Category: music
Didn’t I make you feel?
Theresa Malenfant takes another little piece of Halifax’s heart at Bearly’s Friday night.
Right string, wrong yo-yo.
At the Northside Tavern in Atlanta, Georgia, last night, bartender Cory Gillen was showing off his Atlanta Thrashers tattoo as the Trashers’ game with the Florida Panthers played on the TV above.
The Thrashers won, 2-1, on a Rich Peverley shootout goal, just in time for the tavern’s main act, the gravelly voiced, 69(?)-year-old, Beverly “Guitar” Watkins (below), “a pyrotechnic guitar maven whose searing, ballistic attacks on the guitar have become allegorical tales within the blues community.”
In the late ‘fifties, Watkins played with the band “Dr. Feelgood, The Interns, and The Nurse,” who recorded the single called, Right String But The Wrong Yo-Yo.
Backing Watkins last night was the Northside’s house band, fronted by Danny “Mudcat” Dudeck.
Frank MacDonald’s baseball song
Frank MacDonald also sent us a song he wrote “many years ago.”
“There has never been a musician I could interest in it,” he writes. “Not being a singer myself, I converted into a talking blues that I entertain myself with from time to time in the car, As a old Brooklyn Dodger fan, you may enjoy it. As a Cleveland fan my chances to enjoy things have been few and far between since 1954.”
SANDLOT KID
He lived on a park bench, reading baseball box scores
And paid his way doing odd and end chores.
But he loved to remember when baseball was magic,
And said, “What happened to baseball was tragic.”
But from the deep center seats, he still coached every game
And cheered a good play, while adding, “It still not the same.”
And he’d go on about what it used to be like
When ball payers were ball players and a strike was a strikeChorus:
He was the sandlot kid, dreaming things he never did,
A Triple A player without major league flair
Who grew old in a slum, happy to be a bleacher bum
Who loved every game he took in,
and died wishing the Dodgers would move back to BrooklynHe’d talk to strangers over his coffee cup
About players that he’d met on their way up
“Duke and Mickey and Peewee and Stan
All thought I coulda been a big league utility man
He remembered their names, though they all forgot his
And he kept them alive from that time until this
At a Little League game, everyone stared when he roared
“Hang in there, kid, you look just like Whitey Ford!”When the team was working out, he sat alone in the stands
He’d been tagged out trying to score on his plans
Just a tired old man in a battered baseball cap
A might-have-been waiting his turn at the bat
And yesterday, yes he’d of gone to the game
But he was tired and glad it was called by rain
And he lay down with an illness that never healed
And left a sad little note, saying “Bury me in Ebbet’s Field.[Chorus]
A load of Minglewood
L to R: Bassist Fred Lavery, guitarist Dave McKeough, and old time rocker Matt Mainglewood, testing the limits of the iPhone's flashless camera.
A decidedly graying crowd of hardcore Matt Minglewood fans packed the Royal Cape Breton Yacht Club over the weekend for the latest in Colleen MacDonald’s Load of Wood music nights.
Minglewood was joined by some of Cape Breton’s best loved session musicians, including Fred Lavery on bass, Dave McKeough on guitar, Ian Aker on sax, Kenny Boone on mouth harp, and James Munroe on trombone.
To receive e-mail notification of these occasional (and mercifully early – 6 to 10 p.m.!) sessions, email loadofmusic [at] gmail.com.
A day at the office
Five talented office workers with questionable taste in music:
Anita on Roger
One of the gems Canada acquired when it joined Newfoundland in 1949 was the then-infant Anita Best of Merasheen Island, Placentia Bay. Anita was barely a teenager when Joey Smallwood expunged her fishing community of residents in the great and tragic resettlement. She grew up to be the greatest collector and interpreter of Newfoundland music, storytelling, and folklore of our era—a national treasure in both nations.
Anita writes:
Just read the comment on Roger Howse’s Hendrix night at Bearly’s. Thanks for posting it. I miss Roger’s music a lot.
High praise indeed.
The fiddle tree grows a concert
For years, North River fiddlemaker Otis Tomas had his eye on a giant sugar maple that grew on a hillside near his home. Finally one day, he cut it down.
At a Celtic Colours concert in Sydney Mines October 12, musicians from Cape Breton, Vermont, Scotland, and Ireland will play two fiddles, a guitar, a cello, and a harp, all built by Tomas using wood from the fiddle tree.
United flirts with another ditty disaster
Buried in a Herald story about Dave Carroll’s testimony before a passenger rights organization-sponsored hearing in Washington, lies this little nugget: Last week, for the first time since his YouTube hit went Stage 6 pandemic, Carroll inadvertently flew United Airlines—a long booked connecting flight to a gig in Chicago.
As the flight prepared for takeoff, a United attendant, apparently oblivious to Carroll’s musical history with the airline, chastised him for not placing his (Taylor?) guitar in an overhead bin. A nearby passenger watched in amusement.
“Oh, he’s going to write a song about you,” she said.
A blues anniversary
Thirty-nine years ago last night, Jimi Hendrix died in a London, England, apartment. He was 27 years old. Halifax bluesman Roger Howse honored the anniversary with an all-Hendrix third set at Bearly’s House of Blues & Ribs on Barrington Street. Contrarian friend Richard Stephenson writes:
A fixture at Bearly’s over the last decade, the Roger Howse Band draws praise for the power of its music and the precision of Roger’s guitar work. About 12:30 this morning, following a longer than usual break, the band returned to the stage and, without fanfare, charged headlong into a ninety-minute set featuring nine Hendrix songs. The hand-written play list, now in my possession, included:
- Stone Free
- Drivin’ South
- Little Wing
- Hey Joe
- Villa Nova Junction
- Red House
- Killin’ Floor
- Voodoo Chile
- All Along the Watchtower (encore)
The band played with energy and confidence, wasting no time between songs. The music was loud and hard-edged, the guitar work passionate and accurate. Howse attracts a knowledgeable audience, and last night’s crowd, aware of the evening’s significance, listened intently, cheering the end of each song and the opening chords of the next.
Bearly’s staffers Megan McMullin, Dan Falvi, and Mimi Andriopoulos, who have seen just about everything, understood the importance of the night. Younger members of the audience pressed forward onto the dance floor in wonder at the avalanche of sound. Time flew away and we all felt the joy of hearing Hendrix again.
“I have been influenced by all of the great blues guitar players,” Roger told the crowd. “By Robert Johnson, Albert King, B.B.King, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, and Roy Buchanan. But the man who had the biggest impact on me was Jimi Hendrix.”
I suspect there were small gatherings of fans all around the world last night, listening to his recordings and raising glasses to his memory. I doubt, however, that anyone felt closer to the spirit of the genius than the patrons at Bearly’s early this morning. We have blues guitarist Roger Howse, bassist Morrow Scott Brown, and drummer Steve Tomarelli to thank for this special occasion.
Saturday, September 18, 2010, will be the 40th anniversary of Hendrix’s death. Perhaps the Roger Howse Band will play one more tribute to the greatest guitar player in the history of rock and roll. Thank you, Roger!
