This thread is really bringing back some memories. :violin:
Growing up my Mom always listened to Big Band (where I got my love for jazz, and later bands like Steely Dan) and Dad always listened to Classic Country. Somewhere in Jr. HIgh, or High School, my great-grandmother died and I inherited an old fiddle. I glued parts of it back together, scraped off the finish with an old Xacto blade, sanded it smooth, and refinished her, with a black sunburst done with my $13 Badger airbrush and topped with brushed-on polyurethane. I could play "Mary had a little lamb" after a few weeks.
My roommate in college played a beautiful Ovation acoustic, and was heavily into the Beatles. I was listening to Chicago all the time, but he kept insisting I pull out the fiddle and play along with him (he must've had nerves of steel, or was tone-deaf). We eventually centered on stuff like Pure Prairie League, John Prine, Neil Young, and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (and all kinds of other stuff). Started entering "open stage" nights, and the Bug bit. Hard. A guy approached me in the supermarket, said he saw me playing fiddle in xxx club, and offered me a job! Soon I was getting $10-50 a night playing with him (on bass/vox), a wonderful guitarist who played strictly acoustic/vox with four fingerpicks, and my college jazz band drummer on a delaminating "sparkly" kit he stored, sans cases, in his VW Bug (which I walked past every day to class. In South Dakota! :shock: )
Graduated. Commissioned. Assigned to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. Joined a country band in a town south of Dayton; three brothers, their Mom on keys/vox, and cousin on Lead Guitar (got the part with an audition of Alabama's Mountain Music, a popular band that hasn't been mentioned yet). Those guys knew (their claim) 1,500 country songs, and I gotta admit they'd pull out 2, 3 new songs (to me) on stage every night I was with them, wow! Kept me on my toes. Added a cheap mandolin (they're tuned same as a fiddle) and then I found an E9, 3-pedal, 1-knee-lever pedal steel guitar in a pawnshop for $300, brought her home and eventually learned to play it. Sorta. Cool thing about steel, you can hit just two notes, bend one of them slowly, up and down, and all the folks sittin around the bar just start crying in their beer!
PCS'd to Albuquerque, played in a couple bands down there, but started making enough money to buy some decent synths, and soon drifted into rock. But, those many years of country will always be in my DNA, and a lot of the clips here sure brought back the memories. Sorry for blabbing on so long again. :doh:
