Woodshed: Slop Them Hogs

Four consecutive plays.

Hard for me to believe, but just about a full month has passed since my unexpected return home.  And I have punctuated each week since with a visit to Uncle Buffalo's Woodshed, just as if the last three and one-half years hadn't happened at all.  It's hardly the same atmosphere as it was back then, but precious few things in life ever remain exactly the same indefinitely.  My playing surely hasn't; it's currently in yet another transition, as I strive to resume exploring different avenues of expression.


I can't escape the Hellhounds from the last three years though, and last night they once again let their presence be known.  Out of all the Woodshed Regulars, I'm one of perhaps a small handful of others foolish enough to have dabbled in the Deep Blues on a regular basis, back in the day.  As such, I have a strong compulsion to try and make my instrument "cry," or "wail," or "moan" as often as I can, as a way to express my emotions and pains.  It's not the easiest of things to do when the instrument in question is a drum kit, but this is the path I chose to follow as a youth, and the constant challenge is what keeps me going to this day, musically speaking.


Last night's play unfortunately turned into one of the more unpleasant varieties of challenges I've faced, although I fought like hell to keep my Aggregation from going all Hindenburg-at-Lakehurst.  The night started off with many of the old familiar routines and faces, but this time out there was a healthy injection of new faces to complement the stalwarts, and I initially looked forward to whatever might crop up.  Drum-bud Josh was glad to see me, and got a kick out of my reaction when he handed me a pair of the drumsticks he routinely gives out to his drum students.  I hadn't seen such HUGE sticks since my high school marching-band days.  Josh reminded me that the "logs" in question were meant to strengthen the wrists, and I conjured up memories of youth and countless hours of exercise with similar trees of my own.


I made a sly quip to Josh about his kids winding up with "wrists like Popeye," which got a decent laugh out of him as he agreed with me.  As BB and the Lads got up to kick things off, I wound up with a small but persistent John Bonham-vibe in the back of my head, thanks to seeing those sticks.  Said vibe was quickly escalated by the rather high benchmark BB & Co. set early on.  In short order, I was contemplating a Zeppelin-esque strafing run, once my turn came.  Fate and those damned Hellhounds had other ideas, though.  Once the opening and the first Aggregation's short set were done, BB threw me up with the familiar faces of Hungry Chuck on vocals and harp; my man Jimmy on bass; Legal Mitch on guitar; and good old Vaughan on sax, whom I hadn't seen since the Delmar Lounge blows four summers ago.  Our unit was rounded out by newbies Don on keys, Mike on guitar, and Zack on trumpet.


Counting voice as another instrument, that's eight individual rhythm platforms I had available to work with / bounce off of.  A situation tailor-made for me, until we got into the first number.  For some reason, my Aggregation couldn't quite nail down "Caledonia" properly, despite Chuck's fabulous barrelhouse vocals, and blazing harp-action.  I did the best I could to try and pick up as much of the slack as possible, but the groove remained rather rubbery at best throughout the whole tune.  When the same thing started to happen with our next number, I gave up any notions of a Zepp-run and pulled some heavy side-swing out of my bag of tricks and threw it into the mix.  Now, when I say "side-swing," I mean it in the same context as "front-swing" {riding just ahead of the beat}, or "back-swing" {lagging just slightly behind the beat}.


Thus, side-swing is my personal terminology for riding around the beat, instead of ahead or behind it.  It was the only thing I could do to keep things cohesive, but even that didn't work 100% properly.  I really began to feel burned and highly frustrated as Mike led us into our last number; the resulting tune featured star-turns by everyone in the outfit, save Yours Truly.  I flatly refused my turn when Mike tried to hand me the baton, and carried on with the quite sullen patterns I had sunk down into by this time.  Despite all the work trying to shore up the set as a whole, I was only too glad to split the stage in record time at the end.  This would have been a much easier task if Chuck, Mitch, Mike, and Jimmy hadn't stopped me to praise my mess before I could even sit down.  True, I did hold things together and in good tempo beginning to end, but the rubberiness overall pretty much destroyed the positives for me. Too much slop - and it showed - in other words.


I kept my onstage Buster Keaton deadpan expression going after I quit the boards as a defensive reaction.  Going 1 for 3 during this initial month of plays wasn't setting well with me at all as the night wound down.  The coup-de-grace was the fact that all of the other jammers got called back up for another go, save you-know-who.  Due to a couple of brand-new considerations which I'll clarify in a future blog, I had to lick my now salt-drenched wounds in deep privacy.  As such, the next couple weeks will likely see much re-assessment and re-evaluation, as I ponder my course from here.  Maybe it's really true that you can't go home again, or at least shouldn't bother trying to.


Downer-ending, I know - but then again this is the blues, remember.  Just like high opera, blues happy endings are few and far between.  Kiwll da wabbit, kiwll da wabbit, kiwll da wa-bbit, dig?


Stay tuned.