When I went to Michigan State to study journalism in 1965, I spent a lot of time in the Fat Black Pussycat, hanging out with folkies (hey, Phil Ochs was a journalism major at Ohio State), the first alternate tuning I learned was Open D. So when I built the SluiceMonster, I had to tune it in Open D. "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor" was one of the first songs I learned in Open D. Thanks, Jeff, for reminding me of that.

Make Me A Pallet

Happy Birthday, played lap-style on my acoustic.

HappyBday

Evening. Playing my acoustic with the glass slide on my pinky - just warming up for an evening of fun. No particular song, just migrating from one chord progression to another, exploring the territory.

WarmingUp

Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.WAV

So I've been ramping up my recording capabilities lately. 

And I picked up a program to accompany me on any of my sundry instruments. It's called "Band in a Box." I feed in the key and time signatures put the chords on a sheet where I want them to be, and then the fun starts - I get to choose a style in which I would like to play the piece that I have in mind. And sometimes, wandering around in the ~300 different styles that they've made available to me - well Lord have mercy, sometimes it's just more than a poor boy can stand.

Anyway  - I've been trying to learn the song "Misty." There are reasons for that, and if you want to know about them get in touch. But anyway I was asked to learn this song and I've been working on it for a few months now. It just started about a week ago to come into my fingers in a way that I can feel comfortable with, and still play around a bit at the edges, ya know? So it's time to record this song, and I feed into the Band in a Box the chords and other necessary information, and I go off looking for an appropriate style, thinking something like a smokey jazz nightclub piano trio...

Misty (w/[artificial-but-tasty]Jazz Trio)

A Jesse Winchester song. A long-time favorite of mine, but it's particularly slippery on the lap steel these days.

NothinButABreeze.WAV

Learned the chord changes that lead to the key change on a gig with Kevin Head, back in the '90s, and it changed my life.

20200706 MyGirl.WAV

I set, for myself, an exercise. I felt a lack of technique, so I set out to overcome that lack. But, playing just within the limits of my technical ability, I found a fun-song. Sure, I will continue to work on my technique. But in the meantime, as the man says, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Embracing the Lack.WAV

A song that grabbed my attention, this pandemic-winter

JackArnold

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