Country Club of the South: Hot Night in the Clubhouse

Derek McCoy on guitar, with Dianna Crawford on vocals watching the magic unfold

A hot night it was.  The air conditioning wasn't working very well, and I was not on the list of those who were informed as to why it wasn't on.  This place didn't exactly give us the red carpet treatment.  Do they even know who we are?  Just kidding, but I guess to have a decent meal with a vegetable included and a room to eat it in is sometimes too much to ask.  I hope the parents of the bride didn't have to pay for what we were served.

It was good to have guitarist Derek McCoy back with us for this event.  He sounded great as always.  Nice tone and the right notes grooving, what more can you ask for?

Songs we had to play:  Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (first dance);  My Girl (father/daughter dance);  What A Wonderful World (mother/son dance).  All of those had to be shortened to make them just long enough.  People love that Frankie Valli tune and it certainly evokes some memories.  I really like the chords in it, particularly the opening sequence:

F#7/E
Am6/E (or it could be thought of as F#m7(b5), the A# moves down to A & the C# drops to C)
E

Hard for a guy to sing it because Frankie can get up there and weird for a girl to sing it because it is such a "guy" song.  Oh well, one day it will all makes sense.

Another one we revived was the Zac Brown tune Whatever It Is.  We've done it a few times now but it is one of those that uses the same chords as many other tunes and switches them up within the form of the tune.  Easy to mix it up.  They do some timing things just to be cute.  I always think it's best to adhere to the recorded form.  Note to self: don't try to perform air-violin to explain to musicians that there's a fiddle solo going on - it doesn't look good!  Meanwhile, why was I the only one who knew there was a fiddle solo - doesn't anybody listen to the song?

Johnny relented and ended up getting through Hot In Herre.  I wasn't clear on what his objection was, but maybe he didn't realize that we only play about 90 seconds of the song.  It was an interesting email thread that Benjamin was included on.

I played fretless and my jazz bass.  Had my Genz-Benz combo on top of the SWR Golight 15 cabinet.   This amp just doesn't cut it for this particular gig.  I really miss my GK head.  Hope it gets fixed soon.  The air conditioning situation and the horrible green room area along with the shoddy meal and my lack of amp headroom made for a lackluster night.  Sometimes it's hard to rise above the muck to bring the magic.