Chop Chop

I gave up performing my "folkish" music (accompanying myself on 12-string guitar) in 1984 when I began studying classical composition. Except for at parties, after having had too much to drink, I haven't done any real singing, or playing guitar for that matter. I just sort of quit after a career that spanned nearly 20 years. I couldn't perform anymore. I'd burned myself out and my confidence took a real nose dive due to some personal issues.

Now that I've decided to get back into it and maybe hit the house concert circuit, I've started rehearsing. I was afraid my voice would be unfamiliar to me due to the natural deepening that sometimes occurs as we age. My speaking voice has gotten a bit lower, so it was a natural assumption. In the past I was able to perform some pretty impressive vocal acrobatics, leaping octaves with ease and sliding around the blues. And I've always had a large range. I was fully prepared to transpose some of my more challenging songs to accommodate any changes to my voice, and I figured my vocal dexterity was a condition of my youth. There was no reason to think otherwise, because, when I did attempt to sing my old stuff, I was always in the house where I never felt confident enough to belt it out. Well, I recently cleared out a rehearsal space in the garage and when I first went out to there to practice, I found I was still able to really open up and SING with no holding back. Happily, I don't have to transpose anything, and guess what? My range is still there. It takes a little more support to hit the really high notes with ease, but it's coming along. By October when I'll give my "come-back" concert (ahem), I'll be able to sail over those notes like I used to.

Now if my guitar chops will just come back with as much ease. That's a whole 'nother issue!

Getting Things in Hand

It's been such a long time since I played a guitar every day of my life, my calluses have gotten a bit soft on me. They're still there, but they've been sleeping. This past week, I've rather called Reveille on them, however, and they're proudly rising to the occasion.

I'm not a believer in "Play until your fingers bleed!" In fact, unless you're onstage and it occurs from an especially robust session, it's pointless. When I was younger and first learning guitar, my grandmother, who was a musician and knew about these things. told me to soak my fingertips in vinegar before and after playing. It really worked, and I developed a healthy, durable set of calluses that can still be called on after 50 years. These days I'm giving Eric Clapton's advice a try by soaking them in rubbing alcohol instead of vinegar. So far, so good. It in fact seems to work more quickly than vinegar. I also think that the fact that I'm switching between 6-string and 12-string guitar is helpful, because doing so covers the entire fingertip pad; it may be a little more painful, but not as painful as playing a 6-string, exclusively.

Working on getting both my playing and singing chops back into shape is proving to be a real joy. It's just my memory where lyrics are concerned that's the challenge. My hands know what to do (good old muscle memory never fails!) so I don't give that a second thought. Remembering the words of 36 songs, however, is proving to be harder, not to mention that all of my music was lost back in 2001 and I'm having to dredge up my own song lyrics. Most of them have resurfaced, and those that just won't, I'm simply rewriting. What's the harm? Who's to know? They're my songs.

I have five months until my house concert (I've penciled in the date as October 9th), and there's plenty of time to get everything in hand, so to speak, calluses and lyrics, so I'm not worried in the least. Meanwhile, all of this is completely silencing the old stage fright beast, and that was the biggest challenge of all.

In-Home and Homegrown

Years ago, from 1983-85, I was a member of a southern California group of folk musicians, patrons, and lovers of folk music that met for in-home concerts, camp-outs, and workshops. Nearly every weekend I was in someone's living room listening to a songwriter or folk group, and meeting them close-up. Even back then (or perhaps especially back then, during the heat of the Eighties) I found the experience enriching. Soon, I was performing at house concerts, too. After years of playing duets with bar blenders, and cocktail waitresses shouting out drink orders, I really took to the respect an artist feels when the audience is actually listening, not whooping and whistling. I'm afraid that if I were a well-known songwriter and was met with that crap, I'd leave off playing and say, "Look, you came here to hear me. I came here to play for you. Now, sit down and be quiet." I'm sure that wouldn't gain me any fans, but at least I'd have had my say. But you never know. Some major acts are demanding their audiences put their cell phones away during their concerts.

House concerts are great because they draw a listening audience—everyone is there for the express purpose of hearing the song. If you've never experienced live music in a true listening situation, then you need to.

"All of these things, we believe, set us apart from the usual large concert and bar experience, where sometimes the music winds up being secondary to the party atmosphere and worse yet, relegated to background music." - Scott Aycock, House Concerts Unlimited

I've decided to host my own house concert this year, here at Bookends Cottage. I miss performing, despite the crippling stage fright that started to appear around 1990 and grew to such epic proportions that I couldn't even sing for my family unless I was three sheets to the wind. Of course, that only exacerbated the problem, because I can't perform at peak with even so much as one drink in me. Invariably, I'd wake up the next morning, remember how shitty I sounded, and tell myself my performing days are over. Well, my days as an unabashed wino are gone, and I'm really itching to perform again.

