Geezer Rock

Fairy Tale Town Revisited

Rockin' Do Gooders

KDOG played its first gig in almost three months at Fairy Tale Town at a benefit to raise money for an emergency housing for the homeless. Last year, Nick and I played this with my son Brett on drums. (Kenton was on a cruise he'd won. We were, as we so often are, in between bass players.) The event is at Fairy Tale Town, the kiddie park in across from the Sacramento Zoo in Land Park. We played on the Mering Family Stage - the biggest stage we've ever played on. This meant we finally had plenty of room for Kenton's drums.
The event is a gourmet wine and food expo. Hundreds swell folks pay fifty bucks a ticket. Local restaurants, wineries, breweries, caterers and chefs hoping to drum up business from rich people donate food and drink. You just graze your way through the tables. I was so busy I didn't get much food. I don't drink any more, so I had to settle for a few bubbly, delicious Diet Cokes.

Mak Shau

When The Beatles played at sleazy clubs in Hamburg's infamous Reeperbahn district, the tyrannical club owners berated the boys by screaming "mak schau, mak schau," which is German for "make it a show!" They wanted the group to jump and around and go wild to better entice more drunks into the club. The Beatles developed an unchoreographed, but berserk stage act, enahnced by free beer and plentiful supplies of German diet pills. This simple strategy worked and proved far more effective than music alone in attracting large crowds of German booze hounds. I kept this lesson in mind for this gig. I also recalled the words some classical musician who said, "If you're going to take the stage, give a performance."
I realized that our previous shows had featured far too much standing around and trying to impress people with our so-called "musical content." Trying to present yourself as a serious artist never works. Besides, we're amatuerish musicians. Standing their like Miles Davis at the Blue Note only emphasized our slovenly playing. I resolved not to make this error. I really put a lot of energy into the Fairy Tale Town gig throughout the night. I made full use of the stage and my 30-foot curly guitar cord. I did flying scissor kicks and Pete Townsend style jumps. I made sure to count off the songs at ultra-fast tempos. These antics made the gig a lot more fun for everybody. Also: the stage is huge and the audience is at least 50 feet away from the stage. It would be easy to get lost in all that space. I made sure that the people who were watching had something to look at.
The band rocked harder than ever, although the level of musicianship hadn't improved. But that didn't matter. The audience really loved the show. It went over better than gig in which we'd played a lot more accurately, but didn't put nearly as much energy into the act. Drew's contributions really kicked, too, producing the band's best musical moment ever: a thundering, up tempo version of The Beatles "Come Together." Everything worked. It was probably Kenton's best ever drumming, too. Somehow, we've managed to make our arrangment of this tune work in a blues band context. Even Phillip, the sound guy, said it was "powerful." Phillip is a refined person and not a big fan of our style of music, so that compliment meant a lot.
We got a lot of good feedback. So - a success. And before the biggest crowd we'd ever played to.

Microphone Technique.

For the second time, I hired Phillip Howard to help us set up the PA and run the sound during the show. This made a huge difference. It's also easier to get a good sound outdoors. You don't have to deal with the bizarre acoustics of the typical tiny club. It's virtually impossible for the drums to be too loud outdoors, which makes our music much more tolerable. The day before the gig, I met with Phillip to talk about what I expected from the show. He told me that one factor that really makes us sound like amateurs is poor microphone technique. Poor microphone technique is characterized by:
• Singing, talking and yelling too loud, too close to the microphone. "You can actually hurt somebody that way," Phillip said, explaining that yelling when you're already amplified simply blasts the ears of the audience with high-decibel assaults that can cause permanent hearing damage to any body standing near a PA column.
• Not maintaining a constant distance from the microphone when you're singing. One minute you're close. The sound guy as to turn you down. The next minute, you're five inches father away. The sound guy has to turn you up. "Nothing says 'I don't do this very much' like bad microphone technique." I'm paying Phillip, so I took his advice. After this gig, I rigged up the PA and mixing board at home, plugged in my headphones and spent a week listing to my voice as it came through the microphone. I plugged in my guitar and played the guitar parts and sang all the songs that I do, including the solos, and worked on always moving back to the microphone at the same distance I started from. I tired to sing at the same volume.
Phillip said that Kenton is a real "microphone violater." Phillip thinks lack of experience is a factor, but so is Kenton's use of earplugs. The muffled input he's getting makes him overcompensate by talking too loud and playing too loud. "Kenton," Phillip told him at one point Friday night. "You're amplified. You don't have to yell."

Drew Niebold, Rockin' Daddy

Drew is one guy in the band who shows up knowing more about the songs than he did the last time we played together. You can tell he's listening and learning the material. Nick, Kenton and I are still blowing shit that we've been playing for two years. More important than that, however is Dru's singing, which has really improved our vocal attack. His talent for singing harmony parts on the fly is a big part of that. Also, his voice sounds "rock and roll." He can hit the high "A" in "All Right Now," just like Paul Rogers on the record. His bass playing has a factor we've always lacked - that a big, soft, hole-filling quality that really supports the band. Even if he forgets where he is, or plays the wrong note, or can't remember the part and simply tugs at the root - he never breaks rhythm. This keeps the groove going and the sound full, which keeps the show rocking. I don't think he's even aware of this. He just does it. He's musical. He's not there to play the bass, he's there to play the songs. Kenton, by contrast, is there to play the drums. He told me once he doesn't practice songs. "I practice rudiments," he explained. I guess he meants paradiddles and seven stroke rolls and the rest of it. "Well, we're not leading a fuckin' drum clinic," I replied. "We're playing songs. The crowd is there to hear songs." Oh, well. I practice the songs, but I don't think my playing is improving much, either. I've hit another plateau. I'm having trouble finding the next set of steps going upwards. More gigs would help. So would more practice. It's gonna be slow from here on out.

$35,000 Worth of Drums

Kenton maintains his drum set is worth as much as a car. "The pedals alone are $2,000! They're titanium!" He made one reference to the drum value and the pedal price during the set up. He got his friend, Cliff Lynch, to function as drum tech. Cliff is a grown man with his own business and probaby other activities to attend to. What is Kenton's hold over these people? Is it that people are just dying to get close to rock and roll? Cliff says it's fun. He certainly seems to enjoy himself, always joking and volunteering to help anyone who needs it. I'm glad he's there. Less work for me.

Rock and Roll is Work

I hate Friday night gigs. It's really the last thing I need after a long week of work. I have to knock off at three, load up the PA and fittings, plus my guitar rig, then set it all up at the venue. By the time we drop the downbeat, I've been working for two hours. This gig was complicated by the fact that I had to leave in the middle of the set up to drive my son to a birthday party way down in South Sac. I don't think Keith Richards has to do this stuff.

Musical Mayhem

I played okay, but had a lot more fun than usual. My solos on several songs were just terrible. Plus:
• We all forgot lyrics. Except for Drew.
• Everybody missed cues in at least one song.
• A lot of sloppy endings.
• Rushing. We just can't stop speeding up.

