21 Days/ Day 5

GREAT MOMENTS IN ALCOHOL

I told you about a band I was in in the 80’s for a good while by way of remembering Bo Diddley — in a later incarnation, that same band had grown to 6 pieces, and begun to take on an entirely different aspect. Funkier,  stranger, steering a careful course towards the waterfall and the sharp rocks below.

One Tuesday night, in Tucson, we’d played a killer set before a small but appreciative crowd, and the novice club owner had actually paid us 5oo bucks or something. We were rich.

This particular band almost exclusively toured out west, and we almost exclusively camped out after shows. Weeks went by in that band without seeing a hotel room. It’s hard to express what freaks we really were. These days I see a few “green” bands touring around, and I wonder…

…anyway, we’d experienced a payday, and feeling flush, checked into some low-rent motel by the freeway.

I guess we all drank a little. We were into other things. But one of us drank a lot.

William  Blake was a full-on alcoholic. His maintenence dose would leave him pretty placid, but you could count on it: a few nights on every tour we were going to endure some truly crazy fucking shit. Motherfucker was directly responsible for my beloved Fender getting ripped off, for example — one night, right here in Austin, he so pissed off about 75 drunken fratfucks that I believe to this day I saved him from at least serious harm by hustling him and his guitar shit away from a gig, tout motherfucking suite.

When I came back to get my bass, it was gone. So yeah, it was my fault.

BUT IT WAS HIS FUCKING FAULT, TOO

Sorry.

Anyway, that night in Tuscon, he’d achieved his dose pretty early, and answering whatever demons were calling him that night, he just kept on. We were so…  organic… tribal, even, by then, that we literally communicated with hand signals, and the band organism detected individual failure, and we hustled right outta there.

And ahhhh – into luxurious Days Inn comfort.

All six of us, in one room. It sounds oppressive, maybe, but we’re talking refrigerated air and a shower.

Just sitting here thinking about it, I am amazed. What can I say? — the pull of the music was strong.

So Blake was completely drunk. He was one of those kinda funny, sharp but not mean drunks, uh, Churchill, not Bukowski, if you get my drift. By the time we got checked and snuck in, he was just as pliant as a rag doll (and as capable of caring for himself), so by drunken default he got one of the beds. I don’t remember who got the other bed — we all were so used to rolling out our bags that it really didn’t matter —  but before long, by maybe 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, we were all asleep. We had to get up  soon, and drive  some impossibly long ways.

Sometime later — it was still dark — I woke up to a blood-curdling shriek. We couldn’t find a light, and in the heavy-curtained motel darkness we could hear a counterpoint of animal growling and confused muttering. Finally one of us found the light switch, and there was  William Blake, dick in hand, standing over Yorgi, who was zipped up in his sleeping bag, still wearing a sleep mask  and earplugs as was his wont, unable , in his rage, to escape his confines and rip drunken Blake’s throat out.

For Blake had gotten up in the middle of the night, probably staggered the route to his bathroom at home in Austin, and relieved himself of a couple of six packs of beer.

All over Yorgi in his sleeping bag.

(I just got home from a bike ride. On my way across an airport tarmac in 100 degree heat, I was experiencing a pretty strong feeling for beer, and for the first time since I started these 21 days I experienced something very like a jonesin. Not a gee that would be tasty thing, more like a taste, smell, feel thing. I was glad to feel it, happy to dig in, push hard on my bike, feel the texture of the Texas heat envelope me, and ride it out.)

How Liss Spent Her Summer Vacation

(hear the band live on Aielli Unleashed)

 

 

painting by Layne Jackson from a photograph by Ralph Hattersley

 

 

 

How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Lissa Hattersley’s new record offers a much-needed holiday

First of all, a disclaimer:

I’m the bass player on this album. Lucky guy — I got to play great songs by songwriters that you may not have heard of, record with an amazing assortment of players you may not know about (unless you’re an Austinite, in which case you’re reading the liner notes and thinking wow whatta band) — and luckiest of all, I got to be a part of Lissa Hattersley’s 1st record as a solo artist!

So those are my bona fides – now let me tell you a little bit about this wonderful artist and the great recording she made.

This album is loooooong overdue, if you ask me (and a lot of other people, too), but in a world where solo records get made so soon, so often, I’m just glad she made it. Finally. I’m already bugging her about making another one.