So here I am relearning some of my old songs, learning my new ones, and brushing upon some favorite covers, and I'm finding that the planning process of this is having a calming effect on my stage fright. Well, that's how it works, isn't it? The better one knows one's material, the more confident one is. Who knows what this might lead to? I'm already planning to record an album this year, so maybe I'll get on the house concert circuit again. But sh! I'm not ready to start thinking beyond this one performance just yet.

Birth of the Blues

One of the items on my 70 by 70 list is to stay at Morgan Freeman's Ground Zero Blues Club for a weekend. Located at 0 Blues Alley in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the club celebrates the birthplace of the Delta Blues. With people like John Lee Hooker and Willie Brown as its native-borns, Clarksdale has a vibrant history, and the club is located beside the Delta Blues Museum.

Upstairs, the Delta Cotton Company has several rooms that are decorated in a retro style. If I stayed there, I'd choose the Good Midling room, not because it's the most expensive (none of the rooms are particularly expensive, actually), but because I like the colors and the fact that it overlooks the front of the building. The club itself naturally has live Blues Wednesday-Saturday nights, a full bar, and a great menu. I think it has great vibes, too!

Of course, right now is not a good time to us to go, what with the Mississippi KKK having issued a call-to-arms against people like Nettl and myself, but someday, maybe. Mr.Freeman certainly wouldn't mind, so I doubt his establish would either. It's just those men in hoods that's kind of off putting.

Paul Revere's Midnight Ride

If you grew up in the USA during the Sixties, it was impossible for you not to know of Paul Revere & The Raiders. From 1966 to about 1970 their hits were a constant on the Billboard Top 100, but most of us enjoyed our first exposure while watching Dick Clark's Where The Action Is in the afternoons after school. They were impossible to miss. It was more than their modified Revolutionary War era costumes (ooh, Mark Lindsay in those tights!), though. It was their showmanship, their humor, and certainly their music, but it also was their stage act, orchestrated by leader Paul Revere with his broad smile and slapstick antics. Yesterday, Paul Revere lost his battle with cancer at the age of 76, which is fitting since the band's image so doggedly adhered to the 1776 theme. This had to be Paul's last laugh, I suspect, and it makes me smile.

Make no mistake about it. Paul Revere formed a well-oiled, professional band and as members came and went all the way through today, he knew what made that band successful: rock-solid musicians, polished stage routines, all-out entertainment value, and a tried-and-true professionalism that's been lacking for decades. Paul was known as a warm, affable, generous, and kind man, but I suspect he also reigned supreme from behind his keyboards. He was a true leader and members who left did so usually due to artistic differences. That's okay. To be a Raider meant that Mr. Revere led the show. Please sign here.

"Generous to a fault with your family, your friends and your band, there seemed to be no limit to your kindness. When you turned your attention towards someone, you made that person feel special and in your spotlight. You had a pet name for each person, and you never hesitated to tell them how exceptional they were. You appreciated the talent, beauty, skills and uniqueness you found in others, and you were never shy about telling them so. All the more reason for people to feel wonderful in your presence." Paul Revere & The Raiders Official Website

Until the advent of heavier music by Jimi Hendrix and Cream in 1967, the Raiders were the only group to pull me away from my blind and blinkered worship of the Beatles. The songs on their albums were a diverse mix that covered everything from novelty rock to biker blues and although some songs could be a little kitschy, there were plenty of rockers to keep me listening for hours while I did my homework or sunbathed in the backyard.

It's a peculiar kind of grief we feel when someone like Paul Revere dies. In most cases we've never met them, much less known them personally, and in a lot of cases we haven't listened to their albums in ages, so why do we mourn? Truth is, their death presents us with a startling reminder that we too are mortal and that our time of departure is creeping ever closer. I won't go any deeper than that, however much I like to wax philosophical here, but I will conjecture that it is for our innocence that we grieve and when such a solid building brick like Paul Revere leaves, we recognize that our foundation of life as a human, and its false sense of security, is really only built on sand. Youth is done, middle-age is ending, and we have entered the final phase of this life.

Ride on, Paul Revere. We'll catch you on the flip side!

Paul Revere 1938-2014

Happy 70th Birthday Mick Jagger

1 Son of a gymnastics teacher and a hairdresser.
2 Began singing in his church's choir when he was a child.
3 Was a Business Economics major.
4 First ambitions were to be either a journalist or a politician.
5 Said in 1972, "I'll never tour when I'm 50"....

