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Sound by Jack Daniels
Ever so often I play a gig where the sound is unbearably bad. Last night was one example. In short, from where I sat, it sounded like the rest of the band was in another room playing inside an iso booth with burlap bags over the microphones. Reminds me of a gig during my youth that happened in Amarillo, Texas. Here’s the entry from my gig journal –
One of the first bands I belonged to was called AmaJam. Why? Because we were all from Amarillo, Texas (except for one guy from Dumas), and we attempted to jam. Amajam’s first, and third from last, gig was at a local Amarillo park festival on Memorial Day. The local sound shop must have brought out every piece of sound gear they owned and chain-linked the whole thing together. I remember the way it hit me when I first arrived at the park. It looked like a cityscape – endless uneven towers of black speakers. The huge openings on the speakers reminded me of the floodgates at the bottom of many hydroelectric dams.
I’ve always wondered why so many sound people are hard rock fans, and why they think every performer wants to sound like Sammy Hagar. It must be the Jack Daniels. The hard liquor was already flowing with the sound crew as we unloaded and set up our jazz group. I went out front to see how we looked. Well, like Lilliputians perched between the big guns of a battleship is how we looked. When they were ready for a mic check, the guy at the mixer yelled “KICK!” through the monitors and almost blew me off of the drum throne. I have never since heard a human voice amplified to that level.
I was afraid to oblige him, wondering what damage would be done to my body by the subsequent audio explosion if I actually hit the kick drum. So I taped it gently and watched an old cottonwood tree shed its leaves 200 yards away. After that the sound guy said, “OK. You guys are on!” They cared nothing about checking the other instruments. The horns and keyboard would not be heard, and the bass and guitar were, naturally, set to maximum volume.
The downbeat of the first tune felt like a tactical nuke has just been detonated on the stage. I remember very little after that, except for the look of absolute ecstasy on the face of every member of the sound crew as they bobbed their heads and mumbled (I could read their lips) “Rock ‘n roll, man!”
That we opened with Freddie Hubbard’s “Little Sunflower” was beside the point. It sounded like Sammy Hagar.
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Musical sprinting
I enjoyed some live jazz at The Elephant Room in Austin, Texas last night. Our one true jazz venue in Austin was recognized by Wynton Marsalis as one of the ten best jazz clubs in the U.S. It’s also a good place to watch jazz calisthenics. The John Blondell band was at it last night. John is a Texas phenom on trombone and bass, and his shows are always part music, part theatre. He’s quite an entertainer.
I cut my teeth in the central Texas jazz scene playing with John in the early 1980S, and his crazy tempos were often my undoing. I remember one gig at an Austin cigar lounge called Cedar Street where the band was just a live juke box to add atmosphere for the crowd that gathered nightly to suck on imported stoggies the size of Sequoias. I had just return to town after a long absence and this was my first time with John in years. The evening reached a peak of tension when Steve Zirkel, our eccentric vegetarian bassist, cut off John’s trombone solo on What’s Goin’ On?, ending the tune prematurely. The big man would have none of that and turned around furiously exclaiming, “DON’T EEEEEVER CUT OFF A F***ING TUNE BEFORE I’M DONE! DON’T EVER DO THAT!!!” Without pause he then shouted, “CHEROKEE!!!”and counted off the traditionally fast jazz standard at a tempo that would have easily made pole position at Daytona. I couldn’t even straight stick quarter notes and resorted, first, to two-handing the ride cymbal, and finally, to simply playing all my favorite grooves hoping that I would occasionally land on a down beat. Zirkel lost a bar about every three and Clay Moore, our guitarist, did his best to land a whole note chords, all as Mao Tse Bone blazed through the changes as if he was strolling through a one-chord ballad. He knew he was the only one able to play that tempo.
The few in attendance sat open-mouthed. After three choruses the rhythm section was completely shipwrecked and the tune was cut off sharply with, “THAT’LL TEACH YOU SONS A BITCHES! DON’T EEEVER DO THAT AGAIN!!!” I laughed so hard I could hardly breath. We had just been thoroughly scolded musically.
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High art from HeeHaw
I learned how to do the leg part, but the hands and voice thing seem to go against the natural order of things.