K&W with Bobby at Spectrum -- 27Feb2009

OK, that was a blast. My old buddy Bob Knight came out from Minnesota for the week, so I quickly set up a Spectrum date so he could "sit in". It was an unfortunately cold Friday night, so almost nobody was there -- except for the friends who made our night (heck, month!) by showing up anyway. And there were lots of 'em -- our families, my parents' best friends from the old days (who've known me since I was "a musical proverbial knee-high"), people from high school, college, Toshiba old days, and Indian Princesses -- too many to list! We had 20 or so friends, and only 4 or 6 "other people". But that was cool, too -- it was practically a Private Concert!

Back in the 70's I was just a beginner on guitar, so I wound up on (borrowed) bass behind Bob, or Bob & Jim, who both played amazing guitar and sang. I was too shy to sing in those days, and singing while playing bass is nearly impossible for me anyway. I eventually bought my own bass, which I still have and Bobby played on Friday. But it's been 30+ years and I've learned a few things on guitar and gotten a bit braver, and in the meantime Bobby's been off in Minnesota becoming a bass-playing monster, so this time it was reversed -- I played and sang with Bobby adding a bass line and harmony vocals, all right off the top of his head; we didn't have time to rehearse anything.

And it was amazing! First off, just having a bass there adds incredible depth, if that's not stating the obvious. And I've been yearning for vocal harmony in the act for years. I've had to stay away from songs that need harmony or they lose their essential character, but I still have lots that can certainly benefit from some. And they did. In spades.

I did a bunch of my normal songs, but I also added several that I've tried before but couldn't make work. I thought that with Bob added to 'em, they might fly better. And they did. So that was fun. Bobby was apparently surprised by some of the weirder selections I pulled out -- songs that maybe don't seem do-able, but that I've worked up some crazy arrangement of anyway.

I also re-worked up an "in-joke" (too long a story to go into here) song, "Hey Mister, That's Me Up On the Jukebox", just for the irony of doing it again with the reversed roles. Except I guess I sang it both times. Let's just say that I do it without a capo these days.

Anyway, it all went by way too fast. I really should have gone through and planned which songs to get to, rather than just flipping through the book and finding one. I guess I wasn't sure what was gonna work and what wasn't until I was there to hear how it was going. We'll just have to do it again sometime to get to those other couple dozen songs.

I set up my little camera to take video, but didn't get very much of the show, not to mention the difficulty of taking pictures under so much backlighting. But there are 7 songs to choose from. They're a little rough (Bobby was playing bass and singing with no rehearsal, and the mix was completely different than what I'm used to (with the really loud (from where I was) bass), so I was over-singing, etc., etc.), but really fun -- http://www.youtube.com/y7alanzo

Bobby, come back to California! All is forgiven!