Road Cage

Monday, January 10, 2011
What a trip! New England…
The Xmas gig 2010 was swell, I reconnected with some musicians from Wachusett, MA with an imminent Nor’Easter heading up. But who better to know the possibilities than these guys to be on spot for a storm of this nature. The gig was a local bar in Worcester, a neat one on Chandler St. (the notorious area of the methadone clinic) in a improved, upgrading movement.
Mocha Java took my breath away with a hard rock tune into which I could fit and groove. I hadn’t seen them for a number of years but they were up for a session as well – the music engine can’t be stopped! They rocked. Turns out 5 of 6 of the new songs were in B major.
Quite unusual as they almost always play live in Ab or Db by tuning their instruments down a semi-tone. But on Dec. 26th, Rob felt better in his new tunes in B major. For me as an E Open player, this provided some entertainment (with pedals, or without) on the second fret giving me tons of licks involving pull-offs or mordents. Tasty. A Brand New Bag, or milieu…
Dave Smith, the great guitarist took me back to his house to sleep after Xmas where he presented a Xmas present, apparently a Santa gift for me which had been overlooked! These were the King Biscuit of snow gloves – how do these Wachusett guys know this shit? Dave knew I would soon be using these World Class gloves with which to dig myself out of the blizzard.
Actually, I was headed for Walpole on the 27th to sit with my friend Tony to work out some steel techniques – my Winter, New England nâivetė strong, my bullhead-ness – I was going to Walpole! But Mocha Java and Tony knew better. Buddy, you ain’t goin’ nowhere! I pulled out of Wachusett (Princeton), MA and got down the street in the early evening, got down to Sutton and was blocked from any further progress cause the blizzard had just got with it. I stopped at the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts, called Tony who called the lesson off. With my coffee I swung down to a motel down 146 and got a room with this zero visibility and parked my ass for the night (2 nights, actually). Good advice from my MJ buddies, I was quite comfortable and watched the Weather Channel – coffee, snacks – C-O-Z-Y!
THEN – I called my old friend Herb Smokler down 395 and asked to stay over while the blizzard tore thru. I couldn’t go back to NYC as the snow had picked up – I would have had to drive thru (or try!) Manhattan, drop all my gear, find parking (impossible), get back to storage/reload and head to Reading, PA for the NYE gig with NRPS and 7 Walkers – saved!
All this help from Worcester/Walpole, MA -> CT -> NYC -> PA -> Woodstock, NY for the 1.1.11 date and all the folks in the seam, including Roger who engineered the 12.26.10 session with aplomb (!) got me to where I needed to be to complete the contract. Thanks, could not have been able to do the jobs w/o you all!!!
bc