Step on In and Jam it Up!

‘The Wild Salmon’ in Lafayette sits on the edge of town and as I enter, I feel like I am walking into a scene from the Blues Brothers’ movie. You know, the one where they sing behind chicken wire in order to survive the beer bottles thrown at them. Nothing of the sort happened to me though. First of all, the people inside are all very friendly and secondly, there just aren’t very many of them. Jimmy and I do our thing in a setting that excudes a certain kind of forlorn beer coaster and juke box (digital!) Americana. I can imagine this place going as wild as the salmon in its name, but not tonight. Life on the road is like that, win some lose some. Drive home, sleep and move on.

Which is what I did. And how! Last night meant my first ever return to a venue in the States I had actually played before. Kind of special, that. As I drove around yesterday afternoon I became aware that the neighborhood where I stay and eat and blog is sort of becoming ‘my neighborhood’ too and actually ten minutes ago a man on the sidewalk said ‘ Welcome to the ‘hood’. Blending in is going nicely, thank you.

New Orleans is not the United States like New York is not the United States, but in an entirely different, almost opposite, way. You get the feel of it when you cruise the streets, which are lined by countless trees. Very green here and there is the sense of laissez faire that is very contagious. As Jimmy put it: “You can’t spend more than an hour in this town before someone calls you Baby or Darlin’.”

I walk back into Carrollton Station. New owners since I last played here. Colleen, half of the couple running the place now, greets me as Floatstone, explains how things will work drinkwise tonight and makes me feel welcome. The bar has become non smoking which feels very different from last year when a cloud of smoke hung over our shoulders while we played. The stage seems bigger than last time too, but that is just because all the clutter has been removed and, yes!, there is a new sound system and soundman Jeff turns out a great mix.

The evening turns into a reunion with fiddler Tom Marron who gave me live goose bumps last year as I played ‘The Well’ (a song about the Deepwater Horizon disaster here). It is also a first encounter with Michael Skinkus who is a top notch percussionist. Both of them step in on any of my songs I want and we have a ball. It is great to let go of the set structure my songs have when I play them solo. Some breaks I use would just throw my partners off, so I leave them out. I let the songs flow, up and down, loud and soft, leave lots of room for solo stuff and generally enjoy the chemistry. Tom plays the harmonica too. Lucky me. Michael and I double up as percussionists on Jimmy’s ‘Can’t Stop Drinking’ and we just drive each other on until I am about to get cramps, smiling cramps, I mean. The four of us end with the Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Sleeps’. Jammin’!

There are many advantages of being a one man band. You can always rehearse, you have only one agenda to check, you can chop into a song at random, but of course, there is no interaction except with your audience. So I bathed in the energy loop that gets set up playing with Jimmy, Tom and Michael. Read from the crowd’s reaction and afterwards from my colleagues’, a truly enjoyable time was had by all.

I look so much forward to get into the recording studio with these  guys in a couple of days.
But first it will be rehearsal time with Tom. He will be over in a couple of hours to get some arrangements set up before we get into the studio later on this week. So I guess I will be ‘working’ this afternoon. Sure doesn’t feel that way.

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