music – BaurLife

First Rehearsal, That Was Fun

Posted on January 16, 2020January 16, 2020 by johnpbaur

That was fun. Tuesday night was the first night of rehearsals for me and Max with the Symphony Chorus of New Orleans. It was the chorus’s first rehearsal of the year, aiming towards a performance of Haydn’s “The Creation” in the spring. I’ve never heard it before but, let me tell ya, it’s got some snappy passages.

I learned a lot. For one thing, I learned I’m no longer a tenor 2 for the purposes of choral singing. I’m a bass. And while I can’t read music, I’ve still got a pretty good ear and can find my place with the other basses fairly well. But I’m going to have to do a lot better and spend at least an hour or so every day working on it.

When I was in musicals at Albany Civic Theater I was usually the lead or support – because I wasn’t a good enough singer to sing in the chorus. The chorus has to be able to sing the music as written, and mediates the tempo between what the orchestra is playing and whatever the lead has taken it in his head to sing. Now I’m going to have to get good.

Also, the music director has very, VERY clear ideas of how each word will be pronounced. I hate to disappoint him in advance, but while I plan to get that eventually, pronouncing the words his way is way down my list, well below learning what the words are and what notes I’m supposed to sing.

The people are all really friendly, and happy to see some new faces. I looked around the room, then leaned over and told Max that at 21, he is less than a third of the average age in the room. I, on the other hand, turning 65 next month, am probably right about at the mean. Anyway, it was a start.

Just in Case

Posted on October 21, 2019 by johnpbaur

Max and I went out to the Bywater (the neighborhood between the Marigny and the Ninth Ward) last night to see a man about a guitar case. Turned out the case wouldn’t fit the Fender we got Max at the garage sale last month. Too bad, it was a solid case at a great price. So he still doesn’t have a case for the guitar, but it wasn’t a wasted trip. The guy was fascinating. We met him at his studio and it seemed like he knew most of the musicians who have ever played in town, had stories and advice.

The most interesting – and immediately useful – thing he said was about the case. It was a plastic shipping case, the kind you’d use if you were checking a guitar on a plane. Sturdy. Good locks. He said it had been used once – when the guitar had been shipped to him. There was no point in using it. A gig bag makes more sense when you’re playing clubs and bars all around town.

“Most venues don’t have anyplace to store a case,” he said. “There’s no place to put it. Use a gig bag and you can throw it in a corner, or under the drummer’s platform or anywhere out of the way.”

So that’s next on the list. Find a good gig bag.

Preaching the Power of Real Music

Posted on May 26, 2018May 26, 2018 by johnpbaur

Litle Steven and the Disciples of Soul

When the show starts with a blistering version of “Sweet Soul Music” and just keeps getting better, that’s a good show. And that was only part of it.

We were at the House of Blues on Wednesday for Little Steven van Zandt and the Disciples of Soul, and the “teacher appreciation tour.” And Tori is a teacher. So she had the chance to sign up for the event as “professional development.” Usually that means a day listening to a speaker talk about diversity in the classroom, or new reading theories, or discipline or common core. All important topics, I’m sure. But none of them can hold a candle (or a Bic lighter) to Wednesday’s program, which included a two-hour concert. And because she’s a teacher, it was free and she could invite a “plus one.” That was me. (Our son Max, a music major at UNO, was the plus one of one of Tori’s colleagues. Thank you, Ruth.)

SvZ talks to teachers It was a program by a group called Teach Rock. Check them out at teachrock.org. They’ve got a ton of resources – music and video – and lesson plans and hints for how to use them in the classroom. Not just so kids learn about the history of rock ‘n’ roll – not that that isn’t important. Do you realize there are kids today who have no idea who Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly were, or even Elvis!!?!

But this goes WAY beyond that. There’s material on how to use rock and pop music to teach English, social studies, even math and science.

And Steven van Zandt is a big supporter of the program. The event started with a three-song set by van Zandt and his band – 15 musicians total. It was – Wow! Then he talked to the hundred or so teachers gathered on folding chairs on the floor of the House of Blues, calling them “the most underappreciated and underpaid” workers in America – true that – and also apologizing for the hell he gave his teachers in high school. Then they took a “class photo” – van Zandt is front and center, of course, you can see Tori and Max in the back row, left of center, making peace signs.

