There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!  – Percy Bysshe Shelley

Here it is a week before Thanksgiving already. Let me take a few minutes to see if I can sort out what’s happened in my musical life since my last post… jeesh, this gets harder and harder every day I age…

September and October saw a little bit of SNUG activity. First up was a private event at the Hong Kong Flower Lounge in Millbrae. A stripped-down lineup – SiBon, Ross, and I – crammed into a ludicrously cramped space and played a very short set and got fed some incredible food. Next up was a very fun  outdoor brunchtime gig at the Main Street Coffee Roasting Company in Redwood City. We went over well and hope to be back there again when the weather returns to the appropriate temperature. Finally, we played on a Saturday night at a funky bar in San Mateo, Moon’s Family Sports Pub (I think the word “family” in the title means the pub is owned/operated by Moon’s family, not that it’s a family sports pub to take your kids to for a meal and a few brewskis). This time we had a fill-in rhythm section, Alvin Joseph on bass and an old musical colleague of SiBon’s, Rick Bailey on drums. We went over well and I suspect might be back there again soon.

In October I sat in for several songs with Stan Erhart’s band at the American Legion Hall in Princeton-by-the-Sea, right next door to the OPL, long-time site of Stan’s Sunday night jam which I used to frequent when it was still happening. Then in mid-November I played a set with my friend’s band Blue Tuesday at McGovern’s Bar in San Mateo, an evening that was made noteworthy by the presence of the awesome Berkeley-based guitarist Garth Webber sitting in a later set. It would have been great to have had a chance to play with Garth again (we jammed once or twice a while back at Stan Erhart’s OPL jam), but it was wonderful just to be able to watch and listen to him.

I’ve continued to attend the Club Fox jam on Wednesday nights in Redwood City, but much less frequently. I used to go probably 4 out of 5 times, now I head down there probably once a month or so. My original plan was to switch it up and go to some of the other local jams in between, especially a couple of jazz jams, but I haven’t seemed to have been able to do that quite yet.

Concert-wise, I saw a couple of great shows. In October, at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco, there was a King Crimson-centric performance titled Two of a Perfect Trio – Adrian Belew‘s Power Trio and Tony Levin‘s Stick Men. Belew and Levin, along with Stick Men drummer Pat Mastelloto, were (are?) members of King Crimson, and the whimsical name for the tour is wordplay on the title of a Belew song and Crimson album, Three of a Perfect Pair. Each trio performed a set of mostly their own originals. Then Belew, Levin, and Mastelloto came out and performed a couple of King Crimson songs. Finally the remaining members of the two trios (touch guitarist Markus Reuter from Stick Men, and bassist Julie Slick and drummer Tobias Ralph from Belew’s Power Trio) came out and joined the trio of Crimalums for a pulverizing set of Crimson material.

Then, on Halloween night, at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, I saw Jeff Beck. It was my ninth time seeing him (a review of the previous show in 2009 and a list of all the other times I’ve seen him is detailed in this blog post). This time his band still had Jason Rebello on keyboards, but the bass and drum chairs were filled by Rhonda Smith and Narada Michael Walden. The set list had a fair amount of overlap from the 2009 show, with the addition of several tunes from Beck’s latest studio recording Emotion and Commotion and a couple of new covers added since then.

Not much I can say about Jeff Beck that hasn’t been said, so I’ll leave it at this – when he comes back next year (with a new studio album, apparently, and a tour with his new trio with Rhonda Smith and drummer Veronica Bellino), I’ll be getting tickets if he’s anywhere within a couple of hundred miles…

How To Become Clairvoyant is the fifth solo release by Robbie Robertson, coming 13 years since his last release (and I thought Jeff Beck waited a long time between recordings). I remember being really knocked out by Robertson’s first solo album in 1987, so when I first heard about this one, my antennae twiggled. Then I learned that it is a collaboration with Eric Clapton, which further tweaked my interest.

