One year ago today: February 18, 2017, your delivery’s here.
Five years ago today: February 18, 2013, slap the parents.
Nine years ago today: February 18, 2009, my guitar looks just like that.
Random years ago today: February 18, 2011, the wizard 6 years late.
We are packed and ready for the journey. Minimum six times a year, it keeps me in touch with the Miami crowd and I get paid for the trip. Mind you, that was budgeted for the motorcycle, so remind me to recalculate for the car. Still, I’m sure the gas is covered many times over and that is all I care about. The car is a sunk cost. The clock still reads less than 51,000 miles and I’m getting close to putting the scooter back on the road to cut down on that. And what a strange sign of the times that to make this 245 mile trip to south Miami, I have to pack three different power cables and chargers. C’mon you damn engineers, get it together. And bring ba/ck 3.5" floppies. But like with 3.5 terabytes. I found this package in the Thrift. Should I donate it to the museum?
Now I am not ganging up on Lady Nik, because I know she is sincerely trying and we’ve worked a long time on whatever the hurdle is. The fact is, the upper limit of her learning this material seems to be four songs. If she learns a fifth, one of the other four gets forgotten. I’ve tried everything I’m prepared to try, such as sitting down and showing her note for note the simple guitar requirements for a given song. Of course, I’m hoping a real guitarist would do much better, but this is the minimum. She is able to parrot it back there and then, but a week later, it is like she’s never heard the song before.
We researched her earlier band and that was not the answer. For example, the tunes she played back then were not entirely an indicator of what she could play today. While she can totally ace “Guitars, Cadillacs”, she cannot play “Good Hearted Woman”, yet both were formerly some of her top numbers. And the songs new to her also had no pattern, since she could play complicated arrangements like “Spiders & Snakes”, she could not strum “These Boots”.
Chinese restaurant.
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There is also the matter of comping. Most guitarists will comp if you let them, but this is forbidden in my groups, and we totally agreed on this the first meeting. I have no time to put into just another hack band, so each tune is a prize to played differently than any other tune. We spent time capturing the spirit of each and went over and over the nuances that made it unique. Yet, without realizing it, she regularly lapses into comping. Worse yet, it is a particularly bad comp ad 82 bpm, which drags down the whole song to a dirge. Considering I don’t play any slow music, well, you figure out the rest.
It is a pity even more because we plainly get along well enough to resolve any problems. By now a male guitarist would have stomped out, but that is an ego dynamic not present here. A male who comps will sass you back, claiming wild and idiotic quips like the song sounds better when he is the one comping, or that his comp is better than anybody else’s. (This is where I ask them to play the right way first, which 100% of the time reveals they can’t do it right, and that is the true reason for the comp.)
Also, the matter of me showing a guitar player what to do is itself dicey. I advertised for somebody that could hit the ground running. Getting a quick lesson from me is akin to spoon-feeding a total beginner and this rarely works as intended. This is where we stand. For reasons unknown, she can play some tunes right up to snuff, but there is no pattern to it. Some of the material is easy, some is complicated (arrangement-wise). Other times she can play tunes from her old band and sometimes not. The point is there has been no net progress in weeks. When we learned “Spiders & Snakes”, she promptly forgot “Jambalaya”.
Now, I know she is pouring her heart into this. The songs we can play are dynamite material for the target audience. I’ve been all over Polk and Hillsboro, there is not another band that can touch us. She has grasped the concept of voicings, and in some of our presentations, it sounds like there are three and a half distinct voices, in itself a fantastic accomplishment for a duo. But the catch is, this is possible only when we slow it right down to baby steps. As soon as we play it full speed, by the end of a few measures, she is comping again.
We consulted for about an hour and she understands I have to move on. She is going to try to master the list but that is where my conjecture stands that this will take 13 – 15 months, assuming the progress can be maintained. While I’m okay with that, what usually happens is just before she is ready, I’ll find somebody else. It’s uncanny how often that happens. By then, I could be shacked up with Taylor and bringing her back into the country music fold where she belongs. Still, I’ll keep in contact with Lady Nik simply because there’s no assurance that the next 13 – 15 months will not be as empty a musical search as the previous.
ADDENDUM
This prompts a 40% increase in the number of birdfeeders and a move toward larger feeders, which require filling less often. The back yard, having been left alone for a year now, is the preferred habitat. Still, remind me to get in there and clean up some day soon. Who knows what I’ll find. The budget for birdseed is now nearly a dollar per month.
And speaking of diets, today is day 80 of mine. That’s the 1/3rd mark, that is, 160 days to go. As a reward, I had my first real meal since December 1, 2017. One chicken breast and one bowl of rice. As for results, once more, my weight dropped 20 pounds the first month and nothing since. It's maddening, I tell you.
I am shedding inches, but my weight is the same as it was on January 1. Most noticeable are my work clothes. Pants that used to fit snug now drop off me if I don’t wear a belt or britches. We’ve been here before on dieting, the hope for this round is that I’ve changed my lifestyle more than ever in the past. Obesity is an American problem, and it is plain to anyone who looks that it is the food supply. Go into a fast food joint and often there are no skinny people over 25 in the entire place. If the studies say anything else, then the studies have been asking the wrong questions.
Last Laugh
