Notable Quotes

TC has already given the outline of the trip to Mei-nung, so I can skip right past the sequential bits. Here are some memories and musings.

~~If he had a church, I would have joined it tonight.
Me after experiencing Thank You, by Takashi on Saturday night.

Thank You started off with Takashi and Kenji playing on stage together. Takashi explained that the song was a statement of thankfulness. "Thank you, mountains. Thank you, trees. Thank you, sky. Thank you, Mei-nung. Thank you. Thank me." Then he moved off the stage and onto the grass in front of the audience while continuing to play and sing. Then he started dancing, moving in a graceful manner similar to taichi, swinging his arms slowly out and then bringing his hands together in the Asian way of blessing someone, facing first one direction, and then another, over and over, repeating the lyrics to the song like a chant. Witnessing it was simply mesmerizing, and dare I say, palpable, something like being washed with chi. Everyone in the audience was in rapture. None of us had ever seen or heard anything like it before. Words fail to express the vibe that song created.

~~He’s still breathing.

The head of the Hakka Museum in Mei-nung after testing to see that Connor still had breath after performing on harp on Red River.

One difference between playing at a nightclub and at a festival is that a festival stage usually comes with an emcee or two. The Voice of the People emcee, the head of the Hakka Museum, was not as disturbing as the guy in a skirt at BB2, but he was definitely a character. Not only was it his job to introduce the acts, etc., he was also responsible for quizzing the various Ramblers on various topics while we waited to get started. Typically, he asked me what the washboard was called, and generally bothered everyone else with the usual comments. He was a friendly guy. He came back stage before we went on and got introduced to everyone. Then it turned out that we wanted to be able to say something in Hakka. What we ended up learning was “This is good,” in Hakka, of course. It sounds something like Da gay ho. Before we went on, I think the emcee got five minutes on that bit alone.

~~It was nibbling the hair on my arms, and then it reached up and yanked on my lower lip with its beak.

Sandy explaining how a goose had kissed him violently.

I never actually saw the goose, or geese. Of course, I and everyone else heard them all weekend, usually when we were trying to sleep. In fact, the goose may have been getting back at all of us through its attack on Sandy. We did stay up till nearly dawn drinking and talking in the garden both nights we stayed at the Range Bed and Breakfast (careful, that’s ren-ge, not Home on the Range).

~~This is a tourist hotel operated by Teacher Chen. It’s a beautiful house with a very natural garden.

A local tour guide introducing the Range B & B via his megaphone to a tour group at 8:30 Saturday morning.

Amazingly, no other Rambler admitted to having heard the tour guide blasting away on the megaphone a few hours after we retired on Saturday morning. I didn’t dream it, though. I got up, went to the window, looked outside, and saw the whole group of tourists standing in the garden looking at the pond. Fortunately, I then saw Teacher Chen quickly come out of the dining room and ask the guide to keep it down because she had VIPs sleeping it off. Ninety minutes later when I finally got up to eat my breakfast, I saw the tour group weeding a nearby field in the hot sun. Country justice.

~~It would have been right over there behind those trees, stretching between that mountain over there on the right and this other one here on the left.

Mr. Chung explaining where the controversial Mei-nung Dam would have been built had the people of Mei-nung not stopped it by protesting.

Sunday’s performance was at a museum honoring Chung Li-he, a noted writer in Mei-nung. His sons run the place, and they were on hand during our performance. Before one of the brothers got up to introduce the museum, Christina and I were chatting with him about the dam. I’ve been through Mei-nung several times, but I had never learned where the dam was to have been built. Mr. Chung gestured to two nearby hills and cleared up any question I had about the dam’s location. The valley that would have been covered in water appeared to be undeveloped, and filled with the lush vegetation that covers hillsides in that part of Taiwan. It would be interesting to venture a ways up that valley and see what has been saved. The protests to stop the dam were apparently led by the Mr. Chungs, and were supported by local musicians, notably Lin Shen-xiang and his cohorts. I am certainly no expert on this movement. One thing is clear in my mind, though. The people have not give up their opposition. Mr. Chung said that the dam had never been permanently cancelled, and that if the Executive Yuan ever reactivated the proposal, the people would rise up again to defeat it again.

~~See how they put the tobacco leaves on the ground around the base of the plants? Nicotine is a powerful insecticide.

A Rambler (I think this must have been Will) discussing the state of tobacco farming as we took one of our strolls between Hakka Museum and our hotel.

I grew up around farms, but I had never seen tobacco being grown before. It was interesting to see what cigarettes look like before they get rolled up. The plants are about 1.5 to 2 meters tall, and the leaves are larger than I imagined, perhaps 18 inches by 12 inches across. Across from the tobacco fields, nary a farmer to be seen among the rows, by the way, lay ponds where water plants were being grown. A sign near one of the ponds identified the plant as kudzu. Kudzu is a major problems in waterways in the southern United States. It grows so fast that it chokes up narrow rivers and canals, and the governement has to come in and rip it out. It is one of those pesky foreign invasive species that you hear so much about. Here in Taiwan, they were farming it. Like I said, the tobacco fields were empty of farmers, but the kudzu ponds were being worked by farmers wearing wet suits and standing in chest deep water. They had floating baskets and they were picking something off the kudzu and putting it into the baskets. I am reminded at times like these that teaching is an excellent job. It certainly beats standing in a pond all day and picking succulents off of water plants.

~~The county magistrate asked me if I had been to Chung Cheng Lake. I said I had, and then I asked him when they were going to get around to changing its name.

Bizzness Kennedy reporting on his tete-a-tete with the Kaohsiung County Magistrate.

