By |

When you’re on stage performing, sometimes perfection is your enemy. You’re goal is to sing the song. You want to get the idea across so you go for it and you don’t care if you miss a note or hit the wrong fret. You’re selling the sizzle…not the steak. But sometimes perfection is an admirable goal. Sometimes you want sizzle and steak.
Georgia and I played our Wednesday night Stageit show last night and this morning we were talking about how we each thought the show went. We started comparing notes on how each of us strives or doesn’t strive for perfection. It’s not as if you’re singing the second verse and you’re thinking about what you want for lunch the next day. But we often watch the show, after it’s over, and say “Yikes. That was rough. I thought I played that song better than that.”

 

That made me think of a little game my friend Rudy Guess and I used to play on stage when we played with Carole King on her Living Room Tour.

 

We tried to see if we could be “perfect.”

 

There were songs in the set list that were the ones where “anything goes.” Songs like “Locomotion” and “Smackwater Jack” were written to be played with wild abandon. The three of us would roam the stage, inciting the crowd, setting fire to our guitars.

 

However, there were songs in the set that demanded that Rudy and I attempt to be perfect. When you are playing “Up On The Roof” or “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”….and you are playing the song with Carole King herself….the song deserves to be played perfectly.

 

That is much, much harder than it sounds.

 

Rudy and I would try to achieve it every night. On the classic songs we would each try to play the song perfectly. Not a sharp or flat harmony. Every guitar part nailed. If one of us succeeded in that goal, we would let the other know by whispering one word as we went back to our stools to switch instruments or to sit down… “Perfect” one of us would whisper.

 

Do you know how often that happened? We toured Japan. The US. Australia. New Zealand. Everywhere.

 

We heard  “Perfect” maybe five times. Five times out of a thousand performances.

 

When you’re trying to do justice to a classic song, you are very hard on your self. “Perfect” had to be unquestionable. Undeniable. The fact that neither Rudy nor I said it for the first hundred shows or so tells you how hard it was to achieve.

 

Rudy passed away a while ago. As a guitar player and friend, he was pretty perfect. I cherish the game we played. He made me a better performer by challenging me that way. If there are any Youtube videos up on the Intraweb of us, with Carole in the Living Room Tour…check them out. Maybe you’ll catch one of the “perfect” songs.

By |

We had a band but nowhere to play. If we were going to unveil our new group we would have to take it into our own hands and create a place to play.

One of my high school classmates was hurt in an accident and Dean suggested we put on a benefit concert for him. And we would be the headlining act!!

So the first time I ever play out in public was gong to be in my High School auditorium in front of 500 people. I did not have a great history in this auditorium. I had tried out for every play and talent show my high school ever put on and never got selected for ANY of them. The only time I had been on the auditorium stage was a concert we put on for our parents where I played “God Bless America” on a baritone horn.

Now I was backstage peeking thru the curtains to see if anybody actually came. I knew my Mom and Dad were out there. I knew my brother Randy and his wife Pat was out there. I told myself it didn’t matter if we had a crowd or not. But I couldn’t resist. I peeked out and saw the auditorium was full. I pooped my pants. Just a little. In show business it’s considered good luck. Some say “Break a leg!” Some say “Stain the Trou!”

Dean was in charge so he herded everyone out to their positions.

I went out, put my guitar over my shoulder and stood nervously behind the curtain. We were starting with “Mare Take Me Home”, a Wildweeds song written and sung by Connecticut legend Al Anderson.

The curtain rose, Dean counted off…and I started my music career. I thought we sounded great. I have a cassette of the show…whoever recorded it missed the opening numbers. It only captured a sampling of the middle of the concert…but the vocals sound great. The only instrument you hear is my cheap acoustic guitar with the pickup in the hole. This is what the show was:

“Kind Woman”…a Poco song that I sang. Funny how it’s a song that is very much dominated by steel guitar but Eddy wasn’t playing steel yet. In a year he would switch.

“Down By The River” by Neil Young. This began my lifelong obsession with imitating Neil.

Rocky Racoon (Beatles) sung by our bass player Dennis O’Neal

The JONI MITCHELL version of Woodstock!!! How cool were WE?

