[Harp-L] Chicago jams June 25-26

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I visited Chicago this week, and had the opportunity to sit in with a 
couple of local bands.

Sunday night June 25, my friend Matthew Skoller hosted the weekly jam 
session at the House of Blues.  It's a nice venue where the musicians 
and patrons are treated with respect.

Backed by his regular band (guitar/bass drums), Matthew opened the night 
with Little Walter's "Off the Wall."  I've been listening a lot to 
Matthew's most recent and very enjoyable CD "These Blues" lately, and 
his playing in this set was looser and a lot more active than his 
recordings. He plays Marine Bands, and he plays them hard.  Most of the 
set was played through an astatic JT-30VC mic into a tube amp -- in 
other words, a typical Chicago blues setup -- but he did a couple of 
numbers, including a Jim Liban blues, straight into the vocal mic. 
Overall a very nice set.

I sat in during the second set, fortunately with Matthew's band behind 
me (you never know what the rhythm section will be like at a jam), using 
Matthew's amped setup.  We played "Comin Home Baby" (Lee Oskar A Natural 
Minor harp in second position) and Big Walter's "Have Mercy" (Hohner 
CX12 C chromatic harp in D minor).  Then Matthew returned to the stage, 
and we played another half dozen pieces with two harps, Matthew coming 
through the PA mic, me on the amped mic.  What a great sound! When I 
released my single "Put The Lever Down" in 1981, I used a similar 
formula -- acoustic harp on top, amped harp in the middle (and flanged 
amped harp on the bottom in that case).  (You can hear "Put The Lever 
Down" at http://hunterharp.com/mp3s.html if you're so inclined.)

Monday night I sat in with the Mike Frost Project, a quartet of 
guitar/keys/sax/drums playing jazz standards and 60s-70s jazz-funk 
(Crusaders, "watermelon man", Ramsey Lewis -- you get the picture). 
This is the stuff I grew up on, and it is always fun to play.  The first 
piece we played together was "Blue Monk", for which I used my Neil 
Graham customized Ab Marine Band in 2nd position.  The overblows that 
are necessary to play the very chromatic head on this piece are almost 
all nice, short passing tones.  Notwithstanding that these guys come 
from Howard Levy's town, they looked a little surprised when they heard 
the chromatic passing tones coming out of the short harp.

A very enjoyable but short trip. Two final comments: 1) Matthew told me 
that there are now very few active harp players in Chicago -- what's up 
with that?  2) Non harp-related: on Tuesday night I went to the art 
Institute of Chicago, and was completely blown away to find something 
like 100 of the greatest paintings of the first half of the 20th century 
hanging on the walls.  We've all seen reproductions of those pieces (van 
Gogh, Picasso, Renoir, Seurat, etc., etc.) hundreds of times before -- 
it's a different feeling entirely to be standing in front of the canvas.

Chicago doesn't suck.

Thanks, Richard Hunter
hunterharp.com