Lissa Hattersley is from upstate New York, a little town called Canandaigua near Rochester. She’s spent most of her life in Austin, Texas and New York City. The way I get it, she wound up in ATX after her brother Cleve got here, but I’m never clear on what exactly he told her that convinced her to head south. But she did, and became an important part of the odd story of how Austin, Texas became one of the world’s musical capitals. When she got here in the early 70s, Lissa, Cleve and wondrous violinist Sweet Mary (and a revolving cast of sidemen and co-conspirators) formed a band called Greezy Wheels. In those heady days, Austin was already distinguished, if that’s the right word, as one of the nation’s counter-cultural centers. The real nexus of the thing was probably Hippie Hollow, but the enduring symbol was the Armadillo World Headquarters . I won’t go into a history lesson now — besides, you can follow the hyperlinks — I mention this by way of telling you Lissa was the vocalist and mandolinist in Greezy Wheels, essentially the Armadillo House Band. 

Things just come together like that sometimes: a movement, a band, a place to play. By the time I got here in the late seventies Austin had been permanently altered by a small but incredibly potent group of musicians, artists, and club owners. For me, a young bassist from the wilds of Denton TX, the idea of playing with Lissa or Greezy Wheels was impossibly remote. Greezy Wheels was one of the very first Austin bands to sign with a BIG LABEL, they toured, they held court at Soap Creek and the Armadillo (shoot, they opened for Bruce Springsteen on his first stop in Austin!), they appeared on Austin City Limits – they were the real deal.

The season changed, and with it, Austin, though forever altered, changed, too: the Armadillo became a parking lot, dem ole Greezy Wheels quit turning for a time, and Lissa moved back to NYC.

There she lived, and played, and worked, and made art, and as usual attracted top players to her side for her always too-few gigs. Liss is that kind of musician: players want to play with her, not because it’s steady or cush or remunerative, but because she’s a player, too. 

The season changed again, and she came back to Austin, and continued a life of friends and work and art that always somehow made room for her beautiful singing. 

Wheels are meant to turn — in time, and from adversity, Greezy Wheels returned, that same family core intact, but with a whole new cast of regulars — including me, this time, in the honored bass chair, backing up Lissa’s fantastic singing, so particular, so intimate.

Playing bass behind Lissa Hattersley’s singing gives me that feeling that brought me to the service of music in the first place. Her phrasing, her intonation, her flexibility, her intent listening – when musicians say this about a singer, it’s meant as the highest compliment: it’s like playing with a horn player, man. What that means is she hears the chords, she knows the notes, she feels the time, and she gets the difference between hip and ouch. 
   
Playing with Lissa is like playing with a horn, man. 

The seasons went by in their slow and majestic Texas pace, and — when was it? — a year ago? Lissa told me she wanted to make a record of her own. I immediately offered my services as janitor or brass polisher at the sessions, but, unaccountably, she wanted me to actually play some bass. And she began bouncing ideas for the record off of me, and I watched as she began the always amazing process of creating an album from thin air.

And what an album it is!

I keep calling How I Spent my Summer Vacation a record or an album — by that I mean it in the old school sense of those words: a document conceived and crafted, best taken not just as a collection of songs, but rather a careful collection of compositions, players, and circumstances, all guided with a storyteller’s intent.

Several stories are being told: stories about the progression of relationships (both with others and with one’s self), stories about how sad being alone is, stories about how sad not being alone can be… stories, too, about how exhilarating both states can be — but also, I think, there’s a story woven into the fabric of the recording about Lissa’s own relationship to music, telling us about love and growth and acceptance in an artist’s heart.

Right out the gate there’s trouble: her brother Cleve Hattersley weighs in with his biting and rueful “Love is a Crime Scene” 

 A crime has been committed here/I know the victim’s name/it’s meeee…

 

…and then, in Tony Airoldi’s wonderful “Talking in Your Sleep”, we meet a couple that isn’t communicating very well — at least not while they’re awake.

Then Lissa gives us a little break with her own “Reverie”, a gorgeous and impressionistic song that comes to us on the tail of a moonbeam…
…and it’s a good thing she did, too, because now we careen from infatuation (Marc Black’s “Moonstruck Love”, a perfect deer-in-the-headlights-I’m-in-love R&B pop song) to closing time in bars and not quite enough alcohol in Lissa’s own hilarious and funky “There’s No Fool.”

