My Friday afternoon gig

I was billed to play at the Rendez-vous des Pêcheurs in St Aignan on the Friday afternoon accompanied by the dream team that we'd assembled to play with Bill on the Saturday night. Rehearsals had been a bit complicated to organise, since obviously the rehearsals with Bill were more important, so all in all we managed to rehearse about  1 1/2 hours on the Thursday evening and 1 hour early Friday afternoon. Needless to say I was a little stressed out, but the guys were excellent musicians and I hoped all would go well.

This gig was both an opportunity for me to play live (which I hardly have time to do these days) and also a chance to invite many of the stellar harp players who were there at the festival. We set up around four, and before we even had a chance to soundcheck, the place was packed, so we simply started and adjusted as we got along. The setlist was mosty blues with a few jazzy tunes in there for the more advanced players to have fun with.

We kicked the gig with John Lee Hooker's Baby Lee, followed by Junior Well's Messing with the Kid. The band was cooking, and the sound was great from where I was (and I didn't hear anybody complain). I have a few self-penned blues tunes that I had decided to play, and the first one was Long Leg Blues, a story about a woman who knows how to use her charms. By then it was time to invite my first guest on a Cab Calloway song called San Francisco Fan, a great slow minor jazz tune. I was planning on inviting Bill Barrett to improvise over the bridge, because it goes up a tone every four bars and I simply can't follow that on the diatonic, puny amateur that I am. Unfortunately, Bill was nowhere in sight, and my second choice, Thomas Laurent, wasn't either, so I just sang over the bridge.

From then on 'till the end of the set I had guests on every song: Robert Koch on James Cotton's How Long Can a Fool go Wrong (mean Chicago sound, I played the head, he played the solos, and we traded licks), Thomas (who had just returned) on Gov't Mule's Worried Down with the Blues (Jean-Michel, the guitarist, absolutely killed on that!), Ben Bouman on Help Me (he played a solo on a low Bb Seidel harp, and it sounded amazing) and finally Julien Cormier on Muddy's I Want to Be Loved. I had invited Julien on the same song a year and a half ago playing a small gig after one of the seminars Christophe sometimes organises, and he had totally messed up his solo in 1st position, and I knew that he'd been mortified by it. This was the chance to prove the world that he'd done his homewok in the meantime, which he had!

During the break, Jean-Jacques arrived from Paris, and I asked him if he'd come up and play a tune with us, which he gracefully accepted. He met with Bill and I introduced Tony Ramos to him. Tony gave him one of his custom harps. I checked with the owner to see if everything was alright, and he seemed happy with the gig, so we resumed after a quarter of an hour.

Our first tune on the second set was Jimmy Smith's Back at the Chicken Shack, which I managed not to mess up too much. I find that when I'm using a lot of overblows in a theme (in other words, when it needs to be precise), playing amplified makes it a lot less reliable than playing it acoustic. I suspect it has to do with the whole volume control thing, and also with the fact that I'm stage rusty. Anyway, this was the track for Sébastien, who shaked and rattled its B3 to the core. He sure has nailed that greasy Jimmy Smith sound, and I love it...

I then played another one of my tunes, a slow minor blues sung in French called J'sais plus quoi faire. It's a sad song at the core, about a relationship breaking down, but there are a few dark jokes inn there which tend to the get the audience (and the musicians) laughing. Once more, it worked, so I was pretty pleased with that. I then asked Tony Ramos to join us on I'm Gonna Move to Kansas City. Tony's playing is very fluid and although he was playing over a pretty straightforward blues, he played jazzy lines that fit really well.

I had then planned to invite JJ Milteau on one of my own songs, but he came up and said that since Tony had given him a Bb harp, he would try it out immediately and suggested that we play Watermelon Man. He started solo, vamping along the theme, and the band joined later on. I was glad I could actually play that theme, which is one that I really like. It was such a thrill having him play on my side too: a humbling experience. He really is the master of 'every note counts'. He also knows how to lead a band, and actually gave solos to each of the musicians (including sections of fours to Patrick) but also managed to take back the hand when they were getting too long (Sébastien, in particular, had a tendency to loose himself in his solos and although what he played was alsways interesting, it did sometimes stretch a bit too much).

I played another one of my songs afterwards, called Tired of Being a Teddy Bear, a song about how when you're large, women like you as a friend but not so much as a lover. There was no harp on this (I always say that in a harp concert you need at least one track sans harp) and Jean-Michel took a really nice solo after the bridge. Bill had arrived by then, so I invited him to play on Ray Charles' Don't Let the Sun Catch you Crying, a beautiful, sad and slow jazz tune. He sounded great, powerful and sweetly unhinged, with just enough weirdness to remind you that this is Bill Barrett playing.

There was another guy I wanted to invite, a guy I had heard of and exchanged emails with but never met, called Barefoot Iano. Iano is an Australian who lives in the French Alps, and has the reputation of being an amazing performer as well as a great player and singer. He didn't feel like playing over one of our songs, so he simply called for a country-blues version of Walking Blues.  He started playing some really wild Sonny Terry-ish rhythm, and I just sat by the side of this tall, barefoot guy who was stomping and moving along the music like nobody I've ever seen.

Later on, I would reflect that one of the great advantages of not playing often is that you don't feel slighted when you're upstaged. Because a lot of this music stuff comes down to ego, I had always felt, when I invited guests, that I needed to show that I was just as good as they were. Having Iano alongside me I realised that I wasn't jealous or unhappy about being upstaged, I loved every minute of it ! What a showman!

By the time Iano left the stage, I realised that I was really tired, and feeling a bit dizzy. As I said, I don't play often, and I felt that all my eergy had been used up. I scrapped a couple of tunes and we played Muddy's Deep Down in Florida as a closer. It was getting late anyway, and the evening's concerts would start in less than an hour. I think the crowd enjoyed the gig, and I know that the band did. It's a shame I don't have more time available in my day to day life to get serious about building something up with these guys, but they are pros and they need to eat, they can't put time into any project that won't bring them money.

Still, considering how little we had rehearsed, it was a good gig. I have one frustration with the repertoire and that was that we took San Francisco Fan way too fast, which sort of ruined the song for me, but if that's the only bad thing about the gig, well, that's not bad at all. I took a drink and sat down for a while, getting my spirits back...

Note: I'm still waiting for more photos of the gig, so I will update this as I get hold of them.

Comments

[Bobbiegentry]

J'aimerais beaucoup entendre Tired of being a teddy Bear!