Maugorn

Prologue:
Last year, when I watched the simulcast of one of the nights of the Fare Thee Well shows (surviving members of The Grateful Dead + select guests sitting in for the empty chairs), THAT was impressive! I wrote how enchanted I was that their stunt guitarist to replace the late Jerry Garcia really captured the essence and nuance of Jerry's skilled, beautiful, fluid, and highly idiosyncratic style of guitar playing. He met and exceeded the standards so well that it was JUST like hearing and seeing the shows I saw and heard, except for not having Jerry's vocals.

Later, when some of that lineup decided to keep going as "Dead And Company", with a young protege' named John Mayer in Jerry's seat, I wasn't as impressed. A big attraction to the Dead for me was Jerry's guitar playing. There really wasn't and isn't anything like it. That's what I missed, and that's what Mayer (at that time) kinda imitated, but it was a bit of lo-res picture of it. I was ready to let Jerry go to Heaven and move on.

Present:

But I let Sonya talk me into going to their show last night. I'd known of the Dead, and liked them before I met Sonya, but she got me INTO them. We really bonded going to shows together of not just the Dead, but especially them. So it was one of our "things", and well, you gotta have the things. You gotta do the things.

But man oh man! That young feller Meyer has DONE his homework and now he gets to play with his friends and have the best fucking job in the WORLD!
He has REALLY grown into those huge shoes he was hired to fill.

To be honest, it's not quite the same. Somehow, Jerry's playing, as well as having those idosyncratic hooks was really pretty, and Mayer still has some maturing to do to get there in the pretty department, but technically and stylistically, he's NAILING IT! And he also brings that "not quite fully grown dog who still has his puppy energy" onto the stage and uses it well. Bob Weir, Jerry's guitarish cohort all these years has blossomed into more of the lead guitar world than I remember, especially when Mayer sings, and his singing is a good thing. Mayer's a closer match to Jerry's voice than they've had, so they're not relying as heavily on Weir's part of the vocal repertoire. So the sound has both expanded and evolved a bit over the last reunion. But the Dead have NEVER stood still or pat on their sound or their style. They were always a dynamic venture and still are and that can't be a surprise. With a different bassist in the lineup too, their signature freestyle vamping and warping from one song into another as the mood hits them is not quite as there as it was before. The songs last night had more definite endings and beginnings than the Dead at their peak had. But that's understandable and okay. However- there was some of that creeping back in! Yay! I saw and heard how those blanks were beginning to be filled back in again. Assuming this venture continues, which it looks like it will, that will re-manifest itself in all it's quirky flowy glory. Overall, at this show, at it's best, I could close my eyes and hear the Dead that I got into. At it's worst, I only had to wait a minute max, and it was still damn good. And in those moments when the band got into the groove and painted outside the lines and surfed those big waves of sound- they were magnificent; as magnificent as I remembered.

Oddly enough, my remaining wish as I listened, was to hear more of Jeff Chimenti's keyboard playing. Maybe it was just the night, but he seemed to be a little bit background, and he's good. I wanted more. Maybe next time!

I would see this band again, when the opportunity presents.

In classic rock are these totally kickass epic iconic guitar solos. The end of “Hotel California” certainly ranks among them. There is no doubt about that.
But for a guitar solo that is not all bombastic and epic, there is still a profound, sublime even transcendent beauty to the guitar solo in “Try And Love Again”. I love that solo so much.
The whole _Hotel California_ was a spectacular success. IMHO, There isn’t a single weak song on there. Back in the day, I remember almost collecting the entire record via the singles. It was kind of unprecedented for an album to have that many gold or platinum singles come out of it.

