The Legend of The Reverend Alabacious T Bartholomew

Journal: Thursday, January 28, 2010. 10:24 AM Highland, California.

Tomorrow I turn 45 (yesterday from when this blog posted). This means I’m halfway to a right angle, but somehow I’m already obtuse!

This month closes after a lot of travel (non-music) and the posting of my first performance video (music). The video is not a polished final effort. It is more of a dip of my toe in the water. I had no intention of doing anything more with it until I had a better, more complete version recorded.

The response was so enthusiastic that I decided to post it other places. In the past week it’s had nearly 300 views. More important than the numbers is that I’ve had a lot of encouraging feedback from friends and strangers alike!

It’s a far cry from going viral, even among musicians--which is my hope--but it’s a start. It’s out there now. You can help accomplish this by emailing the link (below) to friends who you think will enjoy it and encouraging them to pass it on.

Here is a link if you haven’t seen it yet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKo2i9evhrE

My goal now is to get another song on video that shows a different music style a different playing technique and shows me singing. I want to quickly dispel the notion that I might be a one-trick pony indulging in the musical equivalent of 'wanking'. 

I think I know just what song to use: "Rain Don't Follow the Plow"

Journal Update: Friday, January 29, 5:26PM: Today (my birthday) I set out to record  a video of 'Rain' but soon found that I need a great deal more rehearsal on the tune in question.

That will be my focus this over the next couple weeks, to get that song ready, recorded on video on posted. My goal is to post it two weeks from today.

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On to the blog...

The Legend of The Reverend Alabacious T Bartholomew, Part I

I’ve often been asked who my influences are, playing bass the way I do. Early on, Geddy Lee of “Rush” Chris Squire of “Yes” and Tony Levin of everybody taught me with their playing that you can color outside the lines, do unconventional things on bass and still make great music.

Later, a bass teacher of mine turned me on to the more-schooled jazz phenoms: Jaco Pastorious, Stanley Clark and several other. When I first heard Les Claypool of “Primus” I had another big clue as to how I wanted to sound and felt more even comfortable making bass guitar the forefront and focus of an ensemble.

There have been scores of bass players I have admired and influenced by but there is one influence I have had that it has shaped my playing more than any other.

It is likely no one alive has ever heard of him: The Reverend Alabacious T Bartholomew.

The Reverend was the inventor of what some wrongly credit me with: Pyscho-gizmobass guitar. After extensive and largely creative research, I have been able to formulate a brief biography of this fascinating character and the pioneer of my playing style.

And I swear, this is all as true as it is!

Born in 1897 in Tupton, Iowa, Alabacious didn’t start out as a musician as such. He worked the pump organ pedals as a child for his mother who at four foot five could not reach them.

Buellettia Bartholomew was a proud, but tyrannical and delusional woman who believed she was of full normal height. This was in-part because all those she knew sat or kneeled when she was nearby. Whenever someone mistakenly came into her presence at their full stature she would accuse them of witchcraft or, more often, of wearing stilts. The ‘stilts’ were dealt with by repeatedly kicking them out from under their wearer. In reality it was their chins she was striking with her boots until the unlucky person fell to their knees in great pain. The reports of how she dealt with those she accused of witchcraft have been sketchy and inconsistent. Some accounts suggest use of fire or boiling water.

Naturally, out of fear of her reaction, it was kept from her that she needed assistance pumping the organ. When she played for the family every Saturday night. As the third youngest, it was the young Alabacious' duty to sneek under the bench and operate the pedals. While she unknowingly ‘pumped’ on little Al’s head he did the actual work with his hands.

After her performances, when he and his aching cranium had snuck from under the organ bench and reentered the room, he would apologize for having, once again. missed her concert.

He would then have to endure more blows as she would often beat him about the head for his absence, deliberately and with the family bible this time.

Despite the beatings and the chronic drooling that resulted, Alabacious enjoyed his mother’s organ playing and especially loved the lower tones of the organ from his point blank perspective under the bench.

Religion was very important in his family and community, but Al seemed to take things even farther than those around him felt necessary.

In the one-room school house he attended he accused the teacher of witchcraft and attempted to set her on fire when she introduced algebra. He was nearly asked to leave school altogether repeated attempts to exercise demons from a fellow classmate behind the outhouse. He claimed the demons in question were located beneath her dress.