I’ve been quite pleased with it. The songs are all very good, though none of them jump out at you as an instant classic like “Cripple Creek” or “The Weight” from his years in The Band.

Robertson’s vocals are… what should I say? – limited? – but they work. He sometimes treads close to pretentiousness, but usually he manages to be emotionally expressive, and he has an excellent sense of phrasing and rhythm.

Sonically the recording is brilliant. It’s sort of a combination of raw, lo-fi electric guitars, nylon-string acoustics, and Hammond B-3, mixed up with more modern electronic sounds here and there. Everything sounds organic and loose, but there are all sorts of interesting layers and interlocking bits of sound, in a way that reminds me of the late Lowell George’s production work with his band Little Feat. I haven’t been as impressed with the production of a recording in a long time like I have been with this.

Clapton is all over the record, but in an understated way for the most part, except for where he and Robertson trade off lead vocals on the song “Fear of Falling.” He co-wrote some of the material, plays guitar and sings backup on many of the tunes. It’s wonderful to hear Clapton involved with something as creative as this.

Steve Winwood also appears on organ. Bass and drums are mostly provided by Pino Palladino and Ian Thomas, There are also appearances by Robert Randolph, Tom Morello, Trent Reznor, Angela McClusky, Jim Keltner, and others.

There’s a nice little writeup about the disk at NPR’s Music’s First Listen site.

It seems I’m letting the time get away from me again. Missed noting a few things that I did this summer.

SNUG played a short one-hour gig outdoors at the San Mateo High School football field on Saturday afternoon, July 9th, as part of the American Cancer Society Rally For Life event. I recorded it with my digital recorder but it was windy, and I forgot the windscreen, and so the results were essentially unlistenable.

I had the privilege of seeing two great shows at this summer’s Stanford Jazz Festival. First, on June 30th, was the wonderful Milton Nascimento and his Band of Four. I’ve been a huge fan of his work since I first heard his collaboration with Wayne Shorter, Native Dancer, back in the mid-seventies. I had seen him once before,  back in the early eighties with a large ensemble, but this time he had a small group with just four other musicians. It was exquisite.

About a month later, on July 24th, I caught Ruth Davies’ Blues Night with special guest Robben Ford. It was great to see Ford play with a larger group for a change rather than in a trio setting.

I had a small jazz gig at the Palo Alto Elk’s Lodge on August 19th, with some of the guys from the group of folks that used to play at the Turtle Bay Seafood & Grill restaurant in Foster City. It was a lot of fun and I hope to do it again.

Aside from that I’ve been going to the Club Fox jam now and then, and also the Sunday one at the Pioneer once in a while. But I am scaling it back a bit for the time being. Just too time-consuming for the small amount of playing involved.

Bobbi Goodman also videoed our performance on June 5th, compiling both tunes into a single video.

On Sunday, June 5th, I was honored to be part of an afternoon of music & fellowship in benefit of the family of guitarist Chris Cobb, who lost their younger son Clay earlier this year. It was held at McGovern’s Bar in San Mateo and the music lasted from before 1pm until after 9pm. Some of the featured performers were Stan Erhart, Dave Workman, the Daniel Castro Band with Terry Hiatt, the Chris Cobb Band; there were many others. I played three numbers (one with vocals) with the able assistance of Jeff Kamil on guitar, Pat Tinling on bass, and Jackie Enx on drums, with Gino “Bambino” Emmerich guesting with us on one tune.

Dave Workman took some video of two of the numbers with his iPod Touch:
“That Road”
“Unchain My Heart”

As you can tell if you watch those YouTube vids, both numbers were somewhat shabby. We only had one very brief rehearsal about three or four days before the show. I made a bunch of glaring mistakes. But Pat and Jackie are such strong players that it almost didn’t matter – the groove and the drive were there for Jeff and I to surf on.

I saw the Tedeschi/Trucks Band a week ago last Sunday night at the Warfield in San Francisco.