It was 1977. I was 14 years old, and re-new to the DC area (we'd lived in MD back in the 60's) having just moved to Bowie MD. Before that we'd lived in western NC, before that, a brief stay in NJ, and before that, Spain. So, when I arrived in this area, while alot of pop music and some amount of country music was in my brain, I had been aching for something more. I'd discovered songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody" and my mind was blown. I grew up with a great appreciation of classical music and Queen, combining it with Rock and Roll was mind-exploding. A fellow student in my karate class had introduced me to Rush back in NC and the _2112_ album was hitting all the right buttons for my love of Scifi. But still, my exposure to what is now called "classic rock" was limited: The Beatles (and then Wings) were my big obsession. I knew I liked Rush. I also was way into my first Elton John record (_Caribou_). I dug the Eagles and Heart, and Aerosmith, but had only heard a few songs at most from any of them. That summer, between NC and Bowie, I gotten some glimpses of the song _Carry On Wayward Son_, by Kansas and it sounded like I'd like it, but didn't quite know from Kansas yet. So, I was a nearly blank slate as I found 98 Rock, broadcasting out of Baltimore, late in the summer of 1977.

I found that I LIKED Rock and Roll. I liked it a LOT. Loud electric guitars and anthemic, bombastic, glorious noise was JUST right for 14 year old me.
Eagles! Queen! Rush! Kansas! Heart! Aerosmith! Led Zeppelin! (!!!), Pink Floyd (!!!!) The Who, on and on. There were some bands that didn't move me that much, (like Lynyrd Skynyrd- I was not as fond of the South that spawned them and informed their lyrics, character sketches or not). Styx had just released _The Grand Illusion_ and OMG!!! "Come Sail Away" was just the most magnificent thing I'd ever heard, and THEN I heard it on the headphones. Even the more acoustic-y bands like Crosby Stills and Nash and early Jefferson Airplane were devoured by my young ears off of my little clock radio.

All through that period, as I started high school and got recommendations of other bands from schoolmates, (Bob said "Check out Jimi Hendrix" and OMG was he right) I would stay up late at night, reading, and listening- but there was still an itch that hadn't gotten scratched yet.

My eighth grade English teacher had taken my existing love of poetry and fostered it into a profound fruition. She'd taken us through various forms and periods and my mind was blown. Not only could poems be pretty, but they could have a depth to them; unconventional rhyme and meter, allegorical or symbolic tracks parallel to their straightforward narratives, abstractions just playing on the sounds, and EVEN a coherency in direct spite to a lack of form or formal structure. My mind was blown wide open. And THEN- she had us bring in the lyrics to our favourite songs and we analysed and dissected them using what we'd learned of the poems we'd studied. My mind was blown all over again, as I began to see poetic potential in song lyric.

And so- as my mind was being blown musically by rock and roll, some thoughts began to bubble through my brain:
-You could make rock music with classical pretensions (Queen!) and rock's natural penchant for epic, larger than life sound could feed seamlessly into that.
-You could make rock music with Science Fiction elements like Rush and Styx, with again, those epic elements boosting the story like a rocket
-You could write deep, penetrating allegory with Rock's penchant for big/loud being a macrocosm for the microcosm you examined. ("Hotel California")
-You could, as with the classical music I loved create profoundly emotional passages; lifts, joy, catharsis, and pain. (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix)

And as teenage me devoured my Tolkien, I started to wonder if, maybe if, there could be music played that evoked (for instance) Tolkien's epic imagery in it, not just in the usual rock idioms, but if rock could be played with a classical range of emotion. It would, (I theorised) take some considerable musical virtuosity; an ability and willingness to play Rock music outside of Rock's musical boxes-to experiment with the form and find new musical frontiers with modern instrumentation with old and new and heretofore unheard stylings.
I also started to wonder if the *writing* in rock music could benefit from someone who *really* knew wordcraft- someone who was not content with simple couplet rhyme, who was willing to tackle the universes I liked to imagine and the complexity of not-so-simple human be-ing. And could such a someone capture the majesty of a world (real or imagined) the way Tolkien could?
I wondered, and I wondered.

And one day, in the early fall of 1977, there it was: the brand new single from the brand new album by Yes: "Wondrous Stories".
I'm not sure if I heard "Wondrous Stories" or "Roundabout" first on 98 Rock.
They played both songs, I remember that, and I remember that "Roundabout" impressed the HELL out of me. These were guys who were not at ALL content to keep Rock in the same place they found it. They heard music outside of ANY boxes, and they played the HELL out of it. Wow!
But "Wondrous Stories"- that song grabbed me by the brain, my heart, and my entire soul as nothing had before and little since. "Didst my heart love till now? Forswear it sight! For I never knew true beauty 'till this night!" (Shakespeare, but you get the idea).
That night, I found what is, to this day, my favourite song EVER!
Everything I longed for in a lyric; the craft, the flow, and the magnificence evoked to me by Tolkien's prose. And everything I longed for in music: the epic sound, the soaring instrumental sections, the spot on "greek chorus" like counterpoint to the narrative.

