Stage Dives

The local blues magazines really need to get their shit together. I spend a great deal of time, it seems, going to jam sessions that no longer exist. Like tonight, for instance. It wouldn't be that hard for someone at the WBS and/or Blues To Do's to take an hour and just phone up every listed jam session and find out if it's still going on. I've shown up to jam sessions in Tacoma to find the club boarded up and the parking lot overgrown with weeds. Twice.

"No, no jam here," I was told tonight, at the North Point, which was at least still open. "Not for three months. We have karaoke, though. Do you sing?"

I ended up rolling past Dawson's. Stuck my head in the door. Different doorman. So far, so good.

Ah. Different jam host. Even better. Tim Hall, who lives in my neighborhood.

I played a set, and at the end I got to sing one tune. I kept it more or less clean; figuring it was a blues jam, I called the saddest blues song I've ever heard: Bo Carter's "My Pencil Won't Write No More." The crowd response was terrific. I'm still not going to push my luck at Dawson's, though.

The trick, at this point, will be finding venues where the material not only works, but where the owners have the requisite sense of humor.

It Starts. . . . Finally. . . .

So it more or less went down like this:

I got 86'd from the jam at Dawson's, in Tacoma, earlier this year. January, I think. As I've mentioned, this creates a complication -- well, not so much a complication as an annoyance -- because the jam host at Dawson's also runs the local jam near my house; he doesn't allow me to sing at our local jam anymore as he fears for his job. Bear in mind, I didn't mutter a single obscenity onstage during the performance that got me kicked out. Someone complained to the management that my songs "weren't appropriate." Apparently, it's a class establishment and come on: like I knew that those were expensive peanut shells on the floor.

Then, a couple of months later, at a jam in an Army bar in Lakewood -- a bar that makes Dawson's look like Dimitriou's Jazz Alley -- I was delivering a rousing rendition of "She Won't Get Under Me Till I Get Over You," and this happened:

(and no, clicking on it does not make the CENSORED sign go away)

If you squint you can see my saxophone on the left side of the frame. Needless to say, the photographer wasn't focusing on me.

Joey The Saint got 86'd from that bar, too. I'm on a roll. On the plus side, I might get a spot on the next Girls Gone Wild video. And I handed out a TON of business cards.

Then we did the album, and things kind of dropped off. Which surprised me. I did get an email from the Washington Blues Society asking me to play a WBS function but, and I quote,

> If you have it together by 9/14 - how about doing an
> ELECTRIC Set at the WBS Monthly Blues Bash???
> I will caution you though - it is an ALL-AGES
> meeting....so no risque stuff....

I can safely assume that they didn't hear about the Lakewood gig.

I don't expect great things from the local scene. Frankly, I'm waiting for the Washington Blues Society to throw a brick through my window once this band takes off. But I would never do anything to purposefully screw over the WBS. They've been good to me. No, seriously. So I declined.

We did a set at Doug McGrew's jam at The Barrel a couple of months ago, didn't hear much about it, and frankly, I turned my attention back to my mundane, non-getting-kicked-out-of-bars-for-freaky-MILF-antics life.

Phone rings not long ago. It's the owner of The Barrel. He wants to book us. Immediately. He's been trying to reach me, apparently. People have been going bonkers over our appearance.

"Ricky," I said, "This is Joey the Saint. I'm the guy who sets my horn on fire and sings songs about hand jobs. Are you sure you don't want Scotty Harris? Nice guy, plays jazz, drives a late-model car. Flosses." I'm not making this up; Scotty Harris has a set of teeth to rival Donny Osmond.

"We love what you did," says Ricky. "They're still talking about it. Can you be in here the 19th of September?"

"Um, sure." (Like I'm booked, right?)

"Great!"

Then comes The Awkwardness.

"Ahem," I ahem'd. "You do understand, right, that we're not going to do Mustang Sally. Or Stormy Monday or, uh, Takin' Care of Business. And that fuckin' Tracy Chapman song. We come in there, we're doing three sets of originals, jump and shuffles, and a short set of encores. You understand this."

"Oh, yeah. It'll be great."

So. September 19th. Saturday. At The Barrel.

Bring your own CENSORED placards; I only have so many.