To understand the significance of Brian’s quote, it would help if you knew several facts. Chung cheng is one of the names (that he chose himself, according to some sources) of Chiang Kai-shek. There are Chung-cheng roads, buildings, schools, towns, bridges, and obviously lakes, all over Taiwan. They are a reminder of the old days under the Kuomintang (the KMT) when Chiang seemed to foster a hero cult. Kaohsiung County, in which Mei-nung is located, is a bastion of Taiwanese identity and firmly green, meaning its inhabitants are largely supporters of the Democratic Progressive Party (the DPP). What Brian was getting at was “Why hasn’t the DPP changed the names of all the places named after Chiang Kai-shek?” A damn good question. Brian apparently also congratulated the magistrate on his recent victory in the elections (held the weekend before the festival), and pointedly asked what had happened to the rest of the DPP’s candidates. The DPP suffered one of its worst election defeats in years, losing a majority of the county government seats to members of the KMT, but keeping Kaohsiung County, Tainan County, and Pingtung County in southern Taiwan. Brian’s forthrightness at the B & B garden summit earned him a box of tea and an invite to come to the county magistrates office and drink tea again some day.

~~Nope, it’s still there.

Christof talking to Dave about the distortion coming from one of Dave’s digital effects.

Christof “the Observer” is a mountain among sound men, not for his size, but for his laser ear and innovative mixing ability (separate output channels for individual frequency bands, who’d have thought?). Dave had a couple of boxes that he wanted to run the signal of his guitar through before trucking it off to Christof at the mixing deck. After Christoff initially announced that there was a distortion on the line, he and Dave had this conversation. Dave: “How about now?” Christoff: “Nope, it’s still there. (Dave twiddles with the knobs on one or the other of the boxes.) Dave: “How about now?” Christoff: “Nope, it’s still there. (more twiddling) Dave: “How about now?” Christoff: “Nope, it’s still there. And on. Finally, Dave had to unplug one of the boxes. And then Christof finally said that the distortion was gone. Throughout this exchange, the Ramblers looked at each other, suppressing smiles. We knew what the outcome would be. Christof wanted a clean sound hitting his deck, and it did not seem likely that he would give in. Of course, none of the rest of could hear the distortion. Nor could Dave, I believe. And that added to the merriment of the whole thing. Christof could hear us better than we could hear ourselves. We were not going to finish our sound check until he got what he wanted.

~~Joseph, Caroline, get over here! Put those kazoos back.

Paul to his children.

There was a smallish audience at the Sunday performance, but one of the best parts of the day was seeing Joseph and his little sis Caroline running around like banshees while we played. They got up on stage, they ran around in front of the stage, they took the kazoos, they fought over them, they played them, and then when Joseph was finished playing the one that his father still hadn’t convinced him to give up, he jammed it into the end of the microphone stand. Priceless.

The MBRs in Meinong

The weather in the Muddy Basin was cold, windy and wet when I arrived at the main station on Friday night to meet up with the other Ramblers, get on a bus, and head south for sunnier skies. Slim, Thumper, Dave and Sandman were already there, huddled out by the bus and waiting for me and Conor. The organizers were there as well as some kids with video cameras, already "documenting" our historic voyage I guess. Conor showed up, bathrooms were visited (there was one on the bus, but they claimed it would stink if anyone used it), and we set off.

We pretty much had the bus to ourselves. We congregated in the back, just like the "bad" kids at school and sat back, looking at the scenery, all the while congratulating ourselves on finally having a "real tour bus". Of course, it wasn't long before David got his guitar out and started playing. One by one, we all got instruments out and played along. The camera people grabbed their equipment and rushed back to catch us in the act, but there was no rush; we played pretty much the whole way down, in between bathroom breaks at strange deserted rest areas that felt like they were shipped in straight from the midwestern U.S. I had a sore throat and a sore back and wasn't feeling too great, but just getting out of town made it all worthwhile.

The ride passed quickly, and we got to Meinong in the wee hours of the next morning. The weather was clear and dry, and warmer than Taipei had been. We were staying at the "Range Bed & Breakfast", a pseudo-western-style hotel amidst farmland and near a group of mountains with a giant swath of stone in the shape of the character for the Chinese word "ren" or person. Due to the late hour, we had to wake the owner, who arranged all of our rooms right there.

After about four hours of sleep, minus the wakefulness induced by a particularly loud goose in a pen downstairs, we dragged ourselves out of bed for a hearty breakfast of egg, ham and peanut-butter toast. Coffee was passed around but I don't drink the stuff unless I absolutely have to. Our soundcheck was supposed to be at 11:30, so we walked through the fields and along a lakeside to the culture center where we were playing later. It was sunny and hot, perfect weather after cold, dreary Taipei. I stopped many times along the way to take pictures of the lily ponds next to the lake. What looked like tobacco was planted in other fields, big leafy plants about two meters high.

The center looked pretty new, and even a bit out of place among all the little farms. A bus had been parked across the main road for use as a little stage, but our event was being held in front of the center itself. We met Christoff, the German sound guy, as well as some of the other musicians such as Takashi and Ken from Japan. They were just finishing their sound check as we arrived. Children were playing around an old tree by the stage that held a large mortar in its outspread branches. A coffee truck guy coughed into his microphone across the street in front of the bus, competing with Christoff's soundchecking.

The center provided a good, solid lunch for us afterwards, and we headed back to the Range to get dressed. I couldn't believe how nice the weather was, though haze obscured the more distant mountains. After we got back to the B&B Brian and Paul, two friends of ours, arrived, as well as Sandman's wife Jojo and some other friends of theirs.

Later, decked out in our Ramber regalia, we again crossed the fields to the cultural center, where dinner was waiting. We played as the sun went down, and did a pretty decent job. Christoff did a great job of the sound and was really on the ball during the show. The crowd, mostly local people, seemed to like the music, though half the time they were staring at Brian, who was making his presence known through hoots and calls throughout the show. It was great. Afterwards, Takashi and Ken did their show, as well as Shengxiang, Yufeng and his group. At the end, we all got up on stage and did two or three of Shengxiang's songs, passing solo parts around among the musicians.

After adjourning to the Range again, spirits were bought and consumed while sitting around in the courtyard of the hotel. I would have liked to have stayed up longer, but some impromptu qi-gong sessions somehow made me sleepy, so I turned in relatively early, around one. Thus I was up pretty early the next day for sandwiches and a nice bicycle ride around the lake the next day before our next gig, which was miles away at a memorial library/museum in honor of the Hakka author Zhong Li-he.