I got the Yes album _Going For The One_ for Christmas that year and it is, to this day, my favourite album ever. As I came into my own buying of my own records, I tended, in those days (depending on the price) to not buy an album that only had one song I liked, until I'd heard more from it. Money was scarce and record albums precious. _Going For The One_ came before that time for me, and it stands, even now, as an exception to that rule (usually three songs on a full priced album before I buy). That year, we also started spending more time at my Uncle Tony's house in Columbia MD around the holidays. Holiday visits with him were easier, and so became more common. Around Easter, I think it was, we went to visit, and in the living room, was this crate of record albums that I was told belonged to my Uncle Doug, who was in the process of moving and had put his records with my Uncle for safekeeping. I was told, that if I wanted to borrow any, I was more than welcome. (Uncle Douglas was a HERO in my younger eyes, he always had and did the coolest things. I wasn't so good at emulating the sports he was so good at, but his other qualities - including a strong appreciation for art, science, bohemian counterculture, extreme generosity to me and an infallible moral compass made very deep impressions on me growing up.) I was BLOWN AWAY by this generosity- again! I noticed, among other things that piqued my curiousity, were several Yes albums. COOL!

One of those Yes albums was _Close To The Edge_, and that cinched Yes for me.
I got home and almost as soon as I had a chance, I was in the living room with the headphones on and the lyrics in front of me and I DEVOURED that album.
Oh. My. God. I never knew that any band could write with such fearlessness, such grandeur, such eloquence, and be just so OUT THERE. And such virtuosity. I could TELL what they were playing was incredibly complex, weird, and demanding. And so breathtakingly beautiful. I totally dug how weird it was and the weird parts of the musical journey that album takes were very appealing to me. But weird music, (I'd found) was often dissonant, and sometimes seemed gratuitously so- weird for it's own sake, like Frank Zappa (whom I've always liked, but not like this). But Yes had a point to it, and were not at all afraid to create something as magnificently beautiful (as Bach or Wagner, or Beethoven, or Stravinsky) or as daring. (I was so pleased to find out just how daring Beethoven and Stravinsky had been in their days) _Close To The Edge_ was rock music, at the same time that it shattered the boundaries of the genre. I LIKED rock music. But THIS- this was MY Rock Music. That album cemented that for me. I then devoured _The Yes Album_ (the other Yes album my uncle had) and from that point onward EVERY Yes album I could find and afford to get- sight unseen, unlike most of the other albums I'd buy new.

And when "And You And I" came on the radio this morning, I let myself be taken back to that time when I heard Yes on the radio at age 14 and that song for the first time, at age 15, and how much THAT song on THAT album cemented my budding fandom for Yes for me.

By the time I was twenty, I owned about a hundred record albums. Almost half of that collection were albums by a handful of artists: The Beatles, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and David Bowie. Over ten of those albums were Yes albums.

Here it is, nearly forty years after my first hearing of the song, and it still packs that punch, and here's the coolest thing: I can still hear "And You And I" even now, and find new threads, new insight, and new colours and nuance in those lyrics. Damn! It's *almost* like not having to grow up, but not quite. It's more like I lucked on to loving something that growing up lets me appreciate even more.

I'm not always a genius. I have issues. I have gaps in my knowledge/expertise. I make mistakes, and I have really epically strange luck. Plus I'm in a business that is difficult, fickle, complicated, and rife with a subjectivity that is way beyond my control. I suffer from setbacks seen and unforeseen.

Through it all, I'm constantly offered advice and help from well-meaning friends. I and my weird, knotty life, seem to be an advice magnet. People see my struggles and they just can't wait to say something that starts with "Why don't you just.."

