Pop And Me

My brother Dan is seven years older than I, and we've been playing music together since I was about sixteen, since he drafted me to play keyboards (and later bass) for his scrappy semi-pro GB band—me underage at open-bar wedding receptions, playing for hours dozens of songs we barely knew for Chatham crowds too drunk to care. The material wasn't always to my taste, but those gigs were my music school. I learned how to pick up tunes and progressions on the fly, how to bluff, how to handle an audience with humor. Most importantly, I learned the value of being an entertainer, as opposed to an "artist."

There were other bands, together and separately. The last—an acoustic duet that played coffee-shops for beer money—was probably our most adventuresome, musically. I played six-string guitar, while Dan alternated between twelve-string, mandolin, and various percussion instruments; we both sang, in classic tight brother-harmonies; and we played, um, an eclectic repertoire.

That is to say, we played songs that an acoustic duo had no damned business playing. "I Got You," from Split Enz. Cream's "Badge." Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade Of Pale." The Left Banke's "Walk Away Renée." Songs by the Cure, R.E.M., Little Feat, Van Morrison.

And we played them in minimal arrangements, stripping the tunes down to the essence and then re-building them in witty, interesting ways. Our key criterion for choosing songs was; Can we make this our own? If the best we could hope for was to re-create the record, then we gave the song a pass. Always, the goal was an embrace of Mies's lovely paradox—to add something, by the very act of stripping away.

My acoustic guitar drove many of those arrangements—while Dan made 'em fly, I was holding down the bottom, providing the structure and the heartbeat; my right hand was a precision machine, and on a hot night I could've punched it through six inches of concrete and never missed a beat.

That worked in the duet context. But I'm learning (all over again) that solo performance requires both power and finesse—requires me to both pump and soar. Five years of hymnody left my guitar-playing more subtle and inventive, less reliant on sheer velocity, and when I think of it objectively, I guess I'm pretty good.

But I am so far from where I want to be.

Part of it, I think, is that I'm lacking the necessary perspective. Although my life allows me time to practice and, occasionally, play out, I haven't actually seen a gig in ages. Except for a brief walk-through at Jitters on a Friday, where I heard two would-be musos crucifying "Little Wing" at excruciating length, I cannot remember the last time I was in a coffeehouse as a patron. And so I have no idea what kind of shows my peers are putting on—how ambitious and eclectic their programming, the general state of their chops—no idea even of the clichés to be avoided.

The bar I've set for myself is people like Richard Thompson or Luka Bloom; guys with a presence that puts a chill in your spine, with a sound that fills the room, with wide-ranging musical ideas that somehow all fit together perfectly, guys with an offhand mastery of mood and pacing—oh, and, incidentally, instrumental virtuosos in the bargain.

I know, myself, how far short I fall of that ideal.
But is anyone else aiming that high?