For the past few weeks I have been getting together with my good friends Mike & Bruce. We pretty much made a Sunday ritual of getting together, drinking beer and playing some of our favorite songs. Everything from Neil Young & Crazy Horse to Velvet Underground was played and what a great time it was. This was also the first time I had played the bass guitar in a band like this since I put the bass down back in 1994. We decided that we just wanted to take our fun rock n’ roll trio to the stage and share it with some friends and family to just bring some good vibes and fun to them and ourselves. We decided to just book ONE show and just have some fun. We called ourselves ONE NIGHT STAND.
The Red Light Cafe was the first place we thought of since it is the place where our friendships were formed and also the place where we congregate every Wednesday night for the weekly open mic night. The audience was made up of about 20 or so people and right away the vibe was great. We opened with “Powderfinger” by Crazy Horse and that drew a nice cheer from the audience. From the first chord I was in the zone right away. I wasn’t nervous, figity or stressed. Just gassed to be playing these great songs with such great people. Throughout the night, songs like, “Hey Joe”, “Sweet Jane” and “One Way Out” just gelled and we were felling it big time. Mike was really cutting loose on the guitar and doing some amazing jams and we just locked in and played until we were covered in sweat. We closed out the set with “Rockin’ in the Free World” which brought the house down. It was hard to believe it was over at that point because it seemed to just fly by.
One of the things I loved so much about this performance was that it was easily the most fun live show I’ve ever played. I really hate to always compare everything to my former band Mystery Road but the experience just didn’t compare for me. Mystery Road shows were fun but there was always so much tension for me and stress to put on a solid performance that I sometimes couldn’t lose myself in the show. This show just felt so loose and carefree that I felt like I could just be absorbed by the songs and feel them. Maybe it was playing the bass? Maybe it was that I wasn’t having to sing and be the front man? To be honest, I think that it was just so exciting for me to be doing something completely out of my norm. It wasn’t folk rock, it wasn’t folk and it wasn’t me on guitar and vocals. It was me playing bass guitar in a rock n’ roll trio and I felt free to just groove out, goof off and have a damn good time (all the time!). Making music with these two is just a joy and it’s definitely something that is inspiring, moving and also has given me some new found confidence in my abilities as a musician.