It even happens when someone asks me "Is there anything I can do to help?" and I say "Um, the most helpful things anyone can do for me are the basic things any performer needs: people to show up at my shows, people to bring folks to hear me play, people to buy my CDs, stuff like that. Those are the most helpful things anyone can do for me." I try to say it early and often, but more often than not, folks will fast forward past that part so that they can get to the point where they tell me some bit of advice that usually begins with "Why don't you just..."

This happens a lot. I hear it from many people- a lot. It gets on my nerves - sometimes, a lot. It bothers me enough that when I'm even a little bit stressed, I'm less than diplomatic with the folks who do it, especially with the ones who do it a lot. That's sad for both them and for me, because, more often than not, they really do mean well and really do wish me well and they are my friends and I love them and they love me too. And so to you folks whom I've snapped at when you were just trying to help, I'm sorry.

Nonetheless, I'd like this dynamic to change. I don't want people to have to endure my frustrated growling and hissing when they say "Why don't you just (do this thing I'm ALREADY doing or know won't work or know isn't applicable, or or or)

Folks, I need you to start believing me when I *tell* you what would be helpful to me. I live in me and in my world, and have for over half a century. I have a decent idea what works so far. And I'm very familiar with all the ways that don't work.

But it's also true that I need help. I need leads and advice, and even knowledge regarding my craft. I'm in a very frustrating phase of my career lately and there are things that I'm sure will help me move past it, that I need to know and don't happen to know. I NEED advice.

But I need good advice, advice that actually applies to me and to my strengths. It can't be yet another version of "Why don't you just..." that tells me more about what someone doesn't know, than it tells me about something that I don't know. Which brings me to a specific, but pretty generalisable example of what I'm talking about in the title of this entry.

Sometimes (either diplomatically or with varying degrees of surliness), I've asked people why they think that what I should "just do" will help, the answer I get is "Well, I just thought..." And all too often they base what they "just think" on incomplete info or even pure conjecture.

When I compare that to the advice/help/suggestions that HAVE been helpful; the ones that led me to developmental epiphanies, or more/better work for me, there is an *actual* difference in how the advice/help/suggestion is delivered. It's not just the wording of the suggestion though, it's the *content* behind it that counts. The key phrase:
"I happen to know..."

Here's a contrasting example:

WHY DON'T YOU JUST....
"Hey Maug, if you want to play in bars/restaurants, why don't you just call some up and get yourself booked?"
(Reality: I do. It's not an easy process. More often than not you need some way in *past* the dozens of others who are competing. Even if you are better than some of them, the owner of the venue will prefer a known quantity, because their business even for one night- is at stake)

vs

I HAPPEN TO KNOW...
"Hey, Maug, you remember my friends (xxxxxx)? They're openning a restaurant and I happen to know they want live music. I bet they'd love to hear from you.
(Reality: This isn't paraphrased very much from an actual conversation that led to the best restaurant booking I've ever enjoyed. It lasted two seasons, led to other bookings, made me new friends, and expanded me professionally as an artist and as a working artist.)

So, if you've read this far, thanks.

And if you're wondering if I'm looking for career advice, yes, I am.

But if you're about to jump in with a sentence that starts with "Why don't you just..." please reconsider.

If you have some intel, or knowledge that you think I can use, check and see if it can start with the phrase "I happen to know..."

Sadly, I'm still likely to get a lot of data that won't be very useful. But maybe, MAYBE this can help people self-sort out conjecture from what could prove to be an actual puzzle piece.

And reiterating this one more time can't hurt:
Seriously, the singularly most useful, helpful thing you can do for me and my career, is to show up for my gigs, buy my CDs and bring new people to my shows. It's the very first item on my wishlist, and I mean my Master Wishlist.

I meant to post this on Wed but you know? Somehow, I think this is a better post for today.

One of the nice things about teaching something, is that issues inevitably arise that are not YOUR issues. Overcoming those issues then teaches you something you may not know or have realised- it gets you out of your own box. And that magickally gives back to *you* more than you put in.

