As there's been all this talk about guitarists lately, I thought I would
share this story. I went to a couple of parties this weekend, dressed as a
vampire. The first one was just a private party a friend of mine was playing
at so I went for awhile and listened to her band.
The second party was at my voice teacher's house and was sort of a
housewarming party. We got there kind of early and just sort of hung for
awhile, waiting for people to come. I had this feeling that this could be a
really cool party and then that other feeling of, well we don't need to stay
a long time but we'll just hang out and see what happens.
As people started to arrive, I saw many I didn't know and a few I had met a
couple of times. I saw one friend(this is kind of strange) who I never see
but twice in the past couple of years, I have run into at parties that she
came to only because she happened to be dating someone who knows the same
person I do. Anyway, there were maybe about 25 or so people and the party
was starting to pick up some.
This one guy had brought his guitar with him and I think I was the only
other guitar player there. But at some point, I went outside on the deck to
play a couple of tunes. I had played some Eagles and a Neil Young tune for
a few people, when this other guy came out with his guitar to play some.
Now here's the cool thing. It turns out he plays guitar for the group WAR,
and has been with them for two and a half years now. He told me they're
currently working on a new album.
Anway, we had the most amazing jam. I mean this guy is such an increbibly
talented guitarist and could play along on anything I was doing, and not
only did he have great control over the fretboard but his playing was very
tasteful and seemed to blend right in. We started out with "Southern Man",
and then an original of mine, "Walking into the Sun". I followed that with
my song about Hobbits, we did an instrumental of his, and then Styx "Crystal
Ball"( one of my favorite old Styx songs) closing out with some more
originals, "Dreaming of You"(which he said I should consider a standard) and
"Broken Candles". I've never really played with anyone of that caliber
before and it was really inspiring. It really gave me a feel for where
these songs can go.
Apparently, my friend's sister was the MC at a show that WAR did recently in
Atlanta and they fell in love on stage. So he came with her to the
housewarming party. It was definately the highlight of my weekend.
Victor