Then we brought out Paul Kroll and he sang with us…this was considered quite a coup. It validated us to have the BIG folk singer in town deign to perform with us.

With Paul we did:

“For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield

It took a while for this song to get going because you can hear Eddy replacing a string that broke during Woodstock. Between songs was always dead silence only slightly interrupted by us tuning…always tuning. My Dad drove me back up to WPI the next weekend and his only criticism of the show was “Don’t tune so much. It makes you sound amerish.” To this day I use that phrase and it makes me smile. “Let’s not play that…it makes us sound amerish.”

“Bluebird” by Buffalo Springfield…a train wreck. A very ambitious train wreck…but a train wreck. The end of this record has a banjo in it. John, our sound guy, made me a little stomp pedal to make my acoustic guitar sound like a banjo. I stepped on it and the guitar just sounded like….the same guitar… only cheaper and thinner.

“Handsome Johnny”….this was a song Richie Havens sang at Woodstock…I knew this one…I heard it at Woodstock and so did Paul. I can slightly hear the band playing behind him but it’s mostly just Paul.

“Coming Into Los Angeles”…Arlo Guthrie. I fell in love with it at Woodstock so I made sure our band learned it. Paul knew it so we let HIM sing it here. I was generous in the years before I became bitter.

The last song on the tape is “Helpless” by CSN&Y. Not a bad version. Once again it’s me doing Neil.

That’s all that’s on the tape. I kind of remember that we took a little break and came back with Paul and me singing Mr. Bojangles.

I’m not sure if we sang anything else together. We ended the show with “I’m a Man” by Chicago and had everybody that wanted to jump up on stage with us. Dean’s girlfriend Cindy grabbed him around the neck as he played and screamed about how great the show was. Our friend Chris Lippit grabbed percussion and played along.

The audience went crazy and the curtain came down. I excused myself and went and changed my pants.

By |

“He’s no fun…he fell right over.”

 

“Stop SLAPPING me!”

 

“Porgie Tirebiter…he’s a spy and a girl delighter…”
When I was really young my parents had the Bob Newhart comedy album. I didn’t really understand much of it but between his album and Shelly Berman’s, I grew up believing that all phone calls are hysterical!

 

When I got a little older my brothers introduced me to the Smothers Brothers. Music AND laughs. My destiny awaited. I remember the routine about their mother buying Dickie a dog and Tommy got a chicken. I’m sure there was subtext.

 

My pal across the street, Pete, would put his parents Bill Cosby record on the living room stereo and we would sit on the back porch and listen with riotous effect. What ten year olds got out of Cosby I’m not sure. Maybe we just liked the funny voices he used.

 

Maybe it was the glimpse into African American culture that his socio-economic themed passages afforded us.

 

Nah. It was the funny voices.

 

Then I hit junior high and high school. I was all in on Firesign Theater. That’s where the above quotes came from. Me and my friend Bob would sit in his basement, with the album on a reel to reel machine and listen to “How Can You Be In Two Places At Once (When You’re Not Anywhere At All)” over and over, trying to catch all the background jokes and effects. It was drug culture humor being enjoyed by two kids hopped up on Flintstone vitamins. To this day Nick Danger and Rocky Rococo mean more to me than Jerry and George.

 

When I made my brief drive thru of college, it was Cheech and Chong 24/7 but I didn’t enjoy them. I get it. They were stoned. One of them was INSIDE the door…one of them was OUTSIDE the door. I needed more, I guess.

 

Carlin was a genius and I loved his stuff mostly because he was the first voice coming out of my stereo that cursed, unless you counted MC5.

 

These days I drive around in a car that has a radio that can get ten thousand stations. I have about six of them set to comedy stations. Sometimes they play Carlin…Newhart…..they never play Firesign Theater. Never Cosby. I have to look into that one. Must be a reason.

 

The toughest part about listening to so much comedy is that, when I perform, a perfect situation will present itself to hit the audience with something I heard Gilbert Godfrey say earlier that day. Then I have to stop the show, give attribution, feel the rage of the audience when they realize they were cheering and laughing for ME, only to learn that the cathartic experience we had all shared was due to someone ELSE’S genius, not mine.

 

Shame on me. Shame on me.