I'm teaching my bass student "Hotel California". To play it and sing it along with her I needed to be in the key of D- it's original key. When I first learned the song, I couldn't sing it that high, so, since I tune my guitar down a whole step, I used the same fingerings and have sung it in C instead.
But it's never really been a strong song for me, because it still lives way up at the top of my range. I don't know why I didn't just sing it an octave lower in D before- maybe it just didn't project (in the King St days I needed that), or maybe I didn't have the command of the lower part of my range that I do now (Thanks to Cindy's help). Or maybe for 20 years I just never thought of doing it that way. But last Wednsday, I found myself playing it in D again, and singing it an octave lower than Don Henley- and LOVING IT! I had control- I stayed on pitch and I had a really full tone. For 20 years, this song has been in my repertoire, received well when I've done it, but I've never really hit it the way I've wished I could. And all I had to do to find the path to fix it was to teach the bass line to a teenager.
Also, her dad (my guitar student) keeps wanting to learn to play songs I don't know yet, but should. So thanks to him, some other holes in my repertoire keep being filled.
Thursday was a GOOD day!

This is why, even tho my primary professional goal is to find gigs, that I always hope that I have time to have at least one student.
1) It lets me share my gifts and keep the music going and spreading
2) I ALWAYS seem to learn as much as my student does, even when I'm teaching the barest, greenest beginners how to just make the instrument work at all. Nothing has advanced my knowledge or improved my technique as much as teaching.

And when I apply this lesson to the macrocosm, it seems to hold true too- that *sharing* has an intangible way of amplifying that which is shared. I truly believe that That Lesson is the Truth behind the parable of the "Loaves & Fishes" miracle, which IMHO makes it far more important (and useful) than a bit of holy legerdemaine to prove some prophet's street cred.

*This* is what I think the greedy don't understand.

And is my answer to why Universal Healthcare is not a drain on the economy (or an *unfair* burden to support some who might be deemed unworthy), but a boost in prosperity that we will ALL benefit from.
It's a collective act of sharing that will come back to us all manifold.
It's NOT idealistic to believe in it.
I for one, experience it every week.

Try it and see. And think on this when you hear the voices who speak saying that the path to meet our collective needs is the path that enables selfishness and greed. That a path that emphasises "Looking out for OUR interests" means that we eschew the needs of others, and instead become a culture of ME/US first, because there just isn't enough (the budget) to share.

We're coming up on an important election.
Who speaks for a future of sharing, and who speaks of somehow saving our culture thru selfishness and avarice?
Dickens wrote:
"Business? Humanity is our business! MANKIND is our business!"

A couple of years ago, I had big fun playing a "Mystery Song" at my shows. It was a contest.
I played the song, and you had to identify the song's author and/or another song from the album I'd heard it on.

Back in 1976 or so, I had an album that had a HUGE hit song on it. I liked the hit song, but I loved the album. And it turned out that there was one song that really struck a chord in my psyche- a precursor to my love of mixing modern music with medieval sensibilities. The song was labelled "Love Song" and it was a tale of longing and rejection and unrequited desire set against a backdrop of medieval pageantry. The Album was _Paper Lace_ who's hit song was "The Night Chicago Died" (and they also wrote "Billy Don't Be A Hero". Anyway "Love Song" proved to be a beatiful "Mystery" song, as it got all kinds of guesses as to where it came from and who'd done it- some close, but all wrong. And I remained mum for over a year as I tortured people with this beautiful tune.

Eventually my downfall came playing it one night for fizzygeek who turned around and schooled ME on the song's real origins with another group. She'll probably pwn me with my new mystery song as well, but so it goes.

The new "Mystery" song came to me on a journey that started with Cheap Trick's "Surrender" going thru me head for no good reason as an internal soundtrack to my snow shovelling this past week. Maybe it was just a good "shovelling shanty". So today, to scratch that itch, I went and looked it up on Youtube and that (as it all too often does) set me on a journey where I found yet another band from the early 70's to dig.

I never got to hear them then, as they were tragically obscure, but I would have LOVED them. They had everything that would have appealed to my 13 year old self then, and very little of the baggage of what later came to annoy me in pop music and push me off the pop radio stations and into heavier Rock & Roll.

