My Sherman street guitarist was not answering his phone Friday and Saturday. Ah, he was out playing. That’s one of the disqualifications I watch for because you always get away with it once. You can play anywhere you want, but you can’t be keeping it a secret. The commitment to my band is too great to allow for that.
Afterward, I stopped at G’s Place, the pub on Tyler. A heavy rock band was putting on a mini-concert. They had more equipment than I’ve owned in my lifetime. A three piece group with a lady bassist. Best tunes were rock renditions of old classics overlong on the lead breaks. One strong point is they had their voicings down to perfection, that is, there was no loss of overall sound when the guitarist switched from chording to playing lead breaks. Impressive.
It was a day of constant humid drizzle, meaning no coffee break at the bookstore, but plenty of time to finish up my budget to year end. Much as I would like to spend my birthday at the Diplomat (just to say I’ve been there), it looks like I may be stuck in Texas for a few weeks. Too many loose ends need tying up, and worse, I may have to drive there because rental transportation at the far end can be too expensive or non-existent. It is a three day trip both ways.
The usual Mercator projections make it far too easy to underestimate the size of Florida by making the northern states appear relatively bigger than they are. Look at Florida on a globe to see the real size. It is 1,300 miles from here to Pensacola. My timing is also bad. There are four weeks of good weather in Texas each year, two in the spring, two in the fall. The problem is nobody knows when they will be. I could leave it till 2011, but this year my birthday has special significance.
The rest of today’s lengthy blog concerns music, you can skip it unless you are curious about what goes on behind the scenes. Jag, the rhythm kid, is scheduled for Tuesday and all remaining 18 Mondays this year are slated for memorizing those parts of music that require it. I’m embarking beyond anything I musically set out to do and am not getting much encouragement along the way.
In my trademark and inimitable work-with-what-I’ve-got style, I went ahead and began programming the unsuitable Zoom MRT-3 drum box. Since I rarely play slow or mood music, I’ve grouped the patterns according to ease of resetting the beats per minute. This has to be done (on stage) between each song, the mental fart of a completely useless design engineer. Zoom has nerve calling it a drum box.
But, it makes the difference I’m seeking at a quarter of the price of my original Dr. Rhythm from 20 years back. I’ve embraced drum boxes from day one which is also why I am so critical of them. Nobody makes the jukebox drummer I want, the machine where I punch in a request, not Bank D, Pattern 37, Tempo 128. All current drum boxes are pieces of junk, and yes, I’ve tried to do something about it but it is a case where I’d need help and nothing is forthcoming.
I have ten songs nearing my standards for stage performance. Doing three things at once is as mentally exhausting as I had calculated. Only driving daily practice is causing headway. Each major thought pattern has to be assimilated, that is, vocals, bass and drums. These must then be brought together and coordinated, which causes the lesser thought patterns to instantly suffer. That means events like recalling the lyrics (I took my banana out of her dirty red pontoon), synchronizing the drum box (a very important part of my act done to unworldly precision), and looking natural while planning ahead to have one’s weight on the correct foot when it is pedal time. Just you try to picture all this happening at once and I’ll bet you ten bucks you forgot to keep smilin’.
At this juncture, I’m compelled to point something out. I directly contradict the old guitarists claim of “doing two jobs” by singing and strumming. In comparison to what I do, guitar is a breeze. Often, if I need to get a new part, I’ll pick up the guitar and strum simply because it is nearly instinctive. I’ve always thought guitarists were just complaining; now I know it from first hand experience. But now, a singing bassist who does not play more than one consecutive root note per measure, that is definitely two jobs. Try it.
My second batch of ten tunes begins this week, bringing me within striking distance of a live show without backing tracks--but I still don't want to play solo unless I must. Nobody would say a guitarist using an electric drummer is faking it, so careful not to say I am either. At least I program my own drums and don’t use any of the prerecorded patterns. Midi tracks, I don’t use them at all. Too rigid for my act.
Each step brings changes and discoveries; for what I do there is no manual. Solo acts were never my favorite for small shows, whereas a duo was perfect and larger groups were overkill. I’ve always felt two musicians doing a tight act were far more impressive to an audience, particularly when it is clear the show would suffer if both parts were not present. The crowd may not be able to define it as such, but they sure know it if anyone tries to fool them.
In a side effect, I’m finding progress is distancing me from anything except duo work, although I’d do a solo should somebody invent a workable rhythm machine. So much of the music now has to be internalized that it is becoming impossible to disgress to only playing bass. My every stage nuance is polished for audience appeal, not accuracy. When I finally get something right, like a cha-cha-cha ending that wasn’t there, I catch myself imitating people I knew from the last century. I owe more to Jesse Demko, Larry Gustafson and Gordie Walker than to the present with its Dookie youTube repli-clones.
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