It's was another small jam this week as Rennie was scheduled to be out while Andy "Paul Bunyan" Trister was a late scratch due to wrenching his knee with an Axe. This left Drew and Scott on drums with Kevin, Rich and I on the instruments. Speaking of instruments, after more than a two-decade hiatus in it's guitar case, my old 23rd Street pawn shop Frankenstrat reemerged with a new loaded pickguard and a proud sense of being. That's right, I cleaned up this old rusty guitar, purchased a loaded pickguard with quality pickups and electronics and brought the old dead horse back to life. Even better, this old dead horse ended up having a much more prestigious pedigree than previously thought. It ends that it isn't bastard but rather a made in Japan 1986, Fender Contemporary Stratocaster. If you wanted a new guitar from Fender in this year you had to get one made i Japan as they weren't making them in America. It's apparently a well renown guitar, not a pile of parts. Kevin jammed with it for our first song of the night while I played his bass, and he sounded great with the guitar. Good stuff.

Another funny part of the night was that Drew was pushing for the Unbroken Chain earlier in the week. Knowing Kevin's daughter was getting married over the weekend, meant for sure we weren't going to play it. I didn't think I had a good enough chart for it anyway. So we get to the jam, it's still on Drew's mind and I was convinced I had never successfully played it nor was there anyway to play it without a chart. To my total surprised some noticed it was in the book. I guess I played it well enough and knew it well enough at some time to make a chart of it I didn't recall. With a Gindoff chart in hand, we ended up giving it the old Deadstein try which survived the song until the bottom fell out of it during the 11/8 good part of the song at the end. Hey, at least it was more than expected. I thew down the Not Fade Going Down the Road Not Fade out of it to get us back on track. Once the Hurt's Me Too got on track it it was the song it was supposed to be. It was cool to sing most of the songs for the night including some mellow once like Friend of the Devil and Ship Of Fools. Both were pretty good. We hadn't played Ship of Fools for a very long time and it was that much more impressive I was able to hold it together though the Ship of fools. Likewise, playing on Presidents Day, I wanted to play Franklin's tower which meant I had to try to play and sing the Help on the Way and play it as a solo guitar. It was all about as good as I could have expected for the situation.

The Lazy Lightning Supplication was part of the big song, small ensemble theme of the night and we pulled it off nicely. It was another good jam with more good stuff you have to listen to or watch than I have time to write about all too bad because it is all too good.

Freak Out!