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ODY: Day 9

Posted by :James Howden On : August 29, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Gary Larsen once had a superb cartoon captioned “Great Moments in Evolution”. It was spun from all the solemn tributes to major passages in the world of sport, like those of NFL Films. (In Canada, we also have the mocked and adored “Heritage Minutes”, tiny slices of historical Canadiana that punctuate CBC television). Larsen’s one-panel “great moments” gag looked like this: near the shore, two innovative underwater creatures – one carrying a bat, one carrying a glove – consider emerging onto dry land where, you guessed it, lies a baseball. (Rim shot!)

I had my moment of (miniscule) transformation today, my little shiver of possibility. I discovered that the blues riff that the TVPI, my guide toward mid-life guitary glory, had scribbled out on paper was actually not that hard! Oh, I’m slow and clumsy, but I can read his little Tabs for Dummies nomenclature and I can, with tortoise-like determination, play ‘dem blues! Quite suddenly, I can imagine getting good enough to play that oh-so-clichéd riff with a little style and pace. Yes, and bar chords really confuse and abuse my fret fingers, but I know where the fingers go. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of this Old Dog Year, and I will dwell in the House of Blues forever. (No sacrilege intended. I plead giddiness, with intent to self-parody.)   

ODY: Day 8. When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Appears

Posted by :James Howden On : August 28, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Dave the Teen Vegan Punk-rock Intellectual was able to fit me in before his shift at the bagel mill today. Week 2 of the Old Dog (new trick) Year has begun, and I was in need of correction, encouragement and some newfangled guitar fun. (Um, ah, serious new challenges on my midlife road to musical immortality, I mean. And All-World Alliteration!)

“Your strumming’s a lot better,” the TVPI observed, “but why are you holding on to the pick that way?” I thought I’d suavely picked up his quick going-out-the-door demonstration of pick-holding. Instead, I’d adopted the most ham-fisted approach possible. No metaphor – my hand was a fist, with the pick protruding like a tiny shark-fin between my thumb and the second knuckle of my forefinger. This may have been part of the reason that my strumming, though better coordinated, was also quite savage, with the pick assaulting the strings at a right angle. Once the approach was more gentle, things sounded instantly a bit more melodic. Whew! Another correction: apparently I not only need to learn more about music but also about my son’s henhouse handwriting. That was an E chord, not G, that I was having modest success at in week one. Okay! 

What else? Power chords and bar chords are not the same things! I felt that my left hand and wrist were about to go epileptic on me after 20 seconds of arranging my digits in the bar chord — the major bar chord — position, so we’ll work on stamina. Once I achieve a kind of manual rigor mortis, I figure, I’ll be all set. TVPI says the bar chords will allow me to just skate up and down the neck (two frets apart tend to sound good in transition, he claims). He’s written down for me the basic pattern of an octave, from A to G sharp, as well as the simplified tablature of his favourite simple blues riff. I hope I still understand it tomorrow. (Oh, I’ll show you blues, buddy. I’ll show you blues.)

ODY: Day 7. Time for Another Lesson

Posted by :James Howden On : August 27, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Another son – so many young men with a thing or thirty to tell me! – advises that there is indeed a C chord. I can recycle my “Old Man and the C” pun. And there are chords A through G, minor and major, a distinction that I can often hear but don’t understand in musical or theoretical ways. In other words, I don’t know how or why the Fretful Fingers do their thing. I think it would be best, though, to not think too much about the WHY of things.

I remember my high school biology teacher, the inscrutably marvellous Mr. Cook, teaching us about human development, of individuals and of the species as a whole. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. He would explain mechanisms and cycles and I would want to know why. “These are metaphysical questions,” Herr Cook replied. I felt proud that I nearly knew what “metaphysical” meant. Among other things, it meant that asking why isn’t always a useful thing. 

Asking WHY is a great substitute for learning HOW. Then I get to think and talk about playing instead of playing. Do it now and understand it later. Okay. Having said that, the fingering makes no sense to me at all. I spent most of tonight’s session, another late-night bonanza, drumming on the body of the beast. I did this partly because I’m a bit lost for things to do – I definitely need another lesson – and partly because I’m trying not to worry about that. It was rather meditative, actually. I was getting to know my broken-necked Dégas guitar.

 

I also like percussion. I’ve drummed on every school desk I’ve ever inhabited, including sudden and startling rolls on my teacher desk whenever it was time to switch gears in class (or wake the dead). Percussive string action in guitarists has always fascinated me, and so I banged up and down the neck in more and less rhythmic ways. I tapped the fret guard and all over and around the body. On my mind was the tapping James Seals used to do on his guitar, which was pretty distinctive even on a love song like “Diamond Girl” or the earlier “‘Cause You Love”. It was one of his things. (He was an odd and often quite beautiful writer, was James Seals, and a great musician. Early Seals and Crofts albums are collectors’ items now, but worth looking for.) And I strummed and G-ed and power chorded, but mostly I beat on my Dégas like a drum.

