Pribek

Ryan hipped me to the Fail Blog…

I got a hoot out of this one.

As always, don’t try this at home and click pause on the music player before playing the clip.

EEEEEEEYYYYAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWN! Man, I slept late, got to blow the cobwebs out. ok

The best song in the world, right now this morning is…

“Drunkship of Lanterns” by The Mars Volta.

These guys, Ryan got me on to them; “You have to listen to The Mars Volta!” He believed in the cause so much that he showed up at the Winnebago with a stack of discs. I’m with you Ry, I’m in on The Mars Volta.

As always, make sure you use only Medium Roast, then click pause on the music player located in the side bar to your left before playing the YouTube.

Good to see young kids taking an interest in atonality.

So, I’m sitting around with this guy the other night, just hangin’, there are a couple of acoustic guitars laying around and the dude says; “You wanna jam a little?” Now anymore, when somebody asks me that, I usually don’t really want to because, it isn’t really going to be jamming. It’s usually some guy who wants to show me his latest drop D lick that he learned from some record. It isn’t going to be an ebb and flow, playing through changes, variations on a theme, kind of deal. I’m not trying to be rude, that’s usually what happens-let me show you some licks.

But, I said; “O.K., what do you want to ‘jam’ on,” thinking the best case scenario will be to find some common ground, a song we both know the changes to, take turns soloing. He says; “How about one of your songs, have you been writing anything?”

I’ll have to admit, I was a little surprised. This has never happened before. So, I started playing a new song, “Honey B”, that has a nice, funky groove in E. To my delight, this guy starts playing some very tasty fills over the changes, playing them in the right places intuitively and backing off at the right times to play solid rhythm stuff. Hey, it really was jamming and, it sounded good. It was cooking.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this guy would be able to lock in with me because, he’s my 18 year old stepson, Ryan. He’s been listening to me play for most of his life. But, it did surprise me because, it flowed so well.

Now, if you’ve been following along since the start of this blog, you may know a little bit about the difficulty I’ve had in putting together a band to go play this stuff live. At one point, I thought, instead of a whole band, I would try a duo because, there are gigs where I could do a songwriter thing, where people would expect to hear original music. And, a duo, of course, would cut down on my expenses and hassle. But, I’ve had a hard time finding anybody that I could really lock it down with. If there’s only two, the two have to be really working not slopping around. I’ve even done a few solo things but, I don’t dig that so much.

Anyway, Ryan seemed to find the groove in a natural way, it felt good. Now, he plays in Church but, he hasn’t been doing other gigs in unfamiliar environments. So, it would require a good bit of work on his part. I asked him if he would want to give it a go and he seemed eager. He’s also been writing some and singing some so, it would be a chance for him to develop those things too.

So, we decided to give it a go and start working on some stuff on a regular basis. See where it leads. No pressure.

This morning we got together and worked through a few things for the first time.

So, here’s my new duo partner.

I’ll tell you one thing, my demographic just got a little better.

Here’s Ryan playing, “I Let The Whisky Kiss Me (Goodnight)”.

We’re a good ways away from booking a gig. Lot’s of work ahead but, I’ll keep you updated on this. And, when I have a little more time I’ll let you in on my method of non-teaching that has been a part of how this kid is turning in to a very solid player.