Grade-A Ass-Kicking

That's right kids... three blogs in one day!

So, I told you about Ihop Alan, the retired musicican with whom I share the Ihop breakfast counter. After asking me a couple of times to come and play with him at *FANCY SCHMANCY* restaurant, I finally agreed. That was tonight. I dragged my wife down to *FANCY SCHMANCY*... handed my car over to the valet, slung my horn over my shoulder and walked in. Alan was in the bar warming up with the piano player. It was crowded. He saw me, waved me over and the night began. How did it go?

... holy shit!.....

Okay, let me tell you about my playing skills. I'm a pretty solid ensemble player. I can do decent work with a majority of the stuff you put in front of me. I am not a professional player. Alan is a professional player (or at least was.) From the minute I pulled my horn out of the case, school was in session, and I was sitting in the corner wearing the "Dunce" cap.

To be fair, on most tunes I did a fairly good job of holding the key signature. My major failure of the evening was blowing chunks on "Route 66." It's a blues in C. I blew a chart that basically called for me to hold a blues scale in C. For those of you not in the know, that's kind of like a chef forgetting how to boil water. The rest of the songs went okay, but I'll tell you it was pretty obvious between the two of us which one was the heavy player. Alan never so much as gave me a funny look, but I still felt kind of embarrassed about how I was playing.

The neat thing about the evening was that I got to accompany a couple of really talented singers. The first was a black lady (She didn't have a "Big-Momma" build, but she sure had the attitude and the voice to match.) I've never head Summertime done better. The other was a blind lady who came up to the microphone and sang the shit out of L-O-V-E.

After about an hour and a half I threw in the towel. Despite how I felt about my playing, I wasn't having a particularly bad time. A trumpet player showed up, and being that I knew we weren't going to fit four of us behind the piano, I took the opportunity to bow out. I also used the excuse of getting my wife home: When I glanced over, she was looking fed up with sitting at the bar talking to the "OC" wives and watching the 50-something manager flirt with all the 20-somethings in miniskirts.

As the valet brought the car around, she looked at me and asked "so?"

....."Holy Shit!"......

I'm glad I did it. Really, I am. It's been a while since I've been the weakest musician in the room... and it's only when you're in a situation that makes you uncomfortable that you experience growth.