my Steal Your Space book

Rich was back this week from his one week hiatus in in Far East and was ready to play.  We had Alan Wikler join us on the rhythm as I was assigned to play lead.  It’s always a fun challenge and with Alan lending me his MXR envelope filter for the jam I was able to get some good Jerry sounds out of my Epiphone Les Paul guitar.  For the most part I felt pretty good during the night while getting better as the night got longer.  Maybe it’s because as the night got longer the eventual collapse demanded a bit more leadership on my part.  In any case as Kevin hung on by a thread and we made it through the finish line with a U.S. Blues.

Besides Alan on rhythm we had a few guests.  These included Ken and Phil who came in bearing the gift of food, one of Deadstein’s favorites, in the form of 3 Dominos Pizzas; mushroom, plain and pepperoni.  It was very nice of them and much appreciated.  Len, long time colleague of Scott and Kevin, from the even more miserable rental furniture world, made is inaugural Deadstein visit.  Scott Bayers was also there for a few songs getting a much needed mental workout on the bongos.  Its seemed to release his inner animal which is a lot prettier than his outer one.  After banging away on those skins, Scott grabbed a few slices, put them in a zip lock bag and brought them to Carol.  She enjoyed a few songs of ours over the cell phone.  She heard us play the Queen Jane and commented how she saw Dylan a few times in her life.  It’s good she has Scott to take care of her.  Lots of goodness happening all over helps everyone’s spirit.

As I mentioned, Alan lent me the envelope filter so we took advantage of that playing a Catfish John, Shakedown and Estimated.  The only other Garband we tackled was the Love in the Afternoon which was pretty good.  We had some nice combos including the Crazy Fingers into I need a Miracle.  We performed an Estimated –> Eyes of the World.  Comes a Time –> Other One –> US Blues was our last combo which closed the evening but it closed pretty strong.

While we were having trouble with selecting songs Alan pulled a list he wanted to try out of his a$$ so we honored the list and got to all of them including the Loose Lucy, Tennessee Jed, Morning Dew and  the aforementioned Comes A Time.  It’s a really privilege to be able to attempt to play lead during the Morning Dew and I did okay on it and the song kept progressing toward its ultimate conclusion.  The Dew was unlike the Tennessee Jed where Kevin ad Scott conspired to bring it to an ending prior to the ending.  Good thing I wrestled that from the abyss.  The Loose Lucy was funny cause I started singing it, thinking Rich was going to sing the rest of the Wikler list, and at the end of the lead I’m pointing to Rich to start the next verse, forgetting it was my responsibility, so he kept playing leads until he started singing.  It’s amazing any of us remain standing let alone play a song with any accuracy.  Rich did a fine job a of picking up where I started it since he was claiming he can’t do the Loose Lucy in the 80’s style vs. the early 70’s style which he is more fond of.

Other recollections of songs include the Eyes being sprightly which is an accomplishment late into the night.  The Thrill Is Gone was our other pseudo-arband song and that was also good.  I remember Alan pulling a good lead on it out of his a$$ on that one.  He must have a lot of room up there. I could go on, but I have to pack up for my Thanksgiving weekend in PA so I wanted to get this stuff down and bogged before I have no memory of it.  We managed to work the jam in on this tight week, Deadstein style.  Let’s see if we can continue this effort through the holiday season.

For your listening pleasure, available at:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/11-24-09/

Have a good Thanksgiving with your families.  Peace, health and happiness and may the Patron flow freely like gravy over a turkey breast.