Golden Days, Full Moon Nights
or
How Rolph Played His Fingers Off
Summertime, And the living is easy
Fish are jumpin', And the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy's rich, And your mama's good lookin'
So hush little baby now, don't you cry One of these mornin's, You're gonna rise up singin'
Then you'll spread your wings, And take to the sky
But til that mornin' Ain't nothin' can harm you
With your daddy And your mammy standin' byGeorge Gershwin - Dubose Heyward
Played my fingers off.
Just woke up from exhaustion.The Fourth of July party I've been at has been going on for thirty-one years. It is an old hippy clan, a kind of extended family. The core group were Salukis in the 60s and migrated to California between 1968 and 1972. We are now spread across California, the Great Basin and Hawaii. We really know each other, the kids, and the grand kids. Even the grown up kids come.
Wednesday, as I posted, I played for six hours just by myself for the workers and early arrivals. That was fine and warmed me up. Thursday I just worked on the party site, and then we told stories and didn't do music. Friday, as soon as I got there I began 'noodling around on the guitar. I didn't have long to wait, Michael and Lindy Lou showed up and tuned up and we ran thru some tunes warming up, and laying the ground work. Also they were checking to see if I'd kept my chops up. And we set up the music station in the small grape arbor on a picnic table. And we played on. And the youths and young men and women who are starting to play began to appear and their Takiamines and Yamahas got leaned against the fence.
Friday night's spagetti dinner came on along with Randy the Brewmaster's golden pilsner and we ate and socialized and went and looked at Roger the host's fine handthrown pottery in the potshop. After an hour and a half my itch to play came back, and at nine o'clock I picked up my guitar and began to play "John Henry (hot 'fast change' version) and Linda Lou appeared, and took out her silver flute and said "Where's Michael?" Michael appeared out of the dark and said as he took his guitar out of the case "Whaddya think--Should we play a little?"Michael and Linda Lou have an established act as a singer-songwriter beatles/folkie duo. They play small festivals and campfire gigs for horseback riding clubs. Michael accuses me of being a blues and bluegrass nazi. I avoid responding, but I have made a few comments about them having "another uniquely personal vision." Once when they were riding me I told them the following joke:
"Q: What's the difference between a singer-songwriter and a puppy?
A: Eventually the puppy stops whining."
And we played. There was nothing set about what we did on Friday. The big night is Saturday when Michael and Linda Lou have an established traditional show at the party. and they hauled out tunes they don't often do, plus ones they thought were my type. "Summertime", "Promised Land", "Hey, you got hide your love away", folk-rock standards, "The Water is Wide", folk era Joan Baez. After a few tunes they relaxed about my being there. Michael is a total folkie finger picker. I played guitar sideman and played two roles behind them: Chicago rhythm playing moving riffs, and lead guitarist up the neck. Sometimes I was a guitarist in Muddy's band and sometimes I was B.B. playing acoustic. After a while Michael started getting into my playing moving lines as rhythm, not something he's used to, and we really began to move. I was totally over my head as to the chord structure of a lot of songs they were playing but all you have to do is find a couple of notes and figure the scale and listen hard. Adrenaline helps, especially in the dark.
Later the full moon rose and I began to see the fretboard more. They tried some very slow breathy folkie numbers and seemed surprised I could do slow tunes with descending figures. After that the door was wide open, and they did all kinds of stuff. Micheal, having some rhythm support, even did some real rockers and tried out the four "blues" numbers they do (kinda 1930s dustbowl feeling). Turns out the old blues nazi knows that stuff too.
At some point in the night we lost our entire audience when they went to bed. We were worried about it until we realized it was after midnight. Then all the young ones appeared from the young kids drinking and flirting party up in the living room and we started up hard again. We went until 3:30 in the morning. The last tune we did was one we'd done early:"And the water is wide,
I can not get o'er,
and neither have I wings to fly,
Build me a boat,
That can carry two,
And both shall row, My love and I."Blues boy did good in a non-blues setting. 'Course it helps that I know lots of traditional stuff of all kinds. And all I've learned in the last year on the net came in handy. I didn't know at 3:30 in the morning that it was only beginning.
at this point in the thread someone interjects:
<<<<<
Way to go BluesBoy! Sounds like you entered
that zone where you are no longer in
control of the guitar, but the guitar is
in control of you. Another situation akin
to handling live rattlesnakes with total
faith that they ain't gonna bite. Is that
a Rainbow Gathering kind of thing?
>>>>>
It isn't a Rainbow Gathering thing really, it's a self-made clan of old hippies and their offspring and friends.
As to the guitar playing, it was sort of the music part of the brain being given full control. I was very motivated and was operating on the 'drive to play.' I made lots of mistakes but just kept going. I figured out scales, chords, and progressions on the fly, and what my parts were out of my library of riffs. It wasn't one of those magical nights of out-of-body guitar playing, it was one of those nights of satisfying musicianship. I was working as their sideman, making their music sound better, adding fills in half-bar holes, playing the bass note in chords, keeping the rhythm flowing with moving patterns, saying where the 'one' was in the turnarounds, playing four bar leads, playing understated moving patterns up the neck under what they were doing. Very satisfying to have some command of 'form.' And to do it in the dark in my head.