I first heard the great and under-appreciated standard “Shake Down the Stars” lovingly treated by Sarah Vaughan (another musician’s singer), and I was struck by both the desperate loneliness of the lyric and the lush beauty of the composition. On Lissa’s delicately aching version, check out the great solo turns by violinist Sweet Mary Hattersley and guitar great Chris Duarte.

From desperate to defiant, Tex Thomas writes to that part of every musician that’s wild and free, and maybe even a little bit mean, and gets it exactly right: there’s a “Fugitive Animal” in every single one of us… and yep, it’s true, we do take a certain pride in it.

But sometimes even the wild ones get adopted, and Ned Sublette’s beautiful “Nightworker’s Song (Blue Time)”, played in close and moving counterpoint as close as a whisper, is a lovely tribute to small and lasting pleasures.

Next up is another song from her brother Cleve, this one from the early Greezy songlist. ”Peace in the Valley” offers a quiet and gentle vision, a sort of promise of heaven.

When we return to earth for the closing tune, “Whatever Way You Want It” (penned by the late and lamented Dan del Santo), we get The Professor’s ode to cheerful and earthy acceptance, and we realize we’ve been on a journey, and it’s been a memorable one. 

The musicians on this record — well, there are highlights everywhere, but just off the top of my head I’d direct you to the dreamily intertwined horns on “Talking in Your Sleep” and listen to Frosty’s drumming, a sly and knowing percussive Greek Chorus throughout — startling, splendid work. For that matter, check out Paul Pearcy’s groove on “There’s No Fool” — that’s New York funk, Texas style, at once relaxed and precise — there’s no teaching that; it’s a DNA thing.

Or check out the 4 bars of trombone madness from Jon Blondell on “Crime Scene”! — or dig John Mills, featured throughout, delivering one great, stirring solo after another, as well as contributing all sorts of cool little ensemble touches. Mills is a miracle, and not just a minor one, either.

Chris Gage not only co-produced, engineered, and mixed the record, but evidence of his stunning musicianship can be found everywhere — piano, guitar (check out his scary dog guitar on “Fugitive”, or his perfect piano dialog with Lissa in “Reverie” – that’s the same musician! Great player, and a joy to work with.

Oh, it goes on and on. It’s a killer record. Lissa would be the first to tell you if it is, it’s because of everybody’s contribution, and that’s true enough, I suppose. But I was there from its first little glimmer, and I can tell you: this is Lissa’s record, through and through. The songs weren’t yet chosen, and she had little or no idea how, when, or with whom, but what she described to me then is what you have in your possession now: a record of songs by writers she loves and wants to honor, played by players she loves playing with — or knew she would love playing with  if she could just get up the nerve to call them!

Well, she called, and they came, and we all played, and at last, at long last, it is my great pleasure and honor to present you with Lissa Hattersley’s debut as a solo artist.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

extra hours

6 2 * Schoenberg always complained that his American pupils didn’t do enough work. There was one girl in the class in particular who, it is true, did almost no work at all. He asked her one day why she didn’t accomplish more. She said, “I don’t have any time.” He said, “How many hours are there in the day?” She said, “Twenty-four.” He said, “Nonsense: there are as many hours in a day as you put into it.”

John Cage — Indeterminacy

Turns out you can add hours of sleep to whatever limited-ass sleep-deprived regime you might have decided to try and subsist on because perhaps you’ve decided you can, oh, I dunno, master guitar, piano, keep on bassin’, get a little drumming technique, write, work, immerse yourself in politics, and occasionally talk to other humans (you probably don’t do that much; you probably should). And be in several bands. And have a job or two or three. Oh, and walk your dog.

I don’t know what kind of psychopath would take all that on, but if I did, I’d be happy to tell him what I learned, exhausted, last night: you can emerge into semi-consciousness, peer at the clock, will it backwards to an earlier time, and go back to sleep. This incredibly valuable technique (oh, I wish I’d discovered it sooner!) allowed me something like 20 hours of sleep in the narrow-ass 4 hour window I allotted myself… once I figured this out, I kept working the clock backwards, and this morning, at 5:15, I arose, refreshed, recuperated, and rejuvenated.