Teach Rock class picture

The program itself took about an hour, and I don’t think anyone would have minded if it had gone twice as long. This group – Teachrock.org – has put a lot of thought in how to use popular music to engage kids who might otherwise not give a damn about school. Tori got a ton of inspiration and ideas that she can’t wait to bring to her classroom next school year.

Then they cleared the chair from the floor and opened the doors – people had been lining up outside for three hours. Yeah, some people had to pay to see the show, Imagine that!

And then – well, like I said, they opened with a blistering “Sweet Soul Music” – that hot horn opening, Do ya like good music (Yeah yeah) That sweet soul music (Yeah yeah) – and when the song was done I turned to Tori and said, “If we had to leave right now, I’d be okay with that.” It was that good.

SvZ And it kept getting better. Van Zandt wasn’t just performing – he was preaching, singing the gospel of “real, live music.” Not computerized, no autotune or drum machines. Two percussionists pounding the skins and the horn section blowing their souls through hunks of hot metal. That kind of real music.

It was a great show. “Down and Out in New York City,” “Soulfire,” “Forever,” “Princess of Little Italy,” some Temptations and lots more – two hours of great, hot, real music.

And Tori got credit for professional development. And a lot of great ideas for using in her classroom next year. And a T-shirt!

If you’re a teacher or student, check out teachrock.org. You can register and have access to a ton of resource and ideas and maybe learn a thing or two that will liven your classroom next year and engage your students in a way they haven’t been before.

Tori and SvZ

Full Circle on Button Fly Levis

Posted on July 2, 2017 by johnpbaur

Things came full circle Friday night.

The story starts 44 years ago, the summer of 1973. We had just graduated from high school and a group of six or seven of us – a mixed group, no couples – had jammed into a station wagon and headed out to a drive-in movie.

I have no idea what we saw. It was just a group of friends enjoying that interlude between high school and the rest of our lives. But one thing made it memorable, at least to me.

One of the people there mentioned having gone shopping that day and had purchased a pair of button fly Levis. Not remarkable in itself, but we started playing with the phrase. Someone, it might have been me but who knows, said, “Button fly Levis took the zip outta my romance.” And I said – and yes, I’m sure it was me – “Sounds like the title of a country western song.”

And my friend John Sanders (who now uses the full family name John DeGrazia-Sanders) turned to me and said – “Write that song!”

So I did. Took two days, but I was determined. Partly because it was a dare, right? I couldn’t turn it down, and partly because it was a funny idea and I didn’t want someone else to take it. I ended up with a plaintive country western ballad that told the story of unrequited love – or at least unrelieved teenage lust.

The problem was, I don’t read or write music, don’t play an instrument. I can sing bit. So I wrote the song but it was really just a bunch of words that fit a pattern. I sang it a few times, but it was probably different every time I sang it.

It was eight years later, when I was working at the La Grande Observer in the far back corner of Oregon, that I met my reporting colleague Jim Angell. Jim is also a great guitar player and performer. He listened to me sing it through a couple of times, tweaked a couple of lines and figured out the chords for it. It became a real song. We actually performed it at the Eastern Oregon State College Oktoberfest that year. Afterwards the college president told us we were nuts. I appreciated that.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, Father’s Day. We are now in the New Orleans area, and Max – as I’ve mentioned a time or two – plays guitar. Plays pretty well, as a matter of fact, and will be studying music in college this fall. He’s been taking lessons at the Guitar Center, and every fifth Friday of the month (for those months that have five Fridays, of course) they have a jam session. The students and the teachers get together and play. Sometimes a student will play something particular he or dshe has been working on. Usually one or two eight year olds will plunk out something on the piano, but there’s usually three or four people up on the stage playing drums, guitar, keyboard, bass. There’s an old guy who teaches wind instruments, and he’s usually on stage throwing in sax solos and keeping them together. Tori’s gotten on stage a couple of times to sing with different combinations of players. It’s fun.

