READIN

Wednesday, May 5th, 2004

Played guitar with Bob, Janis and Jim last night -- it went really well. I'm not sure what I was doing different but my guitar was just a lot louder and most of the notes were right, and when I missed a chord I was able to improvise single-note runs to play on top of it. I even played my first genuine, spontaneous solo against "St. James Infirmary". (On which note, I've been getting loads of idle fun lately from singing the relevant two lines of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" to the tune of the first two lines of "St. James Infirmary". For some reason I have been remembering "I went down, to the Delta drugstore" instead of "Chelsea drugstore"; make of that what you will.) By "genuine, spontaneous solo" what I mean is, we were playing the song, Jim singing; he got to the end of the verse, there was the turnaround, he signalled me, and I started playing the solo -- I had not worked out a solo beforehand, just made it up as I went along -- then the turnaround, and Jim started singing again, and I went back to playing rhythm. Totally seamless and coordinated.

We also played "Shine a Light on You" and "Loser", both sounded great.

posted evening of May 5th, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, May 12th, 2004

I was playing "You Can't Always Get What You Want" tonight and having a lot of fun with it. The key seems to be just to find a groove and get into it -- there are (practically) only 2 chords in the whole song so in order to keep it from getting boring, you need to play it with a lot of energy. My version didn't sound much like the Stones but I think it sounded all right.

posted evening of May 12th, 2004: Respond
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Thursday, May 20th, 2004

I was playing "Rocky Raccoon" tonight and it sounded good; but I can't figure out how to do the intro. I expect Bob will have some useful ideas in that regard when we play on Sunday.

posted evening of May 20th, 2004: Respond

Saturday, May 22nd, 2004

🦋 One hour set

I am trying to put together a one-hour set of songs that I can play on guitar and sing. This afternoon I played a 45-minute set and it sounded pretty good -- the songs were generally not what I would call "tight" but they were all good enough that I could play them at an open mike and not be embarrassed. I have a sort of plan going to do several open mikes and then ask Randal (owner of The Dancing Goat) if I can play a set there on one of his slower nights.

Here is the set from this afternoon:

• The Ballad of Hollis Brown
  I've been working on this one for a while now, one of the songs that really made me a convert to Drop-D tuning. Dylan plays only D-minor chords throughout the entire song, but I play D-minor/G/A7. My picking pattern is fairly elaborate and in another song would run the risk of being too repetitive -- but in this song that's the whole point.
• You Can't Always Get What You Want
• Stagger Lee
  This is the first song I played in Drop-D tuning and I think of it as a critical juncture in my guitar-playing career. It was a year and a half ago or so, and after 3 years of listening to John Hurt I finally got up the initiative to try and copy one of his songs from the record.
• C.C. Rider
• Rocky Raccoon
• House of the Rising Sun
• Prodigal Son
• Palette on your Floor
• No Expectations

The order is just what order I thought of them in when I was writing the set list -- if I were playing an actual set I would fiddle with it some. "No Expectations" is however a great song to end on. Some other songs I reckon should go in there:

• Freight Train
• Tell Old Bill
• Hobo's Lullaby
• Barbara Allen

Also today I worked out Dylan's "North Country Blues" (not to be confused with "Girl from the North Country"), which is very easy to play and sounds beautiful -- once I know the lyrics I will add it to the list too and when all these songs are put together I think I will have about an hour.

Gotta go -- come back later, I am going to add links and comments for each of the songs.

posted evening of May 22nd, 2004: Respond

Monday, May 24th, 2004

🦋 Set work

I'm working on a 3-song set for the open mike on Wednesday. Tonight I tried out "Palette on your Floor", "Can't Always Get What You Want", and "Rag Mama". At least the first two are definitely good to go -- the third needs a little work but I was shocked to be able to play it as well as I did. Gabe assisted me over the phone with a way to transition between "Palette" (which is in G) and "CAGWYW" (which is in C) -- on the final turnaround you go from D to Em instead of back to G, and then to F, G7, C and you are suddenly playing in the key of C.

posted evening of May 24th, 2004: Respond

Tuesday, May 25th, 2004

🦋 More set work

Here is how you transition from "Palette" to "CAGWYW":

...G / B / C / /
G / D / Em / /
G / D / Em / C /
G / D / Em / F /
F / G7 / C / C
C / / F / /...

Trust me -- it sounds sweet. In other jammin' -- I finally figured out how to tie "Stagger Lee" and "C.C. Rider" together; just strum the last chord of "Stagger Lee", rest for a measure, and start right in. That sounds a lot better than the noodling around I had been trying to do.

