We headed out from the Drumeo meetup in Hamilton, ON, nominally en route to this year’s upcoming Blues Guitar Unleashed live jam near Denver, CO. Now, a direct route between Hamilton, ON and Denver wouldn’t normally go through Cincinnati. Fortunately, we don’t care about direct routes nearly as much as we do about going different places and seeing different people, and we love getting together with my piano buddy Honghong. Last year’s visit was way too much fun, so there’s no chance we’d pass up another opportunity!
Set course for Cincinnati!
We quickly got down to the business of getting caught up. Already a world traveler, Honghong recently returned from her self-proclaimed ‘Piano Friendship Tour’ where she met up with 5 members of our Pianote forum (on line lesson program) who live in Australia and New Zealand, coming home with lots of tales to tell. We chatted through one of Honghong’s fabulous Chinese-style dinners and on into the evening. Music would wait until the next day.
We decided to learn The Thrill is Gone together. Although Doug’s already got this tune down, Honghong and I had never learned a minor blues, let alone this classic tune made famous by B.B. King. Here’s our chance! We worked out our own arrangement with 2 pianos and guitar and felt comfortable recording ourselves by mid afternoon.
Honghong and her husband Jim found out that the Lebanon annual Blues Festival was to be held on Saturday while we were there, so we all headed over to grab some dinner and listen to the music. The festival featured a highly select group of regional and nationally known blues players through the afternoon and evening on the best Saturday of the year so far (really, the weather was perfect! And it seems that good weather on the weekend has happened about as infrequently this year in Ohio as it has back home in New England, so we felt very fortunate). As for the music, we particularly enjoyed hearing John Henry & The Rainmakers (mostly original tunes in a classic blues style, flawless guitar playing and excellent vocals), Danny Garwood & Company (at 16 years old, Danny is fronting his own Nashville-based band!) and the Sunny Moorman Group (foot-stomping, high-gain slide guitar played on a lap steel, morphing into a rocking set very reminiscent of ZZ Top, except with more energy).
The next morning we still had more time to jam and decided to work up one more song – Sweet Home Chicago. It came together rather quickly, so we toyed around with even more variations on a different arrangement for one piano (with two piano players) and one guitar.
Looking back on last year’s get together, we realized just how much we’d learned over the past year. A year ago, it took us 2 whole days to learn Blue Suede Shoes. (I hid behind the drum kit and didn’t even try to play the piano, and only played bass notes for Kansas City.) This year… it was just a few hours before each recording was in the can!
Thanks Honghong and Jim for the awesome hospitality! We’re grateful for the opportunity to further deepen the friendship. We’re glad Jim was so willing to turn the weekend over to so much music. And we appreciate his feedback on our recordings! (“What did you think, Jim?” “What?” he says as he takes out his ear plugs…) <JK! And thanks to Luna for turning over her play space to meet our musical needs and serving as a loyal fan and coffee-taster throughout our playing time.
Until next time!
For anyone who’s interested more pix…