Two years later, upon her graduation, he married Gertrudena Lathum, the girl whose undergarments he had attempted to exercise.

Albascious became a preacher and for years led a small congregation in North Central Iowa while tending a small farm of his own with the help of Gertrudena and eventually their seven children, Robert, Robertena, Bob, Berta, Bobby, Bobby Jr. and Ruthette.

Preaching and service to the Lord was his life. However, it would be a faulty tractor transmission and alcohol that would usher his unexpected, and ultimately tragic, journey into music.

Though Reverend Bartholomew was a staunch and vocal supporter of prohibition, he engaged in “medical” use of spirits regularly himself and for his wife. They even, it is said, found the bottle to be effective in aiding his children to sleep every night.

One day while plowing, the Reverend discovered something that would change his life from that moment on.

The few recorded interviews with the Reverend vary greatly in his account of his life-changing musical discovery. It may, or may not have been the influence of his ‘medicine’, an attempt to clear drool from his chin and/or a faulty transmission that jammed his tractor into reverse and backed it suddenly into a fence post.

Where his story is clear is in his immediate intrigue with the seditious tone the taught barbed wire made upon impact. It so fascinated him that he pulled the tractor forward and deliberately hit the fence post to recreate the effect. He repeated this until the fence post broke in two and fell to the ground. He then moved his tractor one fence post down and continued striking them and until a half a mile of fence was down and his herd of dairy cows, startled by the surly vibrations, were running loose over much of Tipton Township.

Gertrudena and several of their children had to round up the herd for miles while Alabacious retired to the barn with many yards of barbed wire in tow behind the tractor. There, he began his obsessive work reproducing the sound he had heard in the fields.

Using a thresher as an amplifier, he stretched barbed wire across the beams of the barn and struck them with scythes, sledge hammers, wagon wheels and partially emptied bottles of spirits to reproduce the disturbing and haunting tones. In time, he had developed the jury rig into an instrument that would have many names and claim several lives.

It has been called: the psycho gizmobass, the psycho gizmobass guitar, the chaotiphonium, Bob, the cacophone, the bass barb fencifyer, “that damned thing you keep in the barn” and, as Alabacious referred to it in private, “Satan’s little helper”.

Not only did Alabacious invent psycho gizmobass guitar, according to some non-tenure musicologists, he also stumbled on to the concept of looping years before Pierre Schaeffer’s “Musique Concrete”.

His six-year-old daughter Ruthette incessantly mimicked the instrument’s every sound while the prairie preacher composed for his new instrument in the barn. At first this practice was punished, later encouraged and ultimately enforced with the same beatings he had used to deter her.

Ruthette would later in life become the Psycho-gizmobass’s first of many casualties, throwing herself into the thresher/amplifier during one of her father’s concerts.

The Reverend’s church congregation would soon have to contend with his invention themselves. It would change both the church and Alabacious T. Bartholomew forever.

To Be Continued…

The Dreaded Banana Song

Oh no! It’s time to talk about the dreaded “Banana Song” again!

If you have been fortunate enough to only recently been following my blogs and Facebook posting you may not know about the contentious, growling, drooling, smelling beast I lovingly call the “Banana Song”.

Its full title is: “Actually That Is A Banana In My Pocket (But It’s Always Good to See You)”.

I don’t mean to imply that this horrible music. It’s actually pretty friggin cool, especially if you’re a geeky tweaky music-head.

Yeah, it’s a little self indulgent, but it is the only tune on the album that is. It’s good to haul off and kick some ass on once in a while.

Like the Rach 3, it’s only a nasty work of music if you’re the poor sucker that’s got to play it.

That would be me.

No sympathy please, I’m also the sick bastard who wrote it.

I have literally been wrestling with this sucker for years. It has slowly evolved into esthetically and academically interesting piece.

A piece that I can almost play!

The technique I use is physically very different from normal bass playing. It’s basically taking my fingertips and striking notes directly on the fingerboard like a piano instead of plucking with one hand and fretting with the other. I can’t take credit for inventing it but I have definitely created my own spin.

