The Bold Stump reunion brought together John Ruetz, Mike Brusha, Jim Haas, Jeff DeMark, Paul DeMark, Syd Matterrer and myself, and here I provide some background thoughts on preparation of the presentation. In my imagination, it was a little journey on music toward the "castle of heaven."
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| Mars Cheese Castle Hwy I-94 |
My boy-0’s and I put a lot of effort into the undertaking. It being our 3rd appearance as The Bold Stumps at George’s Tavern on Main St in Racine Wis., more than a few twists and turns had occurred. That's since our 2018 outing at George's. A change in the band this year, as Bob Stepien retired from the grind, and Syd Matterrer took up the bass on this. Twists, turns and Stumbles - not the least of which was the global COVID pandemic. Cue the Blues: “That’s life”.
Several of our players are pros - I am not one of them. For me it was a learning experience in collaboration, negotiation and expression. I felt I could deliver the songs if I could inhabit them. So in practice I thought to enter them imaginatively. That meant: to find the core r&b experience as represented in the story that the words of long ago tell.
This means 2to take them on as “receptacles in which to pour all of life’s anguish, ones' faith, and ones’ passion." That is to find musical transport that “reveals intimations of heightened awareness."
It starts for me on High Heel Sneakers. 1
High Heel Sneakers is from the musical school of Jimmy Reed. It is about payday euphoria.
This is a working meme that appears again in our sets. In Jeff DeMark's Get To My Machine, the foreman brings my check "and it's my only friend".
It's "I earned my pay, and work week is done, and I am going to a better place." A place of varied Juke joint revelation. In Racine, in our high school days, the place was called "The Nitty Gritty" .
As such this is hard-wired to other numbers in our sequence. Chicken Shack I. Chicken Shack II. (And Feeling Good in its precedent Boogie Children version where Hooker lights upon Henry's Swing Club.) Also, the place of Wild Night from which the jukebox 'roars out just like thunder.' Payday. Something Racine knows.
Put on your red dress, baby
Lord, we goin' out tonight
Put on your red dress, baby
Lord, we goin' out tonight
And wear some boxin' gloves
In case some fool might wanna fight
[Verse 2]
Put on your hi-heel sneakers
Wear your wig hat on your head
Put on your hi-heel sneakers
Wear your wig hat on your head
And I'm pretty sure now, baby
Don't you know you know you gonna knock 'em dead
[Verse 3]
I got my Old Crow liquor/And my paycheck in my hand
I got my Old Crow liquor/I got my paycheck in my hand
Big John's bootleg whiskey /Cost much more than I can stand.
When I dug into this deceptively simple piece, it conjured for me a co-worker from the old days. Jr Elmore with his doo-rag and yellow Montecarlo. If I was to see him maybe on Main St. at Walgreens. And we'd eyeball thru the window the Old Crow liqueur rack behind the pharmacist - something like this happened. Jr’s girl is across the street shopping at the Main St Five and Dimes. Maybe for a wighat. Get dressed up and go out.
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| GRAPH BLUES SCHEMA |
The notion of “clubbing,” which I would also call the "Nitty Gritty" place, begins with HighHeel sneakers” but carries from the Chicken Shacks. Clubbing means first to prettify. It includes the important abstraction of fashion - creative fashion in the form of singer Tommy Tucker's description of 1) a red dress, 2) wig hat and 3) High Heel Sneakers, to mark the evening's dance. Each an object with magical qualities. You got to use what you got to get what you want.
I meant to carry this theme to the close, and do Dylan’s LeopardSkin Pillbox Hat -which, is like High Heel Sneakers, also based on the classic Jimmy Reed model of blues monotony. 2 Dylan studied the blues and the R&B, and saw a satirical view of the Andy Warhol crowd through a lens that changed a wighat to a pillbox hat, I avow.
But our practiced rendition of LeopardSkin Pillbox did not raise its head this night. After Get to My Machine -- and as we headed to Wild Night -- we began to be conjured by the long ago Nitty Gritty club (of course on Main) rave - The band and all were drawn into the whirl. The set list floated to sky. On we plowed to Gloria and Wooly Bully encore and the rush of the dance. A great time.
