[Harp-L] Re: Spontaneous creativity

[Michael Easton <diachrome@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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;
> 	format=flowed
>
> 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