"Rag Mama" is finally together. Never before have I really been satisfied with how I played that song; but tonight the speed was right, the beat was right, I had the vocals down. (3 out of four times that I played it tonight -- hope I hit lucky tomorrow night on stage.) I am not talking about the Band song called "Rag Mama Rag" -- this is a tune by Blind Boy Fuller (which I originally know via Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band):

    A7
I'm goin uptown with my hat in my hand
D
Lookin for de woman aint got no man
G7
Just as well be tryin to find a needle in the sand
C
Lookin for a woman aint got no man
 
Chorus:
Dwee-de-daw, dweedly-daw, Rag Mama,
Come on, baby, do that Rag
 
Well you get yourself a woman you best get two,
One for your buddy 'nother one for you,
Got me a wife an a sweetheart too,
Wife don't love me my sweetheart do
 
Took my woman down to Meeker St.,
Honey now, honey now, whatta'I see,
Saw my woman with a man, she was holdin' his hand
(that ain't right!) Aw,
Pistol in my pocket, black jack in my hand, says
I'm gonna get that so-and-so
 
Now, who'd'a thought my gal would treat me so,
Love another man at my back door
Mind, mama, what you sow,
Cause you gots to reap just what you sow

posted evening of May 25th, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, May 26th, 2004

The set went ok. It was about 15 minutes long, I had a lot of energy throughout but my fingers started losing track about 2/3 of the way in. I missed a lot of notes on "Rag Mama" and by the end of the song it seemed like I had fallen apart almost completely. But, the audience liked it so who am I to judge? Other guitar players tend to be a pretty forgiving audience.

Passing the time before the music started, I took Underworld idly off the bookshelf there and started reading it on a whim -- I found the language most easy on my ears. So I borrowed it and will see how I do reading it over the next few months. It is too big for me to really carry it around conveniently so I imagine it will be mostly evening reading.

posted evening of May 26th, 2004: Respond
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Monday, May 31st, 2004

I will not be able to play the open mike this Wednesday; but I have started working on a set for next week: "Richland Woman Blues", "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right", "No Expectations".

posted morning of May 31st, 2004: Respond

At the jam today, we finally agreed on chords for "City of New Orleans" -- this is a bit historic as every time we have played it before, we've gotten bogged down in arguing about the correct chords. Here it is:

Intro:
| G / / / | G / / / |

  G      /      D    /   |  G   / / / |
  Riding on the City of New Orleans
| Em       /       C      /     | G   /   /   /   |
  Illinois Central Monday morning rail
| G       /        D       /      | G   /   /   / |
  Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
       | Em     /    D           /      | G  / / / |
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.
      | Em        /           /    /     | 
    All along the south bound odyssey, 
            Bm          /      /     /   |
        the train pulls out of Kankakee
    | D      /         /      /       | A   / / / |
    Rolls along past houses farms and fields
    | Em       /          /      / | 
    Passing towns that have no name, 
        Bm      /        /         /   |
        freight yards full of old black men
      | D      /      D7     /    | G    / / / |
    And graveyards of rusted automobiles.
 
Chorus: 
| C      /      D7   /   |  G      / / / | 
  Good morning America, how are you? 
   | Em        /        C        /    |  G  / / D7 | 
Say, don't you know me, I'm your native son. 
      | G          /        D    /    | Em     Em7 A7 / | 
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans 
      | B♭        C       D              /     | G / / / | 
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done. 
 
Dealing card games with the old men in the club car 
Penny a point ain't noone keeping score 
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle 
Feel the wheels rumbling 'neath the floor 
   And the sons of Pullman porters 
       and the sons of engineers 
   Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel 
   Mothers with their babes asleep, 
       rocking to the gentle beat 
   And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel. 
 
Nightime on the City of New Orleans 
Changing cars in Memphis Tennessee 
Half way home we'll be there by morning 
through the Mississippi darkness rolling down to the sea. 
   But all the towns and people seem 
       to fade into a bad dream 
   And the steel rail still ain't heard the news 
   The conductor sings his songs again, 
       the passengers will please refrain 
   This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.

Update: what I mean to say is, the above is some chords that Jim found via a Google search when he was looking for the lyrics; they agree almost completely with the chords which we all had agreed on, independently of looking at that transcription. (The main difference is, we had F instead of B-flat in the last line of the chorus -- I think the transcription is probably correct here, though F sounds pretty good too.) Ignore most of the 7's and 9's in the transcription, which are good flourishes to put in but not an essential part of the song's chord structure.

posted evening of May 31st, 2004: Respond

Sunday, June 6th, 2004

🦋 Weekend update

It was a good weekend. Eva came to visit yesterday, with her newish baby Benjamin (6 months old, extremely cute). We had a great visit and went for a nice long walk. I got the second gate up and it works according to specifications. Ellen and Sylvia drove to Bethlehem today, to visit Joyce and her daughter Susanna, and I got a good bit of time to myself. This afternoon's jam was excellent -- Doug came, who has not been able to for the past couple of months, and everyone was playing at the top of their ability. I had the idea today to play a meddley of "Rocky Raccoon" and "Rag Mama" -- pretty easy to do as they are almost the same chords -- and they both sounded better this way than on their own.

posted evening of June 6th, 2004: Respond

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