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An old friend just got a hold of me

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Isn’t it nice to have a dear old buddy e-mail you right out of the blue? It just happened to me the other day.

A guitar buddy of mine from Brantford wrote on my other site the other day and it really shocked me! When I saw his name I just about fell of the couch with my laptop!

I hung out with Scottie in the mid 80’s through to the mid 90’s. As a matter of fact he knew my Gibson RD Artist before he met me.

See my brother’s girlfriend at the time Caroline, played acoustic guitar and he let her borrow my electric guitar without telling me. I didn’t notice it missing because at the time I had just left my band Pylis and decided to take a leave of absence from guitar playing for a while. While guitar was with Caroline, her younger brother Mike had a friend who played acoustic guitar and had picked it up once in a while when he was at there house. Of coarse he feel in love with it. Many years later when we finally became friends, he was over at my house and he said that he played a guitar that looked exactly like it at his buddies home.

So that was the story, pretty neat eh?

I am waiting for him to replay back to my e-mail and hopefully will be brought back into his little loop of current musical achievements.

Scott loved playing a Cat Stevens and Neil Young type of guitar fingering and had a fabulous voice to go along with it! I loved showing him new types of techniques and ideas to enhance his sound, but he always seemed to be more of a puritan in that sense so it took me a while to figure out why he was stuck in the one genre.

Many years after trying to improve his playing in my eyes anyway, it finally dawned on me that this standard of playing was to be appreciated as much as the more technical approach to playing. This new found love of very simple guitar playing I attribute to my old buddy Scott!

Keep on Jammin’ Scott





Finally working with Rick

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I went to jam with Rick last night and it was just what I was looking for and much more.

As we were driving over to his home/studio he played me some of his demo stuff. As usual I was impressed but this one piece got my mind spinning in all different directions with these almost hidden ideas that I had locked away in my brain.

This was the style that I use to play in the old days of Pylis.

It has the keyboards front stage center the way I like it. I am the type of guitar player who loves to do some intricate background work while someone else takes the spot light. The only thing with this song is that there is someone else playing at the same caliber as myself that likes this same position in the tune. It has areas that are wide open to guitar interpretation that makes my mind spin and I’m loving every minute of it! I know I sound like Krammer from Seinfeld.

The second piece has this Rick Wakeman intro influence that ends up like a rockin’ rap type of feel to it. I know that I have not been exposed to this style before, but there is something in it that catches my attention in a very curious way. At this moment I have it looping through my mind and can’t stop it!

I will try to put some of it up on this site so you all can give me some input into what else I can bring to the piece. I will be looking forward to your insight.

Keep on Jammin’

The show at the hospital

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Well I just got back from a talent show where I work and I had a blast.

I decided to enter it a couple of days ago with a guy from work. We pass each other in the hallways daily and have always talked about getting together and jammin’ over the years. So here was our chance!

We jammed at work 2 times for around 20 minutes and once this past Sunday for about an hour. He is in the process of unpacking belongings into his new house and we all know how much fun that can be, so that’s all the time we had. We went over Late In The Evening and IF we had an encore, it was Come on and Dance by Steve Miller.

There were 6 acts and they were quite memorable.

First we had a Karaoke performance, then a little Jamaican women in traditional clothes who recited a religious poem. That was followed by a dance sorta group and a women who played Ava Maria on the saw, yes you read it right a saw! She really nailed it I have to admit. No pun intended. After that we played! Below is what we played, enjoy.

It went off without a hitch, but there were no monitors so we just had to hope for the best. The vocals were the only thing that I could hear and the guitars were too low. When I did the solo I turned it up a bit and it sounded nice. The only other draw back was that Sean, the other guy I played with, was too far away from the mike for it to pick up his guitar, otherwise it was just for a laugh. We came in second and went away with some neat little prizes.

The winner was the lady on the “saw”, it took guts and skill to go up there and play that thing and in my mind she deserved it. So hats off to Angela and her singing saw!

Keep on Jammin’

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