Playing the Wrong Notes with a Purpose: A Short, Short Story
“Sometimes you hear kids in a garage somewhere who can just barely play their instruments and are hitting it with a kind of ferocious, undeniable spirit that has a power and energy that no one else other than those kids playing on that day in that place will ever achieve in that particular way.” — Pat Metheny
“You might not feel like playing pretty all the time. Instead, you might want to play something nasty… you might want to play something out-of-context with the tune. It might be a note that creates so much tension it becomes unpleasant, but you want it to sound that way.” — George Benson
Out of the box my mother wanted an accordion player, or that was my impression as her only child. Hence, as the only child, I was the only potential first chair accordion for the Lawrence Welk Orchestra that she would ever know. I started taking lessons and practicing on my neighbor’s accordion by the age of eight, but it didn’t last long. The Beatles hadn’t happened yet, but in my working-class KC neighborhood, Elvis definitely reigned as king. He clearly had no truck with accordion players in his band. I know I could find little to redeem the accordion regardless of how smoothly I could render a version of “Little Brown Jug” or “Aura Lee”. I don’t remember how I manipulated the circumstance, but by October of ’64 my mother had relented and I began to take lessons on electric guitar; my own electric guitar.
Initially, she made me practice an hour every day, and we had many knock-down, drag-out family dramas about how I was sure-as-hell gonna practice that thang whether I wanted to or not. By the time the Beatles, puberty, social-cache-as-the-only-guitar-player-who-could-play-and-read-music-in-my eighth-grade-class, and…girls had had their way with me, practicing too much had become the source of family stress.
I ended up doing well enough in school to snag a free ride to Columbia University and off to NYC I went once I graduated.
I wish I could tell you how I juggled academics and musical aspirations on my own in New York and flourished upon my graduation, but I pretty much spent my time at Columbia frequenting bars and clubs on the Upper West Side and in the Village. School was a pretense to be in NYC. I got to see Paul Quinichette and Joe Jones at the West End Café before they passed, probably sat in a booth where Kerouac and Ginsberg sat and drank, bathed in profundity, and I actually developed a relationship with Lance Hayward, a pianist who had a sit-down residency at a club on Bleeker Street. I can’t remember the name of the place. Those are not names for most of us today, but in their day had their place on a New York stage.
Cutting to the chase, I ended up quitting school to marry my high-school sweetheart and began to pursue the life of a working musician. In those days, the mid-70s, you could go several directions to find work. Obviously, road gigs could be found, but more often than not, you’d find the road also had you traveling with guys you wouldn’t hang with under other circumstances. Making it big…yeah, I guess. But what a hassle, you know, with selling out your integrity and all
