I stumbled on washboard playing some 20 years ago when two good friends invited me to join them for a gig in a bar. I was supposed to play guitar (although I had not touched mine in years), quickly found out that it wasn’t going to happen, spotted an old washboard in the corner of my friend’s music space and asked them if they minded; they didn’t. Two weeks later I was crawling around the floor of the bar in question, looking for the thimbles that had all flown off my fingers..
The next day I went around all the local thrift shops to find a washboard of my own.
I was extremely fortunate in that one of the friends I started playing with is a very accomplished horn player who grew up in Tennessee marching bands. He immediately started to coach me on my understanding of rhythm; it took time but I did get better…
Rhythm puts my somewhat dyslexic brain into a particular and mostly enjoyable place, even if it can be frustrating when your fingers, hands or feet (on the drum set) don’t quite obey you as much as you’d like. I wish I had discovered percussion years ago!
A couple of years later while looking for bells and stuff for my washboard I stumbled on Bone Dry Music , Scott included a pair of what I believe he calls “Penny Bones”, a penny glued on to a Medical tongue depressor stick. These remained on my desk for a year or so, and every so often I attempted to get a click out of them; this didn’t happen until somehow it did!
Blues Bands… The downside of being in a band is that they can be doing fine one day, and implode the next. So at the moment “No Brain”, “Ragamoffyn” as well as “Organic Jug” are band/duo/band that I’m enjoying being in when they happen. No websites to link to but gigs, a rare thing these days, will hopefully be posted here..
Past acts have been with Floyd Beaumont and the Arcadelfians, Swamp Train, The Crawfish Blues Band & Messin’ Round… Anyway, speaking of bands, living in a somewhat isolated area when it comes to American Folk and Blues music, it’s neat to be able find videos and songs by bands with washboard and rhythm bone players to learn and be inspired from.
There isn’t that much about art in this blog, initially I would have hoped for more but writing about art turned out to be extremely time consuming and my daily activities in the studio seemed a long monologue that doesn’t repeat well, or something like that. Browsing through the earlier of my musings about art makes me think I made a sage decision in limiting that presence.
*T-Shirt designs…*Rattlebrained Rags is now closed and all links and images on this blog have been remove, sorry. Like for musicians, most systems on the web that enable a creative person to be creative end up taking the larger part of the cut. When I started selling a t-shirt could bring in 4 to 5 $, my last sales would earn around 15 cents; need I say more..
Hope you enjoyed passing by!