The good news: nobody in the crowd noticed or cared. People complain that I am quite grumpy about this issue. We're here to have fun, rock out and play music. We're just a bunch of buddies.
But we not acting like a "buddy band."
A buddy band practices two or three times a month and maybe plays out four or five times a year, for free, usually at parties thrown by friends.
Our presentation of ourselves is ambitious.
• We're putting ourselves out there as an act that's worth hiring and paying. We're asking bar owners to bet a night's receipts on us. We're saying, "We'll pack your club. We'll keep people dancing and drinking. You're going to make money on us." We've only had one show where we delivered this experience: the February gig at The Hilltop, just before Nick's heart surgery.
• We're investing a lot of time, energy and money in the project. A bunch of buddies would make do with a simple set up. We're doing the $35,000 drums, the $3,000 PA system, the $35 an hour sound tech, the drum roadies. We do e-mail blasts.
• Kenon has big plans. He want to open shows for Gov't Mule. (Really.) He wants to put the band to actually make money. Right now, we're just trying to get our price up to "free."
So, yeah, we're taking ourselves seriously. It's more than just for fun.
Musical mistakes that occur when you're out their on the edge of chaos, stretching and testing your musicianship and creativity, well, that's part of the program.
Musical mistakes that are the result of just not knowing the songs, not practicing and not listening would get your fired from a working band. A working band is what we're trying to be. On the other hand, as Jim Andrews of late, great Bittermen Blues Band put it, "The average person at a party doesn't know or care if I'm Carlos Santana. As long as I'm getting into the music and having fun, then they know to have fun and we're a succes as a band." We're getting this asepct down.
Regular readers know that I can be a moody, combative shit. I'm trying not to bum the vibe at shows when mistakes do occur. That's like lifting weights for me.

The Star Fits Come Out At Night

I only got into one battle with Kenton. A new mellowness record for me. The benefit's organizer signaled to Nick that he wanted to come up for some stage annoucements. Kenton went into a "not on my stage star fit" and ordered Nick to block the guy from coming up until the end of the set. "Not until 7:30! I had all this worked out!" Nick quite rightly let the man take the microphone. Kenton actually tried to start the next number. He started playing the beat, trying to drown the guy, sort of the way the Oscar pit orchestra fires up in the middle of over-long thank you speech. "What the fuck is wrong with you!" I screamed. "You don't fuckin' kick the fuckin' organizer of the benefit off his own fuckin's stage!" This is hardly the reaction of a man who is achieving self-mastery. I don't know if the poor devil heard me or not. Kenton did. He resigned himself to a mid-set interruption. An you know what? It didn't hurt the show at all. We needed a breather. Nick also improvised a lost child announcement during "Urban Spawning." Some kid got separated from her parents. He worked it all into the song. Moments like this add texture.

A Mission Statement?

Nick has proposed two mission statements for our band:
• Play music and have adventures.
• Everywhere we go, there's a party.
We're doing the first one. We're starting to fulfill the second. All in spite of ourselves. As much as I bitch about our playing, we have come a long way since we first got together two years ago. I could barely play a guitar solo. I'd been playing bass. I mean it was foul. The progress is so gradual, I tend to forget that there is progress.

Aftermath
Gigging is both a aerobic (jumping around) and resistence (lifting equipment) workout. Saturday morning, I could barely move. I'm in pretty good shape. Kenton's destroyed shoulder and arthritic hands must have been trobbing the next morning. I didn't feel rested until Monday morning - just in time for another work week. There must be an easier hobby.

©2007 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Can't You Smell That Smell?

Kenton, Nick and I moved all the gear from the mojo dojo to my house last week. My home office now resembles the pro audio department at Guitar Center, a.ka. Shit-Tar Center. (Slogan: "We have one of everything, we just can't find it right now.") This era-ending event occured last Wednesday. Thursday morning I entered the office to a familiar and comforting smell: the heavy mush of the Mojo Dojo Rehearsal Studio and Hair Care Products Storage Facility. As you may recall from previous posts, the late hair styling legend Hitoshi "Tosh" Tamaribuchi used the Mojo Dojo to store vats of industrial strength hair products. The perfume apparently soaked in to our gear. It's not much, but it's all I have left of a great era - almost two years. Perhaps someday the Mojo Dojo will be a rock and roll historical site, visited by fans, much as Beatle buffs visit the Cavern Club in Liverpool today. The only reason to pray for this is that it would drive the Sacramento Taiko Drummer group nuts. They're very serious and cared not at all for our racket.
We tried to rehearse the next night, Thursday. Dru couldn't make it. He forget that he had to go to a going away for his wife thrown by her office chums. Kenton, Nick and I did our no bass player thing yet again. We didn't really work on anything. We just played just to do it.
First, we set up the PA, using just one power amp and two small speakers. This worked well, but, with my typical inattention to detail, the floor was covered with a swarming mess of cords thanks to an awkward placement of the mixer and amp. I'm having Brett tear everything down today while I'm one and work and rebuild it with a neater layout.
Kenton is talking about renting a permanent rehearsal space in a studio. We'd have air conditioning, sound proofing and a clean power supply. We could leave our gear there. But it would cost $400 a month - $1,200 a year each. I don't sense a lot of enthusiasm for spending that much money when we're not making anything. But I can see that rehearsing at my house permanently is highy sub-optimal. It's cramped, it hot, the sound isn't any good and all the gear driving me nuts. The Long Suffering Mrs. Chance isn't exactly a fan of this strategy, either. "Why couldn't you move it to Kenton's house?" she asked. "Because he already has like 20 drum sets at his house all ready," I explained. Kenton is also very particular, even anal. He jokes that he is both ADD and OCD. The Mojo Dojo was very dusty and dirty. All the gear is filthy, especially the cords. It would make Kenton ill to bring all that into his house, which is maintained with complusive neatness. Instead, I've got it, with the original Mojo dust and smell.
For a band that has gigs coming up in September and a bass player who doesn't know all the songs, we're not rehearsing with much purpose or intensity. Kenton was sick on Monday. He hates being ill and usually just treats a cold with contempt. This is a man who once drummed his way through an entire skull-imploding gig at the Stoney Inn while suffering from a throbbing migraine that would've forced most people to lie quietly in a darkened room. I noticed Kenton was having trouble remembering cues. I looked over at him. His eyeballs were popping out of his skull and he was covered with sweat, but he kept going. So I knew he must really feel awful.
Fortunately, my son Brett filled on in drums, as he has before, so Nick, Dru and I could work out some tunes. Dru is playing is Epiphone copy of the Paul McCartney "violin" bass with flatwounds, which sounds really deep, woody and bluesy. He had to pawn is main bass. Talk about nostaligic: when I was in teen garage bands, regular trips to the pawn shop were a part of life. Cash it out on Friday, thrash it on Saturday, rest it on Sunday then cash it back in Monday morning. Anytime we needed a piece of gear for a gig, we'd get it a the pawn shop and turn in back in when we were done. In the early and mid-70s, the pawn shops were full of great-sounding vintage gear that'd be worth a fortune today. Back then, it was looked on as worn out, old and corny.
My God, keeping this enterprise together takes a lot of work. We all have busy lives. It's hard to make the band a priority. In fact, I have to make it too much of a priority, which is causing some friction at home, since I'm neglecting other important chores. It's not that I can't integrate all this, it's just that I'm so naturally disorganized that I have trouble managing a full schedule. I waste far too much time on things that aren't important. The Geezer Rock life, ironically, demands efficiency and focus, which seem antiethical to the rock life. But I've noticed that the big rock starts often maintain crushing work schedules. The band is starting to remind me of being in the Boy Scouts, which is hardly what I had in mind when we started this nonsense.
©Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

History of The Bittermen, Part 3

Here in Part 3, The Bittermen break up and then reform with a new drummer, the dynamo Kenton “K-Dog” Lee.