LA guitar pendejos and the pinche mierda they toca

Well, I may change that title before I post this, but it speaks perfectly to the subject. For the first time since I started keeping this journal, I’m tempted to drop the anonymity just so I can publicly bust this fuckhead for the bullshit-playing, hate-filled, has been, jive-ass motherfucking phoney he is, but then I’d have to go back and redact the whole blog out of respect for the not-public-figure humans I’ve mentioned (as aliases) in these pages.

And it doesn’t matter. And I don’t want to provoke even the slightest curiosity that might lead to selling even a single one of his songs on iTunes. But “has been” isn’t quite it; “never was” is closer to the mark. Shit, I never was, neither, but I ain’t making claims. I’ve played some real good music with some real fine musicians, though, and I’m proud of the ridiculously eclectic and eccentric musics this haunted little rift in the spacetime fabric of Texas seems to consistently produce.

Where to start, where to start…

I got a call from a booking agent I know, he said, “Hey man, I got a coupla gigs if you want them, this guy Fuckstick McHair* outta LA, he’s amazing, man, and I told him all about you, and he really wants to play with you.”

As it happens, I’d actually played a little with Fuckstick in 2007**, but he was working his way up the Austin foodchain, and I was insane at the time, so I may not have really registered on his social-climbing radar or answered his phone calls or emails for like 8 months or something. I do remember through the cloud of madness thinking, wow, this guy’s really a smarmy, unpleasant fuck, and I really loathe this fucking Los Angeles studio musician 11th chord suspension and modulating shit with this 53rd string Mose Alison vocal on top of it crap.

But that was last year, and, as you might have gleaned, I wasn’t exactly functioning at peak mental efficiency back then, and besides that, there was a certain wheedle to my booking agent pal’s (he’s also very, very sick) voice that told me I’d be doing him a solid.

I’m all about doing a solid, so I said yes, telling myself, maybe it was just the fog I was in, maybe the music wasn’t that awful, and learning a book, doing two gigs, it’ll be good discipline.

I was already sure, if it came to pass at all, that I’d only do the two shows, because I am sick to death of guitar music; fucking cliché-ridden electric guitar bluesrock swill is about the most tiresome thing on earth. I’d played with one of the best guitarists in the world at doing that stuff, and one of the reasons he’s not famous-er than god is precisely because he tried to play out of that horrible tired box those fuckers live in.

So anyway, I said, “Well, tell him to call me, he has my number, I’ll see if those dates are open.”

“Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou, Seven, man, I really appreciate it, and this could be like a ton of road work, recording, fame, fortune, limos, lear jets…”

uh-huh.

About 30 seconds later, Fuckstick called me himself. He told me how great I am, that he wanted to learn my songs, send him an mp3 — and I already I feel like I’m being played. He tells me the dates, pumps the gigs up like I’m gonna be in Carnegie Hall before I know it, and the second one, the really important one, it’s a show with up and coming guitar acts — and there’s gonna be Fender reps there.

Well, hang on a sec, let me just empty my diaper, there, partner! You say a guitar company is gonna be there? And 2 other mediocre-ass bluesrock trios are on the bill? Lord, have I died and gone to heaven?

Truth is (I’ll bet you’re way ahead of me on this), I shouldn’t have taken the gigs. I was already looking at a crazy nosleepnosleepNOSLEEP! upcoming two weeks: I’d just joined another band, my increasingly full roster of students needed more thought and planning, I could barely walk because I’d torn a muscle running, my day gig (it still feels strange, typing that) was, well, taking my days –

– and oh, did I mention I fucking hate guitar bands?

But I did take the dates, against my better judgment, mainly because I’m an idiot and because it came to me in the form of a favor for a friend.

So we set up a CD and chart exchange, a couple of rehearsal dates, and Fuckstick emails me a songlist. At some point I set aside 5 minutes to peruse the material, and I realize, oh, no! — make that multiple oh, nos: these are the worst charts ever written; virtually every song shows up in this pile of 5 CDs in at least 3 different versions (seriously); almost every song is a cover (a bad cover); the originals are bad-Jeff-Beck-as-played-by-the-knowitall-fuckhead-salesman-at-the-Guitar-Center-on-Sunset Blvd., and each and every arrangement offers all kinds of little squirrelly details: little unison rifflets that you’re only supposed to play on the 3rd and 8th repeats (complexity in arrangements isn’t a bad thing — in fact, that was the element that sustained me through this whole ordeal. What you hope for is a reason for every gesture a composer makes), multiple modulations (oh, yuck)…

and some of the songs are MEDLEYS (oh a medley is a loathsome thing).

