The Saturday Afternoon Acoustic Gig And Other Ones

Gilligan's Pub 5/27/17  (Karl Hudson: Host)

With
Tim Nemec-Bass

The Promise Flower
Listen To Love
I Fought The Law
For What It's Worth
If I Were A Carpenter
Ring Of Fire (Jeff Overly-sax)
Teri My Love (abridged)
Everybody's Talking (False Start)
Gold Dust Woman (Belinda James-Lead Vocals, Karl Hudson, Guitar, Jeff Overly-Sax)
Everybody's Talking
You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover
Come Together (Belinda James-Lead Vocals)

With Julie And The Mad Dogs-Rumors 5/26/17

Johnny B Goode
Highway To Hell

Mike Serbousek-Vocals on Johnny B Goode
Julie Gordon-Vocals on Highway To Hell
Kevin Micheal-Bass
Buddy Archbremner-Lead Guitar

Another stormy afternoon but I managed to do a half hour set of songs, another attempt to do The Promise Flower (and still fucked up on one of the verses)  but it was a pretty good and spirited jam. Tim Nemec, who  I jammed with at Whittier played bass on all of the songs mentioned.  I'm still not entirely sold on The Promise Flower since I'm having issues with one line in that song, it sounded better in the studio than it does live.

For the most part I kept the songs to their original versions and not extended them much although I did play around with the lead on Listen To Love.   For What It's Worth was done Buffalo Springfield intended it to be.  Belinda cracked me up on the version of Everybody's Talking to the point that  I forced her to do a version of Gold Dust Woman, (with Karl on extra guitar and Jeff Overly adding backing vocals). I do think Belinda was ready to call me on that song, she did quite well for a first time we ever done it together. Belinda was also tapped to do Come Together, we did that song at Checker's the other night and she's beginning to figure out the way that I play it, Tim on bass also picked it up, first time we ever jammed to that song. I would love to have more people take turns singing on these songs.  Of course Julie is my first choice, but if she's not around then Belinda has shown she could sing too.

A singer will have their own style to fit the song and chemistry helps too. Belinda brings more of  a cool type of vocals, whereas Julie goes by emotion and feel, basically she has a way that brings me to do a song a lot better than I could ever do singing it.   And it seems like Gold Dust Woman became the focal song of the jams, taken from a clumsy  ideal of trying to play it solo and then having Julie pick it up when I was trying to play it to her for the first time at her place a few weeks ago.  I have heard her sing that song Friday Night at Rumors with Buddy playing guitar and she also has done another version of that with Bart Carfizzi on keyboards, both versions unique, but I'm biased to the point  that when we play it together something comes from deep within. I think the 2nd version we tried at Checkers was the best of them all but the 3rd version got partly recorded and we managed to dub it off on cassette for something in the future.  I'd rather have a complete version but that would bring me and Julie together at some recording studio for that to happen.

It's been a sad week for her, since the breakup of the Acoustic Kitties and then all of a sudden losing one of her doggies and despite all the sadness, she still manages to sing great.  I would have crumbled under pressure.  Since this is Memorial Day Weekend, the crowds were not there for The Mad Dogs Friday Night, nor the Bart and Jewelz show at The Frog Saturday.  I was there to support the effort and not get in the way, it's her gigs and her show.  Bart's wife Kathy was there as well and we managed to talk a bit and took down Bart's keyboards and PA monitor since his back surgery has not helped and he's still in chronic pain.  I feel bad for him, he's doing his best trying to make it work but back pain is not fun.  I've been dealing with that myself the past couple days.  It's their second time out together and a few songs got redone later (guess which one).  I could have made a suggestion about grabbing my guitar and help them along but that's their gig and not a jam.   And not a good idea.   Still, it's tough to play gigs and only have 5 to 10 people show up, and you wonder what's the point but a musician keeps going on, they consider it practice and they'll get better for the next gig.  That is if they get invited back.

Which leads back to Friday Night after the gigs and everybody's packed up and ready to go home upon saying goodnight to Julie, she remarked about wanting to go do something, go out on a date.  I said that I thought going to jams was kinda like a date, was it? She said not exactly. I then said well if I ask you very nice, would like you go out on a date and go somewhere (after all the last time I went out with somebody was over five years ago) and she said yes.   She continues to surprise me in her own ways.  I don't look at myself as just a friend to people.  It's just that Julie is a musician and we share certain interests, I thought about it but never could find the right place and time to say it, but she did.

While I talk about it and think about it, it's hard to believe that I'm could ever be a part of her life even from a musician perspective. Even for 56 years, I still stumble about like a awkward teenager trying to impress her, but alas something gets in the way, I either knock over her fan she uses at her gigs, or stepping on somebody's guitar chord and things like that drives me insane.  No, I never thought this would ever remotely happen again.

With Julie in this life, I'm playing better, the guys in the band are enjoying the music more and I am beginning to lose the negativeness that had been building up for many many years.  And I do hope that this continues me on the right path to what's left of this life. I'll continue to stumble along the journey but I hope the longer we know each other, the more closer we can become.  The music helps a lot, that's what brought us together, on stage.   But I do know it will take time and I'm very much out of practice when it comes to taking somebody out on a date.  I guess the best way to start at square one and go from there.

Hello, I'm Rodney Smith and I play in a band called The Townedgers...............