Stevie Ray’s Benefit
I haven’t been posting a lot lately because I’m spending just about all of my free time editing. Expect this to continue for a while.
I did get out on Friday night to play at a benefit for Stevie Ray, a local musician friend who lost everything in a fire, including all of his belongings, his instruments and his dog. Various bands gathered at The Living Room and played to raise some money for Stevie and his wife to help them get back on their feet. In the cab on the way I called Prince Roy to see if he wanted to come down; he said he’d stop by.
The Muddy Basin Ramblers were on first. We set up quickly and got playing at about 10pm. My first show with the group was on that stage, in 2004. Hopefully this time around I didn’t make quite as many mistakes.
Although we weren’t fully Ramblered up as far as attire went, I decided in the glare of the stage lights to do the show wearing some old round sunglasses I had lying around. Afterwards, not only did I not get the usual “You seem so angry” comments, people actually said I looked serene on stage. Apparently the key to the phenomenon is my eyes. I must look into this.
After the show I was felt tired. You can see me zoning out in the above picture (courtesy of Kevin Smith). I packed up my stuff and headed back to the green room, but was waylaid by a couple of people wanting to know how I could make the washtub bass sound so much like a stand-up bass. I explained as best I could (mainly I just guess where the notes are) and walked back to the green room, where Stevie was tuning a borrowed guitar for the show. I plopped down on a mat and took a nap, as the show was going to go late and I wanted to be awake for any last-minute jamming.
A little later I got a message from Prince Roy; it turned out that he had been standing right in front of me after the show, and I didn’t even notice him. Sorry about that, my liege.
The show did go late. All in all, seven bands performed. I watched from the doorway next to Parti, a Sri Lankan friend of mine who has a shaved head and goatee, and Conor. At one point, as Stevie Ray was in the middle of a quiet solo, a largish foreigner turned around suddenly and threw a beer bottle at the people at the table behind him, shouting at them to shut the hell up. Luckily, the bottle didn’t hit anyone.
By the time it was over, nobody was much in the mood for a large-scale jam, and many of the key musicians had already left, so it just didn’t happen. We wished Stevie the best of luck and went down to the street to hail cabs home.