Bands and Other musical Experience

I played Guitar and Tuba (why tuba?) at Albert Einstein High School in the early 70s. I also played guitar in some other high school musical orchestras if they needed a guitar part. I could read pretty well back then. Played guitar parts for Hair, Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, in various productions for several high schools. I scored an arrangement of Perpetual Change by Yes for the Montgomery County Stage Band when I was a senior in HS. Trumpets, vocals, saxes keyboard parts, etc. Listen to it, it fits with a stage band. It was performed once, and came out pretty well.

I also remember renting a tux and backing a choir on electric guitar, a jazzy number, at the Kennedy Center, although I don't remember how I got the job. Anywhere anyone needed a guitar part, I played, sometimes only going over the score with the director briefly before the performance.

My first band job, with Goodness and Light, was the Warner Presbyterian Coffee House sometime in 1969, $25 (I am not counting free performances, like we did at the Unitarian Church as an opening act before this). Took lessons from Gary Varano in Wheaton, using the Joe Fava books, which are much better than Mel Bay or the others. These books assumed you could play, and had much more interesting sounding exercises. Did this after I had been playing in that band for a year. My lessons would have started about 1970.

Later in High School I played in several musically aggressive bands, that were pretty accomplished. Pop music got pretty sophisticated in the early 70s, and we were in with it. Even dabbled in fusion, doing Chick Corea and Billy Cobham songs. I But that type of music was only popular with musicians. No crowds.

I worked my way through college playing in Top 40 bands. These bands were nothing special at the time, but we played often, were paid relatively well, and were much better than the bands I hear these days wandering though the same songs we played. My bands played lots of songs during an evening, often shortening and combining them to snap them up. The sound at that time was also much sharper, with more spaces in it. Live sound is definitely more smushed out now. And much more harmony singing than you hear these days. I sang lead sometimes, but there were few songs I didn't sing in.

Supporting Work

I did lots of supporting work adding parts, filling in for missing band people, etc. I don't have good records from those days, but I did a lot of piecework in Silver Spring and Prince Georges County during the mid 70s.

During my senior year in High School I did a lot of playing in small studios to fix up arrangements by adding guitar parts or replacing some parts of a performance that were not quite right. Since I did my own recording, I was used to what had to be done to get new parts on. Sometimes it was just a few seconds, sometimes we changed the recordings quite a bit. Not sure that the original musicians were ever told their tapes were modified. Sort of like airbrushing or paintshop mods of pictures. This was actually quite common in those days. Not necessary these days, with the ability to autotune, change speed without changing pitch, isolate and change instruments, etc.

Around the turn of the century, I started playing out again by busking and performing solo, acoustically. To see where, click here.

I have made playlists of my musical influences - you can find them here. If you are a musician, check out my For Musicians pages.

Memorabilia

Some of my bands had posters and T-shirts, but I do not have any of those now. My son swears he saw me show him a poster of me in Ebony Essence when he was young - he described the suits we wore and everything. But I cannot find it now.

Many live shows orchestras: Hair, Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Pajama Game, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, others.

More Recently

Paddy Goes West

The Charts

Tux Redux

Solo, Acoustic

Open Mics, Acoustic/Electric Guitar and Voice.

Backup guitar for Singer/Songwriters.

Me in the foreground, I think at a Christmas Party in a hotel, with Highway Friends. After my Les Paul Custom was stolen a second time (I got it back once), I switched to a Les Paul Standard in 1976 which I am playing here, a more versatile guitar. Alan Kehr is in the background, playing a Travis Bean. I also notice in this picture, he was not using his Shure mic, but one of my old ones, an EV664. Something must have happened to his usual mic this night. Equipment problems are a way of life in a band that does one night stands.

I found a Highway Friends poster, I scanned it and it is attached below.