The charts — they’re like this (only handscrawled):

BBBB F#___________ Gb A#A# !!!!

(BbBbBbAbGGGGCD#D#)

– for, like, a whole page. For real. The !!!s? That wasn’t commentary from me, apparently that means accents, or hits… oh, boy.

The CDs — studio, live, different band, studio, outtake crap… with 3, 4 different arrangements, tempos, everything — which version should I learn?

Covers — well, I’d sworn off playing covers years before, which is not to say I’d taken a vow against playing songs by other people, but rather that I’d made a commitment to original music. The covers here — well the only way I can think of to characterize them is as novelty covers… I’m not gonna go into it too much, but imagine a Stevie Ray song emasculated, reharmonized, the melody given a whispery, faux-jazz reworking and delivered in a horrible imitation of some desperate, irradiated, dropped-on-its-head lovechild of Astrud Gilberto and Mose Alison…

…okay, I’m hyperventilating…

Gratuitous modulation is the first refuge of musical morons everywhere. I’ve studied classical music almost my entire life; I’m such a dork that I’ll buy a score and pass on bread for a month. Modulation (which means changing keys) is a subtle emotional art that composers go to considerable lengths to achieve seamlessly, but more importantly, musically. This stuff — BLANG – new key – BLANG – do it again — it’s jive, it’s jarring, it’s a cheap coat of yellow paint on a rusty piece of shit ‘78 Ford Maverick.

Medleys are of course both the work of SATAN and proof of his existence.

And this crap is slick. Slippery doo doo. That’s the the worst thing of all for music to be – slick. I’d rather hear some 4 year-old clawing at an out-of-tune banjo than listen to somebody’s slick fuckin shit. The players on Fuckstick’s CDs are LA session types, great players with plenty of chops, and I’ve gotta tell you it’s some toneless, souless fuckin bullshit. But look. I’m a bass player, right? I agreed to play this dreck, and so it was time to man up, learn the shit, play the gigs, and take it as a pure exercise in learning — and, may the gods of music assist me — forgetting.

So I was actually cheerful about it — hard to believe, given the bilious nature of every single paragraph in this piece so far, I know, but in the timeline of this association I truly welcomed the challenge, and Fuckstick was certainly very nice. It’s also true that I felt like I was being groped by a skeevy porn mogul, but hey! — it’s nice to be wanted, right?

A couple of days later Fuckstick came over to my apartment, and, as we began to set up, he started telling me what a fucked up town Austin is, how much he hates it here, how every single musician (except me, of course, I’m different) in my fair city plays nothing but strumsy-wumsy bullshit, how the guitarist I played with for so long (and whom I love as a brother) wasn’t all that, didn’t listen…

… then he launched into Stevie Ray, Alejandro, and several other leading lights, all Texans (except me), the weather, our dogs, the shape of our clouds… I don’t know, it was a stream of spew, it’s hard to describe the unpleasantness that was coming out of Fuckstick’s mouth, all delivered with a big smile and new age, fake Buddhist homilies. Takes the edge off, don’t you know, to say, “Everyone in Austin is a pig — but I love them and all is bliss.”

Inwardly reeling before this onslaught of arrogant bigotry, I muttered something about how I never had really belonged to any Austin cliques, and it wasn’t really about all that, anyway. Dark murder was in the room, and I was trying my best to master the lizardbrain within that commanded me to rend and tear Fuckstick limb from limb.

Typing this now, I’m wondering why I didn’t just throw him out on the spot. I think it was shock — shock at how violently I reacted. Only a week before, one of my coworkers was gently kidding me, and said, “Oh, Seven, when was the last time you got mad at anyone?” And I couldn’t remember! And there I was with medieval scenarios dancing in my brain…

Look. There’s lots of folks that need to elevate themselves, but since they have no lift, they have to bring everything down; you know them, I know them. My theory about Fuckstick (and why he thought this approach was going to what? — gain him a loyal minion?) goes something like this:

Fuckstick had come into Austin expecting to be worshipped in Guitartown, and discovered the painful truth, as true here as it is in LA, NYC, and Nashville — no one cares. On the strength of his jive and his resume and his connections, he was able to quickly insinuate himself among the Austin elite, aided by his cutthroat seduction technique, the very essence of survival among the second and third-rate in the SoCal desert. Because guess what, everybody likes to be told they’re beautiful, even by skeevy porn moguls. But the thing about us Austin players is, you can seduce us, but you can’t change us. It’s not really Guitartown, Stevie Ray and Eric J notwithstanding, it’s Eccentrictown, and that’s the real truth and the real heart of Austin music.