Almost exactly two years ago I saw the Derek Trucks Band, which was also a fantastic show by a superb band. But this band is a notch or two better. There are a couple of holdovers – the singer Mike Mattison, though now he’s a backup vocalist rather than the featured vocalist, and Kofi Burbridge, the keyboardist and flautist. On bass now is Kofi’s brother Oteil, who has been the bassist in the Allman Brothers Band for many years now. There are two drummers, J. J. Johnson and Tyler Greenwell. There’s a three-piece horn section with trumpeter Maurice Brown, tenor saxophonist Kebbi Williams, and trombonist Saunders Sermons. Finally, there’s one more backup vocalist, Mark Rivers, for a total of 11 folks in the band.

The music was all new stuff to this ensemble, with the exception of the old Derek & the Dominoes song “Anyday,” which the DTB Band did perform, and maybe one or two other covers that might possibly have been in the repertoire in either Derek’s or Susan’s earlier groups. They performed “Space Captain,” the tune that they recorded with Herbie Hancock on his last CD, The Imagine Project, and a bunch of stellar originals, some of which I’ve heard already, like “Midnight In Harlem” which they did on the last Crossroads Guitar Fest DVD. They did a couple of interesting covers, like Jimi’s “Manic Depression” (which Oteil sang lead on) in the first encore, and the Meters song “Just Kissed My Baby” in the second encore.

Second encore! I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to a show that had a second encore. They played a bit over two hours in all; I didn’t get home until midnight.

Their debut CD, Revelator, is being released in a couple of weeks (June 7th).

The other day on the way to work I listened to the 40th anniversary remaster of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek & the Dominos.

40 years… whew. I was a junior in high school, a nascent guitar player and a stone Clapton fanatic when I first heard this, and I immediately embraced it as an incredible, near-perfect recording in every way – real emotion, exuberant, passionate playing, great songs, the right balance of rawness and polish, and some of the best-sounding guitar parts ever… 

Over the years I have kept coming back to it, and to this day it still always hits me the same way.

At this period of time Eric Clapton was pretty much at the peak of his powers, and ever since his best efforts have never approached even the foothills of the heights he reached on this recording. The stories are legendary – his (at that point) unrequited love for his friend George Harrison’s wife, the sympatico meeting between Clapton and Duane Allman – and knowing this history helps inform one’s appreciation of the record, but it’s really in the music that was put on tape, and the order in which it was presented, that the rubber hits the road. 

In the Dominos (Bobby Whitlock on keys and vocals, Jim Gordon on drums, and Carl Radle on bass), Clapton had a crack rhythm section and, in the case of Whitlock, a songwriting partner and strong vocalist to serve as a foil. And with the addition of Duane Allman, and the generosity with which Clapton featured him in the songs he played on (more than three-quarters of the album), an already delicious musical stew got some wonderful extra spice and complexity. 

Bobby Whitlock, who has recently been very talkative about this album and his time as a Domino (on the heels of his autobiography that came out a year or two back), says that Allman didn’t really add all that much to the album, that it would have been just as great an album had he not been present, but I beg to differ. I’m sure it would have been a great album (a listen to the first three tracks, sans Allman, demonstrate that), but Allman’s playing in the presence of “God” is inspired, and I suspect Allman’s presence tweaked a bit more divine wattage out of Clapton’s playing too.

That said, one of my favorite tunes has always been “Keep On Growing,” on which Clapton alone plays guitar (as on the first two tracks, “I Looked Away” and “Bell Bottom Blues”) — but a lot of guitar! There are multiple parts piled up here. Several overdubbed rhythm figures drive the song, and cocky fills bristle in between the lines of the verses and choruses. Then, after the last chorus, several guitars improvise joyously in and out and around and through each other. It’s the kind of thing that you would expect to quickly dissolve into raucous cacophony and be an over-indulgent mess, but for some reason it’s magical.