 

I would recommend you all go out and get the rereleases of the Firesign Theater albums but I am pretty sure, even if I listened to them now for the first time, I would find them too much work. We have gotten used to our humor in short staccato blasts. We like them coming at us like the hot kiss of a wet fist. (Another Firesign reference.) Maybe they were just what I needed to hear in that time period between my parents telling me “no” and the girls in school telling me ….”no.”

 

Do you find the following funny?

 

A UFO lands in a small town and a local is interviewed……
“The alien had skin smooth like baby’s feet. We took him to the church picnic…where he choked to death on a piece of cheese.”
Still kills me.

By |

The Bluebird Cafe has always been very important to us and our fellow songwriters. In this stressful time when small businesses are not able to be open due to safety concerns, we wanted to do our part to help. So this coming Friday night, Aug. 21st, Middleman Burr will be performing live from The Bluebird stage and 100% of ticket sales will be going to The Bluebird.

Will you please join us for this special virtual event?

For tickets, click HERE

By |

Each week since the quarantine began (which has been 13 weeks now) we’ve written a new song to play on our Wednesday night Pajama Party on StageIt … and then we’ve made those songs available for all you lovely people to listen to, right here. (We can see you. You’re lovely.)

Hope you’ll join us on Wednesday night at 8:30CST!!!! Follow the Middleman Burr Facebook page for updates! Or check our Virtual Tour page for all upcoming shows!

Handwritten Lyrics:  Gary and Georgia are offering signed, handwritten lyrics to your favorite of their songs. To inquire about purchasing one, please send an email to: middlemanburr@gmail.com

6/18/20
Our latest quarantine song is called “The Miracle.

The chorus says:   “I don’t want to leave before the miracle.”

Our new song says that you don’t want to give up and walk away because you might be walking away just before something wonderful happens.

This song is the thirteenth quarantine song Georgia and I have written.

We’re stopping now.

Sure, the next one might be the best one. But we’re done.

Continue reading →

By |

Monday Musings

Well, I did it.

I booked the session for this week. This Thursday we go in and start the record. MY record.

I went with a very stripped down band. I am not even sure what songs I am going to record. I have been writing like a fiend these days. I’m trying to stick to songs that I wrote by myself or wrote with Georgia. We have plenty of those. I have a couple of contenders that I have written with other people. One of them might slip in.

I figure I’ll do about seven songs with full band and then two or three more just acoustic, recorded here at the house.

I usually wait until the record is done before I decide on a name. I wrote a song about my Dad’s business that might make the record. My Dad had his own electrical contracting business the whole time I was growing up. I even worked at the family business for a few years. I was suppose to take the business over at some point but music got in the way. My Dad fought off the unions his whole career. He had a non-union shop but paid his guys really well and was beloved by them all. When his heart started to go bad he sold the business to his foreman. Within a year the union came in. Within another year Burr Electric was out of business.

I was thinking I might call this record Burr Electric.

That would work, right?

The record is a lot of songs played electrically with a band…so…”Burr Electric!”

I’m a clever little willy, aren’t I?

By the way…I really enjoy writing these blogs. I am not sure what I expected them to be…or DO for me…but I am finding it very cathartic to share my thoughts like this. Even when those thoughts are dim and inconsequential.

My Master Songwriting Class is coming out soon. I will be sending out all kinds of emails about that. I like to think that the class is totally separate from my Monday Musings. The musings were not setting you up to be pummeled by requests to buy my class. If any of you want to learn how to be songwriters…you’re going to be given that opportunity soon enough.

If you think to yourself…”Hey! He’s only been sending me these blogs so he can sell me something!!”

I beg to differ.

Picture it like a bodega with a gambling parlor in the back. You can browse around the bodega. Buy some baklava. Buy some gum. Who doesn’t like gum?

While you are shopping I might, in passing, mention that there is a card game in the backroom if you are interested.

That doesn’t make my gum any less delicious. Or my baklava any less flavorful and dripping with honey.

My Musings are my bodega.

My Songwriting class is the poker game in the back.

I hope that clears it all up for you.

I will let you know how the session goes in my next musing.

The day after the session I head to Chicago to play with Laurel Canyon, my CS&N Tribute band with Mark Hudson and Mark Mirando.

Somewhere in the middle of all that my class comes out.

Mmmmm…gum.