The museum turned out to be a recently renovated two-story building filled with the pictures and writings of the late author. Down a little path lay another building that was a private residence of the author's son, now himself an old man. Further on was a large grove of palm trees. It was very pleasant. The weather was so hot that many of us, including myself, bought Zhong Li-he T-shirts to cool off in.

A stage was set up, complete with a sound guy, monitors and speakers, but the organizers seemed to have forgotten the audience, so we played to our own people and anyone who happened to be there visiting the museum at the time. I think we did a bang-up job, though, and the camera people seemed happy, at least. I was standing in a spot where I couldn't hear the bass, so I kept trying to get the sound guy to turn it up, when the rest of the band wanted to turn it down. Well, live and learn.

We took the hotel van back to the Range and waited around in the courtyard, talking and enjoying the weather as dusk fell, until getting back on the bus to Taipei. This time it was only me, Conor, David and Slim, but Dave and Conor kept us entertained on the way back by practicing for their duet performances. We kept having to put on more and more layers of clothing as we traveled north in the night, and by the time we reached Taipei again, we were all muffled up again as we had been when we set out. We went our separate ways, Slim and I sharing a taxi after failing to find a working escalator down to the MRT, and stairs with all our stuff were simply not an option.

I'm really happy that I went on our little tour; it was exactly what I needed after being stuck in Taipei for so long. Sunny, warm skies, little lanes criss-crossing farmland, happy audiences and great music...we need to do more things like this.

Hat Band

The power of the hat goes without saying. (If that were actually so, I would probably end this post right here.).

I've had a lot of hats in my time. The hat I wear most often now is a black fedora. It's a blues man hat. It says something about the way I feel about playing the blues, showing a respect for tradition, but also acknowledging the effect that it has on the audience when I play. An announcement to all assembled: here are the blues.

Like a lot of kids, I grew up wearing baseball caps. I once played the blues in a workshop setting while wearing a baseball cap. It was one of my favorite caps, one of the two that I bought in Hong Yeh village in Taidong. It had a cool red "maple" leaf on the front, and the words "Baseball birthplace in Taiwan" printed around the leaf. It was at the same time patriotic and subversive.

Another favorite hat of mine is a tam in the colors of the Jamaican flag. I would never wear it playing the blues. It just wouldn't feel right. I wear the tam when I'm recording something with a dub feel on my computer. I used to have long hair, and then at least I could fill the tam with my hair. Now, I wear my hair so short, a beret would probably be more appropriate. Cable car operators in San Francisco wear black berets, something like special forces berets, with all sorts of pins on them. I could see a blues man wearing that, especially in a smoky club on Divisadero, after hours.

Somewhere in my mother's attic is an old army helmet from World War II that I played in when I was a kid. It is hard to imagine playing the blues in such a hat, but I suppose if I were in an air raid, and there just happened to be some instruments handy in the bunker, a steel helmet might be just the thing. If I were playing a steel National, I'd want to be wearing one of those shiny steel helmets that color guards wear.

I've had quite a few ski hats. If were in Churchill, Manitoba, on the shores of Hudson Bay, playing my washboard, I might think that such a hat would be quite suitable, especially if it were snowing. I don't think I would want to wear one with dangly balls, though. It would be quite distracting to the audience, I think, if while I were grooving to the beat, the dangly balls on my hat were bouncing along as well.

I had a straw Panama hat years ago. I think it was made in Ecuador. I'd play the blues in a Panama hat, and I would probably want to be smoking a big Cuban cigar. I've never had a straw boater. I'd like to play the blues in such a hat, and if I had the chance, I'd do it wearing a striped sport coat in bright summer colors, and white patent leathes shoes. But not in Churchill, unless it were in the middle of the two weeks of summer.

Our blues hats announce to the audience that we are performers playing roles. Like actors on the ancient Greek stage, we put on masks, but not of tragedy and comedy; our hats signify the blues. The hats put the audience in the mood for music that speaks of the drama of life. The blues is both tragedy and comedy, and our blues hats help us to communicate that with our music.

That sinking and shaking Muddy Basin

This article from the Guardian reports on a theory that Taipei 101 may have caused an ancient earthquake fault to reopen.

I been down so long...



"I been down so long, down don't worry me..."


When I woke up this mornin' the Muddy Basin was gettin' me down, and that song came to me.

I sang it out loud as I walked to the MRT, and the day got better and better as the day went along. Expected grief turned into unexpected happiness. It started when I stepped onto the MRT in the morning and the "xiao pengyous" smiled and laughed. Not at me. They were just playing around with each other. And on the MRT home, sittin' there with Thumper, the "xiao pengyous" were playing with their mom, having fun. And this mom had eyebrows that could move around with amazing animation. They were like caterpillars crawling around over her eyes. I had never seen anything like it. The rest of the day between the MRT rides to and from the great city of Tiptown on this day were also filled with equally strange moments that made me stop and smile. I'll try to remember this day, and enjoy the memory.

Been down so long, down don't worry me...

(Photo is titled "Sally is Upside Down." I found it by doing a google image search of the word "down". It came from http://www.laceysenderovitzfamily.dk/Photo%20gallery%20pages/Spring_2004.htm." I have no idea who she is, and I hope she and her family are well, and don't mind me using her image on this weblog, but she seems to be upside down, which is a form of being down. I wonder how long she has been that way.)

Odds and Ends

So, who did I run into at an MRT station last night? Mark, the accordian player who sat in with us for two shows when Connor was visiting the Middle East. We had a pretty wide-ranging conversation considering that it only lasted between Taipei Main Station and GongGuan.

While we were chatting on the platform waiting for the green line train to come, a yellow line train pulled in. A fellow in an electric wheelchair tried to ride into the car, but he got stuck. The two front wheels of his vehicle got wedged in the gap between the car and edge of the platform. People standing nearby sort of freaked, imagining the door closing on him and the train pulling out of the station. But of course, it didn’t. It took the volunteer rescue team a little while to figure out how to heft the heavy wheelchair out of the gap and into the car, but they did it. There were no station employees around at all. If the guy in the chair had backed in to the car, he might have made it unassisted, since his rear wheels were larger, but maybe not. Had he never had the problem before? I think if that happened once to me, I would make damn sure it didn’t happen again.