You will be able to see it in the video I’ve posted at the end of this blog. I

Forever it seemed, I couldn’t play the Banana song all the way through without making a big mistake.  No matter how many times I played it and practiced it, I would find some new way to get it wrong.

I would practice it for a while, rearrange some things, add a part, take one away. Then in frustration, boredom or plain old ADD impatience, I’d shelve it for several months, even years in some cases.

Eventually I’d get a bee in my bonnet, dust it off and give it the old college try once again… For a while.

After several cycles of this with little progress I said: This is ridiculous! I am going to tame this beast once and for all no matter what it takes!

I sat down, cracked my knuckles and started working at it long and hard. Two months later, even though I had used warm-ups and took frequent breaks, my wrist was in a brace and it was painful to move my fingers.

I was also sick-to-death of the friggin’ Banana song!

Back on the shelf it went. The bass got stowed for a few weeks as well.

Several years after that and about a year ago from this writing, I decided I needed to have “Actually, That Is a Banana In My Pocket” on my album and as a Youtube performance video. It would turn heads and show what kind of agility is possible on my favorite instrument.

If I did it right, it could just be my fifteen minutes of Andy Warhol!

I took a slower and more careful approach to the tune this time. Maybe I shouldn’t try to kill the monster, just tame it a little; make it my bitch.

I snuck up on it slowly. Starting at a painfully slow seventy beats per minute and gradually working my way up, faster and faster. I would stop playing for days, or even weeks at a time to let my hand and tendons rest.

I discovered I always played the piece best for the first time after a break of days or weeks. My performance was still far from good enough to record for posterity but the biggest leaps in progress were always when I was hitting it fresh.

Once when picking the piece up fresh, I thought I kinda nailed it. I’d better try to record it, I thought. I got set up, warmed up, hit record and started playing. This was, however the second time I’d played it through not the magic first. Even though it was quite good, there were obvious problems and mistakes.

Not a keeper.

I tried it again. There were different problems this time. Each take after that seemed to be a little more fraught with stumbles and missed notes. The recording session devolved into a rehearsal until it was time to rest my hands for a few days. You can imagine my frustration.

I have taken those lessons, both of my wrist injury and how well the piece seemed to progress after some down time, not to mention the addition of some needed patience and consistency. I now know more about my own physical limitations and my style of learning.

If you remember from my earlier post about my learning ‘disability’, my brain works a little different from most other folks.

I have heard ADD best described as being like the mind of a predator, stalking and hunting prey: My senses scan the environment like a police scanner; never holding fast to any one stimuli but monitoring everything on a momentary basis. Any snap of a twig or flash of something shiny (oh look!) until I lock onto what I perceive as ‘prey’; a good song idea, a story, my wife making the perilous journey from the shower to the bedroom. When I have located ‘prey’, all my other perception fades into an abyss of nonexistence. My focus and energy engage in an intense super human pursuit.

That level of energy and super-humanity are not sustainable though. After a while, if I am not dinning on the freshly killed carcass of a great and realized idea or I have managed to wrestle the towel away from my wife, my energy and focus will run out and I have to lie down under a the shade of a ____ tree panting and sleeping for the rest of the day.

I might lick my crotch too but, fortunately (for you), this analogy has already been stretched beyond its limits.

Most people’s methodology is more ‘sensible’. Like a farmer, people plant seeds and nurture their growth with consistent watering, weeding and, with patience, harvesting.

Or…

Go to college, get good grades, get a good job, work hard, retire.

It’s no wonder the farmer shakes his head at that artistic dude sleeping under the tree trying—with no success—to lick his crotch.

If he only paced himself he’d have a full crop too. Or what I was told in school, you’re so smart; if you’d only apply yourself.”

The hunter/farmer analogy may have some scientific teeth too when you consider that Asians have the lowest incidence of ADD. Asians have also had an agricultural-based society for roughly six thousand years. While they were patiently yielding crops and raising domesticated animals, the rest of the World was still chasing down wild game and trying to lick things they oughtn’t.

While it can be said that ‘hunting’ takes patience, remember, farming takes seasons not hours or days.

Back to the “Banana Song”:  It going to take both a farmer and hunter to take this puppy down.

