Second Practice (Feb 8, 2009)
Always the glutton for playing I attend an all dobro jam in the backroom at McGrath’s Pub on Sunday afternoon before hitting TTS practice. This is the occasional SFdobro club gathering that somehow magically happens every few months and is always a gas to attend. Since there aren’t a lot of dobro instructors in the Bay area, it is a great way to get together with some other like-minded and more experienced musicians and see up close how they play. One piece of advice given to me by several instructors is to play with people better than me. It’s depressingly easy to find folks better than me (almost everyone is)……there just aren’t a lot of dobro players around and this is one of the best opportunities to try and steal their licks. I leave early to hoof it over to Berkeley.
Parking at the Freight admin office is a challenge, even on a Sunday evening, so I try to get there about 15 minutes before practice. After 2 trips around the block I score a parking spot right in front. Dick and Curtis are already there, Dave arrives shortly after, and we wait in the rain for the entire band to show since Dave has the key and codes to get us in the building.
This week I’m toting a thermos and food to help carry me through the evening. At least I limited myself to one beer at McGrath’s so I am still what passes for fairly lucid.
Practice went smoothly for both Zimmerman bands this week. For the 5PM group we worked through most of the left over songs from last week, worked on some harmonies and arrangements, and narrowed it down to a short list of 7 songs.
I thought it interesting that Dave made the comment that he didn’t think my “2nd 5pm song” choice would work out…the comment I believe was more along the lines that he didn’t see how it would fit in with what we had already and how we might arrange it. That was ok with me since one of my other songs was already on the short list. However…..I suggested this particular song for the 7:30 band as well. I was curious to see what was going to happen later in the evening.
The reason for my curiosity is that this is one of the songs we played at our unsanctioned jam at TJ’s house the day before and everyone liked it.
The 7:30 practice rolled in and like the 5PM group we were working through songs. Now after a bit someone mentioned my “2nd song” and that the group really liked it. So without missing a beat Dave led the band went in figuring out a possible approach. Without going into too much detail, and without giving away the song and all of our arrangement ideas, it probably sounds better with a female lead and male backup…rather than my baritone lead…This is rapidly looking like another lost lead opportunity for me. Then the “aha” moment arrives…Wendy suggests we take it up from F to G and I drop down and try a bass lead for a verse. I am a little skeptical, but go with it and it’s got some legs. I can’t always reach down as far as I would like to hit the really low growly notes but maybe with some practice and fooling around with the arrangement it will work out….and who knows…the song might not make the final cut. Dave comments that the song is working out better than he anticipated….everyone seems kind of jazzed with the low bass vocal and since this is basically a gospel bluegrass song it works in pretty well. We try some other “gospelly” things in the arrangement…..and they sound really cool. At the end I think everyone believes this is going to be a pretty unique arrangement.
Not too surprising, my “off the wall” song suggestion seems to have fallen by the wayside….and after all the hubbub and excitement it received last week. Fair enough, because I had some misgivings about it and the general group feeling was “if we could figure the right approach it would be very cool”. I think we are right on deciding to let it go. I’ll shelve it for a future project.
We break for the evening with the next week’s homework to listen, listen, listen. Everyone is still excited as we leave……those individuals that aren’t online much, or aren’t heavily addicted to their computers, sound like they are going to jump into the internet and iTunes maelstrom.
February 8-February 15
This week is turning out to be on the quiet side….though it is only Thursday evening…..lots of time left before Sunday.
At the beginning of the week, folks sent Jon missing song charts and mpegs to post on the band web pages. A few new song suggestions made it on the list, but only one or two. Lou sent an email that one of the songs on the list for the 7:30 band was stuck looping in his head and he is going to work up a break. It is a cool song in a minor key and I hope it will be a keeper because it’s melody and structure has dobro written all over it.
I spend a few days organizing my iTunes library and paring down my TTS listening list to songs and musicians that I want to try and use for ideas. This is appropriate since last Sunday just before going to practice I thought I had deleted my entire iTunes library, all 2211 songs, about half bought from iTunes and half imported from CDs. You know….I haven’t cried in years but was almost bawling after I realized what I had done. Being the nerd that I am, I figured out how to rescue the deleted files but I was perspiring heavily for a while and the air around me was tinted shades of blue. I resolve to never, never, never ever try to mass-delete songs that mysteriously become duplicated in my iTunes library.
Technology is a wonderful thing. It has given us computers, iPods, iTunes, the Amazing slowdowner, and the Zoom H2. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the Zoom, it is a portable, digital recording device….translation…it’s like a high tech tape recorder. I started recording our practices this week with the idea of critiquing my vocals and dobro fills and breaks, but when I downloaded the sound files to my computer and listened to parts of both practices…the short story is that I cracked up. It’s not that the songs we played sounded terrible or anything….granted they are a bit rough at this point, but after all it is only the second practice. The best I can explain is that it is like watching outtakes of what goes on behind the scenes from a movie or TV show ……if the folks are having a good time then funny stuff happens. I can also hear that I might need to work on filling out some of my dobro parts……..my playing sounds a little raw. Maybe when we get the arrangements locked in and have practiced a few more times it will sound different.
This is the week I actually commit to Hilary to write the blog. It’s not like I didn’t have enough already to do. I had been thinking about it for the past few weeks and the thoughts kept churning in my mind so it seemed like the blog was the only thing I could do to try and exorcise those dobros, vocals, guitars, fiddles, basses, and banjos from playing all day in my brain (besides, the banjos were giving me a headache).
"When you want genuine music -- music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose, -- when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!"
Mark Twain
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