Solo piano gig 6/19/08, Usual Suspects gig 6/21/08, and the future -- part two

Continued from last post

The between-song banter with this guy increased, and he asked if I was in a band. Indeed, I am in two and play with a third, and one of those bands was going to be playing there in a week and two days. That's the Usual Suspects coming to Okra's Louisiana Bistro on Saturday, June 28, folks. Be there! Shameless plug aside (hey, it's my blog; I can do what I want), he asked if I do any singing in the band. I said yeah, there's one song I lead, and it's "Gimme Some Lovin'." Although I wasn't sure how well the song would come off without a band, I figured there was nothing left to lose. "After the Gold Rush" was pretty pathetic, and nobody seemed to mind. So I wailed away on this Spencer Davis Group tune, and ironically, it might have been my strongest vocal all night. I played two verses of it and a solo, during which the drunk guy's friend asked me what other Spencer Davis tunes I could play. The answer would be exactly one, and you know which. Yep, that's right, "I'm a Man." I segued perfectly into that song and mumbled through a verse just so I could do the familiar chorus.

Next came a request from the bar. Did I know "Bad Bad Leroy Brown"? Not even enough to fake it. It didn't help that the drunk guy wasted a minute of my time singing the chorus over and over for me, thinking it would somehow teach me the song or otherwise magically make me capable of playing it. Now I was pissed at the guy and wanted to tell him to go away, but I'm too polite to do that. But I also didn't want to leave my request totally unfulfilled. If I couldn't play "Bad Bad Leroy Brown," there was one other Jim Croce tune that I felt confident enough to fake my way through. So I played "Time in a Bottle." As soon as it was over, the guy was asking me if I knew "Operator." No, I can't play stupid "Operator." Dude, go away. I thought it but didn't say it. Yet somehow, the guy disappeared at that point and I didn't see him again that night. Weird.

His friend, however, remained, and was now onto a Beatles kick. After he recited a litany of early Beatles song titles, we settled on "Day Tripper." I don't even remember how well or crappy this song turned out for us, but at least I lived to tell that it happened. Actually, I think what happened was a Redskins fan named Pat sat down on the now-occupied chair next to me, told me he played guitar and was hoping to become a kicker for the Skins. Cool! I think I played through that entire conversation.

By now, the friend of the drunk dude was cramping my style. Whenever he was there at my keyboard, he was standing directly in front of me, blocking most people's view of me. And he was always naming songs. I told him I had a song I wanted to do and I was pretty sure he hadn't ever heard it before because it was one of mine. So I played "I Beat the System." He continued standing there for the entire song. He was listening intently to the lyrics about killing an ex-wife and getting away with it. I thought that he understood that the song was based on somebody famous, given all the clues in the lyrics. But no. When it was over, he asked me if I was really married. Hahaha. No, I told him, the song's not autobiographical. I told him the name of the song's unidentified celebrity protagonist, and it didn't ring any bells for him. Ok, the guy must be wasted.

Pat was next to me again, this time holding an acoustic guitar provided by his friend Moondog (a guy I met the very first time I played at Okra's, when I was sitting in last December with the hometown band that was then called the Wooly Mamas). Pat said he was too hoarse to sing along because he had been screaming at his daughter all week long -- interesting excuse. Somehow, the talk of a hoarse voice made me want to sing the last few minutes of Aerosmith's "Dream On," and I did it well. My friend Whitney would have even approved! (Well, she wouldn't admit to it.)

Pat came up with some song suggestion he could play guitar along with, but he would need me to teach him the chords first. I said let's not bother learning chords. Let's just do a blues progression in E. So I went into the Blues Brothers' take of Robert Johnson's "Sweet Home Chicago." I don't even think Pat was playing along! But the funniest moment of the night was when I went to sing a verse. My math was off. I think I sang, "Two and two is one. Nine and nine is four." It just struck me as incredibly funny, and I laughed about it for a while. My math was impeccable during the next verse I sang.