Anyways, Mark and I chatted. He’s living in Hsintien now, like two thirds of the Ramblers, having trouble filling out his work schedule, something many of us can relate to, and he’s got a band. And they were performing that night at the Living Room. If I remember correctly, him on accordian, an electric bass player, a percussionist/unusual instrument player, a drummer, and maybe someone else. He described the sound as punk/gypsy/folk. Intriguing. Unfortunately, I had plans for the evening already, so I couldn’t get over to the Living Room to check them out. It is good to hear that he got something together. I know we enjoyed having him play with us.

What's in the Jug?

A jug band needs a jug, and the one we got is a dandy. At first, Dave gave me a slew of ceramic Kaoliang bottles, flower vases, and so on to use. They worked pretty well, but then, on a trip back home to Omaha, Nebraska (the gateway to the square states), I noticed an old whiskey jug being used as a doorstop in my folks' house. I picked it up, tried it out, and wow. It produced a rich sound like no Kaoliang bottle ever had. Of course, I snagged it and brought it back to the Muddy Basin. Although we always to prefer to use Taiwan-made products for our instruments, I couldn't argue with the thumpin' sound of an old American ceramic whiskey jug. And it turns out that the jug is probably pretty old.

There's a stamp on the side that says "H.W. Huguley Co.; 134 Canal St.; Boston, Mass." I haven't been able to find much about the specific jug that I have, but the company did indeed exist between the years 1886 and 1916. As far as I know, they're not around anymore. (If anyone has more info, let me know.) Apparently, they produced lots of different whiskeys with some fun names which include "Huguley's Old Vatted Armor", "Moon Mountain", and my favorite, "Myopia Club". (Found that fun here.)

Because the jug is so old, I don't drink from it, and because it was a doorstop for decades, the dusty and musty stench that comes out of it when you blow into it is pretty bad. so before I play it, I pour a shot or two of whiskey into it as a deoderant. The jug seems to feel lighter and happier when it's holding some whiskey, as it was originally created to do so long ago. Plus, when you play it, the wafting whiskey fumes surround your head, and that creates a nice environment to play some jug music in.

A lot of people wonder how you make a sound out of a jug. Some claim that you blow across the top of it, like a pop bottle, to make a whistling sound. However, I don't think this is the way that those old jug bands did it. One reason is that when you listen to the old recordings of jug bands, the jug sound is nothing like a whistling sound. It changes pitch and slides up and down the scale. You can't do that by using the "pop bottle method". The second reason is that you would hyperventilate halfway through a song trying to get a whistling sound out of a jug. Plus, most snapshots of the players from the heyday show the jug players blowing straight into their jugs. You can't get a whistling sound that way without blowing a lung out.

The method that I use is one in which you pucker up your lips and blow through them. Trumpet players and didgeridoo players know what I'm talking about. It's all in the embouchure. Some people also claim that the jug player can also sing while exhaling, but I find it throws off everything else.

So what's in the jug? Two shots of whiskey, some spit from the spray of playing, lots of dust, and a fond memory or two for the lucky souls that got to drain the whiskey jug in the first place so I can play it today.

Practice Time

If you’ve seen the Muddy Basin Ramblers on stage, you probably imagine that we spend most of our free time in the studio rehearsing. In fact, we do. Thanks for noticing.

Now, take that bag of gasoline away from your face and read the truth.

The band normally meets on Saturday evenings to rehearse. (I didn’t say every Saturday.) Recently, we’ve been getting together at Sandman’s place. Sandy’s place is good, not for its acoustic properties (although they aren’t bad), but because none of his neighbors have complained about the noise yet. It’s also near the MRT, and Athula’s Sri Lankan roti stand.

On a side note: If you don’t know about Athula, get down to the night market just behind the Hsintien MRT station. Look for the Sri Lankan guy selling rotis, flat bread roll-ups filled with spicy curried meat and fresh veggies. Athula’s has a couple of stools for customers and is just opposite a 7-11 (for cold drinks), so it’s the official Muddy Basin Ramblers post-practice retreat.

Athula’s slogan is “No drink, no party.” The last time we partied with Athula, he showed up with five friends and the largest bottle of whiskey any of us had ever seen. That man surely knows how to have a good time.

This last Saturday was a practice weekend, and we met up at Sandman’s to work on some songs. We generally rehearse more diligently when we have a gig coming, and let me be the first to say, “We got one coming.” More on that later.

Surprisingly, we all arrived very close to the scheduled starting time. This may have been due to the challenge to everyone to show up on time made by one very punctual band member, who shall remain nameless.

When I walked in just before 6, Dave and Will were in the middle of a song, and they sounded good. Conor showed up not long after, and for the first hour, we kept it loud the entire time, with nary a break for a drink or smoke. After realizing how unusually productive we had been, we decided to slacken up just a bit for the next hour. No use setting precedents that we won't be able to follow in the future.

Will and I were trying out our new mp3 players/recorders, and we captured several of the jams. The quality of the recordings is similar to what you would hear if someone at a concert held their cell phone up so that you could hear what the band sounded like.

With TC busy filming Lady X in Guanhsi, Dave drafted Conor into trying the washtub bass. He played it on a couple of songs and sounded great. Dave soon jumped up, whipped off his right slipper, and began pounding on the bass string with that. Take notice TC.

Conor also learned a new song on the ukulele, and since he apparently picked it up so fast, Dave handed him a re-tuned banjo with a capo on the neck and told him to try the same song on that instrument. You should know this about Dave. He likes the band to be on its toes: changing instruments and keys are just two of the methods he has for keeping the sound fresh.

Slim had his tap shoes with him, and he was certainly in fine form. I was real impressed with his rhythm that night. He also had the trombone along, and although it hasn’t showed up on stage, it’s coming along nicely. Keep an ear out for Slim Willy and the slippery trombone coming to a roadhouse near you.

Although TC couldn’t make it in time to practice, he did show up later to accompany the band down to Athula’s for rotis. Before everyone left to get food, Sandman convinced Dave to restring his resonator guitar. This gave me the chance to grab Dave’s National, and after a few minutes of listening to me futilely trying to find a chord, Dave showed me some of the basics for slide guitar. I was off.