I have learned that I have to respect my natural temperament to attack this project with brief and effective bursts of speed followed by long periods of rest. I must also wash, rinse, repeat until I’ve mastered this tune.

Just as a hammer cannot push a nail into a board or, in most cases, pound it in one blow, I must use the rhythm of my own nature and develop better consistency to see this difficult task through its complexity and its physical demands.

On a side note: this method just doesn’t work to loose weight and get in shape.

I’ve tried it…

…and so have you!

With modern recording and editing capabilities I can still record it without being perfect each time. I can Frankenstein several takes together and no one would be the wiser.

The video has to be real though. I refuse to “finger sync” the bass part to an pre-recorded track.

I have no trouble believing that, with a little promotional help from my friends, this sucker will go viral, at least among musicians.

So you can see what I’ve been going on about ad infinitum about I have produced this practice version video. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s come a long way.

Enjoy:

Travel for the Homebody

If you are a kid flying on a commercial flight, you want to see the cockpit and meet the pilots -and it’s roughly forty years before 9/11, here’s what you do: Bring along crayons and paper, draw and color a picture of the airplane you are flying in, let’s say a Boeing 707, being sure to include the name of the airline on the plane. Then call the stewardess (yes, that’s what they were called then) and tell her while wearing an adorable expression: “I drew this for the pilot, can you take it to him?”

After you’ve landed in Tampa, Florida and have just seen your first palm trees through the window, on your way off the plane you will be invited into the cockpit and greeted by the pilot himself.

“Billy, have you ever seen a grown man…”

No, no, not like that. He’ll thank you for your drawing, show you the controls and light up the ten thousand indicator lights all at once with a “check bulb” function and of course give you a plastic set of ‘wings’.

This is an actual set of wings I got as a kid
on a flight to Tampa, Florida.

Works every time! -until you’re around twenty-five anyways, then they seem think it’s creepy or something… That might be different if you’re a women though.

“Brenda, have you ever been in the mile high club?”

I have always loved to travel.

I have always been a homebody.

Those statements are not a contradiction. Not any more than I am.

Both travel and home have always been very important to me. When I was younger, the scales were very much tipped towards travel. A trip to my grandparents’ house was always an event I looked forward to as a child. One of the first professions I professed an interest in was truck driver.

I think I dreamed of travel non-stop after that. I used to put on headphones that weren’t plugged into anything because, to me, it mimicked the noise of being on a jet.

I used to watch the trucks heading out of town on Route 332 bound for I-90 and the World as far as I knew.

Finally, when I was eighteen I was able to go on my first unsupervised road trip. I drove my brother, myself and a friend of ours named Heiki Lara to a youth retreat in Eastern Pennsylvania. Coincidentally, my brother and Heiki both live in that general area now. The youth retreat kinda sucked but the road trip was great simply because we were on our own and on the road.

I never missed an opportunity to travel after that: Taking my sister to camp, picking up a German friend of hers at JFK in New York (a full day of driving), or helping a friend move to Nashville just for the road trip.

Just after college, I drove my beat-up ’74 Chevy van from NY to Georgia non-stop just to see a girl.

The driving force behind that trip gave new meaning to the term “wanderlust”.

I loved being gone, but I always returned home. Except for once...

The morning I pulled onto I90-West in a small moving truck headed for Los Angeles, there was no home to return to, it had been sold. I drove away down the Thruway with a dream in my heart but tears in my eyes as my homeland got smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror.

When I started working in game shows in LA, I started traveling four to six times a year, more than I ever had. Then I became a full-time musician for a while and traveled all the time.

I have stayed in Hotel rooms for eleven days at a time, and I have stayed in hotel rooms for eleven minutes total—just enough time for a quick shower.

I have ridden in a tour bus non-stop night and day (except for fuel stops) from Massachusetts to Southern California. The surreal part of that was riding right past my old exit 44 (Canandaigua, NY) at 3AM without being able to stop and see anyone I know and love.

After traveling like that for a while the romance of the road started to look like a truck stop and smell like a tour bus. Being at home became the vacation and vacation was had become work.

Though I still love to be on the road but I love being at home more. When I am home and settled in I am loath even to go out to the store, just ask my wife.

