A friend of mine had a huge cook-out/jam session Saturday night. We called it "A Benefit for Clendon Roberts" because the main purpose, according to my friend, was to piss off Mr. Roberts, his neighbor. Roberts earned the wrath of my friend by accusing him of poisoning his dogs and a few other thing things. So the event was planned, with special emphasis on the sheer volume of the PA speakers during the evening... not just when the musicians were performing, but all the time, with DJ'ed music (most of it not very good) pumped up almost as loud as the live music. The speakers were even pointed toward Clendon's house. I would give anything to have seen his reaction to the party.
And a party it was. The turn-out was much higher than expected. There was plenty of food to go around. It was a "BYOB" affair, so there was a lot of brew flowing, but everyone stayed cool, no altercations or any reasons at all for the law to become involved (always a chance with a blow-out like this one). In fact, the only real problem was the unbearable heat. Pervasive heat. Oppressive heat. The kind of heat that makes you sweat buckets without doing any kind of work to earn it. The "benefit" had originally been scheduled for noon until "whenever", but it was just too hot in the early afternoon to do it. Our host moved the start time up to around 5:00 pm. It was still ungodly hot, but not quite as bad. I got there at 6:00, but we didn't start playing music until around 7:30-8:00.
The main reason I came out was because my son, Bryan, was scheduled to play a few songs to kick off the festivities. He played both covers and originals, the latter of which were backed up by me on the bass and his uncle Charles on the drums. He did a fine job and was well-received. I thought he did especially well when he had a band behind him, and that's only natural. It's just a lot easier when you know you're not the only one on the stage, that you can lean on someone who can pick up the slack for whatever... The confidence level increases when you're fronting a band. I really wish he could find some competent musicians in this area with whom he could form a band. He would love that, and it would probably be the best thing that could ever happen to his music career so far. Any musician would be lucky to play for him, because his songwriting is absolutely fantastic. He has a knack for melody that I've rarely seen in anyone, let alone a 15 year old kid. I mean, he's just starting, who knows what he's capable of as he gets older. He writes the kind of melodies that get stuck in your head, that you can't get out of there no matter how hard you try. And I'm not just saying that because I'm his father... others have said the same thing. So any players who are lucky enough to get into a band with him had better hang on tight, because it will be a wild ride. Bryan's talent is almost matched by his ambition and motivation. For the last couple of months he has been recording an EP of original songs, with help from the above mentioned friend, his uncle, and myself. There's still a lot of work to be done, but considering how long we've been working on it I must say it's progressing at a quick pace. He's already put out a disc's worth of covers that he distributed to family and friends... that's what I mean by "ambition" and "motivation".
He did well, and then it was time for a Jubal Modine reunion. JM was the last band I played with before retiring about 2 years ago. We've all played together quite a bit, even before we came together with the Jubal Modine name (under which we made a good deal of money). We did some typical bar band standards - "Further On Down the Road", "Turn the Page", "Werewolves of London" (okay, I don't know how "typical" that one is, but we did it every night with Modine), "Another Brick in the Wall", a request for a Haggard tune that I fulfilled with "Today I Started Loving You Again"...
Watching the video the day after the cook-out, I was struck by how I stood so still while playing, with my head down looking at my fingers on the fretboard almost all the time I was up there. Like a hulk. Before, back when I was playing in the clubs, I was all over the place, moving around, dancing, I just couldn't stand still with a guitar in my hand. Maybe I was just self-conscious because my wife and some of her relatives were in attendance. If so, it worked against me. I looked like a catatonic zombie. Well, maybe that's exaggerating a little bit.
Anyway, here are a few video captures from the "benefit".
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