Bo!

Thoughts and prayers to Bo Diddley and his family this week. 'Ol Bo had a stroke in Iowa Sunday night after a gig. He's 78 and has battled diabetes. I love the guy. Back when The Brewery(great club in Raleigh)was still open, our band The Woods backed Bo for two great shows one night. He was hilarious, when they turned the house over for the second show he sat backstage with us and told us like 65 jokes! He laughed harder and louder than anybody. I bet he had told those jokes a thousand times but they were still killing him.
He started us off by telling us our cues for stopping and starting the songs and he didn't want me to play "Bo's beat". He just wanted a straight beat, kick on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4. We got into some jams that night that were just completely off the hook! He had a new Octiver box and Jack keep walking over and stomping on it. Bo just smiled. He and David Enloe got into some guitar solo battles that were really amazing. Man! It was a blast! The first set was the best set, it was really brilliant but of course it was the secong set that I recorded. Though it was still great, we were trying to manufacture that magic we had during the first show and not playing quite as instinctively as we had earlier. I think both of the shows were about 2 hours long and each contained about 8 songs. I woke up the next morning and my arms were literally numb! But 4 hours of rockin' out with Bo Diddley was well worth it!