Checker's Jam-Pam's Birthday Party

Acoustic Jam at Checker's 8/16/17

Setlist:

Everybody's Talking
Sundown
Mystery Girl

With:

Jay Dean
Steve Black Wolf
Cathy Hart
Lorie Parker
D.J. Eisner
Carl Meiners
Mike Frederick
Bart Carfizzi
David Arnold
Belinda James
Mark Randolph
Cecie Stark
Peter Stark
Kathy Runnells
Kathy Carfizzi
Buddy Archbrenner
Abigail Bunker
Jeff Gage
Luther Parker
Mike Spina
Tim Canfield
and a few more strangers

All photos by Cathy Hart

(Bart Carfizzi, Donna Jo, Steve Black Wolf)

I'm already three days into my vacation and the days are going by so fast.  And I have not really gotten around getting the basement cleaned, I went to Waterloo on Monday, celebrated Mom's birthday on Tuesday and did the Parlor City Blues Jam and on Wednesday went to check up on Julie. She's two weeks into knee replacement and her staples will be coming out tomorrow.  She's still in pain from time to time but she still thinks she will heal in time to do the Mad Dogs Gig at Rumors on September 1.  We tossed around a couple of songs to do outside of Mike's Johnny B Goode.  But I really not concerned on what songs that  we do.  One thing  for certain, I won't be playing guitar. I had planned on trying to clean the house today but Julie wanted some company, so I managed to go over and spend a couple hours with her.  I had some stomach pain issues so she made up a organic smoothie that actually did work.  It settle my stomach down and was better than  drugs.  She must be physic at times.  I felt much better afterward.

(L to R: Donna Jo, Bart, Steve Black Wolf, R.Smith, David Arnold, Jay Dean)

Tonight's jam was Pam Herrington's birthday at Checkers.  Her and PJ own the place and have been very good to me when I went up to play. I had a couple of Buddy's pizza earlier in the afternoon so I wasn't hungry enough to order anything but Checkers does have some fine pizza.   On my segment, I played alone and really didn't come up with much, revisits of Everybody's Talking, Sundown and Mystery Girl and after that I put away the guitar and went behind the congas and played them the rest of the night.  For the first time in over a year I got to jam with Jay Dean from Blue Scratch and chatted a bit.  Kim, his vocalist from that band was in the audience but didn't stay long enough to sing. I think he was kinda taken aback from Lorie's Boobyful song but Cathy thought up another song dedicated to Pam called Pam's Gravity, probably for the first and only time.  Highlights included the medley of Stand By Me/This Magic Moment/Last Kiss to which it turned out to be an extended jam with Bart Carfizzi and David Arnold, David playing sax and Bart playing keyboards imitating a sax.  Later this was repeated with Belinda James came up to do Stormy Monday Blues.  She just has the loveliest voice to do that song, I think she was born to sing the blues. But due to the length of the song and so many jammers we didn't do Fever, nor Steve did Turn The Page.  But Steve's extending Knockin On Heaven's Door with David Arnold wailing away on sax, he didn't need to.  And then Carl had to do Your Cheatin Heart with Lorie, Cathy, Belinda and Donna Jo yelling out OH CARL on the middle four.  They weren't there at Whittier so Carl could not be embarrassed by that.

(L to R: Carl Meiners, Mike Frederick, Lorie Parker, Buddy Aschbrenner)

It's all in good fun.

Jay Dean (Photo: Ross Kendall)
From the Marion by Moonlight, gig with Blue Scratch.  We talked about doing me subbing for them a couple times.  Back then I was more into hard rock playing but after having a few mellow blues jams at Parlor City I can probably help out if needed.  I had a blast jamming with him Wed night.