Tag: Cup of Joe

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Open Mic Night and the Allure of Playing Country Blues Roots Music…

The scene at Cup of Joe in Cedar Falls during the early stages of Open Mic Night… Hosts Rick Vanderwall and Bill Guernsey…

It’s been two months since I played at Open Mic night at Cup of Joe, located in downtown Cedar Falls, IA… I missed the last one to attend a Wilco concert in Cedar Rapids.

Wilco playing at the Paramount in Cedar Rapids, IA

The Wilco show was a lot of fun and it was a treat seeing Nels Cline play guitar, as he is one of the top players in the country. The venue in which Wilco played was also quite marvelous. It was an ornately restored old downtown theater with marvelous acoustics.

Nevertheless, I was glad to be back at the Cup again with a chance to perform in a small intimate setting… I am clearly not a headline performer… instead, the specter of performing in front of people really motivates me to work at the craft of playing guitar!

Me and my Taylor Solid Body Custom Walnut, with a newly replaced neck…

In the above image, you can see I was delighted to be back. This is me posing before the coffee counter just before my performance… Call my performance costume, ” old man cool-eclectic.” 😁

It was a big night for me because I was going to play publicly, for the first time, Stefan Grossman’s arrangement of A Tribute to Lonnie Johnson… this piece is epic in length and requires a reasonable amount of finger-style skill to pull it off so for me at least it marked a stage of development along my guitar playing journey…

I’d been working on the Lonnie Johnson piece for weeks and weeks and though I’ve pretty much mastered it, it is still difficult for me to play it flawlessly even alone at home, so playing it publicly was going to be quite an adventure for me, but I was looking forward to seeing how well I could do.

A year ago, my fingers would sometime disassociate themselves from my brain on pieces of music much simpler than the Lonnie Johnson charts, so I set a high bar for myself.

Taylor T5z Pro Ltd; Molasses Burst…

I actually began working on the Lonnie Johnson piece using my newest guitar, shown above, the Taylor T5z Pro, which is an acoustic/electric hybrid that sounds great whatever you play on it, but especially nice when playing old finger-style country blues; however, at the last moment I decided to play that night on my Taylor Solid Body Custom, which you can see me holding above. After playing the T5z for weeks on end, I think I just needed a change of pace. I am holding the Solid Body in the photo at the top of this article. It is a lovely instrument and plays like butter… While the T5z plays beautifully too, it is bit more demanding than the Solid Body, and that is probably why I made the last moment switch…

I’ve written before on this weblog about finger-style blues and why I am so dedicated to that genre:

  1. It’s a musical style that can be played strictly instrumentally or accompanied by singing. In instrumental form, the music holds up on its own, so it is suitable for a single guitar player to perform without accompaniment. Since I have no interest in being in a band, this genre is perfect for me.
  2. Country blues pieces span from the elegantly simple to the moderately complex and there are available lots of charts and educational videos from which to learn, so it is a great genre to develop playing chops, which can be very satisfying.
  3. While there is a very active global community of country blues players, they are still diminutive in size compared to other musical genres, so it is a smaller fairly supportive group of players.
  4. As a baby boomer, I grew up with early rock ‘n roll and this music serves as its foundation. Country blues are THE essential roots of much of the popular music that I grew up with. My experience is that audiences are not exposed to country blues that often but like it when they hear it. Much more interesting than the millionth cover of Moondance they’ve heard before.
  5. While players use picks or strum through country blues, the really authentic way to play it is with the fingers. Finger-style playing is way too cool… just sayin’

As testament to the roots nature of country blues, I am embedding a link through the photo of classic bluesman Charlie Patton on the right. It leads to an interesting blog article that gives a nice comparative sampling of rock music to its original country blues form. The blog is called Please Kill Me… This is what is cool… Click on Charlie Patton and then come back!

Grant and me at Bob’s Guitars, our favorite hang out…

As is typical for me, I signed up to play first. There are actually only 6 15 minute slots available for open mic wannabes, so I usually get to the shop about 45 minutes before Rick and Bill, the hosts arrive and when they do I hit the sign-up sheet promptly. My friend Grant is almost always there too and he signs up to play second. In fact, we are hoping to play a full set on our own at the Cup some time in the near future!

That particular night I played in the following order:

  • A Tribute to Lonnie Johnson in Drop D tuning… (Stefan Grossman) – I did ok… shanked some into the rough, but pulled it off… at Open Mic it would be too challenging to record myself; however, I do have a decent sampling of Lonnie Johnson that I made at home, which is embedded below. Note that I am playing the T5z.
  • Spoonful in Drop D tuning… (Charlie Patton, arranged by Stefan Grossman) a briefer and lighter tune to cleanse the palette after the heavy low down Lonnie Johnson piece…
  • Cocaine Blues… (traditional, arranged by Stefan Grossman) a favorite of mine and the rare tune I have completely memorized… breezed through it… a crowd favorite too… a lovely, complex finger-style tune that stays at home in the top three frets… relaxing and also cleansing to play…
  • Police and a Sergeant… (Robert Wilkins, rearranged by Catfish Keith) I love this piece and it’s a great way to end the set. It’s very meaningful to me because I took a lesson with Catfish Keith to work on it! Last time I played it at the Cup, I pretty much lost my way and unravelled, though I got through it somehow… The other night I played it clean as country water…

Below you can see a photo that my wife took of me playing… it’s been post processed and posterized a bit to make it more fun… Note that I am for the first time performing with my iPad and foot pedal for page turning…

It was a great night closed out by the Jacobs playing some jazzed-up seasonal tunes!