Funny thing about that guitar, playing it, you don’t notice how loud it is, but everyone else is thinking, “jeepers, that thing is loud, and that guy can’t play it for shit.” When I saw Sandman’s orange cat throwing himself at the screen door, apparently to escape the sonic barrage, I begin to wind down my performance. It is intoxicating playing that guitar, though, and I found myself in a Bukka White trance pretty quickly.

In fact, once I stopped playing, I realized someone new had shown up in our studio/Sandman and Jojo’s living room: Stray Dog, at least I think that is who it was. He was picking up blankets that S and J were donating to his animal shelter. Apparently, Stray Dog is well known among Taipei’s dog owners as the guy who makes those awesome organic dog biscuits.

The next gig: if all goes as planned, the Muddy Basin Ramblers will be performing in Mei-nung, Kaohsiung County over the weekend of December 10 and 11. It’s a Trees Music event, and will feature Shen-hsiang, members of his old band, the Labor Exchange Band, Okinawan legend Takashi Hirayasu (check out this link), and others. See our Muddy Basin website for more details. Come Saturday night to see performances by each of the bands and hang around on Sunday to see workshops by the musicians.

By the way, the art at the top is by Matisse.

The Washtub Bass

A year or so ago, when I first joined the band, I only played trumpet. David had the idea of adding a bass of some kind to the band, to fill out the lower part of our sound, which at that time consisted only of the jug, played by Slim. We made inquiries into acquiring a stand-up bass, but to no avail; we'd have to look elsewhere for our bass. In face, David wanted to stay with the old-style basses and avoid more modern bass guitars, and I agree. To this end, he did some research and put together a washtub bass consisting of a NT$200 "Chernobyl Orange" Formosa Plastic washtub, a stick about five feet long with a hole drilled through one end, climbing rope almost as brightly colored as the tub, and two metal washers. He took the rope, tied it in a knot, slipped the washers down it, and then threaded it through a hole he drilled in the washtub, tied the other end to the stick, and viola!

So we had a washtub bass. David brought it one night to Bobwundaye for us to try it out, and we did. Everyone gave it a shot, and it sounded great on Bob's wooden platform. The great advantage of flexible plastic is the greater range of discernable notes you can get, as opposed to the metal tubs, where you can just go ploink ploink ploink most of the time and that's about it. One Australian group I know of uses a tea chest, which sounds good, too, but tea chests are more expensive and harder to come by than plastic tubs, at least here in Taiwan.

I got a real kick out of playing the thing, and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to get a bassline out of it, and anyway I was the only one in the band who can't play guitar or any other instrument, so I took over the washtub bass playing. I began to single out the basslines of my favorite songs on my mp3 player and try to figure out what made them so good (or not so good, in some cases).

Funny thing is, most people, if they see me at all back there playing the bass, get the impression from my demeanor that I don't like it at all. Nothing could be further from the truth; I'm just so busy concentrating on getting the right notes on an instrument with no frets, positions, valves or anything to go by except pure feeling, that I don't have time to just sit back, relax, smile, or look like I'm having a good time. Also, I almost never look like I'm having a good time; even when I am. I'll be having a perfectly nice day, and people will come up to me saying, "What's wrong?" But that's just me.

Now, of course, I've added the euphonium to the mix, so I play less bass than I used to, but I still enjoy it. On many of the songs I long to be able to play both trumpet and bass, but I can't, so other members play it instead. Often, after performances, other bass players approach me wanting to try it out, and it's always fun to watch them play it. Most of them don't believe me when I say I've never played a "real" bass before, but it's true; I'm hopeless with any stringed instrument except three chords on a ukulele.

David uses his finger to pluck the bass, but I find that the sound is better for me when I use something like a mic stand or a pen to pluck it. It also saves my finger a lot of grief from the abrasion of plucking. In fact, the rope will and has rubbed its way right through other plucking implements, such as a pen that began oozing ink halfway through a performance at Witches one night. I should try a more sturdy material, like steel, I guess. The plastic tub is also beginning to crack from the stress, but those are easily replacable.

In any case, the washtub bass, with it's deep resonant sound and bright orange color, gets a lot of attention whenever we play, and I for one and really glad we've added it to the band. And, of course, Slim still plays his jug, but that's a story for another post.

A Truly Customized Instrument

I thought I'd share this link from an australian architecture blog, which was passed on to me by a friend

"Nabuaki Date is a Japanese artist who makes ukuleles out of parts of
Japanese buildings that are to be demolished. Each house is documented
through photographs and the parts for the ukulele are chosen. The
finished ukulele is given to the owner of the house as a visual and
acoustic embodiment of their former home."

http://www.gravestmor.com/wp/archives/2005/10/09/ukulele-isation/

Muddy Basin Ramblers

Neo-luddite Slim Tries to Post Something on a Blog

How in the name of the nurses and nuns in a whiskey factory does this thing work?

Word of the day: Frottoir
When Dave asked me to play the washboard in the Muddy Basin Ramblers, I didn't know what I was getting myself in for (or should that be "in for what I was getting myself?"). Besides learning how to play it, something I'm still working on, I've also been spending a fair amount of time searching for just the right board and objects to strike it with.

The first board I got was from Dave, and it's an all wood board, the kind that is probably still in use here in Taiwan. It's a lovely board, with ribbing on the front and back, but sadly it is not terribly loud, and therefore doesn't get played much. I drilled some holes in the upper part of the board and this lets me attach a small thumb cymbal that I bought in Cairo. I put the other cymbal on my left index finger and play the cymbal as a counerpoint to the scraping on the board. I scrape the board with a wooden chopstick, and I think local audiences enjoy seeing common household objects being used to make music.

The second board, also from Dave, is all metal, with ribbing only on the front, and while loud enough, is difficult to hold because of a short stand on its back so that it can be propped up while in use. Another problem with this board is that the ribs, the part that I scrape on to get a sound, are really deep and effectively knock the thimbles off my fingers, making it hard and somewhat painful to play. I think the board is made from cast aluminum, and if I had a way to mount the board on a stand when playing, it would probably make a good bell if I struck it with a hammer or something.

