Yellow Man

Still more history. I don't know which came first, the history or the egg.

            After a good bit of practice alone in my bedroom, I got a call in April from a guy I had met through Billy D. The guy was a guitar player who had played in Billy D’s former band, and in a legendary group that eventually yielded the lead singer and keyboard player from Madisonville’s high school hero band. The guy wanted to get together with one of my classmates, a drummer who had brought me into Cub Scouts, and me to pick a little and see what we had. The dude must have been desperate if he called me, so I guess he was. He suggested a time, and said he’d come around and pick me up for the jam. I agreed.

            The guy and the drummer arrived at my house exactly when he said he would, and hauled me and my equipment over to a professional garage owned and operated by his father. In fact, his father was a great and well known bass player who had played in bands, many of them country, for longer than I’d been around, and I found it a little weird that such an old guy knew most of the songs that I wanted to play.

            After father and son tuned-up and we got a volume level, the guitar guy ran through a couple of titles before we attempted Little Latin Lupe Lou. My end of it was a total disaster. I jumped out at about three times the correct tempo, and threw in the wrong key to boot. God it sounded bad. I had not until that very moment realized that songs could be played in more than one key, though I’m sure most of the songs I played were far from their originals. The guy stopped us and told me to slow down a little. I wonder what his father was thinking. We tried again, but I just couldn’t get it. I think we finally tried Louie Louie with limited success. All the excitement I felt at being asked to jam with real people was gone when I returned home. I felt like a horrible failure (and it wouldn’t be the last time), but the guitar guy was not overly critical, and in fact quite kind. He advised me to play along with some records or the radio to work on the tempo problems. He said he’d call me again.

            I’d actually been to a proposed music practice at Tig’s before I got my keyboard. The plan had been for me to play the family piano, Tig the guitar, and CEP was supposed to sing. We tried a couple of things with no success before the practice degraded into a bullshit session, which wasn’t unpleasant, but also wasn’t music. Oh well. CEP and I saw Tig later that evening at a football game. No future practice was mentioned.