Go Me!!!

I am in the middle of putting together two massive posts complete with mp3's and tall tales of my college days, but seeing as both are wrought with storm und drang and self-effacement, I figured I would drop a tidbit of a pleasant experience while it's fresh on the brain.

As I am sure friends and readers have come to find out, I am highly confident in matters of musical conception, often having excellent arrangement ideas or good instincts on album or setlist continuity and the like, but often stall out of the gate when it comes to execution. Be it due to my lack of commitment to one instrument, lack of serious practice time on any instrument, or even my favourite new excuse, my lack of innate fine motor skills (apparently because I never crawled as a child), I am not an exceptionally deft technician on any of the tools on which I portend to be an "official" user. Upright bass is certainly my weakest suit by far. The other folks in The Whistlin' Wolves seem immensely patient with my lack of technical facility and I make up for it with my other skills and ideas, but every now and again I find myself in a place where those other things aren't enough to save me from winding up with proverbial gunslinger egg on my face.

Last night, The Whistlin Wolves played our first radio appearance. We played as part of a sort of radio hoedown on WKCR, wherein the house band sorta hosted us as special guests to the show. Like so many of the musicians on the traditional scene in NYC, the core members of this house band were incredibly kind and gracious and laid back - so laid back that they shared another trait with the rest of the scene: a general lack of rehearsal. Now let's be clear: I am not dogging anyone who can do a performance at their level (that level being "very high") without much rehearsal, but this laissez faire attitude leaves a lot to chance; like who will actually be in the band that night, for example. The show was due to start at 10 PM, and as of 9:15 they were still unsure as to whether or not their up-til-then-unnamed bassist was going to show, so I started learning a few tunes in the event thay I would need to sit in.

At some point during said rehearsal, the band's just-arrived fiddler asked the leader who I was - not in a "who's THIS guy?!" kinda way, more like a "hey, who's our new friend sitting in on bass?" kinda way. The leader looked up from his beautiful old Martin guitar and said something to the effect of, "This is Trip's bassist. These guys might sit in (referring to me and Spiff, mandolin in hand). Skip Ward was supposed to be here..." I use the ellipses here not because the rest of what he said was unimportant, but the fact that I even heard the five words after "Skip Ward" is miracle in and of itself. "Why?", you ask. Well... go ahead and Google "Skip Ward", or maybe even plug it into YouTube. For those of you without the time or interest in doing so, I'll just go ahead and tell you that Skip is one of the go-to bassists in New York. He's played with some heavyweights like Belá Fleck and Tony Trishcka. He studied with Jaco Pastorius for chrissakes! The first time I heard of Skip was when I found out he would be sitting in with us at a Woody Guthrie tribute we played a few months ago. Prior to said gig, I emailed Trip just making sure that our sit-in bassist would be able to learn our tunes on the fly. He simply responded with a couple of links to video clips of Skip playing on Letterman and Conan. Yeah. So I was basically shitting my pants. Here I am: Captain Butterfingers on the double bass, already nervous about playing on the radio and in front of people who know a lot more about "this music" than I do, and now you're telling me that I may have to do so in front of one of the best bassists in town. While I was nervous about sitting in with this other band, I was even more nervous about the prospect of their bassist actually showing up, because then I would have to play my set in front of him - almost surely to the embarrassment of me and the rest of The Whistlin' Wolves.

Well... as luck would (or would not depending on perspective) have it... Skip did show up, and here I was without a change of clean underwear. To be clear: while an absolute monster player, Skip is also the nicest dude in the world. We checked out one another's moods and instruments like two dog's circling and sniffing ass and silently established that we were both cool with two bassist being there. Despite the fact that I was in the middle of learning a song, I quickly deferred to him and put my bass in the corner so they could run a few more tunes before the show started. I spent the next hour (with a short break to work out our setlist and watch Trip play doctor on a harmonica) pacing the hallway strumming a ukulele and wondering how I was going to play in front of this guy.

Our set rolled 'round and we set up to play. While I would love to spin off all the details of the show (which went quite well), for this story's purpose the important thing is this: I didn't suck. While our tempos were generally a little rushed, I was fairly effective in holding back an all out stampede; and while I didn't play too conservatively, my cautious attempts to not embarrass myself in front of one of the best bassists around lead to my being more focused and making better choices. Let's be reasonable: I didn't rewrite the book on bass playing last night, but when the other band came back in the room to share the last third of the show with us all hootenanny-like, Skip actually suggested we both play bass. He might have just been polite, but it felt like a nod of approval. Nonetheless, I opted to grab Emily's guitar as, in my mind, I had just dodged an ego bullet and didn't want to push my luck.

It might not have been my best gig ever, but I was beaming inside as we packed up because I ussually wilt in situations like the one from last night. I was thrilled to have held my own. I confessed to Spiff as we got into the car to head home to Brooklyn that I hadn't thought much about how our band sounded as I had spent too much time mentally patting myself on the back for a job fairly well done. He was happy for me too and said as much, contextualizing it within how I feel after all of our other gigs (with all the bands): bad. I am blessed to work with three great bands and, more often than not, am pleased with our shows, but it's rare that I come home from a gig so pleased with how I played personally. Considering the odds, this one felt extra special. Mornings after nights like that lead me to want to play more and, perhaps more importantly, play better. Maybe I should call Skip and take a few lessons.