"Willin"

After seeing Little Feat at the folk fest last summer, I took their song Willin' to the acoustic jams. It's a great song, and got a very good reception from the folks at the jam. (The classic live version from Waiting for Columbus is here.)

I learned the song by searching for the chords, which are easily found, here. This is correct, and is perfectly fine for playing along, or in an acoustic jam. But it's not how they're actually playing the song. All these chords are first position (i.e., open chords, at the bottom of the fretboard.) If you listen, you can tell that the acoustic guitar chords are being played high on the fretboard - and having seen them play it twice in the past year, I can confirm that Paul Barrere starts high on the fretboard and works his way down.

Last night I stumbled across a YouTube lesson that explains it (well, maybe not exactly "stumbled" - Privettricker is simply amazing, and I'm subscribed to his channel and look at his uploads with great interest.) Here's his lesson on Willin'. Very easy, very cool.

Mandolin

I was certain I've blogged before about the mandolin, but I see to my surprise that I haven't. The only thing I've written is the following on my "Gear" page:

Ibanez entry-level A-shape mandolin.  So far it's been a lot of fun to play, but I know that if I ever play it more seriously that I'll want to upgrade.  But most of my attention is on guitar at the moment.

I bought my mandolin from an aikido friend a few years ago. He had bought it to see if he liked it, found that he did, and had upgraded to a nicer instrument. I had the same thought - get a cheap one to play around with and see if it's fun.

It is fun - a lot of fun. I played it some when I first got it, then only played it intermittently for a while. But now I'm playing it again regularly. And as I suspected, that means I'd really like to upgrade to a little higher-quality mandolin.

I know what I'd like - but more on that if it happens. The first thing is to come up with the money for it. I've decided that three electric guitars is more than I really need. Even though I like and play them all (but not all at the same time, as ladies under my roof are fond of saying), I would rather have two electric guitars and one nice mandolin. So two of my electrics are now on Craigslist - whichever one sells first, I'll keep the other.

Here's the kind of song that's fun, and not too hard to play, on the mandolin: Soldier's Joy.

Another Jam and Taking a Lead

The other Saturday night, Darling Wife and I were invited to a small acoustic jam hosted by one of our friends from the Downingtown meetup. We had a great time - and the level of musicianship was a big step up from meetups. It was assumed that everyone had a good feel for basic song structure, and would be able to follow along with whatever was going on. It sometimes felt like bring thrown into the deep end, but I kept up fairly well, and it was a lot of fun to be challenged.

One thing I realized afterwards is that I'm now pretty comfortable taking a lead for 8 or 16 bars. There's usually someone leading the song, and he'll nod at someone to take the next section. When I started playing at jams (2+ years ago), that made me break out into a sweat, because I simply didn't know how to do it and didn't want to embarrass myself.

Now I'm happy when I get the nod - not because I'm making any jaws drop with my sizzling leads (I'm definitely *not*) - but just that I can do it at all. All I need to know is what key we're in, and I can do something. The only issue I sometimes still have is the question of major/minor. I'll know, for example, that we're in the key of D - but are we in D-major or D-minor? It's usually obvious - but occasionally it's not. I still feel very much like a beginner - but it feels good to realize that I can now do something that I couldn't before.

The other thing I realized (at least for the group I was playing with) is that if I'm going to play with groups like that, I should be more familiar with some of the folk standards. There were a number of Bob Dylan and John Prine songs called for, and neither are hard to play, but I didn't know them. I've been listening to and playing some John Prine, and he's fun. Here are a couple of my favorites:

• Paradise
• Spanish Pipedream

Nov/Dec Acoustic Jams

There were two acoustic jam meetups in December - one in early December (actually the "November" meetup), and one yesterday. These are still great fun - good people and good music. The songs we played, as best I can remember, are as follows (with my choices marked with asterisks.)

Early December

• Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan)
• Poor Little Fool (Ricky Nelson)
• Here Comes the Sun (Beatles)
• S'Wonderful (George Gershwin)
• Sloop John B (Beach Boys)
• You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (Beatles)
• Big Rock Candy Mountain
• Promises (Eric Clapton)
• Key to the Highway (Eric Clapton)
• Pilgrim (Steve Earle)
• Show Me the Way to Go Home (Irving King)
• ** Carefree Highway (Gordon Lightfoot)
• 6th Avenue Heartache (Wallflowers)
• Soulshine (Warren Haynes/Allman Brothers)
• Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash)
• Dear Mary (Linda Thompson)
• Yellow (Coldplay)
• Help (Beatles)
• Dreaming (Blondie)
• Deep Elm Blues (Jerry Garcia)
• Down By the River (Neil Young)