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| Garage band |
Another number that found its way back to life was I Feel So Good by Magic Sam.
In studying this, it's useful to listen to his Delmark studio and live version (at Ann Arbor Blues Festival), Jr Parker's earlier version, and John Lee Hooker's earlier yet Boogie Children.
As the working lyric notes below who, the song starts with a meeting on the street. We will work from this to a raveup -then, out. Where Hooker's Boogie focuses on the mystic one-note drone, Sam Maggett's version focuses on a guitar that drives changes at key points with incredible urgency. This was a hard change to make, as a singer, but we figured in collaboration (and angst at times) to just stay in A when I was on the mic. The schema shows we go through the classic story of momma and papa talking about junior in bed, and then take it away, and it is up to the players to explore expression - but not ramble. Rave up. We come back down and nod to Hooker's Boom Boom (as with another number, "Pretty Thing", it seemed good to call out the artist's poetry, certainly, in both cases, precursors of today's dominating Rap style).***
In the run up to our first practices I listened closely to I Feel So Good to find after the soliloquy the song becomes a heartfelt litany of percussive screams. One line "I feel all right" is repeated 5 times and it brought to mind the Stooges' "1970" from Fun House. Iggy got his start with Johnnie Young, and studied blues, so I think his primal approach is what the blues told him, and I tried to recreate it here.
Can a white man sing the blues? The answer is, like Iggy and the Stooges, like High Notes (The Who), like so many: We go at the blues and find what we can do that is true.
As ever, the band got better as we played. Jef'f's link to the audience was electric and engaging. Paul's drumming was always there, no true beat left behind. John had a hundred great ways of surprising in the nooks and crannies of numbers. Jim swooped in with harp. Mike wailed the sax all night long. Syd's base was propulsive. Chris Springhorn took a guest spot on a rolling and tumbling version of Chicken Shack Boogie [originated by Amos Milburn].
But was there ever an audience more on the performers' side? I don't think so. They were the 5th Beatle. Our school and town mates - St Catherine's Angels of the Class of 1969 - were there to have fun, and ride the music. Adding special thanks to Al Smiley, who really got this whole thing going, and Ed Raymond for the Garage and more, and always Bob Stepien. Plus Jim Mazek up there! - Jack
Footnote
1 Referring to learnings gained as reading John Eliot Gardiner's Bach bio Of course I know this pompous- trying to map thinking of key originator of original instrument resurrection onto a garage band. For me, it was a helpful exercise, that put me in the music and opened the next door.
Some of Gardiner's heuristics for preparation and performance:
@Decide what to prioritize, when to intervene, and what to leave to chance;
@Give concentrated care to pronunciation;
@Bring out the drama and rhetoric; and
@Approach afresh free of ritualized cliches.
2 This music form was well described by Keith Richards, and I refer to it elsewhere on this site in an appreciation of Eddie Kirkland, Guitar Weaver of the Blues.
*** Update: Later in 2022 Bob Dylan's “The Philosophy of Modern Song” came out. Among the songs he wrote about was Feel So Good, the version being Sun Records’ star Sonny Burgess’s rollicking rendition. In this and other entries in the book Dylan puts himself deeply into meditation on the compositions, and gives some clues in regards to his own approaches to songwriting. Here’s excerpts of the Feel So Good chapter (45).
In this song you're feeling as good as can be, and don’t
need to be convinced…. You never felt better, and you have a hunch you’re going
to feel this way for the rest of your life…you’re intensely alive, coming
through the kitchen, and you’re rockin’ narrow and hard, rockin’ to the point
where no one can hardly see you anymore, like the Zephyr Queen, like the Panama
Flyer, rockin’ steady and shaking the earth – breaking and entering, unworried
about your dreams… This song take the sting out of life, everything you see you’re
snapping it up and they’re forking in over. You’re freed up and going flat out….
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