[815C]

Small clip from last night's gig playing for Meghan Shanley. Got to play with some true Nashville cats - Steve Forrest/Bass, Karlton Taylor/Keys, "Smitty" Smith/Drums, Tim Coleman/Sax, Angelica Green/BGVs, and Sharif Iman joined us on Stevie Wonder's I WISH. This band had never rehearsed together and this tune wasn't on the set list - "What song should we do with Sharif?" - "Let's do I WISH" - "What key?" - "Eb minor" - let's go! Fortunately I had the changes to this song in my memory banks: repeat Ebm7 - Ab7 a few times, then Bb7 - C7 - Fm - Abm - Bb7 - C7 - Fm - Bb7(#5). It's good to know a lot of songs - not just the chords/riffs, but also the Form of the song (what order are the intro, verses and choruses and bridge and outro, where are the breaks, etc.). Often guitarists get so focused on the trees (scales, licks, theory, speed, etc.), that they neglect the forest (learning songs). Remember the END is to play songs. The MEANS is what it takes to get there.



Also, at the beginning of each of the 3 sets the keyboard player (Karlton Taylor who has toured with Tommy Emmanuel, Victor Wooten, etc.) would call out a jazz standard or two and we'd play those before the singers took the stage. I'd never played any of the standards we did last night before last night. Fortunately Karlton had notebooks for each of us with the lead sheets. These guys are all heavy duty jazz players and its easy to get intimidated in a situation like that. But it's important to stay relaxed ("not caring about what they think of you" - in a good way), and just have confidence and PLAY.