We woke up and got to hang out at Alex’s house all morning before our drive to Greensboro. After a few of our horn meditations, Stefan and Clifton went on to practice French and English horn etudes. I tried to read a long on clarinet but they were both reading in F. F as in forget it. My skills on the clarinet are just too sluggish.
We got in the car (Baby Hands went separately) and played the iPod game. Clifton made it almost the whole hour long trip with out getting dinged. Have I explained the game yet? You put your iPod on all song shuffle and let ‘er rip. You can’t vote on your own iPod. The other people in the car can either choose to enjoy the song or say “skip” or “ding.” If you get more than one “ding” you have to surrender your iPod and the next guy takes a turn. A “ding” and a “skip” equals a skip. The songs get skipped and you move on to the next guy. We play this game on almost every road trip. It’s fun. Anyway, Clifton’s 45 minute reign was our longest yet I think. I heard some great music I hadn’t ever heard before. Some beautiful ambient rock by Mogwai, some good old soul by The Staples Singers and a great a Columbian mezzo-soprano named Lucia Pulido. Killer. Eventually a song by The Yardbirds came on and Stefan and I dinged it. Hard. Oh well.
Now we were in Greensboro. The birthplace of Baby Hands. Fun fact of the day is illustrated above. Nice one, Hands. Make your momma proud. And she is. What a sweet and wonderful woman. She’s putting us up in her lovely Southern Home for the few days that we are here. She even invited a whole bunch of her friends over for a party and we performed a small little show for them. It was delightful. Some real good people.
We set up in the living room over in the corner. It was actually a really fun show to play in a parlor like that after doing so many raucous nights in clubs and dance halls. We got to play all the slow and soft ones that don’t work for dancers necessarily but definitely work for a rapt crowd of listeners in an intimate setting. “Make Me Down a Pallet”, “My Life Will be Sweeter: etc… lovely slow and heartfelt songs. The folks assembled were spellbound from the start. I love playing in a more concert hall type setting where there aren’t the distractions of food, dance or chatter to get between us and our listeners. We closed with a version of “Shake That Thing.” Clifton got everyone up on their feet and told them to pay attention to the guy in the white suit who was going to show them some new moves. It was fun getting all these Southern Gentlemen and Ladies to do the twist and the trucking and the hitchhiker and the thriller and the sprinkler. And yes, mostly because it is so absurd, I got everyone doing the Shy Tuna. Perhaps I will release a Shy Tuna instructional video at some point. Ha!
Later that night we hung out downstairs doing our horn meditations in the dark and looking through Hand’s old boxes of history that his mother had preserved. We found a Chilean Charango. It’s a ten string smallish guitar that is tuned a little bit like a ukulele. He also had a pair of these wonderful Chilean cowboy hats. You can see the blissful state I am in.
Hope you have been enjoying the details of our trip so far. Tomorrow is a day off so no update but we’ll catch you again soon.
Be well.