Board number three is one that I bought off the Internet, from the Lark in the Morning website. It cost about $25, if I remember correctly, and when I ordered it, I also had the company ship ten thimbles. The thimbles are steel, and while not large, fit on my index and ring fingers pretty securely, so I generally play with two of them on each hand. I've only got five left, so my extra sits in my pocket when I play. I wish I realized how easy these things were to lose when I bought them. I should have bought several dozen. I've started taping the tips of my fingers when I play because the edges of the thimbles have a had habit of cutting my fingers when I play. So far, however, the tape doesn't seem to be doing much good, because I still come away from performances with bloody and bruised finger tips. More on that later. The board itself is a wooden frame with a sheet of metal fastened in the middle and has ribbing on the front and back. The ribbing is crimped on one side, making the ribs a bit flatter on that side, which alters the sound somewhat and the speed at which it can be scraped. Deeper ribs generally slow down a scrape, while shallower ones give less resistance and can be scraped faster. This board is loud. I've attached a Chinese cymbal to the upper part of the wooden frame on one side, and I play this by tapping it with the thimbles on one hand while scraping the face of the board with the thimbles on my other hand. I've also affixed two cans, about three inches deep, to the bottom of the frame, and I play on these with my finger thimbles. They're not real loud, but they provide an interesting contrast to the rasping of the washboard.

The next board came from Dave, a souvenir from a trip that he took back to States in 2005. I think he told me that he got it at an antique store for $10. It also has wood frame, but it differs from the other American board in that it has a metal plate only on one side. This board has an old look to it; the wood appears aged, as if it had been smoked or oild, and the metal plate was a brass color when I first started playing it. That color pretty quickly got worn off when I played it, and the base metal, some kind of tin perhaps, shows through in the areas that I usually rub with the thimbles. The ribbing on this board is realy shallow, making this the quietest and fastest board in my collection. Unfortunately, the metal is also really thin, and it has now worn through in the area that i scrape the most. Basically, I can't play this board anymore until I figure out some way to replace the metal face. The jagged edges of the broken metal would probably slice a finger up pretty good if I tried to use it again. The last time I played this one, when I finally destroyed the metal face, was when I accompanied Gabriel Gratzer for a song during his performance at Blues Bash 2 in November 2005. This board also has cymbal attached to it, the twin of the one on board number three.

Now, for the word of the day, frottoir. This is the creole word for washboard, and it refers to a particular type of washboard used in zydeco. The premier washboard maker in Louisiana, the home of cajun music, is Key of Z Washboards. The owner of this company, and the premier maker of frottoir for professional musicians, is Tee Don. Tee Don's father made the very first frottoir for Clifton Chenier, the "King of Zydeco," back in 1946. Would I like one of Tee Don's frottoir? Of course. However, seeing as how they cost about ten times more than my most expensive board to date, I may have to save my money for a while. One great thing about Key of Z's website is that they have videos showing aspiring washboard players how to play.

But the search for the perfect washoard is not over because it's not just about the board; what you scrape the board with is just as important as the board itself. Therefore, I have turned my attention to my hands, specifically my fingers, and I have been pondering how to move away from the thimbles. I had an idea about using gloves with metal caps or pads on the fingertips, but I wasn't sure how to go about finding or making such a thing, so I did a little googling and came across Danny Young, a washboard player from Austin, Texas, who found a unique approach to the problem. In the article that I linked to above, Danny describes how he glued silver Mercury dimes to the fingertips of a pair of leater gloves. This is exactly the trick that I have been looking for, and with much appreciation to Danny for the help, I hope to make some of these gloves, substituting 5 NT$ coins for the dimes, for myself. While doing this research, I also came across musical gloves, gloves with sensors built in so that they can be used to trigger MIDI devices. I don't think I'll have any use for these soon, but it's good to know they are out there.

So, that's the long-winded story of washboards and me. In case, you are wondering, I have used a washboard to wash my clothes. When I was living in China back in the late 80s, I used to wash my clothes by hand in a tub with a washboard. It was not terribly pleasant. I am thankful to have something like this to use now instead.

Gig: Gabriel Gratzer and BoPoMoFo at Riverside
with special guests Dave Chen, TC Lin, and Sandy Murray

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't make it to this show, but I thought I would offer a brief review of it anyway. I'm sure such a thing has been done before.

(By the way, Dave did go to the show, and later wrote me a very brief description of what happened, so don't think my review is 100% made up. At least 1% has some connection to the real McCoy.)

BPMF opened the show at 9:30. The place was packed. The usual hipsters from Taiwan University were there, since Riverside is so near campus, and everyone knows NTU students greatly appreciate live music. Between each song, the audience rose to its feet en masse and lustily applauded the performers. Several women rushed the stage and sexually assaulted both DC and Akie before being shown back to their seats by DC's wife, Linda, who was working security for the show.

Each song BPMF played was better than the last, and the heights of musical ecstasy were reached on stage. People were sobbing, tearing at their clothes, tattooing themselves, slapping and pinching at themselves to make sure they weren't asleep, and the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves as well. But no one was asleep; the magic of the evening was a fire that could not be extinguished. At one point, when the music was too hot to handle without oven mitts, the sprinkers even came on, dousing everyone assembled, but it did nothing to lessen the fervor of the music.

During the short intermission before Gabriel came on stage, the staff at Riverside handed out towels to everyone so they could wipe the music goo off. Those members of the audience who had been at Blues Bash 2 commented on how pleasent it was not to be verbally assaulted by that jerky male emcee in a schoolgirl's outfit.

When Gabriel did come on stage, about 11 P.M., he was duded out in the same grey suit, cowboy hat, and gaucho boots that he wore when performing at BB2. It would not surprise me if every blues musician in Taipei starts wearing a similar outfit, such was the audience response to his fine threads. To get a better idea of this man's fashion sense, check out his website at www.gabrielgratzer.com.ar and see for yourself.