NICK: Hatley is stressing Tom. So they call a meeting at Paragary’s. I thought it was just a regular dinner where we’re gonna have dinner as a band and chat and stuff. The three of ‘em, Jim Tom and Fitz, after a short period of time. Tom is very good at systematically telling you what the problem is. But ultimately, they say, “We’re quitting the band.” And Hatley and I are kind of looking at them, like “Wow. We’re blown away by this.” Hatley’s got like five or six gigs that are already booked. And I’ve gone from a six-piece band to a three piece. So, uh, they leave. Now it’s Hatley and I to carry on these four or five gigs. With Dave. And Hatley finds a bass player. We do two of the gigs. Then he had two more. One was a gig out in front of the Delta King on pioneer days in Old Sacramento. And we don’t know where we’re going to get a band. So we go down to the Torch Club. At the time, we didn’t even know that the Torch Club was the place for blues in Sacramento. We talk to Johnny Nugget, who was up there doing a solo thing. “Could you get us a band? We’ve got this gig.” He said, “How much does it pay?” I seem to remember that it was $125. He said, “Okay, I’ll take that. I’ll have a bass player and a drummer there. What time do I have to be there?” So we gave him the time and the date. So Hatley and I showed up there. We got our equipment situated. This old beat up van pulls up. The passenger door opens. This gypsy woman who is about five foot tall, draped in this flowing gypsy type costume with a bandana comes out and says “Okay, where’s Johnny going to set up? Where’s Johnny going to put his keyboard? Where is Johnny going to put this? Where’s Johnny going to put that?” And Johnny never came out until all these details were worked out. Then Johnny came out. He said, “Okay. I’ve got my drummer coming and I’ve got my bass player coming.” So they get there. They were setting up their equipment. And Johnny says to Hatley and I: “This is your gig. But if you guys look like you can’t handle it, you’re outta here. Because I’ve got a reputation in this town.” Hatley and I, this is the first time we had ever encountered anything close to an ego like this. This serious, “I’ve got an established name and you guys are nothing.” So we start playing. He’s playing keyboards. Hatley’s got his guitar. He’s got a wah-wah pedal and six other types of pedals. I didn’t know what any of it was. The bass player is standing behind us. Right behind us and off to the side. During the first number, Hatley’s singing. I’m playing. And my harmonica mike is starting to feed back. I didn’t know anything. Now, this is where I learned that no matter what’s going on stage, you always keep smiling. The bass player leans forward, smiling all the while, and says, “either you get that under control or I’m going to knock you off the stage.” All the while, he’s smiling. He never stopped smiling. Hatley and I are looking at each other and we’re petrified. We’re terrified. That we’re in this situation. So, a few more numbers went on. Hatley’s doing a number. John is doing a number. Hatley started this lead about four numbers into it. And it’s just terrible. It was like nothing anybody’s ever heard. Johnny comes out from behind the keyboard, in the middle of the tune, takes the guitar off Hatley, off his neck, over his head, put it on his head. He’s playing this guitar and it sounds pretty good. He’s jumping on all the pedals, all the wah-wahs, and now Hatley disappears into this crowd. Probably about 600 people. He’s gone. We get two more numbers. Then we took a break. They came over to me and said, “Where’s Hatley?” I’m going, “I have no idea.” And now they start looking at his blonde Gibson, all the pedals, and they start going “Okay, this is worth this much. And this is worth this much. These pedals are worth $120. They’re pricing out his stuff. How much they can get for all of his stuff at a parts shop so that they can get paid for this gig. So, we did two more sets. At the end of the last set – and the crowd is really huge at this time – I’m passing the audition with those guys. I’m not stepping on him. When he’s singing, I’m not playing. And when he’s doing his solos, I’m not playing. So I’m maturing under fire. So, for the last tune or two, I see Hatley coming through the crowd. I think, “Oh my god. Thank god.” He comes up. The gig ends. He pays ‘em off. And off they go. That was that.
There’s this other great story. We had this gig booked at Socal's Tavern. And a again, we didn’t have anybody to play it with us. It was a New Year’s Eve gig. So we went down to Skip’s music, hoping that we can connect with some musicians. There were these kids that were playing these guitars. Two of them. IT just so happened that they were a guitar player and a bass player. Dave was still playing drums for us at the time. We said, “hey, could you guys come and play this new year’s eve gig with us?” so they showed up. We did this gig. Just thrown together. It was the first time that it was a totally improvised setting for me. Where I didn’t know what was coming up. But these guys were playing all this heavy metal stuff. And so, we pulled off that gig. The thing that was great about that night was that at the stroke of midnight, I played “Bug Eyed Willie.” That was a big night for me. So anyway, Hatley and I went on like this for a while. Fitz got back into it. We had an open mike at Socal's where will played with a drummer who’d played with Little Charlie and the Nightcats. He was their original drummer. He went on to play with the Hucklebucks after us. So we did that for about a year. And that was amazing because this guy’s time was just unbelievable. He didn’t do too much. Just great taste. Great time. Then, one night, Fitz and I didn’t show up for a gig and that ended it. So now there’s a hiatus. Then the Bittermen Decide to get back together. So, we had a gig, just an impromptu thing: Fitz, Tom and I at a Philos reunion. (A high school social club they all belonged to.) And so we played. Jim said, “You guys sounded great. Let’s get the band back together.”
TOM: The second phase goes from September 2003 to November 2005. Okay. We get back together in 2003. Just once again the idea is not to really start a band. We just want to get together and have fun and practice. We get together once a week and practice. We actually say, “This time, let’s not create a band.” So we keep doing this. And then the idea comes up that maybe we need to perform for Dave’s wedding. (A reference to the second marriage of Dave Mering.) It’s be great if we could really turn into a band and perform at a party for Dave. So we need a drummer. So we start asking around for a drummer.
NICK: So then we came here and we were rehearsing. And Tom said, “If we’re going to play out, we need a drummer.” We get together a short list of drummers. I heard Kenton “K-dog” Lee play the drums at Dave Mering’s engagement party
DEAN CHANCE: Nick and I are at a engagement party for Dave Mering. The host has a music room with a piano, an upright bass and an electronic drum kit. Kenton was there. I knew Kenton played the drums because he never failed to mention this fact whenever we met. I’ve probably known Kenton socially for 20 years at this point. He’d been in radio sales all the time I’d been in advertising. He called on the agencies I worked at and married the media buyer at Mering and Associates, Debbie. I played the upright bass and Kenton played those electronic drums a little bit. He said, as he always did, “let’s get together and jam.” I had no idea what I was about to get involved in.