And it turns out, their work was not entirely unkown to me after all. A handful of excellent bands and artists have covered some of their work over the years, and I remember always liking the songs when I'd heard them.

So I picked one of their songs, and will be arranging a cover of it.
If I play the song and you can tell me who wrote it, you'll win one of my CDs. If you can get the "bonus" question, you can have a copy of each CD in my whole catalog (which is 4 right now!).

My website:
www.stevehaug.com

has just had one of it's most important upgrades since it went live.

It is now possible to download music from it. My very first downloadable song, a new version of "Long Black Veil" is available now. It was recorded live just this fall at Spoutwood Farm's "Mother Earth Harvest Festival". Oh, and tho it doesn't say (yet), all songs that I put up for downloading will be in MP3 format.

Check back, as more downloads are planned as soon as I get around to editing and uploading them.

My calendar is incomplete at the moment, but it will also be updated soon. It currently has my final shows for the year up and soon will have all the new shows that are already booked for 2010!

I hope you listen, and I hope you like it!

I had this very fun and quirky little dream this morning and I *think* I may have figured out where it came from.
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I was on my way somewhere (I think in the dream, I was headed to somewhere south of Richmond-who knows why) and traffic was horrific, so we (there were these vague other people with me), decided to pull off at an exit off of a thru-way) and stop and have dinner and wait it out.

Well, at the cafe, it was kind of dead except for us, and one of the employees was amusing herself playing an electric twelve string guitar. Needless to say I was smitten and fascinated.
In the dream, I recognised the brand (some weird old brand), but was telling her that I'd only ever seen 6 string models of it. My travel mates thought I was being condescending or pedantic with my geeking out over the guitar, but the gal playing it was not at all offended and was eagerly answering my questions and we were soon establishing quite the rapport about music and guitars and stuff.

The scene changed and next thing I knew, we were all at the gal's house (where, for some reason she lived with her family who were very welcoming and amused by the bunch of strangers their daughter brought home). My travel-mates were becoming a little annoyed but partially amused at how the gal and I were hitting it off and playing music and talking all animated about this and that, and obviously getting into each other. Well, it was obvious to me as we were progressing from music geeking to stealing smooches when we thought no one was looking.

I realised that this couldn't be something too serious, since at *some* point I *did* have someplace I (and the others) had to be and it was I holding them all up. And in the dream I still had my whole life at home with Sonya too. But I really *liked* this gal and she really liked me, and we were having a whole lot of fun together and while it didn't look like it could be a huge affair between us, we weren't ready to end it then, and I knew that I'd find a way back there for more somehow. And the big thing about my attraction was that we were having so much fun musically. (and the smooching was becoming pretty fun too!)
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So I woke up, grinning sheepishly and wondering "What was THAT all about?" It wasn't any obvious wish fulfillment for a person. She didn't really resemble anyone I'm interested in lately.

But it all tumbled into sense to me when I went and neglected some more of my housework today to work on some music arrangements I've been all fired up over lately. It started with "It's A Sin To Tell A Lie" and then other old jazz standards and 40's hit parade stuff I've been getting into to play for the assisted living gigs. I'm really starting to expand my musical palette lately by learning some of these old songs, and my voice teacher has a bunch of them and has been helping learn them as I come up with arrangements. Just yesterday I not only had some breakthrus on an arrangement, but I went online and tracked down a bunch of other stuff that I'd been wanting to find: lyrics, videos, and a complete tutorial about this one song that's looking really scrumptious and informative!

Of particular fun this week has been "It's Only A Paper Moon" which was the first song that my voice teacher and I started to tackle out of her collection. The snag (and the breakthru yesterday) was that I *really* didn't like the arrangement in her sheet music for it and have been feverishly tweaking my *own* chord progressions for it and practicing it over and over again to try to learn it and some other new (to me) chords and chord progressions. It's one of my prettier arrangements of late and again, a LOT jazzier than what I usually do. I'm not just acquiring new songs, there are new musical chops coming into play as well.
Anyway...
I *think* I'm dreaming about a visiting "Muse". Someone who's not in my normal musical millieu, who comes from a musical region that is not my regular thing. We're having a whole lot of fun getting to know each other as I learn these old tunes and adapt them to my current style and repertoire. And even tho it's not my usual thing, I'm REALLY digging what she's bringing to me and want to find a way to have more of it in my musical life. I'm being enriched and inspired by a whole lot of new, different, unexpected, but way classy and cool things. I'm learning and growing, and am being coaxed into doing it because I'm finding it (and this Muse) so fascinating and attractive. And the payoff I'm experiencing is alot like the payoffs I associate with meeting and hitting it off romantically with someone new.
Hence the smooching.

