The Real Memphis Mike (don't settle for imitations)

I've only ever copped one guitar solo from a record. I prefer to improvise, and this goes back to when I first started playing. I doubt I'd ever even heard of improvising at the time. I'd already tried my hand at various instruments, to varying degrees of success. I started on piano. Too much sitting still. I tried violin but for some reason, after a few weeks I was pushed to the cello. This was fine by me...until I broke a cello. So I next opted for something a bit more durable. TRUMPET! (coronet, to be precise) I enjoyed this but again, my thoughts on the subject were never really involved in the equation. Our school's marching band had quite a reputation, and my brother played tuba, so it was assumed I too would excel on tuba. Wrong. 2 or 3 weeks in and I skipped my happy ass out of the school band.  Next up was drums. Having spent most of my childhood listening to classical music, I was starting to pay attention to songs on the radio, or stuff I heard blaring from m...

I've been gigging professionally (meaning I get paid to do it) since 1979. Some shows were better than others, some days I got paid more than others. But a gig is a gig. If you're a musician and you're getting paid to do your thing, it's pretty awesome. For large parts of the 1980s, I made my living gigging. I was mostly playing in punk and rockabilly bands, but as you can guess, that's only ever gonna pay so many bills. So, I played in country, Top 40, funk, wedding bands, whatever was paying. I did some session work when I could. That's a particularly tough gig to get. Unless you live in NYC, Chicago, or LA, your options on that are limited.  When I was 19, a drummer friend called me about playing bass in a blues band. Let me tell you, Ohio in the mid 1980s was not exactly a hotbed of blues music. Even with the popularity of SRV and the Fab T-Birds at the time, there were surprisingly few blues bands. As a lifelong blues fan, I was definitely interested. One o...