NICK: So we contacted K-Dog. That’s Kenton’s nickname. And I told Tom, I said, “Look. I don’t know anything about him, although I’ve known him for quite a few years. His wife, Debbie, works with Dave. I called Kenton, left a number. Kenton called us right back. He said, “Okay, I wanna hear you guys play.”
TOM: So Nick sees this happen at the Fobes’ house. He gets the phone number for Kenton and I call Kenton and I go “Come by, watch us practice and see if you think we’re any good and if you’d be interested in playing drums.” Kenton says, “Sure. I’ll be there.”
NICK: Then Kenton came to the house to hear us play. We played three or four numbers and a couple of original tunes and Kenton said, “I love you guys. I’ll play with the band.” So we played two more tunes. Kenton played bongos on them. That was it. Kenton said, "I'm in the band. Can I bring my drum set over?"
TOM: So he comes to our next practice. He plays the bongos a little bit while we’re playing. But before we even practice, he gives us about a 45-minute summary of his experience. It starts when he was a child prodigy. He started playing the drums when he was 3. Got his pro license when he was 5. They were wheeling him out when he was six to play side by side with some big swing bands.
JIM: Yeah. Its “I’m a pro musician. I’ve played for 80 different bands. I’ve done this, I’ve done that. You guys are a bunch of amateurs. Let’s hear you practice.” And at the end of this he says, “You guys are pretty rusty. You’re pretty rough. But I’d be interested in coming here and playing.” So we think: we got this pro drummer. We are honored that this level of drummer would wanna come and practice. He’s gonna solve all problems.
TOM: So next week, he shows up with all of his drums.
NICK: I was used to guys who would show up with their kits in the trunk. But Kenton says, “I’m going to get my roadies to bring the drums over.” So this is a whole new dimension in drum magnificence. “I’m going to get my roadies to bring my kit over in a couple of days.” I said, “Yeah, sure. You can set them in my big room.” And he shows up. And he it’s like the circus came to town. There are trap cases. There are boxes. There are bags. It seems like it never stopped. Three people, not stopping for about a half and hour. But he’s amazing at getting this huge apparatus into whatever space is available. And he did it there, too.
FITZ; And it is nice to start playing with a drummer.
TOM: But what was the first thing you noticed when we started playing? The first thing we noticed is that our amps barely have enough power. He’s LOUD.
JIM: Here we’ve been practicing for month. No problem. But now the neighbors are complaining. You guys are too loud. We start wearing earplugs. We’re all yelling about the noise. Kenton brought energy. He brought commitment. Always there. Always want to help organize things. Wants to perform. Let’s do this. Let’s do that.
TOM: No lack of commitment. Wants to practice twice a week.
JIM: There always this rift between people who want to play a little bit and the people who want to make it a second career.
TOM: The minute K-Dog comes into the group, things change. Because no longer are we gonna just take our time and practice and have fun. K-Dog has a plan. K-Dog has a schedule. And the first thing K-Dog gets is a key to Nick’s house. He gets a key to Nick’s house because K-Dog wants to practice his drums. K-Dog wants to be able to show up any time, any day, and be able to go in and start playing. Nick is like, “Please call me and warn me before you come over.” K-Dog ignores this. Nick could be naked in there taking a shower and here’s K-Dog practicing.
JIM: Nick could be having a dinner party and the drums would fire up
NICK: Oh, yeah. He was visiting the drum set all the time. The drum set was here. We were supposed to rehearse once a week. That’s it. “Well,” he said, “I gotta practice. So mind if I come over?” He was coming over about every day. I’d say, “Come on by.” I’d watch or go out and do my walks. He’s play. Then when I’d come back, we’d play a few tunes and then he’d split. I was going to go on vacation. And we had a gig coming up. Tom said, “Hey, man, can we rehearse at your house? I said, “Yeah, sure. Gave him a key. Kenton said, “Hey, I need a key, too.” Well, that may have been the biggest mistake of my life. I said, “Okay, yeah, sure – here’s a key.” So he started coming every day. When I got back, the neighbors are going “Hey, he’s playing every day. For a couple of hours.” I talked to Tom, I said, “I gotta get these keys back.” Tom says, “yeah, sure.” He gave me my key back. I went to Kenton. He didn’t want to give the key back. He was going to hold on to the key. So it took a good two or three weeks before he finally relented.
JIM: I think the other thing was, we all liked the blues from the beginning. That was what we played. With Hatley. And also with K-Dog – I don’t think either one of them really like the blues. They had other likes. K-Dog wanted to definitely go in a different direction.
NICK: We started rehearsing here. We got everything set up like it was a stage. Then one day he says, “I need monitors.” So he brought in two new monitors. “And I need a mike.” We went from now communication beyond “here’s a tune, let’s play it.” Now Kenton has the ability to hear and the ability to communicate. So now, Kenton became a bigger force in the Bittermen. He’s giving direction. The amazing thing about Kenton is, and I learned this early on, is the three things that you don’t tell Kenton are “Yes,” because it’s a blank check; “No,” because its an objection that he will do the ultimate to overcome; and anything else that makes sense. So I started to have fun with Kenton. He’d say something and I’d just barley whisper, "ah, bullshit" in the mike. He could hear it in the monitor. He'd jump up and say, "Who said that?" So, Kenton was great fun. I always enjoy him. He comes into it with all the earnestness in the world. Bring everything has to it and invests it all.
The thing was, Tom could only play out five times a year. He could rehearse once a week. He said, “I can play give gigs a year. These are the five gigs. A couple of times at the Club 2-Me. Those went great. Then Kenton started wanting to play more. There were several objectives going on at the same time. My agenda was I wanted to do an album. Something that, you know, I could give to Bobby and that he could have, you know. So he could say, “yeah, my dad was in this band.” So that was my focus. I wanted to get that done by Christmas. Kenton’s wanting to get us gigs. So there’s this pressure going on, a lot like when Hatley was in the band. Kenton was growing this thing a lot faster than we could handle.
©2007 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

History of the Bittermen, Part One

BITTER HISTORY, PART ONE

What follows is the long overdue, mind-bending story of The Bittermen Blues Band – the band that gave birth to KDOG in the wake of its bitter breakup.
I totally respect The Bittermen, who, as you are about to see, formed a band before they could even really play very well. This “friend first, music second” model has served many bands well, including U2 and The Beatles. The members of both bands were barely able to play when they first started.
I’m letting The Bittermen tell the story in their own words. Nick “Sewer Boy” Ciani was a founding member of The Bittermen. Kenton “K-Dog” Lee, our current drummer and fearless leader, joined The Bittermen during their triumphant comeback, which quickly turned into another bust-up. The lesson of this story is clear: get out there and do it. Anybody can talk about forming a band. These crazy 30 somethings, now in their 50s, actually went and done it.
This is their story. Respect it!
The Bittermen interviewed are:
Nick Ciani: harp, vocals, poetry
Tom Andrews: Bass, vocals, technical stuff
Jim Andrews: Guitar
Fitz Miller: Guitar