After this, Moondog pulled up a chair and reclaimed his guitar. He played some chords and I followed along. We gelled pretty well. I had these thoughts at the time about musical collaboration being a conversation. Sometimes you can hit it off with a stranger and have a good conversation right off the bat. Why, because you speak a common language and have overlapping experiences and ways to relate to and complement each other. So we played four separate untitled compositions of his together, each ebbing and flowing very well. I don't know if they were two minutes apiece or more like six or seven. All I know is they were fun. Neither of us was dominating the other. It was just cool. And Jimbo, who I later found out is Moondog's housemate, was enjoying seeing the two of us gel together.

I took out another harmonica for one on my list I wanted to play. It was the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers chestnut "Mary Jane's Last Dance." As expected, it went well. I've been rehearsing it with both the G Tones and the Usual Suspects in recent months, so I was used to playing and singing that one a lot.

Moondog played me a chord progresion that instantly reminded me of the intro to "Ten Years Gone" by Led Zeppelin. In fact, I thought that was exactly what he was playing. It wasn't, but he kept a smile on his face while I played that song for him and it returned to the same chord progression a few times throughout. He said that chord progression is in a lot of songs.

We did one more of his creations together, and then that was it. I didn't play any more that night. It was my last Thursday night solo gig at Okra's. For the record, I had a number of things on my list that I never got to. I wanted to play:
Hot Dog (Led Zeppelin)
Trouble (Coldplay)
When the Levee Breaks (Led Zeppelin by way of Memphis Minnie)
I Will Possess Your Heart (Death Cab for Cutie)
Let It Bleed (Rolling Stones)
Fortune Teller (Who, Stones, Robert Plant, etc., by way of Naomi Neville, a.k.a. Allen Toussaint)
Fool in the Rain (Led Zeppelin)
Psycho (Puddle of Mudd)
Blinded by the Light (Manfred Mann's Earth Band by way of Bruce Springsteen)
All My Love (Led Zeppelin)
Black Dog (Led Zeppelin)
And it was my intention to finish up my Thursday night series with the last track on Led Zeppelin's last album, an emotional tune called "I'm Gonna Crawl." That didn't happen.

Moondog invited me to come party at his place. He was bringing Pat, Dan and Heather. I nearly backed out, but I went. So glad I did because we all had a good time, and Jimbo was back home already by the time we all showed up. There were plenty of guitars -- both acoustic and electric -- and guitar amps and even a bass for Dan. With me on various guitars, we played more of Moondog's originals. And the moment I held an Epiphone Les Paul with custom pickups for the first time, I knew I was holding greatness. Plugged into a Marshall amp, I knew I wanted to play Jimmy Page licks. The first thing that came to my head was "The Lemon Song." The next thing was the Howlin' Wolf lick from "Smokestack Lightning" that Led Zeppelin played on the fan favorite bootleg from April 27, 1969. So here I am on electric guitar nailing these same licks that Page and John Paul Jones did almost 41 years ago. Dan was on bass figuring out "The Lemon Song" so we could play it together. And I'm soloing over top of the bassline. That was a hell of a moment for me.

Two nights later, I'm at the Usual Suspects' backyard gig. This is last night now. No guitar for me. Just keyboard and harmonica and vocals and heartfelt moments of pure energy. The crowd was up and dancing for us during our second set, and on the Stevie Wonder tunes especially, I was giving it my all. Totally acrobatic, totally nutty, totally sweaty, totally careless when it came to the upkeep of my primary musical instrument. That was great.

One of the partiers was a guy named Tim who said he would sing any Elvis tune. We told him we would call him up when it was time for "Suspicious Minds." I was impressed by how good his Elvis voice was! And the people really loved it. Birthday girl Laura was unbuttoning his shirt while he was singing. This was fantastic! And the good times kept rolling through an amazing set that included our best-yet "Hot Legs" competition to the tune of that awesome Rod Stewart song. Laura won, in my opinion. She came out, gams a-blazing!

I was talking to Tim afterward, and his advice to me was to come up with a game plan for moving to Nashville and chasing my dream of becoming a full-time professional musician. Unless somebody can talk me out of it, I think I might move down there this September (following the path of the band formerly known as Alowishious Farhatt and the Soapbox Derby Revival Band, now just the Wooly Mamas) and see if I can make it as a studio musician for a while, with hopes of ending up touring with somebody famous.

So, who's gonna talk me out of it?
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