Mon Oct 13 2014

At the mobile office.

Haven’t typed those words in a long time. Back in the days of the Guitar Craft Diaries, Seattle Circle Diaries, and never ending website updates, coming down here to the café with my computer to work was a slightly ritualistic practice for me. Basically it got me out of the house, where there are myriad minor and mundane distractions, to get my writing or research done. Since then my home/office routine has become a little more regular, and tends to involve more guitar practice than writing. Plus, when I do leave the house I generally try to do so on foot or bike, which means that getting to and from where ever takes up the bulk of the time and is in fact kind of the point, rather than hanging out at the destination. But I had an open morning, and some reading to do, so getting out made sense. Ergo, here I am. Now to the actual work.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I have to say that while the location, layout, general atmosphere, and of course the coffee, still make this my favorite hangout, the quality of the music has deteriorated significantly since the days I worked here regularly. You still get the sense that it is what the baristas want to hear, and not something canned or prescribed. It’s just that in the early days the prevailing personal taste of the staff had a lot more in common with mine. I suppose the upside is less distraction for me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Okay, playing music has gotten me to some pretty interesting and wonderful places in my life. It has also gotten me into some pretty questionable places and situations, and a few downright dangerous ones. But no musician’s war story I can personally pull up comes close to this shit. I first heard of Sam Lay as the drummer for the Butterfield Blues Band. He also played on “Highway 61 Revisited” and was in the band for Dylan’s infamous electric Newport gig. But before that he was in Wolf’s band. Here, he has been fined by Wolf for arriving late.

Getting Lay angry was unwise since he packed a snub-nosed .38. Wolf, too, carried a pistol but didn’t hold on to it at gigs. “When he come in, what Wolf would do is open the cylinder, take the bullets and stick ‘em in his pocket, and hand the gun to the club owner,” Lay said. “He didn’t want it in his possession while he was there.”

Wolf exchanged heated words with Lay about the fine. “He jumps all up and bangs on the table,” Lay said. “So when he did, I just stepped back from him a couple of steps. … I didn’t know nothing else to do. I just whipped that snub out and cocked that hammer back. Everybody broke and run … so I reached down there and got my other $10 and I left.”

Fast forward a couple of days, Wolf and Lay meet in the lobby of Lay’s apartment building.

“You know what he asked me? He tells me, ‘You got a clean white shirt and still got your uniform?’ I said ‘Yeah, Wolf, I still got it. I didn’t have no reason to get rid of it.’ ” Lay was back in the band.

Just another day in the life.

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 09 2014

I notice that clicking sound that I associate with the elements on the stove either heating up or cooling down. I go into the kitchen to make sure I didn't leave something on. One of the burners is glowing bright red. So bright that I can barely look at it. So hot that I'm having difficulty getting near enough to the stove to reach out and turn it off. It is at this point that I realize that my subconscious has overplayed its hand. I am actually still in bed, and dreaming, and the easiest way to solve this problem is to wake up.

John’s birthday today. Don’t really get much worked up by that kind of stuff, but use it as an excuse to remember. Beatles on the stereo all day. Except when it’s Howlin’ Wolf.

Overcast, foggy, with a definite hint of chill in the air today. Drove out to do some errands that I could have as easily walked to. Little pang of guilt about that.

Tue Oct 07 2014

Saw King Crimson last night. Pretty incredible. After the show, hanging out with the gang and having a drink, I tried to avoid commenting on it, as I wanted to let it sink in for a while. But I did make some remarks that were really, really hard on the sound folks. In fact, I’m not sure how much of the problem was the mix, and how much was simply the room, so I’m feeling a little bit guilty having gone off about them like that. But the sound was pretty atrocious in my corner of the audience. So I had to work more than I wanted to, to hear what was going on. It was worth the effort. This is a really great incarnation of the band. I’ll be interested to see if it goes further. Robert has been publicly noncommittal about future plans. As cool as it was, you sort of had the sense that they were just getting going. Great to hear some of the older and more obscure stuff; Sailor’s Tale, The Letters, Pictures of a City. I had been doing my best not to read much about the previous shows so that I could be surprised, and all 3 of those did, as well as One More Red Nightmare! No Discipline-era stuff.

This struck me as grown up music. Not old. Definitely not nostalgic. But music played by grownups for grownups. I tried to compare it to going to the symphony, but that would require too many qualifications – I’ve been to way too many concerts where the orchestra is just phoning it in. These guys were definitely not doing that. I’ll have to ponder this observation a little more.

The three drummer front was actually my favorite thing of all. A really strange idea that totally worked for me. The three clearly did a lot of work. During Pictures of a City was the first place I actually grasped what was happening. A tom-tom roll cascade began with Pat on stage right, and whizzed across the stage through Bill and ended with Gavin on stage left. I actually laughed out loud. I think some of my audience neighbors thought that was a weird thing for me to do during that song, but screw them. I was delighted. Once I saw that, I started to pay closer attention and it was pretty great. The multiple drummers weren’t really additive. It wasn’t like drums but 3 times as loud. To me it felt like it gave each of the players an incredible amount of space to work. And the listening was audible. At one point I had my eyes closed, just taking it in. When I opened them up, I realized that only Bill was drumming, and the other 2 were tacit. I had no idea. I didn’t hear the absence of 2 drummers.

Joked in a text with Bill that the frontline made the backline look like chumps who hadn’t done their homework. Total hyperbole, of course, but it really felt to me that what the drummers were doing was actually revolutionary.

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.

Wed Oct 01 2014

Autumn definitely in the air. Not exactly cold yet, and the sun is more or less out today, but there is a certain quality, and yesterday I caught my first whiff of a wood stove in action in the neighborhood. The cat’s favorite wintertime warm spot has also been called into active duty.

(see also: blog wallpaper)

My one really early morning lesson of the week had me up before dawn. I was already awake but in that doze-zone where I go in and out of a series of vaguely thematically related dreams, and I was frankly happy to get up and away from all that. Exhausting. A lesson focused on counting, which is actually a pretty great way to begin the day.

A large chunk of “personal time” between this morning and the bulk of my lesson schedule later in the day. Several pieces of business to take care of, unfortunately a little further flung than I can do on foot or bicycle. Hoping that the Howlin’ Wolf bio I have on hold at the library, which has been tagged as “in transit” since Monday, will actually get to the shelf this morning. I’m fresh out of reading material.

My call on Monday for recommendations of general practitioners got me 2 in Ballard, one a specific doctor and the other a clinic a friend has had good results with. I like the idea of having my go-to physician walking distance from home. Not sure quite how to proceed in choosing one. Part of me thinks that since I have a little time this afternoon I should just walk in to both and talk to them, an approach that would be way outside of my comfort zone. Probably more likely to call them and see if they are willing to set up a preliminary consultation or something like that. We’ll see. Maybe my feet will take over while I’m down in the neighborhood.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Snapping and bending strings with his fingers or making them sob and moan … he attacked the neck of his instrument like a hound dog shaking a stick. An astounding showman, he beat his guitar like a drum, played it between his legs or behind his head, rode it like a pony, and threw it up in the air and spun it, all while maintaining that driving beat…”

description of Charlie Patton (1891-1934)

from Moanin’ at Midnight. The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf

Picked up the Howlin’ Wolf bio. Only a couple of chapters in so far, covering background about life in Mississippi in the early 20th century and Burnette’s earliest years. Fair read. Too many sentences along the lines of, “But as in every Eden, there was a snake in the tree, a worm in the apple: the racial caste system that kept black people from getting ahead.” Gag. But I’ll live. It does quote the best description I know of country music, equally applicable to the blues:

"Three chords and the truth."