The Jacobs knocking out jazzy holiday tunes…

Thanks also to my friend Grant for the call out at the end of my set! He played a fine set too!

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Friday Night (high)Lights… or life in the open mic world…

Exterior of Cup of Joe, on the corner of Main and 1st Street…

In Cedar Falls, Iowa, right smack dab in the middle of flyover country exists a funky little coffee shop that’s been in business for twenty some odd years. The coffee is excellent, the baked goods are great, and the authentic retro-fifties furnishings give it an ambience unlike other coffee shops I’ve ever been to. In short, it is one of those idiosyncratic local treasures that inhabit small towns. The shop is called Cup of Joe…

Besides purveying what coffee shops typically offer, Cup of Joe is also a patron of the arts… The owners rotate through the walls of the shop varying two dimensional art forms, including paintings, sketches, photographs and prints. In fact, a couple of years ago, the shop was kind enough to host an exhibition of my landscape and prairie photography.

Cup of Joe interior… performance space in the far back… Note artwork on the wall…

Most importantly, on every third Friday of the month, Cup of Joe hosts an open mic night for musicians, poets and what have you…

In fact, last night was my first year anniversary performing country blues guitar at the Cup during open mic and a great night it was…

Through some arrangement for which I am unaware, open mic night has been hosted by three gentlemen who referred to themselves as The Three Blind Mice… They consisted of Rick Vanderwall, Bill Guernsey, and the late Rick Nees. They would perform themselves at the opening of the event and then help out others during their time at the mic. As Rick V. was out of town visiting family, the evening was hosted by Bill alone.

Bill and I mugging for the camera…

Here I am with Bill at the end of the show; however, earlier in the evening my friend Grant Tracey and I helped him haul in his equipment as he was working alone that night. He brings in a PA system and microphones, as well as an amp suitable for electric and acoustic guitars. During the show he tweaks and fine tunes the sound such as you can in that particular space. Most importantly, Bill maintains order and keeps the participants in line and within a 15 minute timeframe.

What was unique and particularly fun that night was the shop owner, Dawn’s request that Grant, another guitarist, and I participate in a video feed advertising the night’s festivities. We all have different music in us… Yeah, you can quote me on that… Grant is a singer/songwriter, largely influenced by his youthful devotion to punk rock… Me, on the other hand, I love those old time, deep rooted, foundational country blues and that’s what I play… You can see our introductory video below: (you may have to click twice)

After Bill warmed up the crowd with a Neil Young cover, I opened the night with a fifteen minute country blues set. It’s my preference to play first, and I will arrive at the coffee shop a good hour before set-up just to get my name on the list first.

Here I am playing my set of 4 country blues tunes. That night was the public debut of my newly repaired Taylor Solidbody Custom Walnut electric. I had the guitar signal passing through my pedal board with compression, some gain to fatten up the sound a bit, a dash of vibrato, some slap-back delay and all blended into some hall-like reverb… Even though I painstakingly set up the pedals at home through my Fender amp, it sounded a bit boomy from where I was sitting… fortunately Bill smoothed it out for me with some amp equalization. Still, when sitting behind the speakers it’s hard to assess how your rig sounds… a performer monitor would be nice, but that’s a lot to ask for at an open mic night…

My set included:

  • I Do Blues – a new tune for me credited to Rev. Robert Wilkins
  • Police and a Sergeant – Rev. Robert Wilkins, arranged by Catfish Keith
  • Railroad Bill – traditional, arranged by Etta Baker
  • Cocaine Blues – traditional, arranged by Stefan Grossman

I was prepared to play more, but Bill put the hook on me as there were a number of others signed for the mic! I did a pretty good job on three of the four tunes, but shanked a few into the rough on Police and a Sergeant, which I played flawlessly at the Bandshell performance last month. Throw of the dice at this stage of my performing career, I guess… It’s not for lack of practice that I shank one, but more dependent on keeping focus and maintaining the brain/finger connection…

My beloved wife Nettie was there to take photos of me playing. She does a great job with an iPhone… I hope to upgrade my iPhone from the current 6s to the latest because the cameras on the new ones are so “dadgum” good and perfect for supporting this weblog.

You’ll no doubt note that, as is typical, I am obscured by a music stand… There are reasons why. First, I much prefer playing sitting down because I have better control of the guitar and secondly, I like referring to the charts while I play because I simply cannot remember most of my pieces which have fairly complicated finger movements.

Before the next time I perform, I hope to convert to an iPad, equipped with a foot pedal, to dispense with the paper and music stand, which should obscure me less while I play…

  • Lillian and me…
  • Jacob and me…

After my performance, I had a chance to catch up with one of my former Northern Iowa Textile and Apparel majors, Lillian T. If I missed teaching, which I do not, it would be because of special kids like Lillian… she was an absolute delight to work with in the classroom… I also had a chance to interact a bit with one of the two Jacobs in the coffee shop that night… He is a Northern Iowa music major and a tremendous guitar player… he noted my tasteful use of pedals and the pleasant “acoustic” sound of my guitar, which obviously delighted me to hear!

  • Grant digging into his Mustang…
  • The Jacobs laying out masterful Jazz riffs…

After my set, as you can see above, my pal Grant played a 4 tune set on his beloved Mustang, including some soulful picking of individual notes within his chord progressions… The show concluded on a high note with the Jacobs, both exceptionally accomplished jazz guitarists, who laid out their improvisations in masterful style…

September’s open mic night was a night to remember… until next month… I am working on some new tunes as I write… see ya…