Late December

• House of the Rising Sun (Animals)
• When Will I Be Loved (Linda Ronstadt)
• ** Willin' (Little Feat)
• Like a Hurricane (Neil Young) (Marylou chose this, as it was the song we played at the holiday open mic)
• All I Want is You (U2)
• Snow is Gone (Josh Ritter)
• Poor Elijah (Robert Johnson)
• Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (Eric Clapton)
• Crying in the Chapel (Elvis Presley)
• Tennessee Waltz (Patsy Cline)
• This Land is Your Land (Woody Guthrie)
• ** Hey You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (Beatles)
• Hey There Delilah (Plain White T's)
• Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
• The Times They Are Changin' (Bob Dylan)

Little Feat, 12/29

After seeing Little Feat at the Folk Festival last August, I was determined to see them again, if at all possible. Well, I didn't have to wait long for the next chance. Within weeks, Darling Wife saw a notice that they were coming to the Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood, NJ in late December. I grabbed some tickets, and have been looking forward to it ever since.

Saturday finally arrived, as did 4 inches of snow. There was some last-minute shuffling of attendees, but we got over to Jersey with no problem, got a very nice sushi dinner, and made our way to the auditorium. It's a very interesting old 1,000-seat theater dating from the 1930's, and we had great seats - very first row of the second section, left-center.

The band went on shortly after 8:00 (with no opening act), and launched into "Rocket in my Pocket" and "Fat Man in the Bathtub", two great songs from "Waiting for Columbus" (their monster album from the 70's, and for my money, the best live album there is.)

I'll likely repeat everything I said after the August folk fest show - they lay down an amazing funky groove. I can't explain what makes it so infectious, but I could listen to them play all night. Many of their songs probably went to 10 or 15 minutes, with the two guitarists and the keyboard trading solos, and I found it mesmerizing - never tedious, as I often find extended jamming. It wasn't flashy pyrotechnics, just fun jamming over top of a rock-solid rhythm section.

I had one detail wrong in August, and I didn't realize my error until after Saturday night's show - there are two guitarist/frontmen, and the guy I thought was Paul Barrere was actually Fred Tackett. So in my August review, when I talked about being impressed with Paul Barrere's multi-instrumentalist playing, I was giving credit to the wrong guy.

They mixed in some songs from their new CD, and the title track, "Rooster Rag", is a very nice bluegrass-type tune with acoustic guitar and mandolin. But they did all the big songs from "Waiting for Columbus", but to their credit, none were note-for-note reproductions.

They closed the set with an extended "Dixie Chicken", featuring Fred Tackett's jazz trumpet intro, then one encore ("Oh Atlanta"), and the show was over, a few minutes shy of two hours.

I see on the band's website that Paul Barrere is going to be taking a medical sabbatical to try to recover from Hepatitis C. I wish him a full recovery, and hope Little Feat will be back on the road ASAP.

"Catch the Wind"

Donovan's "Catch the Wind" is a song I've always wanted to know how to play on the acoustic guitar. It sounds like it shouldn't be that hard, but I've tried to figure it out a few times, and always walked away frustrated.

So it was with great pleasure that I saw it show up in my YouTube feed of new videos last week - no surprise that the tutorial is by the prolific Marty Schwartz. (Tutorial is here, song is here.)

I'm pleased, and not surprised, to find out that it's not hard to play. The trick is knowing to capo at the third fret. Once you do that, it's just strumming C, F, and G7. You can put a few embellishments in, that sound great, and also aren't hard - and Marty shows how to do it all.

The only part that's a little tricky is the descending bass run that starts the song (and some of the verses.) It's not hard, it just needs some repetitions, which I'm giving it.

Kudos again to the best guitar teacher on YouTube. If I ever meet Marty, I owe him as many beers as he'd like to drink.

"Something in the Way She Moves"

It's always interesting to open my YouTube feed and see which of the people I follow have posted a new guitar lesson or song tutorial. Last week, I was surprised to see that Marty Schwartz (the best and most prolific guitar teacher on YouTube) had a video on how to play James Taylor's "Something in the Way She Moves". (Tutorial is here, song is here.)

That song is one of my all-time favorites, and has to be one of the prettiest songs there is. The finger-picking guitar work is *exquisite*, and I'd always assumed this song was *way* out of my league. That may still turn out to be true, but at least I now have an idea of how to play the song (where before, I had none.)

I've gone through the lesson in great detail (backing up and repeating 10-second segments again and again). The chords of the song are not complicated. But the right hand (the picking hand) is as complicated as I imagined.

I've given it a bunch of slow repetitions, and it kinda sounds like I'm getting there a little bit. But then last night, right before turning off the lights, I grabbed my iPod, put on my headphones, and listened to the recorded version. Its beauty took my breath away...and also made me realize I'm still a very long way from sounding like that.

But I'm thrilled that I can play it at all, and this will now be part of my practice routine.