First things first. Yes, the title of last week's newsletter was indeed an homage to James McMurtry, a conscious reference to a song which appears, among other places, on his tour de force Live In Aught Three. Highly recommended; go check it out. How he remembers all the words to "Choctaw Bingo" is, to me, one of those eternal mysteries.

So yes, like those of you who wrote in about it, I am a fan. Though a fan who must sheepishly admit that I have only been to see McMurtry live exactly once, for all the years he has held down one weekly gig or another here in Austin.

In my middle-aged defense, for a long time his Wednesday night residency at the Continental Club didn't start until midnight. And the one time I went to see him play solo, upstairs at the Continental Gallery, I was taken aback by how many people waited in line, paid their cover charge, and then stood in the back two-thirds of a relatively small room, screaming and drinking loudly enough to nearly drown out one of the best songwriters currently working anywhere.

It's still shocking to me when that happens to someone so good, even if it really is kind of par for the course. For a while, I played some trio gigs at a south Austin curiosity of a venue called the Whip In, where I found myself constantly weighing whether the enjoyment of the percentage of people who were actually there to listen remotely balanced out the percentage of people who had come to drink and hang out and make themselves heard over the inconvenience of the live band at work a few yards away.

Of course, I get that sometimes said band has a job to do, and that job is not always to make art music for avid listeners. Leo Sidran, host of the podcast The Third Story, uses the term "functional music" to describe the kind of entertainment that's expected to coexist on equal terms with patrons' conversations, waitstaff delivering drinks, bartenders ringing up orders, and so on.

I've played functional music on purpose, and I've found myself playing it by accident; playing it on purpose is, in my experience, much easier on my delicate creative ego. The terms of engagement were pretty fuzzy at the Whip In, so I tried to take it all in stride, but playing art music in a functional music venue ultimately feels like a waste of everyone's time.

However, while it lasted, the Whip In did have one bit of unexpected glamor – it turned out to be James McMurtry's neighborhood watering hole. So one night I summoned the moxie to take my drink over to the bar between sets and introduce myself. He turned, looked me up and down, and drawled, "Oh, hey," in that very familiar voice. "You're that really good fingerpicker, right?"

I think we spent the next fifteen minutes talking about the raccoons in his attic, and then I had to get back onstage. I only played the Whip In a couple more times after that, and there were no further chats with legendary songwriters, named James or otherwise, but I still feel like I definitely got my money's worth.

In this week's Youtube video, I explain how to add blues licks to a shuffle bass in E. If you're interested in improvising but can't imagine soloing over an entire chorus of the blues, today's lesson shows you how to get started by just adding a few short licks to a simple two-chord intro or vamp.

You can find it here:

Start Improvising On "You Got To Move"

More soon,

David