And that’s the heart of Austin. People come here thinking they’ll change this place, and oh, they upchuck their stripmalls and condotowers and prefab music, but they always either wind up hating this town and leaving it forever or being transformed by it. I believe there’s some deep and serious juju on this land, myself. I think it predates even Native American cultures, and goes all the way down to the core of the planet. There are places like that, you know, weird little pockets of magic, not always benign — New Mexico, Utah, Peru — LOTS of them, and this town is one of them, no doubt. I know; I’ve been everywhere, man.

Meanwhile, back at the rehearsal

Well, I could see this was going to go badly: bad charts, too many song versions, complicated, over-arranged material, all of that is easily surmounted, but you add in a despicable human (you’ll see) and dreadfully bad music, and oboy, where’s my motivation, as they say in Hollywood.

Our next rehearsal, a few days later, was with the drummer at a house of one of Fuckstick’s pals out Manchaca way, one of those ridiculously large places they build on the outskirts of every city in America. Inside, the decor was Dissolute SoCal Whiteflight Alcoholic Coke Dealer. Trash everywhere, piled high, but it was cartons of soy milk, tofu dog packages, and vodka bottles. We set up inside of that sprawling mess in a studio that must’ve easily cost over $100k. As we trudged through the musical muck, I observed a very good young drummer thoroughly cowed into removing all personal aspects of his playing to serve the Aesthetic Vision of Fuckstick McHair.

Depressing.

Out of solidarity for the drummer, I joined him in the task of soul removal — it was what our ‘leader’ wanted, you know? In a weird way, it was the musical thing to do — putting some soul into this crap would’ve actually made it worse by highlighting its fundamental hollowness. But the implicit oppression pained me. Why accept bullying from this little man with his small prospects? I know why I was putting up with it, a favor, two gigs and I’m out, learn a lot of stuff real fast is good brain exercise, etc… but why was this drummer putting up with it? — he plays with him on a regular basis.

And I thought back to when I was 20-something…

no, hahaha, I would’ve put a severe hurting on Fuckstick, lacking all the civilized restraint I now enjoy

Late teens…

Yeah, maybe. The music is hard, ultra-arranged, well-played, I wouldn’t have understood the chords very well. I suppose I could’ve easily been cowed by an LA session dude with an aggressive demeanor and famous musician stories to tell.

I felt for the kid. But he’s more like 27, voluntarily playing this bullshit — hell, he may like it, not for me to judge for anyone except me.

There was one more rehearsal before the gig. Unexpectedly I had a chunk of time open up, and I told myself I’d devote it to learning this dreadfully bad songlist before it rolled around.

But on the day I was paralyzed, man, it was like trying to pull out a healthy tooth. Instead I learned Relaxing at the Camarillo, a Charlie Parker tune , one of the coolest blues heads ever.

Austin slacker.

Still, by the time of the last rehearsal I felt I had a pretty good grasp of the tunes — how to decipher both the indecipherable charts and Fuckstick’s particular language (for example, “bomb” means “whole note”).

After his usual fellow-musician-slagging, Austin-hating preliminaries, we got down to bidness. As we went through the tunes, much to my bizarre combination of professional horror and profound human indifference, I couldn’t seem to retain anything about his horrible fucking music!

This is where I lay off of Fuckstick and take my own fuckhead self to task. Music is sacred to me, man. If I didn’t want to do it I should’ve said so, up front. All subsequent revelations about his mean-spiritedness and the profound terribleness of his music ain’t gonna get me off the hook. There I was, after THREE rehearsals, and ample time to review (ridiculously crowded schedule notwithstanding), incapable of remembering pretty much anything. And sitting here right now, intellectually recoiling from this severe, unpardonable lapse, in my heart, I remain, in truth, unmoved.

