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February 22, 2007
Craig Horton at the Saloon 2/21/07
I’d gone stale on the local scene and it was time for a road trip. As usual I had no sense, and after a long day, followed by a full yoga workout and a mad rush to shower, in the dark I piled into the very back seat of Mo’s van. It was then I should have realized it was Bent Night Out. The seat was jammed against the one in front and there was no legroom. Mo adjusted this while clucking at me. I immediately went to sleep only to wake up in the deep bottoms of Santa Venetia where Jack was waiting with his running shoes on. I awoke again in the City to see Mo’s usual parking miracle space open up before us a block and a half from the Saloon. We piled out and I began to anticipate seeing Craig Horton and his soulful tenor voice and down home guitar.
Walking into the Saloon past the folks at the bar the first musician I saw was the great bassist Henry Oden and I started really getting excited. My head swiveled and there was Steve Gannon on second guitar and I got even more charged. Craig was adjusting his strap and cord between songs. In the back corner was a drummer in black beret and dark glasses. The mind dredged up flashes from the past and I realized it was “Pockets” [Harold Paquettz Logwood], the fine singing drummer I’d seen at several benefits. He’s Mz. Dee’s brother and my radar began swiveling. Sure enough, Mz. Dee in a knitted cap was down the bar. I got even more excited.
Craig and the band started playing and it was a classic instrumental. I can’t quite get my memory to cough up the name, but it was of the Freddie King/Bill Dogget kind that was always played when I was a kid. The ancient wood walls and beat up three-renovation paneling of “The Dump” suddenly took me back to another time and I was 19 again trying to hustle my way into “Carrie’s Place” out on Old Route 13.
It was the blues before “Genres” and Labels and Grammy awards and white boys in leather pants playing a million notes a second. Nope, it was blues like came over my old yellow airline two-tube radio from small stations all the way over on the right hand side of the dial. The blues I found at the jukes that still existed then.
Craig’s tenor was at its finest and filled with soul. His guitar playing was blues feeling itself. Sometimes the meter wandered a bit and a couple of bars were added, but the band followed him seamlessly.
As the evening wore on the sense of being in both past and present grew stronger. A full yoga workout sometimes brings on a breakdown of the separation of the conscious mind and the subconscious. I added a couple of tequilas to that. The ancient wood floor of the Saloon with it’s nail heads won shiny and flat and the wood grain raised from generations of dancers, the beat up Victorian mahogany bar, the excellent sound without being too loud, took me to “Magic Reality” and an almost ‘romance of the blues.’ I was in two or three time zones at once.
Steve Gannon was at his best and playing both rhythm and leads with his clockwork time and restrained soulful delivery. Henry Oden was mostly impassive and drove the groove with authority. I watched Pockets a lot; it was a drum treat as he was solid without over-playing.
Songs I particularly remember were Craig’s own “Is It True (that I love you)” with his wonderful tenor caressing the lyrics. “Driftin’ and Driftin’” had a lot of 60’s soul-blues to it. If there’s anyone whose voice Craig’s can be compared to it’s Junior Parker and Craig did Driving Wheel” so good I just couldn’t believe it.
In the second set Mz Dee sang two songs with the band and it was a blast. The first was a fun up-tempo number, and then she blew us all away. Pointing out at the audience she said, “How many have trouble at home?” “Seems like I’m always in trouble!” I don’t think I’ve ever heard “Trouble, Trouble, Trouble” done with such finesse, and then the power of a hurricane!
Wow!
On road trips members of the gang often bring along favorite CDs and we play them quietly on the way to a gig as we talk. We tend to play them louder on the way back as we’re worn out then. At the second break I showed Mo my latest hot score, Jummy Dawkins’ “All For Business.”
The magic reality got real strong late in the night with a song always played in the bars in the 60s: “Night train!” That loping rhythm figure took me away. After that I started going inside my head to the music place and the rest of me began to nod on a stool, I’d been up since 6:00 am and it was catching up with me. I made it to the van and slept all the way to Rohnert Park. Mo had me woken for a second to get that CD, the case for “All For Business” was empty, I’d left it at home. Arriving, I gave Mo a hug and turned to my car, couldn’t find my muffler with my heavy coat, and started rummaging for it in the van. Mo said, “It’s around your neck.” Oh.
As I drove off, aware that I seemed to still be two places at once, I began to sing the words of the Scarecrow’s song, “If I only had a brain.”
"With the thoughts I'd be thinkin'
I could be another Lincoln,
If I only had a brain.
Oh, I could tell you whyyyyyy
The ocean's near the shore,
I could think of things
I never thunk before
And then I'd sit
and think some more.
And my head, I'd be scratchin'
While my thoughts
were busy hatchin'
If I only had a brain."
(excepted lyrics by EH Harburg and music by Harold Arlen)
Posted by Rolfyboy6 at February 22, 2007 07:00 PM