Chapter 50

We woke up at noon to the noise of my cell phone ringing. Lisa said, "Get up, get up, let's eat and go watch them practice."

We dressed in jeans and T-shirts and went downstairs to join the roadies and the band. They had a private dining room with a big buffet that would be available all afternoon. The huge auditorium was connected by a tunnel to the hotel, so we rode carts over to the auditorium.

The band set up and the sound guys did checks all over the seating area. They were injecting white noise through speakers and reading sound pressures everywhere. When they were satisfied they had the keyboard guy do some riffs followed by the lead guitar, the rhythm guitar and vocalist, the bass player, and then the drummer. He had to muffle down a little as the stage was reflecting his sound a lot.

This was something I knew about. I had played in a band throughout junior high and high school. We were good but not near good enough to quit our day jobs or school. Some of us ended up in the military, some in college, and one in a nationally known band. Our music had been too eclectic. We played mostly Doobie Brothers and Allman Brothers stuff when we started, then went into real hard core metal blues, followed by playing a lot of really strong jazz with some Latin and blues flavor. Like I said, too eclectic for the pop culture we should have been playing to. That was the beginning of rap shit and the hip hop craze. There were some rock and metal bands making it, but not big.

I was sitting by one of the sound boards when the tech kept wiggling a plug. I said, "If you have a kit, I'll redo the plug or put a new one on."

He reached under the table and brought out what looked like a briefcase. It had all the tools. He said, "A new one would be best. This one's getting worn."

I hadn't done anything like this in years, but I remembered it well. They used a butane soldering iron just like we used to, so I quickly had the new plug on. I checked under the board real quick and tapped the connection with the soldering iron to flow the connection a little better and put the lid back down. The sound engineer was sitting back in this big armchair, with his arms folded, watching me and said, "So you've done this before, a lot."

"Long time ago, when you're in a small group, you do everything."

"You've got that. What'd ya play?"

"When you're in a small group, you do everything."

"What mostly?"

"Bass. Some keyboard, some backup guitar, backup vocals, lots of drums and percussion, but mostly bass."

"Have Jimmy let you mess with his bass. He's really crazy about listening and watching other musicians."

I just nodded, as most guys don't want a bunch of amateurs messing with their gear.

The group went through most of their play list and degenerated into some of their newly written stuff for fun. They were jamming a little while when the sound guy talked to the bass player and he came over to get me. "Hey, come on over man, let me hear and watch you. I'll get my Gibson and do some chords with you while we jam.

What they were playing was borderline blues, so it was an easy back bass to insert. There were a couple of bars where they slowed way down, more than half. It was interesting, as it was now almost a ballad that went back to almost rock blues again. Right back where I came from, eclectic.

The guy handed me his bass. I stared at it, "Wow, a real handmade Columbia fretless, this is priceless."

"Yeah, neat, huh? If you can't do fretless I got a Strat over there for the funky stuff."

"Do you mind? I'd love to try it."

"Be my guest. A lot of good fingers have been on that axe working with me. Let me see what cha got."

He had the pickups set pretty high so you didn't have to pull the strings but could walk both hands for the run you wanted. If you slide your fingers on a good fretless with Humbucker pickups, you can make a good bass sing, almost like using a slide. I could see he had DeMarzio Humbuckers so I did a few practice scales then walked a blues riff followed by sliding the fingers a little to see if the bass would sing. Oh, did it sing. It was beautiful.

"Almost makes you want to cry, doesn't it?" The bass man was smiling at me as I wondered at the sensitivity of the bass.

The guitar player asked, "Hey, who's our new bassist. Isn't that the airplane jockey?"

"Yeah man, he knows what to do with the Columbia, too. Do it man, really play it. Come on guys, do the number and see what he does with the drag."

We did the piece and I just stayed with them very straightforwardly, until the part where it slowed down that he called the drag. There was a natural slide between notes that I could almost play one-handed. I slid my fingers, making the bass sing the accompaniment, as the guitar went way high with the metal.

When we were done, the leader said to the sound guy, "You get that? If you didn't you're fired. Damn, that sent chills up my spine. Teach Jimmy that riff, man, that was awesome."

Jimmy said reaching for the bass, "I was watching and listening, man, that was cool. I've never just let the sustain go on and on like that. Let me try."

He went over the series of notes a couple dozen times until he was finally comfortable to drop his right hand and let his fret fingers do the work. "Man, this is sweet. I wonder why I never did that. Everybody is thumping and pulling strings, but I like to just touch them with a walk. You do the same, it's like you're making love to the axe, Man. It's the way it should be."

The sound guy said to the lead, "He says he does everything, we should hire him to pick us up when one of us goes down for the night."

The leader said, "I think the man has as many hobbies as he can handle right now. We might get him down to the studio for some fun though. That would be cool. Let Jerry work some percussion while he does the drums or give Dean a chance to do lead and he can fill in on the keyboard. Hey, can you do a B-3?"

"Not really. I've only played the Hammond a couple of times. I would have to spend a lot of time practicing and probably take some lessons. And I don't have a lot of extra time."

"Gotcha, I know the feeling. All we do is live music. We write it, practice it, play it for fun, play it for pay. Everything's music. I keep waiting for that day when I don't want to pick up this Gibson or the Strat again, but it ain't happenin' so far."

Jimmy said, "We're all junkies. Our wives all say we're queer for each other, but we're queer for our music. We go between rock, blues, and now more and more jazz as we are getting older. I think our ears like it more. The blues still pull us back though."

I got up to get away from them so they could play among themselves. I sat down with Brandy, Tiani, Lisa, and John, who commented, "So what else don't we know about, Chuck?"