What is home though? I’m not sure I’ve found it yet. It can be said that Audra is my 'home'; I’ve never felt so at-home with anyone. Where is our home? Not that an apartment can’t be a home, but it’s not for us, not really.

Is it a state? Is it a state of mind? Is "home" it the journey home?

Perhaps if I get some paper and crayons, draw a nice picture of my ‘home’ and send it up to the pilot, he’ll give me a set of wings and show me the way.

Journal:

I had almost forgotten about this feature. I put it on hold while I posted my Christmas story and never brought it back.

I spent a week in New York (downstate but not quite the city) for show biz stuff. I was too far away to see any family or friends from home. There was an old friend that I was going to meet but I wound up getting a nasty cold and had to cancel.

Next Saturday when I post my next blog I will be posting it from Toronto where I will be working on another show. New York and Toronto in January, I sure can pick’em huh?

I was able to record a new demo version of “Loser’s Treason” with a revised vocal melody and new percussive elements. I sent it to my producer but I haven’t been able to talk with him about it yet so I don’t know if it sucks or not yet.

I will be able to use my hotel time to do some editing and pre mixing of the album. There are a couple backup singers I need to prepare parts for “Loser’s Treason”, “Sugar on the Snow” and “The Cider Miller’s Daughter”. A friend of mine is going to record a guitar solo for “Loser’s” and I need to get him a good set of tracks to work with.

It’s becoming clear that completing the CD is going to be an exercise in faith and compromise.  Since I am doing most of it myself, there’s a certain amount of anxiety in putting a hault to revisions, corrections, and tweaking and calling it ‘done’. I'll have to relinquish all control and release it to the World and set it adrift into the ether of history.

I am plenty brave when it comes to posting files of my works-in-progress as long as I can hide behind the excuse that it’s “…a rough mix, it’s not done yet”.

Why look, there’s that link now: http://www.reverbnation.com/joeltjohnson -have a listen.

Like raising a child, the purpose of creating this music is to send it out into the World to its destined ears, not to be kept at home till it’s unemployed and living in my basement twenty years later.

Note To Self From the Future

Note to Self:

Remember to explain things to your readers. This isn’t just about you know.

Good idea, other self-writing-a-note-to-me-about-the-blog.

Don’t mention it, self-writing-the-blog.

No matter what age you are, you can look back at a time when you were perhaps not as wise, not the pillar of wisdom and good judgment that you are now. Don’t you wish you could go back and hand-deliver to yourself the lessons that you had to learn the hard way? Give yourself some clues to poor decisions made? Or things learned too late to capitalize on, opportunities missed; like youth itself for instance.

While you were at it you might even drop a stock tip or two on yourself and who won/will win the 2021 World Series.

But what about now genius, are you perfect yet? Infallible? Isn’t your future self watching you through the impassable curtain of time, screaming at the top of their lungs: “You moron, you’re doing it wrong, you’re missing it!”

But we can’t hear it. We’re too busy looking at our other younger selves, screaming at the top of our lungs, “you moron…   and don’t sell your friggin’ Apple stock yet either! It’s called an ‘iPod’!”

Maybe, if we step outside of our present selves for a moment and take some clues from the things we might tell our past selves and engage in some good-ole common sense, we can make a good guess at the things our older wiser future self might tell us in from our 'now'.

This week’s blog is my attempt at that very thing…

Note To Self:

Time is passing. When you were even younger you wasted it like it was water on the ocean. Now you are worried about every moment that you’re not productive. The younger you didn’t have it all wrong you know. Time spent worrying about time wasted is not only time wasted; it deepened the wrinkles in my forehead. My heart and spirit haven’t benefited from it either. No, time isn’t water on the ocean, but it can’t be kept in a bottle either. Let it flow, enjoy the ride.

Play more mentally challenging games, keeping learning, test your memory. I’ll have a easier time remembering when to take all these damn pills if you do.

Sometimes there are people in life that just piss you right off, I know. If you got to know them, in time you’d learn to appreciate many good things about them. You’d probably tell others: “Oh, they’re alright, that’s just their ‘stuff’. They don’t mean anything by it.” Why not assume that’s the case. Why not assume everyone has a side worth getting to know. Isn’t that what you’d want others to do when you’re a jerk.

Oh come on, admit it. You can be a jerk sometimes too.