Well, we’ve been going to these for four years, and Friday’s was Max’s last as a student, since he starts classes in August and the next five-Friday month is September. So earlier this year I tracked down Angell – he’s in Wyoming no happily married and just back from a vacation in Iceland – and he sent me the chords, and this Father’s Day Max sat down and played “Button Fly Levis.” We practiced it a few times this Friday at the jam session we performed it together.

It was a blast. If you listen to the video, you’ll recognize that my voice doesn’t go quite as high as easily, as it did 43 years ago. It’s a little strained. But I’d forgotten how fun it could be to perform, and Max followed me wherever I was going so it was OK. I told the story, and people laughed in all the right places, and applauded at the end.

It was especially sweet to perform the song with Max. He is the age now I was when I wrote it. It was fun to share that moment from my past as he’s getting set to start his future.

Blues on a Sunday Afternoon

Posted on June 14, 2017June 14, 2017 by johnpbaur

Max at Preservation Hall 061117 About this time five years ago we were planning our move from St. Croix back to the mainland, and we had picked New Orleans as our landing spot.

It wasn’t the “safe” choice – we could have headed back to the Northwest where we have friends, know the lay of the land, could have blended right back in. But we wanted the adventure to continue. So we picked a city we’d visited once and found interesting and started getting ready.

We also wanted to give Max a chance to explore. He was 14 years old and really getting into music. What better place to scratch that itch than New Orleans?

And Sunday that all paid off! On Sunday, Max got a chance to perform in the legendary space of Preservation Hall, one of the cradles of traditional jazz and the blues. Pretty much anyone who is anyone in the New Orleans jazz world has played in that very modest space. And now Max has too.

Max has been taking lessons at the Guitar Center almost since we got here. Back on St. Croix he took lessons from a teacher at Good Hope School. This fall he’ll continue his study as a music major at the University of New Orleans.

Preservation Hall is not a grand concert space on the order of Carnegie Hall or anything like that. It’s actually one of the shabbier buildings in the French Quarter, and that’s a place that has some shabby buildings. The hall’s exterior is a muddy brownish color with streaks of other hues – it’s almost impossible to describe the color except for “old and weather beaten.” Inside, the paint is peeling, the plaster is cracked and falling. It’s maybe 25 feet square, with a couple of rows of benches in front of the performance space. I leaned against the wall in the back – but only after checking to make sure it wouldn’t collapse under my weight.

But it’s not about the state of the walls. It’s what has happened inside those walls, in the air, the enclosed space, that matters a great deal. It was started in the 1950s as a place for the city’s traditional jazz musicians to gather and jam. It became the place to hear traditional New Orleans jazz, and grew into a band that traveled the world, turning people on to the joy of their music.

That joyful music was starting to fall by the wayside in the ’50s, along with the musicians who had lived it all their lives. Preservation Hall became the place where it was collected and treasured and performed and revived. And now Max has a part of it.

The Guitar Center holds a regular performance time – I guess you could call it a recital – and the woman who organizes it happens to be married to the guy who does tech for Preservation Hall, and one thing led to another and there we all were Sunday at 11 a.m. Instead of cramming into the performance space at the center, we were cramming into one of the hallowed venues in the city.

Instead of the Guitar Center’s electronic keyboards, the piano students played the hall’s old upright piano – battle scarred but still with a bright sound. Several of the drummers, playing on the Preservation Hall kit, did very well. And there was a woman, I’m guessing in her late 30s/early 40s, who a year ago decided she wanted to play sax. She got up there and did fine. Got a ways to go, but I marveled at the guts she showed.

And then there was Max. He was playing “Graveyard Playboy,” a blues song he wrote that displayed both very good musicianship and his weird sense of humor. Over the years all our kids have all displayed humor that the more rigid, stodgy types might sniff at and call “inappropriate.” It comes from being raised in a largish theater family where the influences included a lot of hanging around with adults. And Max, being the youngest by a good many years, has it in spades.