ODY: Day 6

Posted by :James Howden On : August 26, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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It was the perfect day for the mid-life Guitarzan, the ol’ dog and his year for new trickiness, the Old Man and the C (guess I’ll have to learn that chord), to play and play. (Wait a minute. Is there such a thing as a C chord? What do I know?) The bride had cleared town, the holy little terror had gone with her, and 24 hours of bachelorhood beckoned. The Crossroads! Me and My Guitar (Always in the Same Room). Time to stretch it out.

Except that I forgot. Got myself home at a decent hour from dinner with the Newlyweds, didn’t remember my little curvy friend Dégas waiting upstairs in the study, switched on Saturday Night at the Movies. (God bless TV Ontario. TVOKids is about all we’ll let the little guy watch, but I can’t believe how little I’ve watched this movie-lover’s — and commercial-hater’s — dream. I’ve seen Chariots of Fire before, but it’s one of the few really good jock movies. I’d been moaning to the Newlyweds and their friends about how sports movies always irritated me (That guy’s no ballplayer! He wouldn’t say that! Oh, come on!) when Buddy jumped into my discourse: “Wait, what about Field of Dreams? Bull Durham? Huh?” Couldn’t even argue. Stopped me cold. I sat corrected.) So you’ll understand that when Chariots was just about to start, and the Midnight WatchGirl was out of town, well, shoot, I was running! (Standing, actually. But that’s almost like motion.) I liked it. I enjoy watching running. And the post-film interviews. And the first ten minutes of a quirkily American 1930-something version of Anna Karenina. And I digress now nearly as long as I digressed then, well past the witching hour. What about the guitar?!

The (sort of) good news is that I put in nearly half a wee-hours hour on the guitar, since there were no sleepers to disturb. A good thing about messing around on a guitar: it’s easier to fulfil a daily commitment to it than, say, remembering to fit in a workout or a meditation session when the eyes are bleary and the flesh is weak. And I did! I’ve cheated on the diary entry by sleeping first, but in my aimless/restless way, I didn’t mind keeping that little promise at all. Six in a row. The Streak lives! 

ODY: Day 5

Posted by :James Howden On : August 25, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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The fingertips on the left hand of the OD are glowing like coals in an old contented fire, and have been all day long without even looking at that friggin’ stringy machine. Got down to stringy business late in a long day, and all I wanted to do was power chords. (They don’t hurt my burning digits as much.) They don’t sound too musical, or too powerful for that matter, but I like the gonzo athleticism and basic brainlessness. Delicacy is for the weak-hearted. (Okay, delicacy is for those with some level of skill. Momentarily, I can sometimes imagine skill, but I’d probably imagine it better if I was Airing it and didn’t keep putting an Actual Guitar in my hands. Sigh.)

ODY: Day 4. Ride ’em!

Posted by :James Howden On : August 24, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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It’s on its way down to 7 degrees Celsius on this August night that feels like fall. Good sleeping weather. Good Bonanza weather! Guitarzan couldn’t bear to slog through the mud of the way I make G and A chords tonight, so I started off with my inimitably mal-tuned acoustic power chords. (I haven’t figured out where to put my friggin’ elbow when I’m flailing, but flail I do.) And then as I practised picking out an individual string repeatedly, at some point I succeeded in hitting the same one six or seven times in a row, because suddenly a theme from my childhood TV sprang from MY GUITAR! What a great thing: 12 notes in a row on my chubby E was the start of a song.

 

Lorne Greene and Dan Blocker and Michael Landon and whoever played “Hop Sing” gathered around the campfire in my bedroom tonight, because 12 quick plucks on any string (except maybe A, something wasn’t right there) and at any fret point sounds a little like the beginning of the Bonanza theme. (Ask your father.) Then I had to mess around to find a couple more notes, and I had the first part. YEE! I found ways to play it with any two consecutive strings, and began to see what the Teen Vegan Punk-Rock Intellectual (my “teach-Dad-a-lesson”-er) meant by the fifth fret. (Does that take it up an octave? Whatever it does, it allowed me to find that high note at the end of the first phrase of the song.) I also found out how to play the thing on one string; heck, I can play it on any string! Just not very fast, or very well, but I was tickled rosy.

I even got parts of it using power chords, though it sounded like I was playing in a cave under water. Who cares? I found such utter delight in the child’s play of figuring out a simple tune. Only the first two phrases, mind you; it gets a little more musical after that opening hoofbeat melody. But as the TVPI had counselled me: “Play songs. You gotta play songs.” Right agin, perfesser! I’ll be back on the trail tomorrow.

ODY: Day 3

Posted by :James Howden On : August 23, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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A small victory in the Old Dog, New Trick Olympics today. My mid-life quest for guitar glory saw its first hint of musicality tonight, when the G-major chord came out sounding vaguely musical on a few of my eccentric windmill strokes. My fingertips felt sliced and diced by the time I’d hit the individual strings enough to organize my fretting, so the chord didn’t hold up long. But I heard it, dammit. I heard it. And the strings go E, A, D, G, B and E again. And that’s an octave, from fattest to skinniest. (Or is it two?) That A chord doesn’t make much sense to me yet, but that might’ve been because I read the diagram wrong again. Is this why we call a frightened or nervous person fretful?