And before anyone says that neither Mick nor anyone else should be performing rock & roll at this age, I'm bending over. Please kindly kiss my ass.

Happy Birthday, Mick!

I Wouldn't Change a Thing: Notes for My Memoirs

I never write only one book at a time. While I'm assiduously working on my main project, I'm also taking notes for the next, even if they seem to be unrelated. In my present case that's not actually the situation. While researching and writing about rock & roll in the 1960s and '70s for Beyond The Bridge, it has been easy for me to find things I'd like to use in A Polite Little Madness, my upcoming memoir.

Recently, I've been reading two books as I write: Ready, Steady, Go!: The Swinging Sixties and the Invention of Cool by Shawn Levy and Faithfull: An Autobiography by Marianne Faithfull, both of which lend a great deal to my understanding of my own evolution as a musician...

My Long-Time Secret Love Affair with Patti Smith

One of the things that few people know about me is that I have, since about 1979, been a huge fan of poet Patti Smith. When I discovered her, I had no idea who she was, or what she was about. I had just moved back to the US from a three-month musical stint in England and my attention was on getting a record deal in the ever-shrinking world of what was then called, more than a little deprecatingly, MOR, or Middle Of the Road. Although I’d been introduced to Punk in England, I wasn’t at all fond of it and, when I came home, I was met with the less confrontational, more palatable New Wave. Apart from Bob Dylan, Bette Midler, and Billy Joel, I knew nothing about what was going on musically in New York. Because my then managers were steering me into what they considered to be more financially lucrative waters, Smith as a singer-songwriter flew totally beneath my musical radar...

Happy End of the World!

I figure if there is the remotest chance of a Big Kaboom happening today, all of the our departed rockers will be welcoming us to the Other Side with the greatest concert ever held. Imagine the line-up! But I doubt we'll see it just yet. Instead, check out my son Micah Atwell's latest recording. It's called 13th B'ak'tun and is just awesome!...

Hollywood is Not all Glitter and Sawdust

One day in September of 1983, I drove to Hollywood to pay a visit to Tower Records, on Sunset Boulevard, undoubtedly the best record store in the world for many years. I was on a kind of vision quest. I had gotten some money for my birthday and I planned to get as many Lps (yes, vinyl) as it could buy. I'd decided to buy cold, too, meaning, I was going to look through the vast bins and pick albums of artists I'd never heard of, all in the folk category...

Sacred Spaces Within

We musicians have a special relationship with our instruments. We fall in love with them, often name them, and sometimes refer to them with either male or female pronouns. When I got my very first guitar, a little $14 6-string that my dad brought home to me as a surprise for my 14th birthday, I took it everywhere I went, even to bed at night, where I gently placed it on the other pillow...

Peace, At Last

I never paid any attention to Etta James until one summer night in Kansas many years ago during a long trip I made in my VW van. I met a guy who collected records--LPs--vinyl, mostly the blues. I loved this song so much, I asked him to copy it onto a cassette for me. It was nearly all I listened to all the way back home to California.

Thank you, Ms. James, for all you gave us.

A Very Important Day

Reaching Out

Yesterday, not long after I posted the news of Deni's passing on Facebook, my phone rang. It was Ernie. As in Big Brother Ernie Joseph. My first thought was, "Oh, man, I can't talk to anyone right now," but that quickly changed.

He asked how I was doing, then he led me into a conversation about the clubs and the bands in Ventura County during the 1980s. We reminisced about the musicians we knew and performed with, and about how exciting the live music scene was at that time. We shared funny stories and nightmares about club owners, and the recording studios we'd used. We talked for over two hours, the conversation drifting from one thing to another, as they do whenever Ernie is on the other end.

We talked about how our perspective has changed about the music scene through the years, how making music for the love of music rather than fame and fortune took hold. We didn't talk about our troubles—he didn't allow the conversation to go in that direction—we just talked about music. Most importantly, he waited for me to be the one to end the conversation. It made yesterday a great deal more bearable. The sound of a friend's voice was all I needed.

Ernie is such a selfless, tender man. No wonder I based my main character, Gordon, on him and dedicated my book to him. He told me that he volunteers his free time to helping the disabled and the elderly, taking them on errands, hoisting them and their wheelchairs in and out of his van, and then he went on to say how they enjoy the way he "hot rods" them through the stores. How like him!

You know that I've always adored Ernie; I've never kept that a secret. His reaching out to me yesterday in his unique way meant everything to me. I just hope I'll get to spend some time with him again one day, face-to-face.

Heartfelt thank yous to everyone who thought of me yesterday, both here and on Facebook.