Max is very comfortable in his skin, he knows who he is, isn’t afraid to show that to the world, and isn’t interested in judging or being judged about it. He just got up and performed – he’s a good musician, can play the hell out of that guitar he got as a high school graduation present, and perhaps more importantly, he’s becoming a very good entertainer. (You can see his performance here.)

So when he sang about meeting a woman in the cemetery who was there to bury her second husband (who had died when she fired a bullet “and he got in the way,”) he paused and said, “I like ’em crazy,” it was pretty funny. The woman sitting next to me paused, cocked her head then said, “OK” and laughed.

Max had a couple of things the other kids didn’t. It wasn’t just the musicianship. There was a pretty wide range of that. But most of the kids, you could see them thinking, could almost hear them counting, worrying more about getting the exact right note than keeping the flow, the rhythm. Max was just up there playing, relaxed and confident. He had stage presence. He missed a couple of lines, jumped a couple of places, but if you’d never heard him practice the song you’d never have known it. He just smiled and kept playing. He had fun with it, and the audience did, too.

And now, no matter where he goes in life, no matter what he decides on for a career, he’s always got that on his resume. “Oh yeah, I played Preservation Hall.”

Music Review: Mason’s ‘Pirate Party’ Rocks the Corsair Classics

Posted on October 9, 2016October 9, 2016 by johnpbaur

First, a disclaimer. I met Tom Mason five years ago, have seen him on stage several times, and consider him a friend. In 2012 he told me an idea he had for a song. I gave him a couple of ideas for lines, a couple of which he adapted and used in the song “Talk Like a Pirate,” for which he graciously gave me a co-writing credit. The following is written not because Tom is a friend, but because I want all my friends in the pirate community to know about this terrific album.

How many versions do think have been recorded of “Drunken Sailor?” Of “Blow the Man Down,” “Haul Away Joe” or “Bully in the Alley?”

It’s a rare pirate band that doesn’t have at least one of them – or all of them – on their playlists and CDs. And there are a lot of good pirate bands out there, a lot of recordings.

So if you’re a pirate musician, how do you do something different with it? How do you make your version distinctive?

If you’re Tom Mason, it’s not a problem. Tom Mason and the Blue Buccaneers have a new CD out, and it’s a must-add to anyone’s collection of pirate music. The album is aptly titled “Pirate Party.” It fits. This is the disc you’ll put on when you gather the brethren for a bacchanal. It’s a lot of fun.

The album is made up of eight pirate classics, two of Mason’s original songs from his earlier albums, and three of his originals which haven’t appeared on an album before. (I blush to mention that I was involved in the creation of one them.)

But though the songs are familiar, Mason and the band infuse them with a real, robust joy. It starts with the musicianship. Tom is a great blues and American Folk guitarist and singer/songwriter who was making his living in the music world long before he decided to explore pirate music scene eight years ago. The crew are pros from the Nashville music scene. Together they give the album a rich, full sound.

Their version of “Blow the Man Down” has the swing and swagger of a New Orleans second-line parade and a funky syncopation on the chorus. The old favorite “Drunken Sailor” gets a kick-ass new life, pulsing with a Bo Diddley beat driven by percussionist Pete Pulkrabek. The classic shanty “Haul Away Joe” rocks, and the album opens with a bang with a rousing “Bully in the Alley.”

The other classic numbers are “All for me Grog” and “Wild Mountain Thyme,” and the performance of the latter is the most traditional on the disc, a really beautiful Scottish ballad that’ll have buccaneers reaching for their bandanas to wipe their eyes. (And if you’re wondering why there’s a song about mountain wildflowers on a pirate album, this is exactly the kind of song sailors would sing while gathered on the ship’s bow in the evening, singing along and thinking about home – and wiping their eyes.) “Wild Mountain Thyme” is a gem.

There are two instrumentals, “Irish Washerwoman/Swallowtail Jig” and “Morrison’s Jig/Lilting Banshee,” both of which give Leandria Lott’s violin a real workout.