Old-Dog Year: Day 2

Posted by :James Howden On : August 22, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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Put in an excruciating 35 minutes. The Teen Vegan Punk-Rock Intellectual commanded me to hold the pick a certain way, and it seemed to help my strumming a bit. Just having a pick probably helped make it sound a little more authoritative, if utterly muddy and tuneless. The pain wasn’t only emotional. My fret fingers feel chubby and arthritic, though they are neither. (And the tips hurt. Waah!) Picking slowly down the strings, each note of the A and G chords could be made to sound somewhat clear, but the strumming was horrible. Then I realized I’d been reading the TVPI’s handwritten chord diagram upside down.

After that, there were a few moments when I might’ve been actually playing the G major and minor chords, albeit badly. The A still sounds like I’m strumming on a leaf rake. Patience, Old Dog.

Dar at the Noir

Posted by :James Howden On : August 22, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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I am more than mildly infatuated with Dar Williams. (There.) My general (if limited) pattern is to fall for the blonde and tall, and she is an elfin brunette, but that hasn’t stopped me from tumbling off cliffs of emotion and devotion when I hear her sing, especially live. In spite of her hair colour, size and marital status – not to mention mine – I might be tempted to propose lifetime commitment to Ms. Williams if I were ever to actually meet her. I guess I’ll just buy more albums. She is funny, wildly smart, terribly serious, and sings from a deep well of sadness that informs even the wittiest of songs.

My bride and I saw just enough at her short FolkFest stint Sunday to convince me to drive up the road last night to the Black Sheep Inn in bustling Wakefield, Quebec. I dragged five friends with me, two of whom were local Wakefield yokels designated to fight off the envious so that we latecomers could get a seat au Mouton Noir, that wee haven for musicians and them as loves ‘em. Dan Frechette, the opener, was a pleasant Manitoban surprise, engaging and charmingly geeky and a very good writer to boot. Imagine (visually, at least) Eugene Levy with trimmed eyebrows, a clear singing voice and crisp guitar slinging from the left side. I’d see him again.

And Frechette was nearly as anxious to listen to Dar Williams as the rest of us. It was a love-in. The Black Sheep is a cramped venue in a tiny village that attracts the best songwriters, singers and pickers from all over North America. Whether it’s the beautiful view of the Gatineau River and its hills, the loyal listening folk or the gracious management, it’s become a magnet. Williams strongly credits le Mouton for helping her regain her performing mojo. And what a gift that is.

She’s a better guitar player than I’d realized, her voice is full of range and feeling and my goodness can she write! Her songs are often too complex or too subtle, I imagine, for her to ever get much pop radio play, and her style is distinctive enough that she is not easy to cover. Some of her early songs were occasionally so dense and manic that they were hard to take in all at once. They rewarded close listening, to be sure, and now she slows them down just enough to make them accessible to first-time hearers. I noticed this with her deliberate and witty rendition of one of her fans’ faves, “The Babysitter’s Here”. It’s a signature Williams piece, containing childhood sweetness, adult wit and a scorching way of seeing.

And as she has done so many times, she had me snuffling and heaving at the shoulder. “February” kills me every time, and “The End of the Summer” is one of the most melancholy and moving bits of song I’ve ever heard. Newer pieces – the haunting “Blue Light of the Flame” from her most recent album, My Best Self, “Mercy of the Fallen” and an inspired cover of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” – remind me that I really know only Williams’ first three albums from the mid- to late-90s. She’s a wonderful artist. (She’s also written a couple of young-adult novels, for heaven’s sake, campaigns earnestly for environmental protection and also fit in the birth of a son.) I have some shopping to do. (But worry not, Dar, no stalking for me.)

Old-Dog Year: Day 1, Lesson 1

Posted by :James Howden On : August 21, 2006
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Category: On Second Thought

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This was the day. No more fudging, no more slithering into the underbrush of Some Other Time. Appointment with my son, the Teen Vegan Punk-Rock Intellectual (TVPI), who had rescued a broken-necked guitar from the curbside and glued it back to life. (If the Carolina Hurricanes’ Erik Cole can come back from a broken neck for the Stanley Cup final, this little Degas can put up with me.) That’s my weapon. I am Guitarzan. It’s my midlife moment, and I’ll cry if I want to. I am learning to play guitar, and I’ve given myself 365 days to do it. (To know more of the background to this goofy and scarifying quest, check here for the genesis and creation mythology and/or here for the move from the heady excitement of myth to the dull building of callous and routine.

TVPI Dave gave me way too much credit for having a clue. Okay, the fat string is E, then comes G, A, B…Damn, forgot already. Okay. The TVPI flooded me with way too much stuff, and I was all too eager to watch him noodle rather than finger-stumble myself. Yikes. I’d thought that I’d at least be able to strum with some coordination. No tango. (No waltz. No way.) But it felt good to start, and I walked away with little cheat-sheets on the G major/minor and A major/minor chords and what to do with my clumsy leftward fingers. Banzai!