My Musical Ideas...

 I have these musical ideas. One of them I had about 10 years ago when I bought a very nice Eastwood baritone guitar. At the time I was playing out a good bit with a lot of different musicians and making cigar box guitars. It seemed there was a lot of opportunities and one of them I felt was to have a little trio of a hard driving rhythm guitar player, me on the baritone guitar playing bass lines and throwing in a bit of lead guitar and a drummer. 

Baritone guitar is that sound you hear doubling the string bass on old country recordings. It's that low twang on TV and movie sound tracks where the shows are either about surfing, aliens, 1960s spy themes or spaghetti westerns. I figured it would go good in a small ensemble for bass or lead especially with an electronic dose of stuttering delay, dripping reverb, and wobbly tremolo. That strong strong rhythm playing and a thudding heavy tom tom would be picking up the bass sounds when I took a lead. 

Nobody else thought this. I could not get the idea off the ground. I was just a guy with a weird guitar like no one else had. To tell the truth if I was a bit better at Travis picking I might have put the idea across. 

It's ok though because by now I have about lost the fire in the gut required to tote a big Fender amp somewhere and my neighbors have not complained about stuttering delay, dripping reverb, and wobbly tremolo that emit from my house from time to time.  

Today I played tuba, digeridoo and harmonica in the park. I can get all that stuff from the car to the bench where I sit to play in one trip. I take playing in the park in spells. Depends on how good the fish are biting or if my services are required to babysit a grandchild. I have played twice out of the last 14 days or so. 

Some days no one stops to talk. Like a band built around a baritone guitar, a tuba player on a park bench might be someone that's not quite right but I do meet interesting people that if they stop to talk to me can only be labeled as the righteous true believers. There was the out of town band director using the jogging trails who was surprised to see a tuba player on a park bench.  I once gave a harp to a homeless guy who stopped to listen and talk. An Asian lady enjoyed the music so much she gave me $20. 

Today was a good people day with many folks enjoying morning before the day got too hot A guy walking the trails gave me a thumbs up. An older couple getting in their steps thanked me for the concert. A guy with a sack lunch and a cool drink at a picnic table told me he had not seen a digeridoo since he left California. Another a walker told me in broken English with his hand to his heart, "your music, I better now!"  

I can't remember exactly when I started these park tuba concerts. Must have been sometime in 2019. It's not an original idea because as I have traveled from New Orleans to New York, Munich to Prague and Austin to Waco I see people playing in parks. It's something that I thought my town needed. It's one of my musical ideas that has worked.