Continue to dabble in other disciplines and instruments but learn to focus enough to become a master of your first love: the bass guitar; tap every drop of its untapped potential.

Some of the people you know now will die much sooner than you think. I can’t tell you which ones, so love them all like you’ll never see them again. But, um, lay off the bear hugs and the impassioned goodbyes, it kinda freaks people out.

The things you think are really important right now, right this moment? they aren’t, not really.

What is?

The stuff you’d guess if you really thought about it: family, faith in something greater than yourself, community, exercise, fiber, stopping to look in childlike wonder at the shiny things in life; just not while you’re driving or juggling chainsaws…

Love.

I became more-or-less like the people you are hanging around now, so do me a favor; call up a billionaire once in a while. -Nah, just kidding. Do whatever you have to to spend time around people who are happy in their life, avoid those who aren’t. Park yourself next to those older and wiser than yourself, then shut your mouth and listen. Spend some time around younger folks that stop to look at shiny stuff too.

I can’t remember what it was the wife and I ever fought about; not a one, not a clue. Why don’t you forget them as they happen, you’re going to eventually anyway.

Finish that state quarter collection you started before they get too hard to find. No, it’s still not worth very much but I love taking it out and looking at it from time to time.

Even though I have some counsel for you, I have learned not to regret things we’ve done and not done. I also have learned not to give advice to anyone that doesn’t ask for it and even then, sparingly. While I’m being contradictory: don’t take any advice that you didn’t ask for yourself.

I’ll just let your brain spin around a while on whether to heed that one or not.

Save early, save often and for heaven’s sake back up more often. You have at least one more cataclysmic hard drive crash in your future.

Don’t give up on your music, writing and other creative endeavors. You really can make a living off of your creativity, you just have to believe it enough to take some risks and commit yourself to the point that your self-confidence starts to snowball.

You need to be smarter with your money and more aggressive about getting paid. I have people who do that for me now but you don’t and won’t until you can do it yourself.

Ironic huh?

Spend less time trying to impress and more time being impressive.

Once you get used to eating smaller portions of healthier foods you won’t miss it and almost everything will be better, I promise.

You will miss having a cookie whenever you want or as much ice cream as you can stomach. Sorry; it’s not all sunshine and unicorn glitter here in your future.

Oh, and being thin: you do get cold real easy, just put on a sweater.

I do!

Take a little more heat when the blame comes around, give away a little more credit when the accolades are pouring in. What you deserve will come to you in the end. Just concentrate on making that a scenario to look forward to.

I bet you think I’m going to tell you to be less impulsive, but I’m not. Be impulsive; just learn from your bigger mistakes and create a sensible balance between the sugar of the moment vs. the whole grain of the years. Life is about both.

Change your habits to live more sustainably. You're doing some things but there's a lot more you can do. Somehow, there are folks still trying to debate over global warming after all these years, but enough people thought it was worth taking a chance to change, instead of taking a chance by doing nothing and it benefited far more that CO² levels. There are a few folks who are a little less rich but everyone’s life is a little better and we go to bed at night knowing we've been good stewards of God’s gifts.

If a tall blond dude named Klaus tells you that you can earn ten thousand dollars in three days by flying to Zurich, for God’s sake don’t go!

You will make more money by-the-way. I have more stuff, a better car, a nicer place to live than you do right now. I’m used to it though and live life-day-to-day just as you do now. There are still things I would like that I can’t afford… yet! Even though you have less, recognize that you really are basically happy now. I cherish memories of what is your present life.

Speaking of memories, I remember Delilah, the cat whom we found as a kitten at that film shoot in Mississippi, give her tummy a good scratch for me will ya? I have another cat now but I really miss her sometimes.

Keep writing your ‘blog’ as you call it, you’ll get better at it and it’ll lead to other things. “Blog” -ha! I haven’t heard that word in twenty years.

Regarding stocks:

Research and diversity my friend, research and diversity!

The 2021 World Series:

Beijing over Seattle in game 5.

We were talking about full-contact poker right?

What about you? Leave a comment about what your future self might tell you; both as positive reinforcement and constructive criticism.

I Hate To Watch

Given the date, one might expect this blog to be about New Years Resolutions.

