Soundchecking at Chickie's with Junco...
And memories of Honeyboy doin' the Hambone
And, as chance would have it, I find myself back in my other living room, Concourse C at New Orleans Louis Armstrong Airport. There’s a wall of nasty weather on its way from Mexico, but there’s still a chance I’ll make it out to Houston before it hits - assuming, of course, the storm doesn’t make it to Houston before me. I’m confident that I’ll make my connection and that tonight I’ll be sitting down for an evening meal in Canadia.
I’m setting off on a two-week tour, opening up shows for my old friend Bonnie Raitt and her band. I’ll be warming up the room in theatres every night with forty minutes of solo piano plonkage, hoping that the crowds will be at least a little familiar with the sound of Crescent City ivory rattling. If they aren’t at the beginning of the show, they will be by the end. The solo variety of my dog and pony show allows me a fair degree of flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pantness and I can never really anticipate what my fingers will choose to do when I sit down at the keyboard. Sometimes they go at it of their own volition and I sit and watch and listen.
Who knows, I might be given a good idea earlier in the afternoon at the soundcheck - a process that can sometimes take as long as the gig itself, or longer. It’s a chance to hear what the room sounds like and try out the piano du jour. I’ll often let my digits do the walking and just watch and wait to see if they’ll lead me to somewhere inspirational. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, there’s a cerebral repository of melodies and lyrics, riffs and turnarounds, intros and outros, a library, a to-do list, a mental inventory of song ideas; just scraps lying around in the cerebral filing cabinet that will come to me unbidden, if they feel like it.
The last solo show I played was on my home turf at Chickie Wah Wah’s den of ill repute in New Orleans on Wednesday and the tune that popped into my mind after some initial rambling and noodling was Junco Partner. ‘Junco’ was James Booker’s signature tune. Dr John used to play it too and its form and its lyrics are based on an older blues that had low-down associations. Mac said that it was a favourite with the old junkies, a basic blues anyone could mess around with up in Angola penitentiary, an old plantation turned prison in North Louisiana, a tune that they’d play for the hookers, dealers and pimps.
Below the paywall is a recording of soundcheck, some recollections of a trip to Angola and memories of Honeyboy doing the Hambone…