The other day on the way to work I listened to the 40th anniversary remaster of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek & the Dominos.

40 years… whew. I was a junior in high school, a nascent guitar player and a stone Clapton fanatic when I first heard this, and I immediately embraced it as an incredible, near-perfect recording in every way – real emotion, exuberant, passionate playing, great songs, the right balance of rawness and polish, and some of the best-sounding guitar parts ever… 

Over the years I have kept coming back to it, and to this day it still always hits me the same way.

At this period of time Eric Clapton was pretty much at the peak of his powers, and ever since his best efforts have never approached even the foothills of the heights he reached on this recording. The stories are legendary – his (at that point) unrequited love for his friend George Harrison’s wife, the sympatico meeting between Clapton and Duane Allman – and knowing this history helps inform one’s appreciation of the record, but it’s really in the music that was put on tape, and the order in which it was presented, that the rubber hits the road. 

In the Dominos (Bobby Whitlock on keys and vocals, Jim Gordon on drums, and Carl Radle on bass), Clapton had a crack rhythm section and, in the case of Whitlock, a songwriting partner and strong vocalist to serve as a foil. And with the addition of Duane Allman, and the generosity with which Clapton featured him in the songs he played on (more than three-quarters of the album), an already delicious musical stew got some wonderful extra spice and complexity. 

Bobby Whitlock, who has recently been very talkative about this album and his time as a Domino (on the heels of his autobiography that came out a year or two back), says that Allman didn’t really add all that much to the album, that it would have been just as great an album had he not been present, but I beg to differ. I’m sure it would have been a great album (a listen to the first three tracks, sans Allman, demonstrate that), but Allman’s playing in the presence of “God” is inspired, and I suspect Allman’s presence tweaked a bit more divine wattage out of Clapton’s playing too.

That said, one of my favorite tunes has always been “Keep On Growing,” on which Clapton alone plays guitar (as on the first two tracks, “I Looked Away” and “Bell Bottom Blues”) — but a lot of guitar! There are multiple parts piled up here. Several overdubbed rhythm figures drive the song, and cocky fills bristle in between the lines of the verses and choruses. Then, after the last chorus, several guitars improvise joyously in and out and around and through each other. It’s the kind of thing that you would expect to quickly dissolve into raucous cacophony and be an over-indulgent mess, but for some reason it’s magical.

Special editions of a couple of my favorite recordings have come out recently:  John Barleycorn Must Die by Traffic and Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek & the Dominos.

The Traffic set arrived on Friday and includes two disks: the original album remastered on Disk 1, and a couple of alternate takes, including a rather different arrangement of the title track, plus a bunch of live tracks from the Fillmore East from 1970, which include Ric Grech on bass along with the core trio of Steve Winwood on vocals, guitar, piano and Hammond B-3, Jim Capaldi on drums and vocals, and Chris Wood on flute, sax, and Hammond B-3.

The Dominos package is supposed to ship tomorrow so I should have it in a few days. In addition to the remastered album, there are also tracks from their appearance on the Johnny Cash TV show and a couple of tracks that were recorded for an abortive second Dominoes album.

I have almost fully recovered from being up past my bedtime after the second SNUG gig in fifteen days. Both were at Murf’s Broadway Cocktail Lounge in Redwood City. Both gigs went well. Not much of an audience – a few friends, and a few other folks… a couple of dancers…

Our fill-in drummer, David Bossler from the local band Funktional Soul, did a great job on our vast repertoire with minimal rehearsal. 

One good thing was that for once we seemed to have gotten SiBon’s vocals loud enough, and the recordings I made with the Zoom H4n came out very well.

Recordings of “Use Me,”  the Bill Withers song which is my one lead vocal with SNUG, and my guitar solo on “Chain of Fools” are posted now on my website. Hopefully SiBon will find a song or two worthy of using as demos and will put something up on the SNUG site.