Tonight I’m learning the solo to the Journey Song, “Lights”. It’s a pretty standard blues riff in B, and I’ve heard it so many times that it is a natural, no brainer. Still, there are some tricky bits, like the 16th note walk down at the end of the solo. Neal Schon is a killer, bedrock guitarist, and probably did the solo in one take, then spent the rest of his life playing it the same exact way. I read an article about him. He was only 16, when he was asked to play with Carlos Santana on one of Santana’s first albums. It is one of my favorite albums, and arguably, the best Carlos ever did. It has that loose 70’s soul feeling that makes you feel stoned, when you are not. “I ain’t got nobody, that I can depend on”, so tasty. I have no idea what they are saying in Spanish, but I can sing along phonetically. The percussion absolutely fucking melts your backbone and makes your hips and shoulders swivel.
So I sit here on Christmas night, learning another cover song. We’ll probably play it at the gig on New Years Eve. We’ll play a couple of our original songs for our regular fans, then start playing drinking and dancing songs for your entertainment. When I’m playing cover songs, I enjoy it. When I think about learning the cover, and practicing it, when I could be writing my own songs, I feel like a charlitan. As Salamagundi we’ve probably played 500 songs. We can pull off at least 200 songs without trying too hard. It’s easy to slip into playing classic rock, only, but I think what keeps us fresh is playing new songs like The Killers song we are doing. Many of the songs we play were my favorites at one time or another, but we don’t play much of the bands I’m into now. Wilco, Son Volt, Jay Hawks, Todd Snider, Drive By Truckers, Cracker, Bruce Robinson , Raconteurs, and so on. I’m lucky to have a group of friends who enjoy playing the music, but somtimes I think learning covers, and playing bar gigs are holding us back from getting our original material out in the public. So, I guess you could say I have mixed feelings.
Still, at 43, I’m still writing, recording and playing music live. That’s more than a lot of my friends who have packed it up and talk about their band days like Viet Nam vets and old hippies, talking about “back in the day”. Like battle scars and whiskey memories…. Guess I better get started on that set list.