I will give that subject the slightest nod: I resolve to finish my album by April and start performing my own material in February.

Nuf said.

I watched my new “Joe Bonamassa At Royal Albert Hall” DVD this week. It was awesome! If you ever get the chance to hear JB play recorded or live, do yourself a favor:

jbonamassa.com

Bonamassa was a child prodigy blues guitarist from New Hartford, New York, a place where I used to attend field band competitions in high school. Joe would have been around five or six at then time. I remember hearing about Joe in the ‘90s; playing in Rochester and around the region. When I was on tour a couple years back one of the guys on the bus turned me on to this amazing guitarist/singer who I found out later was that same kid from New Hartford that I remember hearing about (I'm so bad with names). I also saw him briefly show up in the documentary “Tom Dowd and the Language of Music. The ledgendary Tom Dowd had produced one of Joe's albums and the cameras caught Bonamassa in action enough to show that he was something extraordinary.

A clip from "Joe Bonamassa At Royal Albert Hall"

The Albert Hall DVD was great and I really enjoyed it.

Then why, after paying twenty or-so bucks for it, did I have to force myself to watch it?

It’s always been hard for me to watch music performances. I have a difficult time simply enjoying then.

When I’m in the audience, whether live or on a screen, I do two things.

I analyze: What’s the equipment? What effects are being used? What chord is that? How did he/she do that?

I postulate as to why the heck am I not on stage myself: I can’t help it, when I am in the audience all I can do is imagine myself on stage playing and asking one more question that drowns out all the others: Why is that not me there on stage? I could do that. I could do better maybe.

Even when I’m watching something non-musical I imagine my own music to it.

Whether this is healthy ambition or some tragic character flaw I’m not sure. It’s not that I don’t appreciate and honor the talent, skill and creativity of other musicians. I would just much rather be doing it than watching it. Maybe it's sad that my ability to simply enjoy experiencing the thing I love is diluted by my desires. Considering the joy I get from making music, I wouldn't trade it frankly.

As I mentioned once in the old blog, in seventh grade I took string bass lessons and was so bad at reading music that I wasn't allowed to play in the orchestra. The Jr. High orchestra was pretty bad, so I must have really wreaked!

I remember sitting in the audience for a school concert. I watched every vocal group, every band plus the orchestra perform while sitting amongst my fellow non-music classmates. I kept asking myself that same question: Why not me?

The jazz band didn’t even have a bass player for cryin’ out loud! I kept imagining what notes I would play and how much better it would sound with a bass.

The next year I was in all but one of the seven music ensembles the school offered. The exception was the seventh grade band (I was in eighth grade).

By-the-way, a new goal: to open for Joe Bonamassa.

Life is more complicated than it was in Jr. High. I want to be on stage doing my own thing but I can’t just say “I wanna be up on that stage” and expect things to happen. It’s just not that simple.

Or is it?

Even if it is simple, it ain’t easy. If it were, every four-string bass jockey would be quitting their day gig at Guitar Center, trading the Saturn for a fifteen passenger van and hitting the road.

Yes it’s going to be tough; sweat must be expelled and sacrifices must be made, but that’s a good thing. Think of it as a natural selection process, a weeding-out that prevents crappy ill-deserving, narcissistic self-severing, musicians and performers from ever reaching the World stage.

OK, so it’s more of a crackpot theory.

………………..

As promised—or at least as implied—I am going to end my blog with something my friend Jim wrote a couple years ago:

Basses and Dogs: A Comparison
By Jim Schreck

One is referred to as Man's best friend

The other pees on the carpet

Both were made for walking

One can be slapped, popped, and distorted to produce hours of creative fun

The other gets plugged into an amp

Both have sufficient volume to wake the neighborhood at 3AM

One produces a lot of sh** in the bottom end

The other produces a lo of sh** with its bottom end

Both can bark and bite

One can be modified with several electrical devices causing it to emit many scary, loud, often painful sounds

The other just gets plugged into an amp

Both looked and sounded a lot better in the store

One is linked to running jumping and catching frisbees in the mouth

The other sheds on the furniture

Both are responsible for massive amounts of drool

One is linked to such behavior as staying out all night, rolling around in garbage and copulating in the street

The other leaves its chewy toys under the couch