metaphysical redneck – buddhist country
My friend Steve is a very talented musician and songwriter. He’s played all kinds of interesting venues from honky tonks to places of worship. He builds beautiful native american flutes, and plays upright bass (airbrushed with gorgeous Betty Page pinup artwork) in a Rockabilly cowpunk band. He’s written and released lots of material over the years, ranging from country and western to new age spiritualist meditation music. Sometimes it’s both of those things at once; which, believe it or not, makes perfect sense.
This weekend, he let me and a couple of friends play along.
I occasionally make mention of my “awkward country phase” in the mid-90s, but this weekend, I got act it out a bit, backing Steve on a couple of tunes as part of the Down Home Dharma Band. It was a ton of fun, pretending to be a country side-man for a little while, and employing my Fender Telecaster in the way nature intended.
Below, I include a video from our soundcheck on Sunday. Sad to say, I do a lot of shoegazing, but improved my performance a bit during the main event. Other than a couple of bum notes (also remedied later), I think it sounds pretty okay, given that I never really considered myself a lead player:
In any case, I had a lot of fun, and want to thank Steve, Jeff, Bryan, Greg, Elizabeth, and everybody else for coming together to make this happen. It was indeed an honor to participate.
