Drew skipped rehearsal last night to attend a family function, so Philip sat in on bass. He really seemed to enjoy himself. Philip, the fearless KDOG sound man, is trained on keyboards. But he can wheedle a little music out of almost any instrument. He showed a real flair for locking up tight with Kenton's kick drum as we ran down "Bug Eye Willie," "Mother In Law Blues," "All Grown Up," "She's Tuff" and "Hootchie Coochie Man." We even tried out some new material: "Twenty Yards Behind," "Casting My Spell" and Bo Diddley's arrangement of "I Can Tell." If Drew can't make the gig, we've got our backup guy. "I'll play from behind the soundboard!" Philip said.
"I love the band," Nick said as we went to pick up pizzas on our break. (Plenty of anchovies on the side. When I woke up this morning, my armpit sweat smelled like cat food.) I love the band, too. God knows we've nearly killed each other more than once. The tensions and rivalries make the Sunni-Shiite schism look like a summer camp sing-a-long. And yet, somehow, we've started working as a unit, instead of like four guys with conflicting agendas.
"When's our next gig?" Drew asked me the other night when I saw him at the McClatchy High School Winter Concert. (My son, Brett, played cornet in the jazz band and Drew's daughter, Abby, played upright bass in the concert band. Nothing is cooler than a girl who plays the big doghouse.) "I'm actually looking forward to it."
When he found out that band wasn't booked until April, Drew arranged for us to play at Marilyn's on Saturday, Jan. 17. Drew's other two bands are the openers. That's good. I think we can get a lot more people. He's going to feel like a whipped mule by the end of the night: he's looking at 5 hours of playing and singing.
Bug Eye Willie: Bastard or Voodoo Child?
Kenton and Nick told me they'd worked on a new ending for "Bug Eye Willie" last night. They're right: it is only half a song. It's like a movie that ends in the middle:
Sad little song
An American tragedy
Tell you the story of Bug Eye Willie
Boy's so dumb most folks call him silly
Daddy was a rabbit
He liked running the ridges
His momma like sunning what she kept in her britches
One day his momma was cooking a brew
Rabbit said let me lick that while I'm lovin' you
Momma said don't touch that it's gettin hot
Rabbit said let me be the judge of that
Rabbit started slippin' and slidin' in the messy love goo
Bug Eye Willie said hey man I'm in here somewhere too
One day Mark came for the twins plus one
Bug Eye Willie figured himself likewise a son
He went callin' out to daddy Mark
Mark said no your Daddy was an aardvark
I agree with Kenton. The song can't end with Willie can't end with the bastard being rejected by the father. In Kenton's new version, Willie kicks his dad's ass. I thought this had Oedipal overtones and that Willie should then impregnate his mother. Kenton wasn't thinking on those terms. He wanted to turn it into a Clint Eastwood movie. Nick wasn't sure about this. "I always thought it was like 'Faust' - a tragedy," Nick said. "It started out as Marlowe's 'Dr. Faustus' and now it's Geothe's version."
In Marlowe's play, Faust is goes to hell and his torn apart by demons. Geothe's rigs the plot to Dr. Faustus gets into heaven. "Suddenly, he's the hero."
"That's it," I said. "Willie needs to make the hero's journey, like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Or like Jimi Hendrix in real life. In New York, Hendrix is nobody. People laugh at him. Then he goes to England and blows everybody's mind and comes back as the biggest badass guitar player and showman on the Earth. That's the plot of 'Hear My Train a'Comin'"
Dig
Gonna leave this town, yeah
Gonna leave this town
Gonna make a whole lotta money
Gonna be big, yeah
Gonna be big, yeah
I'm gonna buy this town
I'm gonna buy this town
An' put it all in my shoe
Might even give a piece to you
That's what I'm gonna do,
what I'm gonna do,
what I'm gonna do
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