The new originals are, “Pirate Party,” a good song for an election night party, a number that would not be out of place in a 1930’s Harlem nightclub (if you can imagine Cab Calloway wearing an eye patch); “Talk Like a Pirate” (the song that celebrates International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which Tom graciously gave me co-writing credit on); and the very funny “Pirate Polka.” He rounds out the CD with two numbers from his first album: “The Pirate Song” and – one of my favorites of his numbers – “Throw Me in the Drink,” a celebration of alcohol with an infectiously sing-along chorus and a “pound yer tankard on the table” rhythm.

All in all, “Pirate Party” is a rollicking party of an album suitable for any gathering of filibusters. Invite the crew over and turn the volume up. You’ll have a grand time.

You can order your copy of “Pirate Party” at http://www.tommason.net/.

Awful and Awesome – Mostly Awesome

Posted on May 3, 2016May 3, 2016 by johnpbaur

Arlo Guthrie. “Alice’s Restaurant.” Awesome.

I was surprised how emotional I got Sunday in that last hour of the festival, when the audience was all singing along to that classic song.

We had planned to go to the New Orleans Jazz Festival Saturday, because the forecast for Sunday was so bad. (I had bought tickets for the final weekend before I checked the weather forecast.) Then it rained like hell all Saturday, so we figured, “Why not?”We went with the original plan

Blues Tent aisles awash — Blues Tent – Aisles awash!

I have never paid that much money to be that uncomfortable. When we arrived the sky opened with a torrential cloudburst, gutters instantly overflowing, lightning crackling and booming. As soon as we were on the festival grounds we took refuge in the Blues Tent – Brother Tryone and the Mindbenders, were really good blues band – and the aisles down toward the front were a good three inches deep in runoff that had nowhere to run. (Although by the time we saw Arlo in the same venue at the end of the day, it had dried out. We didn’t, but the floor did.)

It never really stopped raining all day, but it never approached that opening deluge. So that’s something I guess.

We were armed with ponchos and umbrellas and a variety of other gear, but it was still pretty miserable And worth every minute.

Neal Young was really good. Arlo was great. Not just “Alice’s Restaurant.” He did “City of New Orleans,” “The Motorcycle Song,” “This Land is Your Land.” Classic Arlo stuff, and classic Arlo stage patter. He just comes across as this neat guy sitting around shooting the breeze and playing a few songs. And there was a delightful sing along at the end, a “new” Woody Guthrie song, “My Peace,” the words written decades ago by the legendary singer/songwriter, the tune written more recently by his equally famous son. I have seen Arlo on stage before, almost 40 years ago in concert with Pete Seeger, but he didn’t do “Alice’s Restaurant” then. He seemed almost unchanged, except for the hair, which is bright white. He apparently now uses the same stylist that used to do Col. Sanders. It was a wonderful and very emotional finish to the day. Loved it loved it loved it.

Neal Young fans in the mud — Neal Young fans in mud …

Youngster in the mud — A youngster in mud

Young was the only performer we saw in the outdoor area – standing in the rain, in a boggy mire. We were standing in the mire, the several thousand diehards there to see him. He and the band, of course, we on a covered stage. The mud was that special squishy, silty kind of mud that creeps into everything, what my dad used to call “Army mud: Too thin to stand on and too thick to swim in.” It’s the kind of mud that at first feels semi-solid, but if you stand still for a couple of minutes you realize your feet have sunk in. Fortunately, Young and the band kept us moving our bodies, so we were all saved.

What must it be like to know that thousands of fans will do that to see you? His set was a mixed bag, a lot of jams that turned every song into 10 or 15 minutes. But yes, he finished with “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World, which is just one hell of a great song.

Of the acts we saw throughout the day, and that included Ellis Marsalis (the head of the clan, father of Wynton, Banford, Delfeayo … that whole insanely talented family,) the best was Trumpet Mafia. One bass player, one guitar, a keyboardist, a drummer and a conga player, and 12 trumpets. Twelve. A dozen. Wow! What a sound. Powerful! And all of them really terrific players. I have 30 seconds of video I put on Youtube just to give a soupcon of what it was like. Just amazing. Check it out.

So yeah. Tori, Max and I were wet. We were cold. We were exhausted.

We had a great time!