So What's New With You?

What's going on in your lives? Where have you been? What are you working on?

I won't bore you with any more talk of LA. Life here consists of me trying to find an apprentice to take over the acoustic guitar section of Bananas, so that I can take more time teaching. And now it's time to actually sit down and write a practice manual to hand to each student. I've been doing it by embedding it in the lessons I record for them, but I want them to have it complete in hard copy, in one place.

The Gayle gig at Amnesia had another nice bit of fallout for me. One of our hot little local bands is Whisky Richards, that includes fiddler Katy Rexford, from Misisipi Rider (if you're only on one band around here, you're a slacker), and a standout Tele-bender named Adam Roskiewicz, who came up to me after our show and told me he'd been stealing licks off me all night, and would I like to get together to pick. Big ego boost, and you bet I would.

And next Saturday, 2/5, we're playing a little dive called the Spice Monkey, and our steel player can't make it. We've been using Jeanine Richardson on percussion for the last 7 or 8 months, and her husband, Maurice Tani, has been coming to all our gigs. You might recognize Maurice's name from my hyping of his band, 77 El Deora, here on the blog. Besides being a great singer-songwriter, Maurice is a fine guitarist, and by this time, he knows most of our stuff. And we're going to have him fill on guitar while Jon's out. I really like the guy, am in awe of his talent, and am just stoked about getting to work with him. He's multitalented, and did the poster I posted for our Amnesia gig. That's him in the hat, up to your left.

And just for nothing, the top photo is Norma and me at Multnomah Falls, on our vacation last fall. We've renamed it MultNorma Falls.

And in Other News.....

We found Milt Weber!  Hopefully he'll join us here soon.  Now all have to do is find Cass Conway and Dan Winchester and we'll have a skiffle band again.

And life goes on

Coming back to earth, we had a great gig at one of our regular haunts south of Market, last Thursday. We've added a few new tunes that are a bit poppier, rockier, and less country, but they went down well with our alt country crowd.

The other band was a a little five-piece from Austin, called Uncle Lucius. Good players and solid grooves. Kind of your southern rock kind of deal. We all got on well and it was an evening of work that was no work at all.

Now I'm putting some acoustic stuff together for a showcase that Vernon Black does at Bananas the first Wednesday of every month, featuring friends of his from all genres. Being the acoustic specialist here, he's been bugging me to do one of these for months, and it's time.

Vernon is one of the finest players I know, and his work is all over Mariah Carey's and Aretha's work with Narada Michael Walden. Frankly, I'm flattered by the attention.

And so, life goes on.

This reunion thing seems to be catching on.

Monday night, a bunch of us showed up at the Troubadour for the Troubadour Family Reunion 1964-1974. The Paradox was represented by Penny Nichols, Bruce Kunkel, Jackson Brown, and myself. Running the Paradox hoots when Steve left gave me the training I needed to pick up the slack when the Troub's hootmaster, Larry Murray, left for Nashville to see if the grass actually was greener, and I spent much of 68 as the MC, until SF beckoned, and I bailed.

The invitations went out, via Facebook, to anyone from that time period who worked at the Troubadour for more than 6 months, headlined the Troubadour, hung out at the Troubadour bar, or slept with anyone who did. Since I hit all four bullet points, there was no way I could pass this up. And it was a superb party. I got to find out where people had gone, what they'd done, and to remake a lot of old acquaintances. I even got to publicly snub Dr. Hook's old manager. The one who made millions off us and left us broke. OK, that sounds small of me, but damn.... It was satisfying. The first time he sees me in 30 years, I'm having a wonderful time, hugging old friends and jabbering away, and he's alone at the back of the bar.

Bruce and Penny were smart, and did early sets. And they sounded wonderful. They always do. I was scheduled to go on as a duet with John Beland, from the Burrito Brothers, but we got sandbagged when a couple of old folk acts went up and just rambled, running out the clock.. The first one spent 30-40 minutes, and finally closed with her hit. People were drifting off to the bar and the sidewalk. Then Jack went on and just killed. He did a couple or Warren Zevon tunes, and then a couple of his own, and the crowd that had refilled the showroom gave him a well-deserved encore. He remains a class act. He was followed by a couple more old folkies who cleared the house and ate up our set. Which was fine. There were more people on the sidewalk in front of the place and in the bar than there were in the showroom, and they set up a couple of rock bands.

The vibe, however was great, and it was wonderful closing circles with folks. Also a bit weird seeing a number of middle-aged ladies who were underage the last time I saw them. But you know, we've all gotten on.

It was a great time, well worth the drive, but I'd forgotten that it was a different vibe than the Paradox. More cliquish and competitive and, well, Hollywoodish. It made me miss the rest of the Paradox gang even more. Norma and I are so looking forward to PIII

A Cake for the King

The King is dead, long live the King

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELVIS (76

LAST NIGHT WE WENT TO OUR LOCAL CENTER OF THE ARTS FOR A DANCING BIRTHDAY PARTY FOR THE KING... John Girton , and another lead guitar , bass, drum, back up vocals....to cool, not a still bottom in the house, many dancers up in front. THE KING LIVES!!!!!! AT INTERMISSION WE HAD BIRTHDAY CAKE.......

Guitar lesson

Last night I watched Folk Rewind on PBS.  What a great show.  I love John Sebastian!

The show was a fantastic look back to all the songs of peace and social justice, which makes for a nice fund-raiser for pbs.  Those were the days!  Even had Bobby Darin in a tux and bow tie big enough for Soupy Sales singing his song of peace -- amazing watching him sing it.

But what I kept noticing is that most of the trios (Chad Mitchell, Kingston, Limelighters, the Brothers 3 +1) and groups like the Christie Minstrel Singers, played four-stringed guitars, which they strummed up by the neck.  I had never noticed that before.   

I guess the tenor guitar was big in those days (I, of course, thought it was an oddly shaped ukulele....)