And while I'm so smitten, this musical rush is all I've been talking about to people lately.
I'm *sure* that they totally want to know every detail about every new chord and progression and I'm mastering and every new old song that I'm digging up. And they're rolling their eyes just like the travelling companions in my dreams. Plus I'm feeling just a teensy bit guilty about neglecting some of my other projects and responsibilities for it.
But dammit, she's so CUTE and we're having such FUN!!!!

I've just finished adding 4 songs to the repertoire this week and that's just the beginning.

Today was my first set at the North College Park location. Hopefully it won't be my last.
In true snafular fashion, the fellow who hired me in Laurel did not *fully* consult with the manager here before penciling me in for Fridays. Fortunately there wasn't a double booking.
Unfortunately, because of the economy and the footprint of a new, bigger restaurant in the same plaza, I've been informed that it's not 100% certain that I'll be here every Friday.
Oh well.

I played today and it was well. Here's the set:

	3/13/09	Potbelly Sandwich Works (N. College Park Store)

01) Workin' At The Carwash Blues
02) Son Of A Son Of A Sailor
03) Wild World
04) Frog Kissin'
05) While My Guitar Gently Weeps
06) Ruby Tuesday
07) Me & Bobby McGee
08) Sugar Magnolia
09) Big Yellow Taxi
10) Heart Of Gold
11) Dixie Chicken
12) Dock Of A Bay
13) Brown Eyed Girl
14) Sunshine Superman
15) Uncle John's Band
16) Margaritaville
17) Romeo & Juliet
18) Thank You
19) Can't Buy Me Love
20) Gimme Three Steps
21) The Joker
22) Can't Find My Way Home
23) Don't Go Back To Rockvile
24) Maggie Mae
25) The Whistler +(inst)Banish Misfortune
26) Jambalaya
27) Women Are Smarter

Notable things:

Again, I was well-recieved and got some nice applause and compliments.
The additional performance time I'm getting lately is starting to show. My arrangements are tightening back up and my voice is *very* recovered from the last cold. Now to get back more of the high end, and (re)memorise more songs.

jmax315 dropped in!

Last Saturday, I tried out their new standard issue amplification system, which is a nifty Fender two channel acoustic/vocal amp, which was pretty nice. It has built in effects for both channels and sounds alright. But my guitar's pickup, if it's not buffered thru something that can take it's impedance, is all bass all the time. I bought this guitar for the bass response and I bought the pickup I used for it's bass response, but that was too much. It was a little boomy on Saturday even turning the bass control all the way down. Today I brought in one of my Tube MPs (the tube preamp that I swear by and have a bunch of) and plugged the guitar into it first.
Ahhhhhh. Next time, I'm bringing my mic as well.

( Some musically geeky nattering )

In my previous posting, thnidu, upon reading my setlist asked:
Ever hear "Heather on the Phone"?

Um, no, I haven't. And before you go rushing off to "remedy" this...

Here's one of those places where, tho I hang out with alot of filkers and where we have alot of music in common, I diverge from the "filker" model and lean much more to the "folker" model.

It's hard to avoid "postmodernist deconstruction" in an artistic environment as vibrant and as chaotic as this age is. Good art is often congruent with pushing barriers, and transcending the seemingly artificial limitations of form, meter, theme, content, aesthetic, culture, and even epoch. Breaking out of boxes is all well and good. Artistic pioneers expand our horizons and our world.

