{"id":1371,"date":"2014-02-04T03:01:03","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T03:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nosmallthing.net\/main\/?p=1371"},"modified":"2021-05-08T14:23:24","modified_gmt":"2021-05-08T14:23:24","slug":"a-night-wallowing-in-the-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nosmallthing.net\/main\/a-night-wallowing-in-the-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"A Night Wallowing in the Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lil<\/a>We stood awkwardly at the hostess\u2019s stand.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook again,\u201d we urged the slim blond to review the guest list on her computer screen.\u00a0 \u201cWe won the tickets in a WDCB giveaway.\u201d<\/p>\n

The claim happened to have been true.\u00a0 And, after having won other pairs of concert tickets before where we couldn\u2019t attend because of schedule conflicts, we had a hard time believing we were really going to cash in on the freebie.<\/p>\n

John, who actually won the tickets, almost apologized when he asked me if I\u2019d like to go.\u00a0 Lil\u2019 Ed has been around for years and years. The set would probably be pretty predictable stuff. But I liked the venue, which was smallish, and I love seeing LIVE music and \u2013 what can I say \u2013 FREE is always good. There was a good pizza place I wanted to try next to the venue, so it was pretty much a no-brainer.<\/p>\n

For a few moments, a little anxiety swept over me.\u00a0 What if they didn\u2019t find our name on the guest list? I saw John was mentally preparing some sort of leveraging argument like name-dropping the person at the radio station who confirmed the prize tickets, but the hostess just said, \u201cI believe you. It\u2019s not that full anyway,\u201d and led us to our choice of tables near the back.<\/p>\n

Lil\u2019 Ed Willams, who stood maybe five foot four not counting his iconic colorful cap (sort of like a fez without fringe) was accompanied by his half brother Pookie<\/i> Young on bass, Mike Garrett on rhythm guitar, and Kelly Littleton on drums -\u2013 the Blues<\/em> Imperials<\/i>.\u00a0 They had been playing together about 25 years.\u00a0 Anyone who went to summer music festivals about town must have seen the act at least a few times.<\/p>\n

I had seen them before, but the specifics eluded me. I must have been more interested in the event than their musicianship.\u00a0 Here, between the brick walls of this small, suburban club, I found myself very conscious of EVERYTHING.<\/p>\n

I guessed them to be about my age. (I later Googled Lil\u2019 Ed\u2019s bio and saw that he was, in fact, only one year older.) I studied their outfits and tried to think of a word for their look,<\/i> but each band member had such a distinctive appearance. <\/i>Pookie, a gentle giant of a man, wore a sort of dark brown leisure suit, which created an unusually spacious background for watching the small and precise movements his thumb made along his bass\u2019s strings. The drummer wore a bowling shirt.\u00a0 He could have been sent by central casting to play a small time loan shark from Gotti\u2019s neighborhood in Queens.<\/p>\n

And they dazzled!<\/p>\n

They performed a two-hour set, mixing blues standards with their own compositions. Lil\u2019 Ed did not take up time chatting with the audience.\u00a0 Yet, finely decked out in his Sunday going to meeting<\/i> suit and shimmering cap, he gave quite a show!\u00a0 He rolled his eyes theatrically and managed to get the most soulful sounds out of his slide covered pinky finger. Mike Garrett\u2019s right hand, at times, became a blur. Pookie shuffled his weight from side to side, his eyes closed. He was in a zone. And through his steady beat and perfect touch with the high hat, I never forgot about Littleton, whose face I couldn\u2019t even see from Table 33.<\/p>\n

I have been feeling sort of blue lately.\u00a0 Too much snow.\u00a0 Too much time spent indoors. Too aware that I am in between<\/i> different phases in my life. Going to hear a night of live blues was just the thing.<\/p>\n

Why does it seem that wallowing in the minor chords and steady rhythms of the blues feels so right?<\/p>\n

There is so much room to improvise within such a steady, reliable structure. Isn\u2019t that a little like life? I wondered what it was like for The Imperials<\/em> to play the same songs so often, the same chords, the same notes, looking for the same cues from each other.<\/p>\n

Each performance is different while our longing to hear our own heartbeat within the music doesn\u2019t change \u2013 and that\u2019s no small thing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo: Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials Press Kit, 2012<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We stood awkwardly at the hostess\u2019s stand. \u201cLook again,\u201d we urged the slim blond to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","grateful-dozen-tourist-eyes","grateful-dozen-winning-luck"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Night Wallowing in the Blues – No Small Thing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nosmallthing.net\/main\/a-night-wallowing-in-the-blues\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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