I guess I just can’t forgive dissing SRV — not to mention my best friend, the city where my daughter was born, the state where my ancestors lived and died… but you know, I’m a musician, I mean if, well, if Charlie Parker did that, I wouldn’t think twice: Yeah, you right, Bird, Austin sucks! — can we play Donna Lee now?

Inexcusable. This is an instance where I’m going to ignore my emotions and learn the lessons my brain commands me learn, which is (alone in) telling me I done wrong. My heart? My gut? They’re telling me I should’ve sabotaged his car, or superglued his face to a city bus.

And still Fuckstick was telling me how great I was, all about my spirit, my life, what I should be doing to be happy, did I wanna hook up with this woman he knows, and I’m thinking, it wouldn’t really even BE murder, right, I mean aren’t there instances where there’s implicit cosmic approval?

Come gig day, heeding my higher consciousness, I actually got up early, before my students started rolling through, and seriously knuckled down with the CDs for a few hours. After my last student left, I had a solid hour before I had to go to load in, and I filled it with more study on those horrible tunes. Dutifully, I wrote down questions about rifflets I didn’t have time to ear out (the charts were absolutely useless), arrangements (as in which of the many recorded versions should I heed), ectetera.

When I got up to the big, multi-room, something-for-everyone entertainment complex (which means you can listen to really loud country music while you play!), I loaded in my stuff, helped load in everybody else’s stuff (I’m a good guy to have in your band, honest I am), set up, asked my questions, clarified my rifflets, got the songlist in order. Then Fuckhead asked me if I’d go with him to grab a bite, and I said sure — my curiosity about other people is nearly bottomless, and it certainly wasn’t hard to get him talking about himself. We went to a Subway at a nearby freeway truckstop. I grabbed some trailmix and juice while he ordered up a sandwich. While we sat in the fluorescent yellow glory, eating, a family walked in –

“Look at those fat fuckers,” he hissed, “and LOOK! That one woman is wearing a Jesus t-shirt, she’s fat and ignorant.”

You go, boy, I thought, you’re actually dissing entire religions now.

Then he was off on Texas again, then all Southerners, with an aside for every human that walked in the door.

Walking back into the club, he looked at a couple in front of us and said something so vile I can’t repeat it here, not even in this invective-filled posting of mine. With that fucking Buddha twist on the end, too, and I realized, this is just one of the worst humans I’ve ever known.

You know, I did a pretty good job on the gig. I played the shit out of most of the songs, and expertly covered up the places where he changed thing up, or I’d completely forgotten. I definitely had a couple of brainblanks, but anyone would’ve on their first time on a gig as involved and arranged as that one.

On the first break he told me to put my bass amp on the ground, and I needed to play with more presence, man, music is about presence — this is Old Fart for turn up, I’m deaf. My good nature finally crumbled away and I said, “Back the fuck up. My rig stays where it’s at, my volume is fine, shut the fuck up.”

Well that drove him from the dressing room, and I fear it may have cast a permanent pall on our relationship, as well. Just then, the soundman put on a CD of me and my best friend, the brilliant guitarist Dervish, in all our ragged glory, and everything dropped into place, somehow.

And so it went, through 2 more sets. No one was there — why would they be? At the end of the night he called out the well-known sentimental standard he ends his nights with, and as I looked for the horrid chart to remind me of the modulations, he said loudly, dripping with sarcasm, “You don’t need a chart, do you?” and I hollered back, “I do when the changes are wrong and stupid,” but he didn’t hear me. Listening ain’t exactly Fuckhead’s long suit.

After the gig, I quickly tore down, loaded up my rig, and drove away. Before I left, the drummer said we should exchange numbers. He liked me. I liked him. Good player.

Halfway home, Fuckhead called me.

“Hey, where are you? I have your money!”

“Keep your fuckin money, I don’t want it.”

“You feel pretty bad, huh?” undoubtedly thinking I was agonizing over missed rifflet #9 on the second coda’s repeat in embarrassing cover song #33.

“Nope, I feel great,” I said, and I did — I was driving away from him and his lousy ass music.

It was dawning on him, at last. “Will you play that Fender showcase?”

“I will,” I said, “because I said I would. But here are my conditions. One rehearsal, no more, the drummer has to be there, and that’s it. And after that, you may never call me or email me again, ever. Is that clear?”

I haven’t heard back from him.

__________________________________

*Not his real name.

** Watch for my upcoming post (it’s still in draft form) called “Everything I did in 2007 was wrong”