Liberace Part

            I need to come up with a piano part for Things Have Gone and Changed. I dug out my keyboard from storage, but of course it doesn’t work anymore. It’s been years since I last used it.

            I found myself at Saint Vincent DePaul’s yesterday. They have a bunch of old pianos for sale. I was timidly and without drawing to much attention to myself trying to work out a part. I’d put some time in and then walk around and look at shirts and shoes only to go back to the piano to work on the part. I can hear the part in my head, but I wasn’t able to transfer it to the piano under the circumstances. It’s a mild Liberace part in E minor.

            I came back to my studio and found a website called pianochord.com. I opened up the chords that I needed and played them against the song on my computer on the fly. I’d press the play chord button on the website in real time against the song. I still don’t have the Liberace part, but I have the rest of it figured pretty well. 

Poor and Generous

I went to the Dodger game with Jessie Sweet last night. Jessie had four tickets that his dog-walking boss gave to him at the last minute. He couldn’t find anybody else to go with, so it was just he and I. I did the driving. We drove over in my convertible. I paid for parking. We sold the other two tickets. We sold one of the tickets to an older gentleman named Dick. Dick was very nice and knowledgeable about the game. The seats were great. Twenty rows back from the first base dugout. The night was perfect, but the Dodgers lost. Jessie bought me a beer. After the game Jessie bought us burritos with the money we made from selling the tickets. Jessie Sweet is generous. Poor and generous, there’s nothing better than poor and generous. 

Cowboy Kenn

            I played two gigs this weekend, one at the cowboy bar, and one at the steady in Venice. The Venice gig started off ominously. The keyboard player went to turn on his rig, and nothing happened. There was some kind of digital confusion. There were strange looking lights, but that’s it.  We tried to bang on it to get it going, the usual stuff, but it was not cooperating.

            The keyboard player went out to the parking lot to make some phone calls, when Tree Man happened to walk in. We explained the situation to him. He left. The players in the band weren’t overly concerned about not having a keyboard player. "It could be a mixed blessing," somebody said. 

            Then out of nowhere, as if it were a dream, a confusing dream that could be interpreted in the positive or the negative, the keyboard player walked in with a keyboard stripped around his shoulder. 

            “Where’d you get that?” I asked.

            “I was standing in the parking lot when a guy with a cowboy hat walked by with it. I said hey, can I rent your keyboard?”

            “How much?”

            “Twenty-five dollars!”

            “You got it.”

            Only in Venice. And that’s how the keyboard player got his keyboard. A couple minutes later, Tree Man walked in. He had a keyboard under his arm.