Stepping Up to Make a Formal Introduction

I've mentioned Tobiah in a couple of posts, but it's high time I really introduce you to her. I mean, like, formally. I came to meet her online through my son Micah, who produced her CD, Step Up; when I heard her music I was awestruck. She is such a talented songwriter, and I think you know how picky I am, being a songwriter myself. I heartily suggest you check out her CD. No worries, Tobiah, being the generous lady that she is, allows you to listen to it in its entirety before you buy it. She recently performed (with guitarist Nigel Beck) a live concert. Here is an excellent review, by Indie Showcase, of that performance.

TOBIAH - Thursday 24th March 2011 - The Blue Coconut Club. Pulborough. U.K. 

I was fortunate enough to have interviewed Tobiah on the 12th February this year for Indie Showcase. After having heard her new album "Step Up" many many times preceding the interview and loving it in its entirety, I had exceedingly high expectations of her gig. 

She shared the stage with another talented musician Nigel Beck, whose singing and finger picking skills on his 6 and 12 string guitars were breathtaking. They showcased their own songs individually and some they sang as a duet. Nothing special about the latter you might think, had it not been for the fact they'd only met each other for the first time the day before the gig! One day to rehearse live together but they sounded like they had been a musical couple for eons.  They complemented each other perfectly and I truly hope that this isn't a one-off and that I'll have the opportunity to listen to them live again.

I have to admit to having been put off going to live gigs because of my expectations. Yes, I know it's my fault, but when I go to listen to an artist or a band, I want to be able to hear them and just them. I don't want to hear the tinkle of glasses in the background or the quiet murmurings of people attempting to whisper to each other. At The Blue Coconut Club the owner Mr. Jimmy Lee, himself a very accomplished musician who also played on the night, laid down the rules, gently. This is how a music venue should be, perhaps it helps having a musician as the owner. The regulars knew and welcomed the rules and they were there for the same reason as I, they showed the respect due to artists and there wasn't a sound from them, apart from the well-deserved applause at the end of each song.

Tobiah looked absolutely gorgeous, but this isn't a lady who's just about aesthetics. Her voice, the lyrics and her guitar skills enthralled the audience. I felt privileged to have heard her album already, for I knew what to expect and she certainly didn't disappoint. Playing live shows up artists weaknesses and Tobiah was strong, very strong. 

I expect her to go far. 

But an artist needs appreciation from many to succeed, and we the audience cannot appreciate what we've not heard before. It is for outlets such as Indie Showcase to spread the word, showcase their music. 

I urge you all to listen to Tobiah, there will be the majority of you unlucky enough not to be able to see Tobiah live, but her album "Step Up" is the next closest thing.
Tobiah, I know I will be safe speaking on behalf of the others at the gig in thanking you for a wonderful night.

I wish I could have been there, I knew I was missing something very special. But, good news! She has expressed that she might like to come to the States to perform!

Legends in Coats

This seems to be the year of the Legend walking away from the camera while wearing a long, swingy coat. Judging by these two CDs from Leonard Cohen and Keith Richards, that is...

Dirty River

In all the years I've been blogging, I don't think I've ever shared with you one of the most important eras of my life. It was a time when some dreams came true and others fell apart at the seams, so that may be the reason why I've never discussed it with you. It was a time when I was taken from the edge of hell to the very gates of heaven, only to be dropped again, left to find a new way back, a new destination, and new dreams. For years, even thinking about it created so much pain, there was no way I was going to talk, or even write about it.

Shanti-Mantra by Ravi Shankar

This song has gotten me through a very difficult week, so I made this video in thanks.

My Musical Roots: The Rooftop Singers

I think this group had only one big hit, Walk Right In, but I played the heck out that 45. Both sides (the B side was Cool Water). It was, of course that pairing of two beefy 12-string guitars that made the record so popular in early 1963, and it was what began my lifelong love affair with folk music. I'd always wanted to be a beatnik anyway, and the folk music scene was just an extension of all that, with candles in wine bottles, Cubism on the walls, the poetry of Ginsberg and Kerouac, and the obligatory existential, black turtleneck...

My Musical Roots: Fats Domino

Oh, but I remember my brother playing Fats Domino's 45s. Although he was only seven years older than me, Rick was of an entirely different generation. While the 60s loomed ahead for me, in the 50s Rick was all about Elvis, Conway Twitty, The Platters, The Ventures, and Fats Domino.

I wasn't all that fond of Elvis. Even when I was still in the single digits age-wise, I felt there was something pre-fab about him. Something contrived and manufactured. Later, I learned that it was his manager, Col. Tom Parker, who castrated him, musically. But Fats Domino was a different matter...