Commentary: Nick started playing harmonica to beat the blues after his divorce. This took place about 5 years before the formation of The Bittermen.
Nick: I was 25 when I started playing the harmonica. I was single and raising Bobby by myself. When I was in college, I met this guy. He was a Vietnam Vet. There were lots of vets coming back to college on the GI Bill. I gravitated to these older guys just because they were more interesting. I was hanging out through all of my college years with these Vietnam vets. I met this guy who played the chromatic harmonica. He would play show tunes. “As Time Goes By,” stuff like that. I thought, “Wow. This is really cool.” A couple of years went by. I started driving trucks for the Sacramento Bee at night. I thought, “I’m going to get a harmonica.” I’d have to wait for a couple of hours at work, not doing anything.” So I went in to this music store that used to be over on Capitol and about 26th street. Or maybe it was J. Anyway, I went in there and I told the guy, “hey, I want to buy a harmonica.” He said, “Well, what do you want?” I said, “I don’t know.” I didn’t know anything. He said, “Well, here, take this one.” It was a Blues Harp. So I took it home. I’m kind of like tweaking on it. There was literature that came with it. Songs like “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore.” Then there was a discography with Sonny Boy Williamson and all these blues guys. So I went down to Tower Records and bought the Sonny Boy Williamson record One Way Out. For the next five years, I picked that thing up every night and put it on and tried to play to it. I still play to it.
I was just playing along, not really even thinking that I’d ever get in a band or anything. I was divorced. I was kind of living this blues life, raising my son and driving trucks at night. So there’s this whole blues feeling that I’ve got. And I’m buying more and more music. And I’m really digging all this. Tom and Fitz and Jim are lifelong buddies. We played on softball teams and whatnot. This time, we were playing volleyball. I was in the bathroom because the acoustics were good. I was blowing my harmonica. They came in through the door. “Hey,” they said, “we never knew that you played that.” We sat down and started BS-ing a little bit. I learned that Fitz had taken guitar lessons as a kid. Jim had a guitar at home that he was tweaking on. And Tom, when he was going to Chapman, knew a bunch of guys who had this jug band. Tom said, “Hey, we oughta form a band. I said, “Well, yeah. Let’s do it.” So Tom’s girlfriend bought him a guitar, a bass. He went and took lessons. After several months of that, we got together and just starting making noise. The band just developed from there.
TOM: We started in 1992 and went to, probably, the first quarter of 1994. Okay, this is the way we started. None of us knew how to play our instruments. My brother knew a little bit about how to play guitar. Fitz knew a little bit about how to play guitar. I knew absolutely nothing. And Nick, he had been playing the harp for awhile. So actually, he was the best musician to start with and we just got together and practiced.
JIM: We just tried to develop something. We didn’t have any real vision
TOM: I went and bought a $99 dollar guitar over at Skip’s. Just an acoustic guitar. And we started to play.
FITZ: He took some lessons and kind of learned some bass parts on the guitar and that’s the way it started.
TOM: I came up with that name The Bittermen because when I went to college, one of my friends, Martin, played on the baseball team. And all the baseball players back in the late 70s and early 80s who were on that team had a really regimented structure to their lives. They couldn’t have any facial hair. They had to have really short haircuts. They practiced twice a day. They had to get up really early to go to the first practice. Then again late in the afternoon, running their asses off. They were all bitter. That’s what they called themselves. “A bunch of bitter guys.” It kind of worked for us. I was happily married. But Nick, he was in a situation. There were some other issues going on.
JIM: Nick was single. I had just broken up with my girlfriend. I was single. Fitz has always been single. Most women who could come and see us would come up to me as say, “why are you up there?” What have YOU got to be bitter about?” Because they thought we were women haters. And you know- they were kind of right.
NICK: Were rehearsing over at Fitz’s house. Tom was always a little bit further ahead on the electronics and the PA and all that. He had studied theater productions at Chapman. So he knew how to put together the sound system. We had all these speakers. We had a little PA with mikes set up at Fitz’s house. Once a week, we’d get together and rehearse. Our friends would come in. The sounds were getting better and better. They were bearable. We got about 10 songs together. Tom said, “Why don’t we have a show?” We invited all of our friends over there. I bet there were 50 or 60 people, maybe more, at Fitz’s house for our first show.
TOM: We had no structure, meaning I would go to guitar lessons once a week. I would learn a different three bar pattern. Real simple chords. Power chords. Not even a full chord. They were just two-string chords. The first one we learned, we called it “The Train.” We’d learn these different patterns and we’d all play the guitar at the same time. No bass line. No drums. No real singer. Nick was just playing the harp. We just kept going like that, until I said, “Well, I’ll just play a bass line on the guitar and outline the chords. Jim will play lead guitar and Fitz will be rhythm.” Then we just kept developing it. Eventually we got to the point where we decided we eventually wanted a drummer. We did play a two shows without a drummer. We played at Fitz’s house.
JIM: We had a pretty big crowd. Fitz has this huge room. So we set up at one end. No drummer. Just the four of us and all these seats. We put seats down. People could actually sit down like it was a small auditorium. We played our four songs that we knew at that time. People walking by could hear it and they’d come up, too. A couple of guys came in and we kicked ‘em out or something. So they got ticked off. Fitz had left his keys in the door so they grabbed his keys and went running down the street. Our first adventure was crowd control issues.
NICK: About this, time Hatley arrived. I don’t know if it was before or after the drummer. They both came in at about the same time. Now Hatley was Fitz’s brother-in-law at the time. He was from Norfolk, VA. He was a pretty capable singer and front man. He comes by one night, kind of sizing everything up, looking around. We finish the number and Fitz says, “This is my brother-in-law.” Hatley says, “Can I sing a couple of numbers?” I said, “Sure.”
TOM: Then we picked up Hatley.
FITZ: He was married to my sister.
JIM: He worked at The Bee. (The Sacramento Bee, the newspaper.)
TOM: Hatley came and watched up practice and said, “Hey, I’ll be your lead singer.” I’m cut out for that kind of work. So he starts singing. We got a little 40-watt PA. Four channel. He starts singing. We start learning a few more songs. We got a drum machine. We learned a few more songs and decided to have our second show.
NICK: The only thing Hatley did at first was sing. He started bringing more and more songs in. Tom kinda was great at balancing things. I had six or seven songs. Hatley had six or seven. So we went from that first house party to another house party at Fitz’s. Again, it was great. It was all our friends. It was basically more of a love fest than it was a musical experience. “Hey, there’s going to be a big party at Fitz’s house. We’re going to see all the people that we love. Oh, and the band’s going to play, too.” People started getting a kick out of the band. “Man, this is great. You guys are a bunch of buddies.” For that expectation, we were really pretty okay. We met whatever level expectation of the people who were coming.
TOM: Our second show was at my ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend’s house In the back, they had this little house. It had a built-in bar. A pretty big room. Perfect place for a party. It had its own little bathroom. And we set up and did our second show. With a drum machine and a real lead singer and people thought, “These guys are great.” Now, granted, they were drunk.
JIM: Which has always worked to our advantage.
TOM: That’s a key to our success. People really enjoyed it. They like house parties.
NICK: At the time, Tom was singing one number and I was singing all the rest. We had about 12 songs. We did “Boom, Boom”.” We did an original song that Tom wrote called “Susie Girl.” We did “Bug Eyed Willie.” We did an Albert Collins song that Jim liked. We did a Sonny Boy Williamson song, “Born Blind.” So Hatley came in and I said, “you do these three songs.” I’ve got the rest. Tom has one. And that’s the set.”
TOM: So we did two gigs without a drummer. Then we got a drummer. Dave. I can’t remember his last name. He was the brother of somebody we knew.
FITZ: Jill.
NICK: Well, we were at a different party talking about this band and a friend, she said, “Well, my brother plays the drums and he’s looking for a band.” We said, “Hey, we’re going to be rehearsing on Thursday night. Have him come by. So he came by.
TOM: This guy could play the drums. He came in, watched one of our practices and picked up a big pot and a wooden spoon out of Fitz’s kitchen and started playing this thing.
NICK: So he shows up with a pair of sticks and no drums. So we got pots and pans out of Fitz’s cabinet, He auditioned literally on pots and pans. He was good. He had a lot of facility. We said, “If you want to be in the band, you’re in the band. He was really excited. He was a lot like K-Dog (Kenton Lee) in his hyperactive enthusiasm for the band, you know, “I love you guys. Let’s play!” So then we started playing with him.
TOM: We thought, “Hey, this guy is pretty good. You’re hired. Come on in.”
NICK: Now, everyone else always thought he was on drugs. He probably was.
JIM: He goes, “Well, can I bring a couple of drums over?”
TOM: We go “sure.” And it, the drum set, starts growing. First the bass drum. Maybe one other drum.
FITZ: It’s in my living room. This whole set. It grows.
TOM: Every week, it keeps growing as he brings other things. Then the bells come. But now we’ve got a drummer.

Next: The Bittermen start gigging for real.

©Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Going Forward

Nick's heart surgery, the depature of Player X on bass, the city code problems at the Hilltop Lounge and the difficulties of regrouping with Dru killed the band's momentum. We've had exactly one gig since February. There wont' be another until Sept. 14, as far as I know.
Kenton "KDOG" Lee, he who owns 20 drum sets, started his own advertising agency in February. I told him he was crazy to do this when he was already the greatest radio sales rep in town. Why take on clients? Why manage people? But, as Nick maintains, "there are three things you don' say to K-Dog: yes, no and anything that make sense." Becoming an agency head at 55 is so labor intensive that even Kenton, who seems to be powered by a cold fusion reactor, doesn't have the energy to build the business and the band with his usual fervor.
I am amazed by how difficult it is to keep a Geezer band together. Monday was our first rehearsal in almost a month. Vacations and work are to blame. A two-hour weekly rehearsal is barely time enough to memorize what part of the microphone to sing into. The fewer gigs we have, the more I forget about how the PA is wired together. (Fortunately, we now have ace Swedish sound engineer Phillip working with us. The poor bastard. I looked at his music collection. He actually likes real music. He must really need the money.)
Then: last week Kenton's good friend Hitoshi "Tosh" Tamaribuchi died unexpectly in Las Vegas. He was just 62. A heart attack took him. The produced two aftershocks in the world of KDOG. First, the loss of a good friend, so close to his own age, really jolted Kenton. "Sixty-two!," he lamented. I'll be there in five years." I tried to comfort him by pointing out he could die at anytime and 62 isn't some kind of jinxed, Indian-sign number. "Great," he said.
The other problem: Tosh is the man from whom we lease the Legendary Mojo Dojo Rehearsal Studio and Hair Care Products Storage Facility. Tosh's daughter, Tiffany, owns the Sacramento Taiko Dan drumming group that rehearses in the next space over. I think she'd like to see us move out. We've already gotten the call about ending the arrangement. (Fans of the Geezer Rock blog will recall my frequent references to the Taiko Dan - a group that plays those amazing, huge Japanse drums. I often call them the "Angry Women Drummers" even though I have no proof that the are angry or even women. I think I saw a guy in there once. I'm pretty sure the Angry Women Drummers think our band stinks. ) Tosh died owning Kenton $3,000. Maybe we can apply that to the rent and stay for another year. I only met Tosh twice. He'd run several popular hair salons in Sacramento. Like a lot of guys in the hair business, he seemed to have friends everywhere he went. A lot of people I know knew Tosh, although I didn't realize the connection until this week, when it seems every other person I talk to mentions his death.
If we lose the lease, that will be the end of a key piece of KDOG history. I don't know where else we'll find such an accomodating space for so little money.
Nick was on vacation Monday. So rehearsal sounded a bit thin. Dru's ability to sing good harmony parts on the fly amazes me. He gave me one piece of distrubing news: his old band, Ruby Scooter, is starting up again. They rehearse twice a week. He's going to be a busy guy. Just so long as he doesn't quit. I pray about this.
©2007 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The Dog Days

Kenton is on vacation - or at least gone. Dru, Nick and I worked at Dru's house on Monday evening. It was hot on the little porch Dru uses as a music room. When we arrived, a a kid band featuring Dru's daughter Abby on drums was practicing for their first show. They placed a fun version of "These Boots Are Made For Walking," the Nancy Sinatra song. Then they did a White Stripes song - "Hotel Yorba," I think.
Dru is not familiar with blue bass patterns. These things are like a second language to me. It's interesting showing him how they work. I have to slow down and think. Dru is musical. He can sing almost any melody he can hear in his head. His pitch is accurate, too. I sing the bass parts to him, hoping they will bury themselves in his mind and muscles.
The best part: I am gradually giving Dru more of my songs to sing. I'll keep a few that I can do well. Dru just has a better rock and blues voice. My voice is as uniform, plain and colorless as a slice of Wonderbread. On Monday, I got him to do "Rattle Snake Shake," which he can effortlessly sing in the same key as the great Peter Green/Fleetwood Mac recording: A. He sounded great. The learning processs is slow, but he's going to make the band a lot more listenable and fun.
Drue played his Jaguar bass through his 300-watt Ampeg SVT with the 8x10 cabinet - the amp that has broken the ears and vertabrae of many players. I'd never played through one of this monsters before. It sounded great.
But...it's just too much amp. The classic amateur mistake. It's a mistake Kenton and I made when we acquired the 50 watt Marshall half stack. It's a wonderful amp. One of the best ever made. Its sound is instantly recognizeable as classic rock tone. Think Free. Think Bad Company. Think Hendrix at Woodstock. Think Duane Allman at the Fillmore Est. But it's just too damn loud. I tried to tame it with a power attenuator. That's a device that goes between the head and the speaker and turns some of the amp's power into heat, resulting in a reduction in decibels. But you also lose some tone - the very sound you're paying all those very large dollars to achieve. It's dumb. At first, I liked the sound. But any adjustment beyond -4 DB started to sound think, crackly and wimpy. What's the point?
Dru now uses the Marshall as a bass amp, which sounds great. I have switched to the Genz Benz Black Pearl, probably the fifth amp I've tried with the band. It's adjustable to either 7, 15 or 30 watts. While it doesn't have channel switching, it does let you kick in a boost for leads. It yields good clean and dirty sounds, too, making it much more flexible than the Fender tweed amps I've been using. God only knows if I'll stick with this. The Black Pearl weighs a ton, even though it's not much larger than a Fender Deluxe. It feels solid, with no rattles or buzzes, even when you've got it turned up loud enough to knock squirrels out of trees a block away. But it's best feature is that it can get a rock sound without destroying the brains of paying customers.
Also, the Black Pearl is not a Fender tone: it's not so glassy and twangy. It's thicker and darker.
We don't have another gig scheduled until Sept. 14 - a benefit at Fairy Tale Town. Last year, Nick and I played this gig, accompanied by my son Brett on drums. Kenton was out of town. Brett earned school credit for both a cultural event and community service for playing. I think we need to get one more gig this summer, in August. The long layoffs are eroding what little ensemble skill we possess. Gigs are the best practice.
One of the biggest problems in a band like this is keeping the momentum. Distractions such as work and, in Nick's case, almost dying, act like a drag chute on progress. I found the same problem in maintaining a fitness/workout program: just about everything else in life conspires to keep you out of the gym. You have to be as ruthless and selfish as a crack whore going after her next rock. A lovely image. Is it possible that I am a ruthless crack whore?
©2007 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHT RESERVED.

