And More Groups

Von, Paul and Z (That's Me)

I lucked out.  When I started playing music I happened to be surrounded by some of the best pickers in the entire Pacific Northwest.  And they all lived in Moscow, ID, my home town.  There were music parties at least once a month.  One of the first music parties I went to was, again, at Paul's house  I remember honking out the bass line for Mustang Sally while everyone at the party did a conga line.  The talent level of a few key individuals was so high that we could pull off almost anything with class and style.  I remember playing What a Wonderful World with Von and his daughter Jane to a silent crowd at a party -- the way the bass line hits the root with the melody on the octave, then follows the melody a third below til near the end of the run is fantastic.  I don't have a recording, but here's Louis doing it:

Anyhow, I always thought that if I could be in a group with Paul and Von, I would have arrived.  But it sort of never actually happened.  One of my regrets.  But now that I'm going through all my old recordings for this blog, guess what?  A good quarter of the songs I have are with Paul and Von.  No real group ever, but I sure did get a lot of playing time with them, for which I will be eternally grateful.

Here are the recordings I have:
Bad Apple Learning Songs and Banter
Black Orpheus
Girls from Ipanema -- This is just about my favorite recording of this song. No really.
Mossy Cow
Recado Bossa Nova
Sweet Georgia Brown (Slow)
Temperence Reel
Is It True That I've Lost you

Von, Paul, Z and Ben

Ben is Von's son, and a miraculous musician.  Ben's primary language is not English, but music.  I have seen Ben pick up just about any instrument -- guitar, mandola, fiddle, anything -- and seem to master it immediately.  When he was ten he entered the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival competition with a harmonica and won it all.  He played on stage with Lionel Hampton, himself and his big band, and laid waste to the entire Kibbie Dome.  Seriously, a genuine prodigy.

So when I was asked to play bass on Ben's album, meant to help him on his way to a professional music career, I did my best to live up to the perfection that is Ben.  It was not easy.  I never practiced more earnestly.  And practice we did.  I have up to four copies of many of the songs we attempted to perfect for this album.  This is where I learned to really focus on getting all my lines down, perfectly, and in time, with no superfluous notes.  This is where I learned to work at music.  Here are the songs I have:
Ain't No Coincidence
Baltimore Johnny
Cherokee Shuffle
Dig a Hole
Eat My Dust
Gold Rush
I'm a Vampire
La Cucaracha Partial
Little Maggie
Seven Years Across the Sea
Shady Grove
More that I don't know the names of

Bad Apple

This was a group that I slapped together (and named -- I've actually named quite a few of these groups) for some SEL event.  I used to work at SEL and Carl and I (We Are Not Brothers) played the first SEL Talent show there, so I became known as a "music guy".  So when they needed some music I put this group together around the song "Roll On Columbia"

Get it?  You see, SEL made relays that protect power transmission and distribution systems.  And a big buyer of their products was the BPA (Bonneville Power Administration -- an American public works project arising out of the New Deal designed to turn the power of the Columbia into an economic driver of the entire Pacific Northwest region.  As part of a propaganda effort, the BPA hired Guthrie to write a series of songs.  He was driven all around Washington and Oregon to gain inspiration for the songs:  See the Wikipedia entry on this topic.
The group consisted of Me, Von, Paul and Jim B, and eventually picked up Ben too, playing Jim's Statocaster.  Jim sort of took the group over and got gigs for the next couple of years, which was great.

Here is are the songs I have recorded from this group:
Beaumont
Big Bright World
Black Orpheus Partial
Blue Chalk
Bojangles
Cecil Brown
Chocolate Jesus
Friend of the Devil
Girl from Ipanema
Hanging Day
Here in California
Red River
Rose in a Spanish Garden

Thorn Creek Boys

There once was a family, with 4 (maybe 5?) sons, that lived on Thorn Creek Road -- the road between Highway 95 and Uniontown.  Kind of out there.  The four boys played, in no particular order, fiddle, mandolin, guitar and banjo.  I believe the fiddle and the mando were identical twins.  The only thing they were lacking was a bass player.  They needed one for a show that I can't remember, and somehow they found me.  They were a tight little group whose vocal harmonies sounded great because brothers share the same vocal cords.

I learned the following songs with them for this one gig.  Wished I could have played with them more, but here are the recordings I have of the practices:

Dark Side of the Moon
Fire on the Mountain
Fox on the Run
Highway 40 Blues
Little Darlin
Midnight Flyer
No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem
Old Sierra Madre
Operator
Rocky Top / Foggy Mountain Breakdown
Wagon Wheel