums came out almost simultaneously in 1971, shortly after I graduated high school and as I was embarking on my path to fame and fortune in a Norfolk, Virginia-based blues/rock band.

Koko’s version took the rough edges off of Wolf’s original, particularly his notoriously idiosyncratic relationship with time. This is more or less the history of blues moving into the world – it goes from something unique to a particular artist and undergoes a kind of standardization which makes it a lot more easily accessible to a lot more people. Pretty much every cover I’ve ever heard since then has been based on Koko’s version. Even Wolf’s London Sessions version is a cover of Koko, more or less. So when Bill and Igor and I first got together in The Undercover Blues Band, we elected to go back to Howlin’ Wolf as our jumping off point. What evolved was a completely unique approach. Not a cover of Wolf’s arrangement, by any means, but not Koko either. Much of what we do in UBB is pretty straightforward interpretations of songs anyone with an interest in the blues would know. But there are several arrangements so specific to this combination of players that I would be very careful about trying to recreate them with anyone else. This is one of them.

Still, I have a perverse love of these tongue twisting lyrics, so as I began looking at putting together a repertoire that travels, I decided to go back to the beginning. After working with Wolf’s original for a while I found myself heading back to Savoy Brown. I liked the groove and got some energy from playing with it, so it felt I was going down a good path. The weird thing about their version is that it is looooong, and basically what happens is they play the whole song through, and then inexplicably switch to a boogie rhythm and play the whole thing over again. For me, and this is strictly a personal thing, if a song is longer than 3-4 minutes, there had better be a really good reason. My days of 10 minute guitar solos are behind me; 2-3 choruses max, only stretching it out further when we are really clearly on a roll. So back to Koko; clean and succinct and pretty much exactly what I was looking for. One interesting discovery, after 40+ years, was that Savoy Brown turned the rhythmic placement of the repeated figure completely around. I wonder if that was intentional. Kim Simmons has a Savoy Brown Facebook page. Would it be rude to ask? “Hey Kim! In 1971 did you really mean to move that figure 2 beats to the left, or was that an accident?”

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So… “natural” talent or acquired ability?

Last Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I was following this train of thought, concluding more or less that 1) I don’t actually know if such a thing as natural talent exists, and anyway 2) if I ever had any, it was exhausted early. I kind of took a break from writing over the weekend. It had started to become more of an autobiography than I had really intended. TMI and too much work, and I wasn’t sure that was really what I was after.

So rather than spell out the details of a lifelong pursuit of the musical craft I’ll propose this as the process that encapsulates it all for me:

1. Play guitar.
2. Develop a sense of competence and achievement. Feel good about my guitar playing.
3. Put myself out there.
4. Find myself in a situation where I realize how completely delusional my assessment of my own talent is. This generally involves coming face to face with people who really are good guitar players, and not just guitar-playing wannabe’s like me*.
5. Hang around these people/this school/this band/this job, and learn everything I can from them.
6. Practice what I am learning.
7. Return to Step #1. Which is to say, put into practice what I have learned.

And so it goes. Repeat that for about 50 years, and here I am, still repeating it. How specifically this has manifested at any particular moment in my life, I’ll bend your ear over a drink sometime. Tall tales and war stories.

* Note: this is not actually how I judge myself or my abilities. It is, however, a pretty fair representation of the way it feels in that moment of recognition of how far I still have to go.

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So… “natural” talent or acquired ability?

The protracted Wang Dang Doodle-related yammering was really a kind of associative tangent to this question. I’m not quite as obsessed with this particular piece as its current prominence in this blog might suggest. The outcome of my work on this song will be that I’ll be standing on a stage somewhere, I’ll be playing this tight little guitar figure/groove, and over top of that I’ll be singing these clever twisted lyrics, and it will look like it is the easiest and most “natural” thing in the world for anyone to be doing. But the way I need to address the piece very precisely illustrates the reality of the process I need to go through every time I have to make the journey from complete incompetence to being able to do something that appears effortless.