The tone I got was a pretty distorted rock and roll tone for an acoustic steel guitar. It was pretty awesome. I started improvising and we went off for a while. It was pretty good but they weren't really improvising type of musicians, they're better at playing songs by the book more so than originals or jamming. So I asked them if they knew Hey Joe and I showed them the riffs and changes in the song. Then we played a rocking version of it. It was pretty awesome.
We even had two singers and they did a good job. My guitar solos sounded pretty great even though I was playing on acoustic and my fingers bloody hurt like hell. Because I couldn't do the bends (too hard on acoustic) I resorted to doing a ton of double stop Hendrix/Chuck Berry style. It sounded pretty good. What sounded even better was my rhythm, the sound of the chords was sparkly clean yet slightly distorted. Heavenly guitar tone for a tone I just dialed in automatically without any setup.
The other bar was this place called Petie's Place and its even closer to my house. I would still classify this place as a dive bar but its a lot nicer than the Canby and it has a much cooler vibe. The people here were much nicer to me than at the Canby. It seemed like at the Canby I had to prove myself to the musicians playing there. They were a bit stand offish towards me at first before they saw me play. At Petie's it was the opposite, they were super nice right off the bat.
There was a house drummer and bass player and everybody else came through to either jam with them or with their own drummer/bass player. I signed up and got onstage and we did a fantastic Hendrix inspired version of Sunshine of Your Love. We did all the songs I played with them as instrumentals. After that I asked them if they could do Stratus and I even began teaching them the main riffs and whatnot but the bass player wasn't having it. So instead we did Hey Joe. It ended up working out great. I sounded great on my Hagstrom Les Paul and I was getting a really good distorted guitar tone. Great for Hendrix tunes. I got a sense that the drummer could play any type of rock and roll and jazz too even maybe if I could've gotten to play Stratus with him but the bass player was definitely a rock and roll only type of guy it seemed.
Later that night I played again. I was originally planning on playing War Pigs and Black Sabbath but this old guy came up to me and asked me what I wanted to play. I told him those two Sabbath tunes and he was like oh well maybe I should get the other drummer for that stuff, he plays great on that stuff. But I noticed he had drum sticks in his hand and I didn't wanna leave him hanging so I asked him what songs he knew? He said a ton. I asked if he knew Foxy Lady and Spanish Castle Magic and he said he did. So I said lets do Foxy and from that break into Spanish Castle.
It ended up working out great. He played pretty well. We straight rocked that place hard. The bass player was a little off on Spanish Castle Magic but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he doesn't know too much Hendrix? So yeah it turned out to be a real Hendrix night of jamming for me.
I had so much fun at Petie's that I'm planning to go to their open jam next week as I'm off that day. I might even work on memorizing lyrics to songs I already know how to play so I can do the songs as its meant to be with a vocalist (not just as an instrumental). People there liked me so much. It was great getting respect from fellow musicians and love from the audience, even hot girls and women. If I keep doing this maybe I can find musicians to play in a band with. At the very least I'm keeping my chops up and playing real music in front of a live audience and enjoying it.
Open jams are awesome!
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