Various Jams-Jeff Overly Birthday Bash and Whittier Acoustic Showcase

Various Jams


Long Branch Supper Club Acoustic Jam 9-8-17
Brought to you by Tony Nickels


Songs:

Fever
Come Together
Cinnamon Girl
The Last Time
Tulsa Time
Everybody's Talking
Round around
Simple Man
Hot Rod Lincoln (false start)
Rock Me Baby
Keep Your Hands To Yourself/
Let's Work Together

With:
Mark Randolph-Guitar on Fever and Come Together
Belinda James-Lead Vocals on Fever and Come Together
Jeff Overly-Saxophone and Vocals, Lead Vocals on Round Around, Simple Man, Hot Rod Lincoln
       and Keep Your Hands To Yourself
Tim Nemec-Bass
Tony Nickels-Percussion


Whittier Acoustic Jam Showcase with David Lam 9/9/17

Songs:

Cinnamon Girl
The Last Time
Tulsa Time
Sundown
Just To Satisfy You
Everybody's Talking
Light My Fire
Logic And Lies

With
Rose Slaymaker
Tim Nemec
Carl Meiners
David Lam
and the rest of the Whittier Jam gang who's name I don't know but their participating was welcomed.


I've down in the valley on a roller coaster ride and on Tuesday was ready to walk away only to have Belinda tell me not to do that, not to let my depression get the best of me.  So I decided to ride it on out.  And went to the ball game.

And then went to Checkers and performed.
And onward to the Long Branch
And finally Whittier Community Center where it was the finale of the week of playing. Not a money making event but it did build the confidence back up again.

With the death of Don Williams I wanted to do a song as a tribute. The best one was Tulsa Time and on Friday we tried a version but I ran out of printer ink and couldn't read the words and did it in a A to E chord progression.  And on Saturday decided to try the original E to B7 scale.  That worked better.  The past week I focused on just doing the songs that I have been playing the past couple weeks.  I learned The Last Time and Cinnamon Girl plus Tulsa Time and decided to keep playing them and polishing them up.   I tend to think the more I play these songs, the more I get familiar with them and take them to the next level.   But there are songs I have yet to play, Turning On Blue, Refugee, What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding, and the new Steve Earle song Looking for A Woman.  Upon this, I haven't done many originals, Logic And Lies was done Saturday Night and I Always Wanted To Be With You last week but for the most part Logic And Lies the album is now basically archived, only a couple others will be performed.  I doubt if I'll examine any of those outside of Mystery Girl and Logic And Lies.  What's the point of doing The Promise Flower if the person I decided the song to doesn't care about it?   The object is to find songs that I can enjoy playing, and having the customers out there like them.  If it means forgoing most of the Townedgers' music so be it.  I'm not giving up on The TEs, far from it.  But at jam sessions I will probably will go with songs that people want to hear.  But I will not stop looking for more obscure songs to play.  There's a restless spirit in me that continues to look for the forgotten classic song.  While The Stones folk will go with Can't Always Get What You Want, which is a fun song to do, I rather much do No Expectations or The Last Time, the latter my favorite Rolling Stones Song of all time.

Friday Night, Jeff Overly came up from Fort Madison, he was playing along with Karl Hudson and Peter Cacioppo in The Buzz band and mentioned about joining the Long Branch Acoustic Showcase, so I gave him first priority over anything else or bands.  I did catch part of Rick Clay and Nikki D's acoustic duo at Ramsey's and Rick amazes me.  I'd never figure him to do Lady Gaga or Sugarland but he's a pro at what he does.  Nikki D, great singer too. In some ways, Friday's show featured all but one member of the Egads!, a new band collective featuring myself, Belinda, Mark and Tim,only Larry Axelman was not there. For the most part Mark and Belinda almost did a hour long set, and then I took the stage to do Fever and Come Together with Belinda singing and Mark playing guitar on Fever.   Then I took over, and Jeff helped on vocals on a couple songs before we attempted to do Run Around, the Blues Traveler song.  I don't think Tim was conditioned to play the same four chord riffs over and over for 6 minutes but I kept going.  Then Jeff wowed the crowd with a stirring version of Simple Man.  And I managed to play guitar rather than drums.  Tony did that.  With Jeff in tow, the songs I did do, were extended by a couple minutes and to conclude things we did a mash up of Keep Your Hands To Yourself with Let's Work Together as a medley.  It was ugly but it did worked.

For Whittier there wasn't very many jammers, Carl from the Checkers jam showed up and Rose and Tim later on and once again it was mostly covers except for the end song which was Logic And Lies. This time out, Tulsa Time was done better and in E chord instead of A and it made a big difference. There was a guy that did a flute solo on Everybody's Talking and I had some female backing vocals on The Last Time. Except for a couple messed up notes, the Whittier Jam went very well.

(The Jewel Runners or the host band (Jon Wilson, Ryan Phelan, Daddy O, Dan Johnson))
Photo by Ryan Phelan

Parlor City Blues Jam-Jamming With Daddy O 9/12/17

With

Ed Butler-Vocals and guitar
Dennis McMurrin-lead guitar
Ryan Phelan-Host Guitarist
Dan Johnson-Bass
R.Smith-Drums
Jon Wilson-Host Drummer

Songs:

I Shot The Sheriff
Wicked Game
All Along The Watchtower



In the hour that I got there, I never heard as much jazz in one hour than I have all year.  This was a special event since Daddy O did a rare host and when I ran into Dan Johnson at the ball park last night he mentioned this and I was not too sure about being there.  But when my place of employment wasn't busy then it was okay to show up. The other DJ, Hovenstat was the second drummer at Rumors Sunday Jam and he mentioned that they had 5 drummers for two sets.  DJ would eventually take over for me after my set and I went home.

Plenty of musicians up there,  Ed replaced Ryan Phelan on guitar and I helped him keep a beat on the songs.  Ed is very unconventional and like myself tends to play around the songs, no songs are ever the same way twice but he played it straight through Wicked Game, in fact I think he did a very cool version of it and All Along The Watchtower I based the beat from perhaps Bob Dylan and The Band's version from Before The Flood but I may have based it upon a version Tony Brown did at the jam one time, Tony was there but didn't play.  Ed did a shortened version of Sheriff, instead of pausing I followed him into the next verse.  Before hand we did chat about the set list at Rumors when he did that and had a good laugh about the Bob Wills song.

So, the debacle of last Tuesday's jam is now a distant memory.  I had two great shows on Friday and Saturday and tonight's jam was epic.  In a moment of redemption, before I left, Craig Erickson popped in to say hi to Daddy O and Dan.  I got to say hi to Craig this time instead of running the other way at Hy Vee.

Side Note: Dennis McMurrin is a local treasure.  All the musicians love him and it turns out he's very down to earth and a great person to talk music too.  In my two years plus of being back I managed to hang with the best musicians out there, and some have been surprising, Bob Dorr is a one of a kind, he floored me away when we jammed together.  Dennis McMurrin just might be the most humble and best of them all.  I really enjoyed this jam session.

(Dr. Hanna from his FB site)

George Hanna.  By day he's a local dentist, but sometimes at night and on Tuesday Nights he'll be at Parlor City, jamming with the best.  Next to Jon Wilson, Dr. Hanna is the most swinging-est drummer I have heard yet. He can do the Purdie Shuffle just like Bernard can.  Perhaps I should look him up to see about my choppers.