[Harp-L] Re: Spontaneous creativity



Cool John,
I was in a similar situation last night. A flute playing buddy of mine has several bands.
One jazz, celtic, baroque, folk and now blues. Several of his cd's have been nominated for Grammy's and
his folk band recently won an award for best folk band of 2009.


His wife plays electric cello, doubling as bass, in all the bands. They both play thru Digitech processors.

The drummer and guitarist for their blues act didn't want to do the gig for personal reasons so he contacted me to put a band together
for them. I brought in piano, bass, guitar and myself on harp. I passed taking a cut so we could afford to hire the pianist. The whole time both sides were kinda nervous if it was going to work.
I shared the stage with most of them in the past so I knew there was going to be some kind of chemistry.


The bar was a little thin due to a rainstorm and we weren't listed as entertainment for that evening. The people that did come out stayed most of the night and we ended up with more people at 1am then
when we started at 9pm.


We all had different notions about the type of blues we were going to play. Since it wasn't purely a blues room we weren't locked into playing a certain way for the audience.

We averaged 3 to 4 songs per 45 minute set playing 4 sets. Non of the songs seems drawn out and I was surprised how fast the sets ended.
We played a mix from All Blues and Mercy, Mercy, Mercy to Chicken Shack, Sissy Strut, All along the Watchtower (killer Hendrix style solo on cello) to Guyger's "Blues from the
Darkside."


At first most of the very young crowd just used us as background music but then I noticed heads started to pop out from the pool room and after awhile we cleared out the pool room and
everyone was on the bar side checking out the band.


At the end of the night the manager hires us back for Memorial Weekend even though we were just a pickup band with no rehearsals.
I was told I will be paid next time.


On Apr 9, 2010, at 9:15 AM, harp-l-request@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Message: 8
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2010 01:36:59 -0400
From: "John F. Potts" <hvyj@xxxxxxx>
Subject: [Harp-L] Spontaneous creativity
To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <2A8F0D72-9F25-4CB3-8766-043B391749BE@xxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; delsp=yes;
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So, the guitar playing jazz band leader with the Masters in Music
I?ve been playing with for a while tells me this week he?s going to
use a vibes player instead of a drummer......
FWIW,

JP

Michael Easton www.harmonicarepair.com






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