Leap Week Part III: a Tornado Brings in March Madness

Thursday I was at Java Monkey for a Pot Luck Themed wine tasting event, with the ubiquitous jazz stylings of The Adrian Ash Group.  We all made it through another 2 week period of life.  It jelled once again for our willing souls.  Many things sounded good.  Adrian called Watermelon Man.  Whenever I hear that, I freeze a bit as I hear Cantaloupe Island in my head.  They both start on F, although the former is in F or F7, while the latter is in Fm or Fm7.  Subtle difference, but not really.  It's just my personal little trip.  As long as I make it to the IV chord and not the bVI chord, I'm doing well.  Then the V to the IV loops for 3 go-rounds.  That's it.  No sweat after all.  I tried to take some daring chances during a few of my solos.  It seems to break me out of the doldrums I can get myself into.  Running up high for a quick peak at the upper register is a nice easy way to brighten up a stale motif.  Take it from me, I have the stale motif thing down.

Now this got my attention.  If it was posted on the door, there might not have been any parking spaces!

Friday I met up with the very hip blues band The Jump'n Jukes.  They are blessed to be the real deal, a sound from old sweet home Chicago or deep in the heart of Texas.  Nice guys all around: Steve Sams on vocals & blues harp, Juha Saily on guitar, Jim "Stuff" Jones on violin (some folks call it a fiddle 'round here - by the way, I truly hope I have these names correct, you know me...), & Pete Bennie on drums.  They had requested upright bass, so that's indeed what I brought (had my Jazz in the car just in case).  It has been quite some time since I've played a whole night of blues music.  I can't remember, certainly not since this blog started up.  I even told them that before we started - great reassuring words to relay to people I've just met!  ha!  It turned out to be a good fit all around.  We played at Spiced Right Ribhouse, located just north of Roswell Square on Atlanta St.  The ambiance was a little odd.  They should seriously reconsider the lighting.  Those compact flourescent bulbs have different color temperatures.  That cold bluish light does not convey a down home experience.  Just my personal issue, perhaps.  The stage in the corner was a nice size for the five of us, plus a PA speaker on a stand.  Juha had a beautiful Gretsch hollow bodied guitar; Steve had the old school vocal mic that was blues approved to the max - not to mention his bullet mic for his harp; Stuff had it going on with one of those modern Acoustic Image downward firing tiny combo for his electric violin (you don't see a volume control mounted into a violin very often).  Me, I brought my Genz-Benz out for the first time in a while.  It gave me plenty of headroom for this job.

Some of the setlist:
Read About My Baby (Original)
Baby What You Want Me To Do (Jimmy Reed)
Big Boss Man (Jimmy Reed)
Help Me (Sonny Boy Williamson)
Hideaway (Freddie King)
Mean Old World (Little Walter)
Read About My Baby (Hollywood Fats Band)
I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline) (Howlin' Wolf)
Rock Me Baby (B. B. King)

Juha, whose name sounds like "U-Hall" but w/o the L sound (he also goes by J), gave me good instructions, although sometimes I would misconstrue his 4's as 5's or vise versa.  Here's a great example: sounds like Green Onions.  How great of a hint is that?  The only time I completely fell off the bus was during Hideaway, which is quite an arrangement.  That's a good blues tune for everybody to know.  A real guitar slinger anthem which I first heard on my old bud Phil Hurd's copy of Eric Clapton's At His Best double album collection on Polydor (just a bit of detail there for you to get the picture of just how ingrained this is in my formative conscious) - it was John Mayall's Bluesbreakers that E.C. was with.  Freddie King's version is the one we all check out when really digging into it.  I gotta mention Stuff's violin playing - it added so much and he's a master of inserting quotes from other tunes into the spaces between the vocal lines.  Very cool technique all around on his part, all while being perfectly in tune and being a consummate pro entertainer.  No shoe gazing here - he got up in my grill a few times!  Great stage presence and masterful eye contact!  Also on hand was an old friend from my days with Big Matt Kearney, the young Dave Cunningham on tenor sax.  He sat in on the 2nd set and sounded much like I remember Big sounding!

Bottom line: these guys should be playing in some much larger venues.  Almost makes me want to change paths and become their manager or agent!  Hope I can testify with them once again sometime real soon.

Juha Saily

Pete Bennie

All of this happened while a rather major tornado scare came upon our area.  It came through our area but did not do any noticeable damage, at least from what I can tell.  There are areas that were badly hit.  Typing this as I'm watching the Today Show's story on the poor Louisville, Kentucky Mom who shielded her 2 children from their house collapsing above them and has since lost parts of both of her legs.  She is lucky to be alive.  I am very flippant about these storms but need to take them more seriously, obviously.  My prayers go out to those who have suffered a loss this past weekend...