A Weekend of Playing Through the Fog

Friday the 9th I had my gear with me to head straight down 85 (a lovely autumn jaunt with about 20,000 of my closest friends doing the same thing) to set up and play at the Capital City Club with the Billy Batts Ensemble.  It was another round of distinctive blues, jazz, and soft rock for the fine folks in downtown Atlanta.  We were inside, even though the temps had rebounded to the milder side.  Big TIme wasn't with us.  In his place was Keith Hicks, who has played with us before.  Hey, I just realized we didn't get around to Bright Size Life.  We did a fair amount of blues and such: Little Wing, Tenor Madness, All Blues, Song For My Father, and a request for Take Five with an enforced drum solo by Mark Letalien.  Really, on of the highlights was the last tune we played; an afterthought of a jam on Stevie Wonder's Love Light In Flight.  The melody and changes lend itself to a real smooth Latin-tinged groove, far removed from the '80's electronic blandness of the original from The Woman In Red.  Walt "Middleshelf" Austin had the changes and pretty much everything.  Stevie doesn't write too many bad ones, but for my money, once he started programming everything, the heart and soul vanished.  Keith played really well, if a little too loud (what guitar player doesn't?).  He should be doing it more often.

A surprise - young drummer-extraordinaire Reece Harris (of the trad-jazz sensation The Flycats) came by
during a break in his band's set taking place one floor up.  Ever dapper and spreading his bonhomie like
Tinkerbell scatters her pixie dust, Reece make everybody in the room smile and see the lighter side of the situation.

Saturday was with the more flexible conglomeration of the same cats, Atlanta's own Sweetwater Junction.  We played a high school reunion for the classes of '71 and '72 from Chattahoochee High School.  Their football team is the Cougars, so a big sign was hung that read "Welcome to Cougar Country".  How appropriate.  There were many cougars present last night.  Well preserved ladies in short skirts out to have a good time.  We did a decent job of giving them some nice music.  Acoustic based first set, using my Johnson fretless.  It does indeed seem to distort a bit if the volume pot on the bass is all the way up.  By nudging it down to about 8 or 9, it breathes a bit better (thanks for the tip, Walt).  I compress the signal anyway, so the volume remains about the same, just a little less hot.  I love the sound of it; a nice alternative to upright or electric upright.  I'm thinking the guys in the band are not so crazy about anything other than a Fender.  Well, it worked in giving us a different vibe for the lengthy first set.  The batteries in my 6-string died on me during I Saw Her Standing There.  I had to switch back to the Johnson.  I brought my Stingray as well, so I brought that out for the funk-filled third set.  One of our best from this night was a high-energy filled Hard To Handle.  Mark Letalien was on fire, brimming with boundless energy that I dutifully stayed on the leading edge to keep the bus on course.  We had some nice rhythmic and melodic turns - I thought of Geddy and Neil during those composed fills over Freewill.