Anath | my Steal Your Space book

Raising the Limit on the Freak Ceiling – While theUnited States is fighting to raise its debt ceiling to pay its bills, the freak ceiling at Deadstein seems to be getting higher and higher, almost to the point of seeming unlimited. The ying-yoink of it all.

This week’s ying and yoink was the coupling of two new musical guests to Deadstein, Anath and Hook. We only jammed with Hook last week for the first time and had never played with Anath. Rich could fill you in on how he met Anath, her story etc. (http://www.anathmusic.com/) I did a mix of a video recording session of hers with her own original music, but never played with her. With her not knowing too much Grateful Dead and steering toward Beatles music, we were headed toward disaster since it’s not Deadstein forte, but from the first line of our first song, Come Together, we knew it was gonna be pretty good, and it was.

Not that this night did not have its own difficulties. Of the three Fender Twins they gave us, two were electronically unplayable. Fortunately, Carroll’s is Carroll’s so we swapped the two bad Twins for two new Fender Supers. One developed a terrible hum, but the one I ended up with eventually sounded good. It was a rough start though.

We had enough time to play a nice set just with the 5 of us with serious meaty Dead songs. The opening Getaway was a throw away as the amps were not cooperating. We therefore restarted the night with a Bertha and got going in good fashion ending the set with a stand alone Playing in the Band and Shakedown Street. The Playing was pretty adventuresome.

The only guest was Scott’s old time bud Andrew. He stopped by prior to attending a show at the adjacent Terminal-5. He poured a couple of shots of some tequila he was hawking and left one on the piano for Elijah as requested by Scott. As Scott was eyeing that shot all night long, Elijah had the last laugh as Scott ended up spilling it on the piano before getting a sip of it. I don’t think Elijah was coming anyway.

Anath and Hook arrived at around the same time but we gravitated toward doing the Beatles songs and Anath’s leaning vs. Hook’s. Nevertheless, we initially got through the Beatles stuff, some was hard to do and some was successful. I thought Hook and I jammed nicely in combining Harmonica leads and guitar leads during both the Come Together and While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Kevin totally blew the second version’s lead after denying missing it on the first one and discussing what to do at nausea prior to the second crack at it.

We jammed a few songs which loosened us up as we eventually ran out of non-jam type of songs. The LaBamab à Good Lovin à LaBamaba was a great mix between Anath and Hook; probably the highlight of the night. I liked Anath’s tambourine, as it helped with the tempos.

I left the room with Hook holding school with Anath and Alan on how to play Harmonica. For all I know they are still there. So it was another excellent night at Deadstein; never exactly knowing what is going to happen. A musical adventure and exploration that you just don’t get any where else. It’s why you show up every week.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/07-27-11/