Unlike at his BB2 show, Gabriel played an electric guitar, and wowed the audience with this accomplished playing style. Not only is the man a consumate performer, he is an able improviser as well, making up songs off the top of his head several times throughout the show. Who knew that so many things could be made to rhyme with Buenos Aires?

Ater about an hour of non-stop blues, Gabriel moved out into the audience, among the people, and asked Dave to join him for two songs. In the immortal words of Dave, "I did two songs with him acoustic." Dave and Gabriel were the Blues Brothers of the evening, and while it wasn't clear who was Jake and who Elwood, these two bluesmen proved once again that the blues is an international sound.

BPMF joined Gabriel for the last few songs, and they even made room on stage for TC and Sandy during the last two. Apparently, Gabriel was so moved by the sound of the brass twins that he invited them both to move to Buenos Aires and become members of his posse full time. TC begged off, saying that he needed to concentrate on finishing his movie first, but someone saw Sandy on the phone later asking Jojo if she had ever wanted to learn Spanish.

The evening finished up at about 12:30, but no one was ready to leave. The staff at Riverside were forced to turn on the sprinklers again and even threatened to have the nutty guy in the the schoolgirl's outfit drop by and regale the audience with stories about his time in an ashram in India. That got everyone moving toward the door.

All in all, it was an unmatched evening of music. Blues fans in Taiwan, most of whom I am sure had never heard of Gabriel Gratzer before, had learned that blues is not just about the Delta, or Chicago, or even Shi-ta road; it is a music that spans the globe. We all look forward to the next night of blues, and we take our cowboy hats off to DC Rapier for bringing Gabriel to our island paradise.

Key Words
I have a feeling that this blog will not show up in google searches unless I pepper it with key words. So, if you have an aversion to posts that lack any sort of prose, avert your eyes.

muddy basin, muddy basin ramblers, blues, jug band, old time music, jazz, hokum, dave chen, taipei, taiwan, washboard, tap dance, bukka white, son house, muddy waters, blues bash, free beer, sex, xxx, music, live performance

muddy basin, muddy basin ramblers, blues, jug band, old time music, jazz, hokum, dave chen, taipei, taiwan, washboard, tap dance, bukka white, son house, muddy waters, blues bash, free beer, sex, xxx, music, live performance

There now. That wasn't so bad, was it?

Report on Poohat

I got a response from the artist who created the poster advertising our gig at 89K in Taichung last March. I emailed him yesterday and let him know that he was no longer the anonymous artist responsbile for the wild poster. Now, he will be known as Poohat, the moniker he goes by on blogspot http://poohat.blogspot.com/ . I also threatened to come and bother him in Taitung, but he let me know that he has been living in Taichung for some time, and that he is about to leave the island and return to Canada for at least a year. Timing is everything. Hmm. Blogspot is not letting me upload any other pictures. Do blogspot have a one per day limit on photos for free blogs? Or is my Internet connection acting wonky for some reason today. Anyway, check out poohat's site.

Gig: Riverside

Tonight, November 8, Gabriel Gratzer will be performing at Riverside with BoPoMoFo. Apparently, we were invited to go along, and probably accompany him on a song or two, but I didn't get the message till this morning when I checked my email. I guess that is a lesson: check email at night.

Honestly, I don't know if I would have been willing to go tonight, even if I had known early enough to get my gear together. Tuesday nights are generally not about music. Living so far out of town probably has something to do with this attitude.

That being said, I had a great time playing with Bonzo, the Slovakian bluesman who came for BB1 earlier this year. We met up with him on a Tuesday at the Living Room and jammed on several songs, memorably G-L-O-R-I-A.

The regret that night was not being able to hang out later at the club and continue drinking vodka with him. I remember seeing him take an envelope of cash from Corbett or his wife and then immediately splash out for a round of drinks for the musicians. I'd give you a picture of Bonzo Radvani, but I don't seem to be able to put more than one picture in this post.

Photos from Blues Bash 2

A friend pointed out that several flickr pages feature pics from BB2.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cantikfotos/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/robynkao

Monday morning is a good time to trawl the net looking for mention of the Muddy Basin Ramblers, and I found one new reference. The picture above is a poster that was made for a gig we did in Taichung earlier this year. I've got one of the prints, and I'm hoping to get the chance to meet up with the artist. He lives in Taitung, and I love hanging out down there. You can check out the artist's blog at http://poohat.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_poohat_archive.html

If you haven't found our band's website, then by all means get over to http://www.muddybasin.com and check it out. You'll also find mention of us at http://www.poagao.org, which is TC's website.

Gig: Blues Bash 2

November 5, 2005 was a day that the management of the Breeze shopping mall will never forget. DC Rapier and the Blues Society on Taiwan brought Blues Bash 2 to Taipei. Blues Bash 1 was held in March 2005 at Tiger City mall in Taichung, and although the outdoor courtyards at both places gave the events a similar feel, the weather for BB2 was much nicer, with warm, sunny skies in contrast BB1's cold, blustery winds.

Another similarity was the music: BB2 blue everyone away. Of course, the serious blues fans knew what was in store, but the shoppers who wandered in and out had probably never seen or heard anything like the music that was on offer. The lineup of bands at BB2 featured many of the blues bands currently performing in Taiwan, as well as several international artists.

Starting off the show was BoPoMoFo, playing Chicago blues and led by DC Rapier. Up next, country/blues Beaver County Rangers, with Kevin Smith on guitar and vocals. Then it was the turn for a real local act, Black Sheep, featuring frontman Stevie Ray who is on a mission to spread the gospel of guitar god Stevie Ray Vaughn. After that came Le Chats Noir, a cool jazzy blues combo with hot guitar licks and a sultry French femme on vocals. Next were Dave Chen and the Muddy Basin Ramblers, with the longest name and sound check of any band holding the stage that day. The Ramblers were followed by Boogie Chillin', sporting snazzy dark suits and flinging insidious blues at an appreciative audience. When the sun had finally set, Argentine Gabriel Gratzer sat down to perform a sweet solo show and was joined at the end of his set by several guest musicians. Finally, Shun Kikuta, of Japan and Berklee, and backed by the members of BoPoMoFo, shook his blue Gibson at the audience and rattled the windows of the mall with an inspiring selection of blues standards. The last act of the evening was an invitation to every musician in the square to claim a space on the stage, and it was a spectacle to behold.