Scenes From A Comeback

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On Friday night, KDOG played its first gig since Nick's open heart surgery in February - a parking lot party at Kenton's office building. Kenton "K-Dog Lee, who does nothing halfway, spent $1,000 renting an 8 by 12 foot stage, plus professional theatrical lighting. It looked like a real rock show, always an important entertainment dimension. Even if the music isn't so hot, you can at least loom over the hapless audience like Zuess and Co. hurling lightning bolts from Olympus.
Kenton called me at 8 a.m. on Friday morning, as he always does on gig day. Before a show, Kenton is as antsy as a virgin facing the marital bed.
"Well, I took one for the team," he announced gravely. "I got a cortisone show in my elbow."
Kenton's elbow is sore. Playing golf and drumming makes it worse.
"The doctor said nothing's broken in there," Kenton confided. "He just said, 'As old as you are and as much as you use your body, you have to expect this kind of thing.' That's the last thing I needed to hear. I'm old!"
The music was actually pretty good, despite new songs and a new member, the mighty Dru Niebold on bass and White Man Rock Vocals.
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Dru sang well, but he was a shaky on the bass parts. He claimed not to know how to play "The Wind Cries Mary," but we forced him to do it anyway. The person who actually screwed the song up was, yes, me! The guitar solo sort of wandered off the foot path and into the berry bushes. I don't think anyone noticed or cared. A lot of guys are reluctant to command the stage for fear of rejection, but I'm always amazed at how forgiving audiences are. It's actually hard to incite hostile reactions.
The band sounded good. Not tight, but good. The balanced sound is accounted for by two factors:
1) We were playing outside. With no walls or hard sufaces to contend with, the band sounds much quieter and a lot less harsh.
2) I spent $240 out of my own pocket to hire Phillip Howard, a professional sound guy. Phil has been doing sound at my church, St. John's Lutheran, conveniently located at 1701 J Street in Midtown Sacramento. This made a tremendous difference. I realzed that we can probably never do a show without Phil and expect to generate a pleasing aural experience. About five times during the evening, Phil came up to me with a technical issue or question. Every single time, I thought to my self, "I have no idea what he's talking about." I covered my ingnorance with true guy-like bravado. "Sure, sounds good," I'd say. "I've often wondered if that was the problem." Live rock sound is like baking bread. It seems simple, but for some reason, all my loaves look like burned-up dinosaur turds.
The stage rental and sound guy brought our expenses for playing this gig to $1,240. This is the opposite of professional. I feel like one of those vanity authors who has to pay to publish his own turgid, lifeless prose.
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Nick sounded and looked great. He's lost weight. He claims to feel like he's 30 again. Nick even felt strong enough to lump amps and gear. I keep asking him if he's been "cleared for sexual activity." He avoids the question as nimbly as a Bush administration spokesman. I try to tell him that this information is critical to the plotline of "Rattlesnake Shake." Our version of this bluesy mediation on self-abuse features Nick by name. I feel that, as a professional matter, Nick should confirm that he does indeed "do the shake," so as not to mislead the audience. At Nick's last gig before his semi-emergency triple bypass, Nick had been approached by a trio of middled-aged lady fans who were offering him an evening of entertainment after the gig. I belive the plan was to "entertain" his brains out. Clearly, this would have killed him. Nick's coronary arteries were full of goo. But, since Nick is the only band member who generates female fan interest, it's important that we issue a press release the minute his is cleared for mojo duty.
As you may know, I am not in a rock band to reclaim my lost youth. My youth isn't even lost. It's right where I left it, back in the early 1980s somewhere. When I was young, I was an idiot. I'm not going back. For me, the band is about living here and now.
Friends familiar with the Geezer Rock project sent me a link to a June 17 New York Times story titled "The Boys in the Band are in AARP." This story follows the hackneyed storyline that Dad bands consist of Boomers who think they're still twenty - or wish they were. I expect this kind of freeze-dried reporting from People, not the Times. Here's a quote:
"Part of recapturing lost innocence means laboring under an illusion or two. Mr. Lamond recommends that practice rooms be free of mirrors. 'You don't want to be playing your guitar, feeling like you're 20 all over again, then look in the mirror and see some paunchy, balding guy," Mr. Lamond said.
I am paunchy. I'm not balding. But my hair looks like a dirty snow drift. My ears are getting bigger - and hairier. I read that a man's ears and scrotum never stop growing as he ages. Prostate cancer I can take. But God spare me from a scrotum the size of a gym bag. You see these old guys at the health club, stooped over, with scrotums swinging halfway to their knees.
My stage look embraces these harsh truths, but without revealing any hint of scrotal size. Instead of trying to look younger, I am devoted to trying to look as old and unhip as possible.
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I thought the black socks and dress shoes were a nice touch. I don't really know if anybody gets the joke except for me.
One of the keys to pulling off this look is to make sure your shirt and pants are just a little big too tight. It really adds pounds and years for that "extra paunchy" look.
Despite the cortizone shot, Kenton's elbow continue to throb with pain and developed lumpy, discolored swellings. He actually skipped his big drum solo, an even that may signal the coming of the Rapture. Afterwards, he iced it down in a beer tub, like a starting pitcher coming off a tough outing.
A final note: my dad, visiting from Texas, attended the show. I think he enjoyed it. He didn't seem taken aback by my appearing on stage looking exactly like HIS father used to. "I thought it sounded good," was his only pointed comment, aside from "boy, you guys sure have a lot of equipment."
©2007 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Five Years?

Dru Niebold, our new bass player, plays in another band called Ruby Scooter. They're on hiatus. He told me at lunch today that they'v played together for five years. The first three years were rehearsals. No gigs. Three years. The band leader is a perfectionist, Dru told me. "Everything had to be perfect from the order of the songs and they way they flowed into each other to the way we looked." I saw them rehearse once. I was blown away by their mastery of 60s and 70s psychedelia, new wave and British Invasion styles. I especially liked their medleys, which cleverly mashed together songs like "Hot Child In the City" and "Sweet Jane." Everything was nearly perfect or at least very good: the guitar tones, the parts, the vocals. The sound was incredibly rich for a three-piece. I just groaned when I heard all this. My band could barely negotiate three chord songs. Three years of practice.
Kenton isn't a perfectionist. His attitude is learn five songs and play a 5 hour show. Who cares? Just make it fun. Most people are hardly discerning listeners. Nick does a sort of talking version of "The Wind Cries Mary." He's nowhere close to the actual melody. People love it. It sounds like Lou Reed or maybe Sid Vicious doing "My Way." I suppose we might offend the occasional Hendrix purist, but that kind of person isn't at the shows we usually play.
Practice last night was depressing. Untogether. A wall of noise. Phil, our soundguy was there. I'm can't tell if he's helping or not now. All I can hear are drums. I'm standing next to my amp. Dru said he couldn't hear the guitar at all. Phil says it sounds good out front. I hope he's right. When I sat in with the Dick Bright Orchestra, I had good sound on the stage, standing right next to the drums. This is a typical KDOG situation. We have a big gig coming up on Friday night. The bass player barely knows the tunes. The rest of us keep clamming on tunes we've been playing for the past 18 months. And yet, we keep going. The goal is to stand up and play and make it look like a party no matter how terrible things get. Never, ever act like anything is wrong, even if your amp is on fire, the drummer is nodding out after huffing too much paint thinner between sets and you've managed to forget all the words.
Forgetting words: this happens all the time. Fortunately, we do a lot of originals and a bunch of obscure covers, so nobody knows the difference. I just make up some new ones on the spot or repeat an earlier verse. Nick got confused last night on Mother In Law Blues and sangs bits of three different songs. I had no idea. If you can't remember the words, sing something dirty - that's my rule. Audiences at bars love anything racy. Most of them aren't listening anyway.
Item: both Dru and Kenton said The Police show in Oakland last week was horrible. They pointed the finger at Andy Summers. He's a Geezer Rock hero, since he's still touring the world at 64. They said his time was bad, there was no chemistry on stage and that at one point, he went down on one knee for some guitar gymnastics and could barely get back up. Just like in Spinal Tap! Kenton, in his typical hyperbolic fashion, told me, "You could've played that show! I'm not kidding! He was horrible!" It was probably just an off night. I have made the "help me I can't get up" routine part of my own stage routine, although hardly anybody present at the Hilltop noticed this most excellent pop culture moment. One person even thought I really had hurt myself, since I was wearing my "old guy" outfit. I guess it's a compliment. I must have done a good acting job.
©2007 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Not Exactly Keith Richards

