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| Playing Stormy Monday on an instrument intended for Puff, the Magic Dragon. |
This is the only known picture representing my brief but furtive professional musical career, which took place in its entirety in a single evening at the Black Dog Coffeehouse somewhere in the bowels of Kansas, during which I played the goofy 12-string guitar you see pictured here. (That's me on the right.) It must be noted that I made no mistakes, and also that no money was involved, except at the end of the set when I got a cup of coffee and they charged me for it.
I paid for the coffee, but I did not put a tip in the jar.
For this gig, we called ourselves the Square Waves. That was mine.
My son was there--that was the whole point, a father-son band, as you can see with the front man there and his son, the bass player--but my son was not in the picture. Well, not exactly. He is being eclipsed in this shot by the front man, Detroy. Hence the term front man, I guess.
We played for about 45 minutes--all covers, of course--and I did not sing. The most challenging piece was our rendition of Stormy Monday, I thought. Detroy gave me the chords, and I listened to the Allman Brothers Band track about 20 times, and made my own part on the 12 string. It was all a lot of fun.
Did we suck? Oh yeah. Not as bad as the free-form jazz combo with the Pakistani drummer and bass player, but that's another story. Or, actually, no--I'm never going to talk about that.
A 12-string guitar! I played violin when I was a girl and four strings were all I could handle. Of course, I didn't have the option of drinking coffee back then, so maybe your cup of java is the trick to conquering all those strings. Glad that you *forgot* to tip. Honestly, they wouldn't even give you a cup of coffee?!
ReplyDeleteApples oranges. On a 12 string guitar, 6 of the strings are just along for the ride and you don't have to think about them. Plus, I'm aware of how difficult it is to make a musical sound come out of a violin. As is my cat who I felt was certain there was some kind of demon mouse in the little wooden box I was holding under my chin.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about the payment for the coffee. I thought of saying, "I'm with the band," then thought better of it.
Square waves. That's good.
ReplyDelete