Crawfishing with Johnny the Rapper...

Morgan and Ali had a craw fish boil last weekend. It was kind of a house warming party for their new home. We ate and played music so it was kind of a gig in the way that when your family and friends show up to your house with instruments they play and if someone does not have an instrument you give them one. That's what we did for Johnny the rapper and his friends. 

This is 62 pounds of crawfish. They were all eaten except for the barest bowl of tails we shelled out at the end of the night. 

Morgan did the cooking. After years of training my kids throw great parties. I don't have to do anything but bring my guitar. Oh yeah there was the fact that Morgan made me weed eat the yard while he mowed the morning before the party but it's a pretty small yard and it might have been some kind of pay back for me making him do the same thing at some point in his growing up. 

"Hey man, what you going to do with that cob when you through with it?" 

This girl wants me to eat craw fish with her. 

Here is some of the folks sitting around shelling and sucking heads. As the evening wore on instruments came out. I regret I laid down my camera for a guitar as there was some interesting music that happened and I did not get a picture of the players. Sometime through the evening Johnny the rapper and two friends appeared.

Johnny saw me playing the harp with the guitar as I do and told me he had played the harp but had given that up for rapping. His friends, and I regret again I did not get their names. One told me he played like Van Halen. The other was either not a musician or a braggart. He did not tell me anything. 

Me and Johnny got into a conversation based on a mutual love of thick delay and flanged sounds. We were not able to create such as this but with Cathy on guitar, Morgan on acoustic bass, me on reso, harp and cigar box we gave Johnny the bongo cajon drum, Van Halen took the cajun washboard and not a musician played tambourine.  We suddenly had a band. 

Now I must say that Johnny and friends were drinking beer. I don't drink and don't encourage it to facilitate creativity but a person can consume a certain amount to be at such a point as they can do no wrong. Johnny got to this point with the bongo cajon. The bongo cajon is a square box drum you play like standard bongos. Only thing is that in addition to playing it in this manner Johnny turned it over to shriek, yell, moan and groan into the sound chambers. At this point in the story I must note that neither Johnny or his friends had ever played any of these instruments before and before the evening was out all had taken a worthy solo spot. 

Which I guess brings me to the point of this long rambling story.  I am sorry but sometimes I would rather play with Johnny that I would with you old boys who think you know how the song goes. Seems like sometimes a musician is a closed book. He's got his thing. He likes it and he sticks to it and might not be very adaptable when things get different. People like Johnny keep it fresh and open. 

Later on Van Halen did play some guitar. I guess he did sound like Van Halen but I don't know. I'll have to youtube some of that stuff to see. All these guys and the various onlookers did well with the traditional big ball dance as the band cooked up a spooky stone groove to "Big Balls in Cowtown." Johnny never did throw up in the bongo cajon although it seemed he might at times. I like to think that was just his passion for the moment we were in. His friends capped the evening off by assuring us that there was no way in heck they were going to let Johnny drive. 

People like Johnny teach us all. There are no barriers. Get out there, eat crawfish, jam, live.