am taking a break from playing... james & i've been at it for hours & hours, working on our 2nd set for our duo... when we stop, i realize my feet hurt (i play standing up, w/quite a lot of stomping taking place), i'm cold, i'm sick, i'm hungry, & he's the same... he has a venue we'll approach soon: says they book blues solo & duo acts. there are a few other places we can take our act. i finally got nerve to sing for him the big joe turner style lament i wrote him, to showcase the sonorous horn element of james's voice (he only uses it a few times in his current repertoire, to mighty, mighty effect); he took it & went out to the porch & started scribbling more lyrics as i played a new orleans romp & found myself adding lyrics w/o my usual supplies of notebook/pen... my mind gets in a free place after a while doing this, & it's beautiful, blissful, heart-shaking... we've been going thru my song notebooks all day, in between practicing, mining songs & song ideas i've written, found two more we'll use - one i need to finish writing after i stop blogging.
oh, what joy it is to share music w/james. to think we grew up at the same time 120 miles apart listening to complementary, in many cases, same stuff: what an amazement. i spent 43 years in bakersfield-frazier park not knowing one soul who shared my american music background in its particular intensity & depth; thank goodness i published online my "bride of frankenstein" song, for that's what brought me to james's attn. yes, heavens, add to it that he, too, is a universal monsters lover! he really dug that song & tells me as he read thru this blog at that time he thought, "who the hell is this girl? then i saw what you looked like & thought, oh man, i'm in trouble"... while waiting for him to shape up this new song, i clicked on our facebook photos to pull these two pix & our 4 million honeymoon pix came up. what a great & cool adventure we shared! what a wonder! i looked back & was filled w/gratitude! what a life we get to lead, in spite of patches of melancholy/whatever, which, for heck's sake, fall into every life, after all! in memphis at sun studios, james prompted me to sit at the studio piano. "who knows - it might've been played by jerry lee lewis." then he snapped this pic. i've been to sun before & never thought to do that. came home & turns out, dang if that's not the killer's very own wurlitzer from the legendary sun recordings of the '50s!! and there i sat, soaking up some of his juju! i don't have near the dexterity, of course, but i sure feel the fire at times, i really do! the other pic's my favorite of james in memphis, standing outside wc handy's blues hall looking noble & strong & cool. wc handy, father of the blues: james dedicates for me each week "st louis blues" bc early on, he knew i loved, loved the way he drops octave & belts that one out in both tenor & bass, full bore, & now his band out-blasters the blasters on it (as well as many others - they absolutely stomp the crap out of any other living band!), & how cool that he dedicates to me such a rockin' song, not some wimpy ballad, tho he does dedicate to me "trying to get to you" (not at all wimpy, but a ballad), which i know he has dedicated to others, but the difference is this: the latter song really is OUR story, what really happened between james & jenny, so we name it now as ours, a song of our love, like so, so many others we have written or that already exist in the great pantheon of american music... well, he's done writing lyrics, so here we go, back to practicing our hearts out... guess i will finish that other song a little later... may your day/night, too, bring creative bliss!
oh, what joy it is to share music w/james. to think we grew up at the same time 120 miles apart listening to complementary, in many cases, same stuff: what an amazement. i spent 43 years in bakersfield-frazier park not knowing one soul who shared my american music background in its particular intensity & depth; thank goodness i published online my "bride of frankenstein" song, for that's what brought me to james's attn. yes, heavens, add to it that he, too, is a universal monsters lover! he really dug that song & tells me as he read thru this blog at that time he thought, "who the hell is this girl? then i saw what you looked like & thought, oh man, i'm in trouble"... while waiting for him to shape up this new song, i clicked on our facebook photos to pull these two pix & our 4 million honeymoon pix came up. what a great & cool adventure we shared! what a wonder! i looked back & was filled w/gratitude! what a life we get to lead, in spite of patches of melancholy/whatever, which, for heck's sake, fall into every life, after all! in memphis at sun studios, james prompted me to sit at the studio piano. "who knows - it might've been played by jerry lee lewis." then he snapped this pic. i've been to sun before & never thought to do that. came home & turns out, dang if that's not the killer's very own wurlitzer from the legendary sun recordings of the '50s!! and there i sat, soaking up some of his juju! i don't have near the dexterity, of course, but i sure feel the fire at times, i really do! the other pic's my favorite of james in memphis, standing outside wc handy's blues hall looking noble & strong & cool. wc handy, father of the blues: james dedicates for me each week "st louis blues" bc early on, he knew i loved, loved the way he drops octave & belts that one out in both tenor & bass, full bore, & now his band out-blasters the blasters on it (as well as many others - they absolutely stomp the crap out of any other living band!), & how cool that he dedicates to me such a rockin' song, not some wimpy ballad, tho he does dedicate to me "trying to get to you" (not at all wimpy, but a ballad), which i know he has dedicated to others, but the difference is this: the latter song really is OUR story, what really happened between james & jenny, so we name it now as ours, a song of our love, like so, so many others we have written or that already exist in the great pantheon of american music... well, he's done writing lyrics, so here we go, back to practicing our hearts out... guess i will finish that other song a little later... may your day/night, too, bring creative bliss!
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