(My mic was not set up conveniently for leaning forward and singing harmony to the melodies... as I was playing the big E-flat recording bass 40% and trombone 60%. I would have played probably 60% recording bass, 30% bass guitar, and 10% trombone, but the wife of the bandleader is a bass player. She was looking at charts and playing notes that were mostly rudimentary. I had no charts in front of me, and I was playing inversions that sort were friendly with the melodies - and counterpoint types of bass lines and things that were - even if - arguably - more elegant and likely what you would hear in recordings or arrangements - two different "correct" bass lines don't sound very good against each other.)
As everyone knows and as I've pointed out before, we aren't Wisconsinites, Minnesotans, South Texans, nor any of those types.
We are from the mid-south, but we've been playing this stuff since the '70s (obviously mostly in September and October). Also - as reviewed before, we have nothing more than melodies and lead sheets. I've spoken of Bob Westbrook the amazing accordionist, his passing, NOT getting his lead sheets, and the former side man (who plays everything) recreating them - many in easier keys, as Bob Westbrook insisted on playing them in the correct original keys... so - without my own sheet music stack/book and really not any particularly good ability to read sheet music or chord changes and play the E flat tuba - I just have to go by sound and memory, and trust the mastery of scales and arpeggios (along with stealing so many tunes and chord changes off of recordings back in my youth) to deliver the correct pitches in the keys in which my fingers newly recognize.
(same songs, but different tuba and different keys)
Mostly, we are jazz musicians and oldies musicians.
You guys know that I used to play in several freeway philharmonics. I've moved away from most of those, because I just didn't like being away from home overnight, catching cooties many of the times I would be out of town (as I'm normally not around a whole bunch of people... I remember one of them testing all of us for covid, and then me coming home WITH covid), and having to do nothing for significant numbers of hours in a row out of town without being able to make any money (where as instrument repairs were just sitting back at home with the lights in my shop turned off).
This stuff is fun, but - to be truthful - I really have just about enough of it each each year, particularly when we have four or more seasonal jobs of this genre. That's enough of it for me.
People around here aren't particularly sophisticated as to German music, and typically request stuff like "Beer Barrel Polka, "Too Fat Polka",:and those sorts of things.
I enjoy playing some of the waltzes.
I sort of like playing the melody on the trombone on "Wien, du Stadt meiner Träume", and improvised trombone harmony on things like "Kornblumenblau", and those sorts of things. I also like playing a Strauss waltz or two during one of these gigs, because every strain is different, and I like having the first two or three notes remind me of the melody and chord changes to the entire remainder of each strain.
Someone walked up and asked us to play "a waltz and a polka", but couldn't name any.
(We're pretty silly...)
We played "Lucy In in The Sky With Diamonds".
lotza gear for six polka people:
My next gig is a dixie gig at a country club in Memphis called The Hunt and Polo Club. It's one of the later built clubs (newer money in the outskirts of town), so I don't have to dodge gunfire to go to that one.
The one after that is an oldies gig on bass guitar in Jackson Tennessee (a pretty good size town roughly halfway between Memphis and Nashville). That's an oldies job on bass guitar, so the the most difficult thing about that one will be hauling the amplifier...but I have that newly rehabbed cart, don't I?
guitar nerds:
' remember Rondo Music and SX guitars of the past?
The guitar he brought today was one of those fabulous $79 knockoffs of a Rick. (Those things are so well made... I should have bought one of every bass guitar model and color that they made.
)THE ACCORDION PLAYER WHO JIM FOUND:
He's an old dude, he had a bad heart and almost died years ago. This was when they were first trying out those pig valves. Because he was talkative and funny in the hospital (he believes), they decided to be nice to him and give him one of those experimental valves, and he recovered with a very strong heart. Jim rehearsed with him (at Jim's house). The guy didn't sight read so well and was nervous, but worked on all the tunes in the entire book and played all of them very well at the gig. Maybe next year - when we do more of these (assuming that guy or none of the rest of us have croaked), Jim won't have to double on keyboard (mostly with an accordion sound) while trying to play all of his horns.
...the 2002 Chevy Prizm (Toyota Corolla) up on the hill:
That's Mrs bloke's with 240,000 miles. Everything works and (keeping up with traffic on I-40 and avoiding being tailgated) I had it up to about 80 miles an hour today on the freeway with the air conditioner going.
She rolled her Honda Element, so this is what we had left for her.
I'm currently bartering repair work for one of those older bulletproof Jeeps for her to have to replace the Element. It's been so many years since she has driven an automatic transmission car, she'll probably stomping her left foot a whole bunch for a while, once she has the Jeep.
Tomorrow, we are smoking our first beef brisket.
(My mother - who would be 110 this year - had a delicious recipe with brisket involving a burgundy wine sauce, and the only barbecue that was ever created at the home of my youth was real barbecue (pork, of course). I've studied on this, and it looks like it's a lot easier than smoking pork. My sister (a very active and busy octogenarian) we'll probably come over and help us eat it.
I'm still not willing to call it barbecue. It is what it is.
(Kroger has brisket marked down to $3.99/lb. That said - as is known, these things are huge, so with our reduced rate grocery sales tax in Tennessee, that hulk cost about 80 bucks.).