Special guest sitting in...

Here's a pretty good story.

A few months ago, I had a gig at Bill's Bar in Boston. Bill's is on the strip with a pile of bigger clubs, and right across the street from historical Fenway Park. Anywhose, while going out for dinner, I had heard that the Frog Brigade and Galactic were playing next door. Man, I wish I could have caught that show!

After dinner (and 2 opening bands), we hit the stage. About an hour into the set, I saw a note being received by one of the keyboard players on the opposite side of the stage by a weird lookin' dood. He read the note and looked immediately at me.

Thinking nothing of it, the note was passed thru the horn section - each guy looking at me in amazement while the note made its rounds. At this point, I knew something was up, and was all excited cuz I thought it was a girl's phone # or something!

By now, the percussionist, guitarist, and singers have read it (yeah, it's a big band), all giving me some kind of look of satisfaction, and it finally got to the band leader, the other keyboard player.

Luckily, I was standing right next to him and looking over his shoulder, I read the note....

"Les Claypool is in the house and wanted to know if he could sit in"

"Well hell ya, he can sit in" I said with the same look of satisfaction I received to the guy who started the 'hand off' of this note, and away he went. I looked around the club but didn't see Les.

Another 30 minutes or so goes by (long set!) and BANG, there he was, emerging from the side door from the adjoining club where he was playing. Les made his way to the stage, one of the singers announced him, and the joint went ape-****. He came over to me (the band was jamming the intro to a tune), shook my hand, said "thanks a lot" and gave me a pretty satisfied look when I handed him over my 75 musicmaster. He yelled "what key?" and I knew I was in for a real slap happy treat when I responded.... "E minor".

With no place to go, I sat back in the keyboardist's chair, about 3 feet from Les, and proceeded to watch him kick my ass on the bass. He's not much taller than me (I'm 5'6"), but his hands are huge. The only thing that sucked was that I was the only dood in the band that didn't get a chance to jam with him. Oh well, I can't have it all.

After the jam, we finished the set and I got the op to pick his brain for an hour or so, and that was real cool. I also told him that he was one of my childhood idols when I first started playing at 14, which made him feel kinda old. HA!

(I'm the bald Mr. Clean lookin' fella next to Les in the Picture with some friends and band mates)
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2 days later I had a gig in Burlington VT and dumped a beer on Jon Fishman (of Phish), but that's another story for another day.

 

Hey Keith,

Believe it! I'm gonna tell my grandkids that one - let's hope they know who he is. We rapped about everything from tour stories to his wife n kids... totally whacked conversation dynamic to be sure.

If you need something to to feel unsure about, how 'bout this:

One thing he couldn't get over was my fiddle that nite - I brought my 75 musicmaster bass along, which is a short scale ax. He couldn't get over how cool he thought it felt, or what kinda tone it had - overdriving and fuzzy (I admit I changed out the crappy stock p/u for a Duncan Blade).

So, if you see him sporting an old school short scale bass in the future...

 

Sure thing, but I tell ya what, I'll tell that one next week, that way I can do em in installments... cuz there are quite a few good (and tru) stories!

(that one is pretty tops tho)