About three months ago, I stopped at my favorite wine shop and bought two magnificent bottles of Tavel - the French Rose. Tavel is a deep garnet red. It's stronger than the limpid pink wines produced in California. Each sip is like a mouthful of summer berries. I had several mouthfuls of summer berries. By dinner time, I was raving drunk and slurring my words. This on an ordinary Wednesday. I had an hour long conversation with my grandmother. I can't remember what we discussed. I was quite emotional at dinner, recounting this conversation. The Long Suffering Mrs. Chance cut me off. "I think we'll talk about this when you haven't had quite so much wine." The next morning at breakfast, I announced that I was quitting.
I'd been playing with a lit stick of dynamite for too long. My mother, a raging alcoholic, died at 49 of liver failure. She collapsed on her kitchen floor in South Padre Island, Texas. They found her 12 hours later. She'd been ill for several days. Bowls of vomit were all over her apartment. The toilets and sinks were full of vomit. She was holding a glass pitcher of instant tea when she sank the the floor. The glass shattered and cut her hands. She died in a puddle of blood and tea. She was emaciated and looked like she was 70. The Mexican maids wouldn't go in the apartment. A week later, after the funeral, my mom's sister and I cleaned up.
Mom hated AA. She fought off the positive effects of her many stints in rehab. I have to say that she kept her sick sense of humor through it all. One of her rehab facilities in Dallas was right next to a Miller Beer distributorship. Outside on her many cigarette breaks, mom used to lead the other drunks in cheering the loaded trucks as they drove off to make their deliveries. I can't imagine what the staff must have thought. One of moms rehab pals - I think his name was Buddy - drank a bottle of Aqua Velva on his last night of freedom before detoxing. It was the only alcohol he could find. I think his wife had poured the rest down the sink. He told me his farts had never smelled so good - clean, bracing and masculine.
Mom died in 1988. I am 49 now. I am deciding to live. No interventions or AA meetings or disasters. I had never been arrested for drunk driving or plowed my car into a house, as mom had done. No one did an intervention. It's only hard at moments, like when I first arrive at a party. At those moments, it's very, very had. Then the moment passes.
I started sleeping soundly. Alcohol is depressant, but it disrupts sleep. The buzz wears off and you wake up. I would be awake for two or three hours a night. By the first weekend after I quit, I was sleeping like I did as a child. It felt good. Removing all those carbohydrates from my diet over night, left me ravenous. I actually put on weight. It was like going on a diet - and failing.
I started drinking non-alcoholic beer when I felt like a beer. I looked at the label of one - less than 0.5% alcohol. That meant it had some alcohol. I tried what every alcoholic must have tried: I chugged three O'Doul's very quickly and waited to see if any buzz presented itself. I learned that you cannot get drunk on this stuff. The most you can achieve is a condition I call "mystic bloat," in which you are so full of carbs and gas that you do experience a kind of dopey sedation, like after a big Thanksgiving dinner.
My skin cleared up. I had been subjected to a kind of chronic scaling, with dried skin peeling off like postage stamps. That went away. I wonder if yeast had someting to do with it.
What could be more rock and roll than quitting drinking? Think of the greats who have gone before me: Ron Wood, Slash, Greg Allman, Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan, the members of Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Eric Clapton, Malcom Young, Frank Beard - there are too many to list. Sobriety is a must for today's Geezer rocker, like knowing the main riff to "Takin' Care of Business" or "You Shook Me All Night Long."
I am once again amazed at how much self-control it takes to lose control in music. The French novelist Balzac counseled thusly: be regular and orderly in your life so that you might be insane in your work. I foget the exact quote. A week from tonight, I will play my first KDOG gig stone cold sober. Maybe my first gig ever sober. As a teenager playing in rock bands, I kept a bottle of soda pop wine such as Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill on my amp. Before the stage band concert my senior year of high school, I drank a quart of malt liquor. Now, even a couple of drinks throw off my find muscle coordination, making it hard to play fast passages cleanly.

Keep It Stupid

It is often observed that simple music is the most difficult to play. "How difficult it is to be simple!" Van Gogh once said, around the time he painted a mostly brown picture of a pair of shoes. I'd take it one step further: stupid music is the most difficult of all. This occured to me last night as we rehearsed "La Grange," a great song that manges to be both stupid and sublime at the same time. Virtyally no lyrics. No real chord progression. A nifty modulation up a minor third for the first guitar solo. All this in less than three minutes on the record. And yet, it's still so difficult to execute. You have to get a thousand little nuances just right, from the tempo to Billy Gibbon's little triplet guitar quivers in the first solo, which I discovered are tough to execute with the right timing and feel. Frank Beard's drum fills are also hard to duplicate. Dusty's farting-in-a-trash can bass sound, along with his incredibly steady time and willingless to play the simplest part possible, are also key elements. If all this isn't right, your version of "La Grange" will not rock. This is simply unacceptable, even blasphemous.
I think "Keep it Stupid" would be a fantastic band name. Since Kenton "KDOG" Lee will never agree to a change, perhaps Nick and I can turn this into a song.
Rehearsals at the Mojo Dojo Hair Care Products Storage Facility have resumed the air of drudgery now that the excitment of Nick's heard surgery has passed. Dru is learning the KDOG set list and adding a few cool touches of his own, most notable "All Right Now," which is another simple song that demands laser-like attention to detail. The tendency with this song is to over-play, which must be resisted. Free's original record is as perfect as a clothespin or a paper clip or a hammer: no uncessary flourishes. It has to be played that way. I have been having fits getting the guitar solo with exactly the right feel and timing. It's starting to infect my mind. Last night, I dreamed about this solo. I was trying to play it on the tuba, for some reason. The effect was not a rockin'.
Kenton, who tends to overplay as natrually as beavers tend to build dams, actually showed admirable restraint last night. I know why, too. He had a sore elbow. He showed it to me: the thing was swollen up like somebody had smashed it with a baseball bat. It looks like Kenton's arthritis is speading from his hands. He trussed it up with one of those Ace elastic braces. I know it hurt like hell to bang on the drums when your joints are creaky like that, but I think it actually improves Kenton's playing for some reason. I am not alone in this assessment. Midway through practice, Kenton apologized for his playing, saying he felt "off."
"I think you sound great," Dru said.
"I can barely move - my elbow is killing me," Kenton said.
"I know - so you're doing less," Dru said.
I agreed. Kenton did sound steady and driving. Favoring his elbow, he holds back a bit, I suppose, and plays more purposefully. He thinks about what to leave out, rather than what to put in.
Thank god I'm holding up physically - so far. Even so, my left hand, my fretting hand, is fatigued by the end of a two hour-reshearsal. On the last two songs, it feels shaky. It's just a strength and stamina issue, I'm sure. But since I can be quite a hypochondriac, I immediately wonder if this is the beginning of Parkinsons or if I've had one of those "mini-strokes" that are so popular these days. After Nick had his triple bypass in late February, I began having about 12 imaginary heart attacks a day. Every gas bubble was suspect. I pictured myself in the back of the ambulance, blue, with the EMTs compressing my chest. I've gotten over this phase.
I've been thinking a lot of about simplicity/stupidity lately. I saw a violinist perform a concerto at the Mondavi center last month and marveled how many different sounds and tonal colors he evoked with just his intstrument and his hands. When he was really digging in with the bow, he even produced his own fuzz tone: thick, over-tone laden passages that actually sounded quite wooly and distorted, even though he was playing a an unamplified insrument. After that show, I boxed my my effects pedals and went back to the basic set up: my Les Paul plugged straight into either a Fender tweed or a Marshall amp. No master volume. Just turn it up and grind.
I saw ZZ Top several times in the 70s and early 80s. Most shows, Billy Gibbons played his Les Paul straight into an amp. A very loud amp. He would play the whole show without moving off the bridge pickup of his sunburst Les Paul, yet produced a full spectrum of loud, quiet, dirty and clean sounds just using his hands and the volume knob. If he did have any effects pedals, I couldn't see them. There are some great videos on YouTube of ZZ Top playing on the German TV Show, Rock Palast, in 1980. His performance is a master class in what's possible when your sound is coming out of your hands and mind, instead of out of an elecrtronic box.
©2007 Edward Dean Chance ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.