But the temptation to view art itself as the target and/or the box is only and ever will be an amusing sideline to me, and not a serious puruit. I remain to this day, highly amused at the iconoclastic statement made by Alfred Jarry's (now so old and iconic itself that it's origins are forgotten) drawing of a black mustache on a print of the Mona Lisa.
That was HILARIOUS, at the time. It's a classic bit of juvenile deliquency that is both transcendant and infantile, shocking, while oddly satisfying.
It's like the fart in church that everyone has wished they could do.
That *doesn't* mean that I am now inspired to go and find more Mona Lisas and try my hand at making her into a cowboy, alien, astronaut, elf, cat, etc.
To me, that's kind of not getting the original joke, which IMHO, was more about blowing off some cultural steam than declaring "open season" on an icon.

Before I go off on a rant here, and risk alienating people I very sincerely care for and want to remain friends with, I want to make a couple of things clear.

I don't chafe at being called a "filker" so much as I did. I've made peace with the term because:
I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED MUSIC AND SONG WITH SCIENCE FICTION OR FANTASY ELEMENTS

One of the most target rich environments for finding that kind of music is the filk room at a con. And when I find a song from anywhere in my travels that has these elements to them, the 1st place where I find an audience for them is the filk room at a con.

There's so much that is made that is so very good, that comes from the filkrooms, or is brought to the filkrooms. More music than I could ever hear, more than even I could ever play. Even tho, by contrast to "pop" music, it's rare and hard to find, there is STILL more than we'll ever know, and plenty to love.

And there's so much other music to love too. I love the Beatles. I love the Grateful Dead. I love Bob Dylan. I love Joan Baez. I love Donovan. I love Led Zeppelin. I love Janis Joplin. I love REM. Heck, I even love John Denver.
I love the music that these folks have made, and the lyrics that they have written. Some of them have sung Sci-fi and Fantasy, many have not, and yet I love all this music; more music than I'll ever get to play, and much more than I'll ever get to hear.

And I'll confess, that sometimes the first thing I'll hear in a song that I like is imagining what I'd do with it if *I* were playing it, because that is my art. But again, I seem to diverge from the "filker" model here.
To make a song "my own", to incorporate it into my own artistic vision, I'm imagining what it would sound like on my guitar, with me singing it. I'm asking myself which harmonica I'd prefer. I'm asking myself if I'd prefer the banjo or the bouzouki. I'm asking myself, if I recorded it, what *other* instruments I'd like to hear. I'm asking myself, what I can do to the sound, the delivery, to make the part of the song that speaks *to* me, come *from* me. And the answer to that question, in divergence from alot of my good friends in the filk community, is not going to be "What *OTHER* words would I sing instead?" That's just not what I do.

SOME TIMES I've done this, to amuse myself and others. But that's not where my real artistic bent lies. That's not the place where my soul speaks loudest from.
I'll cop to thoroughly enjoying a couple of guilty pleasures:
-Mad Magazine's classic christmas carols that I remember 1975(?)
-the occasional song from Wierd Al, (but not all of them)
These top my list. I'm not averse to musical parody.

But seriously, it's not my "thing", not my direction, not the voice of my soul. And so, I don't make a point of collecting, finding, pursuing this as a major point of my musical direction. Parody, while it's *in* my milleu, certainly, is not really in my repertoire, and it's not on my playlists in anything resembling regularity. I'll do stylistic mashups and take advantage and point a chord progression as an homage to a classic riff or sneak in a sly snicker at some cliche, but parody filk just ain't my thing when, IMHO I've got so MUCH music to play and so much music to learn and SO SO SO MUCH that I still want to explore. Parody Filk, to me, sometimes seems like the goal is to see how many different outfits we can scrawl on the Mona Lisa, and that's not what sings to my soul.

"Heather on The Moor" is one of my favorite songs ever. It would be on my desert island list. It would be a song I took with me on an escape pod into the void of space, possibly displacing a piece of paper's worth of food or oxygen.

So, bearing that in mind...

It would be rude and mean of me to just diss someone getting creative and artistic fulfillment from using some phrase that some song's lyrics suggest as the launching point for their take on something. People are very very passionate about the music they love and it's never a good idea to stomp on that, even accidentally.
So before you go and share some parody with me, please check to see whether what looks like sharing to you might look like big mean boots to me. Reciprocation, okay?