Blow by blow

...for those who don’t know. I think I should probably give an account of what happened down to The Pour House on Christmas night for my birthday bash. There were a lot of faces missing (although about 170 paid) so as their friend I just wanted to tell’m what they missed.
Obviously, when you’re dealing with a bunch of drunks then you never know who’s gonna show up and who ain’t, which is why I paint for myself and don’t have a crew like my Dad did back in the day. That’s a story for another day. But when David Enloe called me 2 weeks ago and said “learn the live Faces version of “I Can Feel the Fire” from the “Five Guys walk into a bar..” CD” I knew there was no need to even listen to it, it wasn’t gonna happen. I just know David. Sure enough, he calls on the day of the gig and says “Uh, we stayed up late and partied and I ain’t gonna make it to the show”. So it’s raining outside and I get from him about what I figgered I would get, a no show. OakTeam guitarist and drummer Dave B. talked to Chip Robinson as we were doing soundcheck and I never asked what he said but obviously he had better things to do. I thought Scotty Miller was coming according to his Emails but it just didn’t work out for any of them. Three for three..all no shows. Greg Rice gets a pass. His folks live in Pamlico, NC (which is where he was) and we’ll take him whenever we can get him. So we were left with just the three of us, Dave, Jack and my very own self personally to do at least an hour and a half to entertain the peoples what came to wish me a happy birthday. Was I worried? Hell no, not in the least bit. We had done it before and will probably do it again. Big Daddy Dave should have invented the phrase, “Get’r Done” and Jack has never failed me. These guys wanna play, 3 piece, 4 piece or 5. Don’t make a shit to them. They are always chomping at the bit to rock and that’s what we was fiddin’ to do!
So we get our soundcheck done with master soundman, Jac Cain and Will and his band start pluggin’ into the direct boxes up front for their acoustic guitars. Will had told me that their singer, Corey knew “Can’t Touch This”, the MC Hammer song, so after they checked with “Folsom Prison Blues” I hopped up there and a called for it to see for myself. Will played the bass part perfectly and I had the beat. Corey nailed all of the lyrics for that sucka and it was funnier’n hell! It was really great and I wished we had done it during the show!
People gradually mingled in and about 8:30 Will, Corey and Dave did a quick 6 song set which was received with more than polite applause but even a few yips and yells in there too. It’s fun to see guys up there that can actually sing, especially when one of them is your son.
We took our time about getting the OakTeam show on the road, allowing for more time for the peoples to arrive. But the show finally did go on about 9:30 or so p.m. I had it in my mind, though we hadn’t discussed it , that we would do 2 sets. I purposefully did not eat dinner and DID ride my Schwinn Airdyne exercize bike for 30 minutes before leaving home. Both were good decisions. I learned from Dan that a full belly makes it TEN times harder to get up there and sing your ass off all night long. Duh! I guess if I would have just stopped to think about it…So anyway, to make a long story longer, we kicked it off like we do about 80% of the time with “Weather or Not”, the perfect song to start with out of the “Olympic Theme” song. We then went down the list pretty much like the new “live in the studio” set list does, “Killin’” next, “Mr. Bus.”, “Daddy had a Wreck”, etc. etc. We did about an hour of the favorites from all of the records, 18 songs or so, before ending the first set with “Price of an Education”.
We took about 30 minutes to talk to folks, change shirts and in the case of Big Daddy, smoke a few cigarettes. We started the next set without Dave and Jack. This was something that Will and I had talked about earlier and had only practiced just before soundcheck. Will played my high strung (using just the tiny strings from a 12 string set) Tele acoustic and I stood up there and sang one of my favorite songs from the second record, “Nothing on You”. I think it went well. I felt really comfortable AND confident with Will up there only forgetting one line in a song that’s full of’m. I thought it was one of the coolest things we did all night. The OakTeam boys came up and we did “Church Folks Comin’” and “37 Miles in Reverse”, the 2 that I play guitar on. After that it was a free-for-all, “Battleship Chains”, “SLUT”, “Can’t git the one you want” and then my friend Barry Herndon came up and played drums on “Purple GTO” as I sang and played with my remote controlled purple GTO that I got for Christmas. Dave sang a verse too. He has to help out on that one, it’s too high for me and just totally wrecks my voice for anything after it. I don’t know why in the hell I wrote it in that key!
Will came up again next and blew everyone away with his drumming on “I Love You Period”. We had everyone doing the signs for the punctuations that Carina came up with 15 years ago. It was dumb and fun to see the crowd in unison making fools of theyselves, just like us! I fell out after that and went into my “I’m so punished!” soliloquy that lead into “Thunderbird”. That thing gets stupider and longer every time I do it. I never know what the hell is coming outta my mouth next when I’m rattling off about how the man is keeping me down and how I gotta self-medicate and the only way to make it through the day is well…basically get drunk on Thunderbird. Seriously, I got no clue what the hell I’m talking about up there. I just get the spirit, like a preacher. Next thing ya know you’re bombarded by the first 2 chords of the song....blang blang!...”got 2 quarts this mornin’..”
Outta that we hit “Check Please” 90 miles an hour and said “Goodnight!”. Then we ran off like rock stars or something. It was an Ass-Kickin’ of the highest order. But hell, we would play all night if they’d let us. It’s just too much fun, y’all.
BUT! I hadn’t had a drink all day and there was still time to celebrate my 50TH!!! Birthday. We jumped back out for “All Dressed Up” and Big Daddy finished the night up by singing “Turn it Up” from Tommy Stinson’s last record. LOVE that song!
It really couldn’t have gone much better. I would’a loved to have shared the stage with our other friends but I think this was the way it was meant to be. And we pulled it off.. like the troopers we are. No brag..just fact.