I'm in downtown Baton Rouge
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| "Go To Shreveport, Dude!" |
I have 7 cents left after having taken the bus down here.
I guess I am managing to live off of what I make on the weekends, for about six and a half days.
There is a slight chance of rainfall tonight.
I didn't pack for New Orleans.
I will shoot up to Scotlandville tomorrow, after hopefully making enough tonight to finance the trip; grab clothes, which should be dry by then, and the two books that Sue checked out of the New Orleans library for me. They are due on the 19th.
That's about it.
I will scrounge for tobacco before it rains; and then get ready to sit and play for as long as I can stand it.
Shreveport
Shreveport is on the horizon, after my talk with the train hopping kid last Sunday.
He said that it is great for busking (and panhandling) and that getting a train from there to Texas is childs play...
Must be some sort of revenge, my voice is utterly trashed right now. I inhaled some chemical fumes as I've mentioned, *possibly* chlorides of some form, and come to think of it, it reminds me of some childhood encounter with an enthusiastically-disinfected pool. Or Nature's revenge on me for talking trash about your singing. Hopefully I'm better in a few days and your singing ... have you considered doing Dylan?
ReplyDeleteI got myself a "Little Martin" guitar today. Yeah a baby weewee beginner guitar. I love it. Between it and Mel Bay I will learn how to play. I'll start recording myself ASAP and put it on a blog so you can tell me how that 7th dimished 6th augmented minor chord etc should have been a blue-note major pentatonic wheedledeedee to make my song sound like blinga bling blang blang whango-thrash instead of The Streets Of Laredo. And how I really ought to get my voice up into my nose where it belongs.
I love the Mel Bay Books I am in book 4 (E major, A flat Major) and have been since about the age of 17...
ReplyDeleteI had all nine of them! I used to crack open book 9 and dream of things to come;
Am planning upon picking up where I left off as soon as possible; maybe find them online...
Book 2, by the way is the one (the green one) to play over and over and over and get a metronome...
I used to sing more vocally exacting stuff, and my voice has gotten a bit slack lately for not doing them songs...
Comfortably Numb is one of them; but I did "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues" and "Skyline Pigeon" both by Elton John, and my voice stayed in better shape..
-Pavarotti "If I skip a day of practice; I know it. If I skip two days, the audience knows it..."
But, yeah, the buskers quest for the loud song has kind of pushed those to the back burner (playing outside the Superdome with 5,000 people walking by and yelling to each other about that onside kick in the second quarter, c'mon now; no time for Skyline Pigeon [check it out, it was a B side to a 45 when I was a kid; a kid who always flipped the 45 over hoping to get more for my 75 cents]
I'm going back in the comments; did you actually recommend a song that you would want to hear, or did I dream that; guess it would be in the comments; I do a pretty good "Tears In Heaven" maybe I could compromise on doing Dylan and meet him half way at Clapton...
OK I started a stupid blog about me and my new geetar, if only to get it recorded that this is the first day (or yesterday was) that I got the thing and just now's when I started noodling around on it (not counting the noodle-time in Guitar Center).
ReplyDeleteI think when a guy takes up guitar, they're committing themselves to an instrument that's just not that loud, and they have to play it in its natural environment and not try to make it be a trumpet or trombone.
Fer instance, does the Superdome have a parking structure where you can get great acoustics? In Santa Cruz most of the beggars are on Pacific Avenue, but a very few smart beggars hang out in the covered parking structure where it's quieter, and people aren't "braced" against beggars the way they are on Pacific Avenue. The end result is the occasional parking-structure beggar does well, I'm even more kind-hearted towards them.
If I busk Pacific with my voice and guitar, I will use one of the areas with an overhang for good acoustics, and will try to keep my voice and my playing very clean, because it's kinda like a radio signal I think. A clean signal gets through better with less power.
I didn't suggest a song, but how about "Radar Gun" by the Bottle Rockets, great song.
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ReplyDeleteYessss! My new blog is at http://makingmusicwithmartin.blogspot.com and it works!
ReplyDeleteI think now I came up with the name because subconsciously I was thinking of the old "Making bacon with Macon" interludes on the old South Park DVDs.
I'm sure the Martin guitar co. will approve, at least as long as they never catch onto the rather obvious Macon parallel.
I checked and the Mel Bay Modern Guitar Method only went up to book 7. But if you get all the supplementary books at each level too, it's something like 43 books!