Take Me Up

There have been a few times, while playing music with certain people, that I've had the sensation of being lifted off my feet and up into the air, a sort of levitation.Their playing was so strong that they were able to have this effect on me.I don't think anyone else noticed this happening, but for me it was an amazing experience.I was swept up in the air as if gravity had stopped.It only lasted a few minutes but it was a feeling that you never forget.

The first time this happened I was at college at Kent State in Ohio.I was playing in the school jazz band, an eighteen piece orchestra, that was directed by a man named Bob Chmel. He had gone to school there at Kent and was the drummer for the band in years past when the band was led by Bill Dobbins who was and probably still is a BAD cat.

The year I was in the band, Clark Terry, the jazz legend, was touring the country with Dee Dee Bridgewater and playing concerts with school bands as part of his jazz education program. It was during our performance with Clark Terry that Bob went into a Star Trekian Warp Speed. Probably what happened was the band was playing poorly and Bob was lighting a fire underneath us, or maybe he wanted to show Clark Terry how BAD he was.
Whatever the reason, his playing lifted the entire band up like a pilot lifts a jet plane.It was amazing for me to feel that energy coming from one man.So great! It wasn't until years later when this happened again, that I realized it wasn't a freak occurrence,or was something I imagined.It was someone connecting with his music at a very high level.

I got this feeling again, in San Francisco, up on Grant Street where I was playing in a band that had Joey Covington on drums.Joey was a guy from Pennsylvania who had moved to Hollywood and eventually joined Hot Tuna with Jorma Kaukonan and Jack Cassidy from the Jefferson Airplane.He went on to play in The Airplane and Starship with Grace Slick and Marty Balin and Paul Kantner.

I met Joey at a jam session up on Haight street when I was new to San Francisco.Right from the start I felt a strong musical connection to him.He was a truly fantastic drummer, the best drummer I ever played with.
I spent a lot of time with Joey and learned a lot from him.He had a horrible reputation,and people were wary of him and his star was definitely bent, tarnished and crumpled. He was fairly down and out when I knew him, but I liked him just the same and he taught me a lot about the music biz and he could play the drums like a God.He played an old Gretch snare drum fro the 50's ,real deep ,that he fitted with a calf skin head.It sounded like a gun going off.It was so loud ! But beautiful.

We were playing at the Coffee Gallery, a funky bar in North Beach, that was a beat poet's hangout in the old days, with a blues singer named Lisa , when Joey started playing this Boogie beat during my guitar solo. He picked up on something I was playing and
started a groove using tom toms, sock cymbal and a cowbell.I felt him responding to what I was playing, and the music became a current, a river that was flowing, something you could step in and out of. Again, I was floating around in the air.It was the greatest feeling! The band was really cooking!
Afterwards I mentioned it to Joey,who told me that it was my playing that inspired him to play what he played and that what had happened was an exchange of energy. He seemed to know a lot about that.He used to play a lot with Carlos Santana and Jerry Garcia ,and of course, Jorma and Jack. All these people loved to jam, and would do so plenty, for hours and hours,and the energy was what it was all about for them.That and listening to each other.

Another time this happened was with Noel Redding in Ireland.I was playing with Noel on a Friday night, as I often did, when he had a weekly gig at De Barra's, a local pub and music venue.Noel had played bass and formed the band The Experience with Jimi Hendrix.
Those days were over and Noel now enjoyed playing and singing Buddy Holly songs on an acoustic guitar that was amplified really, really loud.When I showed up he played the bass.Usually there were only a hand full of people there.Sometimes a drummer would be there.It wasn't a big gig.Nothing special for the people of Clonakilty.
Noel had lived around Clonakilty for years and was known to everyone who lived there. He had the driest sense of humour I had ever seen. When I first came to West Cork, I was amazed at how Noel would drive up to De Barra's , and he drove a car with a hatch back that he would leave open-I mean all the way open- with his guitars just sitting there on the street waiting to be stolen while he had a pint inside the pub.But nobody would dare steal them.He would kill them dead with his wit.

One night during a guitar solo of mine,on a three chord jam,I was aware again of being levitated.Noel was playing with such conviction,and brilliance, placing his notes with such perfection and weight at exactly the right moment in time,the sound firm and defined, the notes falling exactly on the middle of the beat, creating a forward momentum and again, a current, a river of flowing sound ,that transcended time and space.His playing was so thunderingly heavy, so full of experience (Ha!).I was in awe! I had played with Noel many times before but nothing like this had ever happened .He really knew how to connect to something outside of himself.

I remember looking over at him and he looking back at me and wondering why I was staring at him.He didn't know that I was having a sublime musical experience.I guess for him it was fairly normal.I guess that's what being in a band with Jimi Hendrix does to you.You learn to expect a pretty good guitar solo.You expect the music to groove.You expect it will take off.
Noel Redding was BAD ! R.I.P.

These experiences that I had, and hopefully will continue to have, were for me, unforgettable.It must be said that they occurred in small, very un glamorous places, with a small audience who for the most part, were unaware of what was happening, and couldn't have cared less.
Sometimes the BIG GIG that pays fantastically well and that is sold out and recorded, and the musicians well rested and well fed, wearing their favorite most comfortable clothes, with lavishly catered dressing rooms, the best sound gear available, the most well rehearsed band of great players, the material carefully chosen, will sound terrible, and the tiny shitty bar, with vomit on the floor, that you arrive at hungry, tired, with the flu,and the audience of one argumentative drunk person, a pick up band that has never played together,the drummer's bass drum pedal broken, will be the best performance of your life.You just never know !

We must always stay ready, keep our ears open and always try our best to play as well as we can for The Music's sake.It can be an Uplifting experience!