The funny part was that I operated as a 'backline' guy, as is typical in the blues and in bluegrass, and they were uncomfortable with my standing behind them, and moving up when I added leads, and sang the low parts in songs. They unconciously wanted me to stand in a line with them. It is hard to control dynamics that way. After a while Michael seemed to figure out that I was complementing their work and he started to stand out in the imaginary 'baby blue spotlight'.
The adrenaline just continued.
Having gone to bed at 4:00 a.m., I woke up at 7:00 a.m. and went to work and worked six hours. When I got back to the party around 3:00 p.m. I was beat but couldn't sleep. The drive to play music had me and I recognized it and got the guitar out and started on my practice tunes. Michael and Linda Lou showed up at the music table after about four tunes and suddenly we were doing an afternoon show. We went for two and a half hours, doing some of the same tunes as the night before, and some new to me. It was nice seeing the fingerboard. I was able to try a few things I wouldn't try in the dark. The adrenaline was back, the drive to play was full. And I got them to play more 'hot' than they are used to playing. Michael's gift is very much harmonic.
The Beatles' unusual harmonies and chord progressions are things he does better than most people. Linda Lou is etherial and not a belter. They are not used to 'snap' in their music. With my background(?) in music types that emphasize 'time' and rhythm, I pushed the envelope slightly while being their sideman. There has never been an afternoon show at the party before, and we drew all the beginning guitar players and all the "I used to play" people. When we had to stop Michael said "Well, it will be different tonight."
From that and other things I gathered it was possible I wouldn't be playing the Saturday night show that Michael and Linda Lou have done for years for the folks. Mostly Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, with some Neal Young, and other stuff I don't do. I had been prepared for this and sat on my will to play.I had to stop playing around 6:00 because I'm on the "Chicken Crew" and Larry the ChickenMeister called me to come to the barbeque pit. We did 30 barbequed chickens cut in quarters and served a raft of people. More handmade beer from Randy the Brewmaster. And Ernesto had several bottles of fine Napa Valley reds-the unfiltered ones that taste of their native soil. And only for the Chicken Crew. And the California sun was golden.And down at the music table the beginners gathered with their plywood guitars and did tunes together. I got out my guitars and the pignose portable amp for them and let them play. They are all 'family' and I owe it to the people who taught me. And to Cleo, Muse of Music. Michael didn't want to run Guitar Club and disappeared. I didn't want to run the Guitar Club and I was busy with the chicken, but I kept an eye out and put in a word here and there. Guitar club went on for two hours until dinner. My old friend Frankie the train engineer played with his teenage son from his first marriage. My old friend Gene Yano astounded his son by playing fingerstyle blues - his son didn't know he could play. Several young men got together and played songs that this old man doesn't recognize by groups he never heard of. And all the time I was cooking chicken 30 feet away. And the light turned slowly from golden to red as we served the chicken and ate and drank heartily.
After the big chicken feast it was time to socialize and tell war stories. Major Bill was setting up the poker game, the basketball players were going for one last game of horse, the twenty-somethings (almost all our kids from the first round of reproduction) set up the "quarters" drinking game they used to play when they were late-teens and we let them drink openly (no driving). And the stories were going on the deck and the senior ladies had their women's union meeting going in the kitchen, discussing remodeling their husbands.I couldn't stand it, I took a pass on the poker game, and went down to the fire where the music was.
Michael and Linda Lou and their old playing partner were there and they were getting ready. I saw what Michael had been obliquely hinting and I went and got my lawn chair and went and sat in the audience. After two songs Linda Lou came bay and said "Why are you sitting down?" I said "I don't want to intrude on your old established act." She snorted and said "Get the guitar." I was there in fifteen seconds. In tune.:Their old friend was unsure of me and kept turning his back to me. He is a finger picker too and he filled out the chord structure of Michael's work and played a lot of the bass runs and hook riffs of the songs they were doing, many of them ones I don't know. I saw I had my work cut out for me, and I listened hard. And I played bass fundementals of chords, up the neck leads, anything that wouldn't get in his way or Michael's way. It took almost ten songs before he stopped having negative body language.And we did tunes until 2:00 in the morning. For my home folks, my family, my oldest friends. I played on Beatles songs, Neal Young songs, I laid out on some songs and sang the bass parts for four part harmony.
My wife, who is not a blues person, stared at me in surprise. She didn't know I could play things like this, nor that I could do parts. She's used to hiding the blues records when people come over. Funny how that works.The will to play the guitar. The adrenaline. The music. And the just-past-full moon rose. And god's little lanterns were twinkling on and off in the heavens, and I was God's own guitar player, for a little while.I could hardly drag my body to breakfast in the morning.
It was a realization of the fine old dream of playing. And for the homefolks too.