On Tour
Published: Fri, 03/01/24
"Well, thank god you didn't say 'I'm going on tour.' Guys come in here, they're like 'I'm going on tour, man,' and I'm like 'Dude, you're driving upstate for the weekend in your friend's minivan.'"
Now, on a few occasions, I did hit the road for a couple weeks at a time; one winter my friend Jeff and I drove down the entire East coast to play a series of shows in Florida. Did that count as touring? We were still just a couple of dudes, definitely in a minivan, and the glamour factor was honestly pretty low. But it was more of an adventure than anything else, our version of going on tour. Some nights lived up to the dream: at one venue, people were mostly listening, and when they weren't, one couple took it upon themselves to personally shush anyone getting out of line. The four of us got to chatting afterwards, and we wound up on a beautifully deserted Saint Augustine beach at midnight, drinking Mexican beer, jumping through the waves, and reminding each other "...and it was 15 degrees out when we left New Jersey!"
One night with no gig, we went to see Tombstone. Our favorite part, of course, was Val Kilmer's smartass Doc Holliday, and we spent the rest of the trip attempting to drawl "I'm your huckleberry" with the same inflection, and failing miserably. That might have been the same trip we caught The Quick and the Dead – I'm not sure why so many Westerns were coming out that year, or why we spent so much of our free time patronizing the multipex, but that's the one where a young Leonardo de Caprio falls to his knees after a gunfight, and at first you think, "aw man, they got him!" Then he raises his arms to the sky and shouts "Is it possible to improve on perfection?!!"
I don't know if today's lesson is perfect, but it's pretty dang good – it covers three simple steps you can use right away to turn an eight bar blues into a complete tune: creating an intro, alternating between the melody and a vamp, and adding short improvised fills in just a couple of spots. You can find it here:
Play a Complete Eight Bar Blues in Three Steps
This March in the Fingerstyle Five membership, we're working on arranging the eight bar tune "How Long Blues." "Arranging" sounds all complicated and fancy, but it really just means taking the bones of a tune – the eight or twelve bar melody, played over the bass – and finding ways to turn it into a complete-sounding song by adding intros, fills and maybe one or two other elements. We'll have a whole month of live streams, Q&As, videos and, of course, pages of detailed tab for all the material. To join us, click the link below and sign up:
The Fingerstyle Five
More soon,
David