Okay, that is my lame attempt at a straight description of what went on. Now, here's a more personal recollection of the Blues Bash 2.

I missed the first act. Noon is just too early to start, in my opinion. It was hot when I got there, and there was no barbecue to be found, so my wife and I beat it into the mall and found a decent Chinese restaurant. Finishing that, we decided to check out the Starbucks' patio on the second floor, overlooking the courtyard where BB2 was held. I got an ice coffee, a table beneath a ceiling fan, and relaxed under the canvas roof. A couple of fans approached me a little later, and I chatted with them about the band, music tastes, and of course, what we all do in Taiwan. Scott, the one I remember more clearly, works for a patent company, writing applications and that sort of thing. It turns out his wife is an English teacher and works as a rater for the speaking and writing portion of the GEPT. Small world, yada yada.

From my perch upstairs, I saw that the rest of the band had arrived, and while I listened to the Black Sheep and Beaver County Rangers, I got my washboards sorted out. Basically this means attaching the cymbal to one of them and wrapping my fingertips up.

I made it down to the backstage area by about 3, and chatted with bandmates and friends until it was out turn to go on stage. About the stage, ohmigod! It was an all-in-one unit from a beer company, and the sides and roof were all hydraulically controlled. Opened up, it was a space-age, self-contained performance stage, with a built in sound booth, dedicated outlets for power, monitors, mics, and the like. Unfortunately, the sound guy was a little put out by Dave's sound design, and we did the best we could to whittle our microphones down to a number that he could finally deal with. That was why it took us so long too get set up, but we finally took over the stage from the emcees, a pleasently obnoxious 6 foot 6 inch tall guy in a school girl's uniform, and 4 foot 10 inch Linda, DC's wife, at about 4:20. Meaninful that.

I can't be bothered right now to look for my copy of the song list, but I remember it featured Rag Mama Rag, Friday Night Fish Fry, Dancehall Shuffle, Red River, All By Myself, Jug Band Blues, and one or two others. The set went by incredibly quickly. One stand out moment, a long moment, of musical ecstasy was Conor's wicked harmonica solo, featuring a-hooting and a-hollering, to open up Red River. The monitors on stage weren't giving us much sound, so TC and I, who depend on hearing Dave's guitar for our riddim cues, might have been rambling a little more than usual, but everyone said the sound was okay, so I guess it didn't make much difference in the long run. Dave stuck to the guitars and left the banjo at home this time, so we didn't feature quite as much tuning time between songs as we often need, and we all felt that we kept up a good pace. When you get forty minutes on stage, you don't want too many of them to be lost to incidentals. Will had his tap area miked, and Sandy had a pick up for his resonator ukelele, so we had a completely amped sound, something we don't accomplish in many of our gigs. I got All By Myself to slightly muddy start, but we got it back into line pretty quick and we finished all together on the "all by myself" vocal part at the end. The last song was Rolling and Tumbling, I think, and it brought our musical offering right back to the delta blues at the end of our set. We reluctantly surrendered the stage to the emcees and offered our encouragement to Boogie Chillin' as they climbed the stairs.

Then I started drinking, in earnest. I had thrown the tail end of the previous night's suntory into my starbucks earlier, and it was time to thin the blood in my veins. Several of us took a few strolls across the boulevard to enjoy the evening scenery. I do like the eye-scream at estrogen malls. The supermarket downstairs at the mall, aside from being another of the vastly overpriced mall markets that have sprung up in the last several years, featured an interesting selection of alcoholic libations. I enjoyed the spiked Japanese lemonade that a gentleman of locks treated me to, and I grabbed some more for myself later. Good, but maybe not worth NT$90.

The music was awesome. Playing at these shows is always great, but hearing everyone else is even better. It is wonderful to see the audience get into the music. As musicians, we can't help but be moved by the music, and to see that it has the same effect on others is satisfying, especially the very young and very old.

I was very glad to have the chance to get on stage with Gabriel. Of course, I had no idea what he wanted to play, aside from his warning that it would be ragtime. He has a great voice, wonderful hands on the guitar, and a real feel for his music. After his set, we chatted a bit and he's as nice a guy as you could for. Apparently, he comes out of a gospel tradition of music, and also has a music school in Buenos Aires. He said he was getting ready to go and do five dates in Japan after he leaves Taiwan.

Shun Kikuta was an inspiration. I have never seen a full-on blues showman before, and he was one. He made the point of mentioning that BB2 was his first chance to be the fron man. Normally, he plays as the guitarist for Koko Taylor, identified as the "Queen of the Blues." I can't vouch for Koko, but Shun is amazing. In fine blues tradition, he not only broke a string on his guitar but dropped his glass slide and watched it roll off the stage and shatter on the concrete below before finishing the set.

Continuing with my personal recollection, let me jump to the blues jam at the end of the show. I was on stage with probably 12 to 15 other people, and it was a jam I won't soon forget. I was on stage left, with two harps and a trumpet to my left and three tenor saxes to my right. Behind were the bass player and drummer, and farther down the stage to the right, a collection of guitarists that seemed to grow with each passing minute. I even saw a taxi pull up on Civic Boulevard and a guitarist jump out and run to join the guitar gang before the show ended at about 8:30 or so.

Not having done much shopping in the mall, I talked DC and Linda into selling the MBR members concert tees for half price, so my collection of Blues Bash shirts is now up to 2. A complete set, so far.

Afterwards, some of us retired to Da An park for more drinks and music under the stars. And then finally my wife and I jumped in a taxi for our ride back to the mountain. The rest of the party was headed over to the opening party of Bliss, the new reincarnation of Chocolate and Love, on Hsin-yi road.

All in all, it was a powerful immersion into the blues. I look forward to more.

This blog is a document, after the fact, of Muddy Basin Ramblers gigs. I won't vouch for the veracity or wittiness of the posts to follow, but I expect there may be a smattering of each.