Vietnam: Busking with a Vet

The Vietnam War tore this country apart.  Not to mention the horror and tragedy the people of Vietnam suffered.  Our involvement in the war shaped my teen and young adult years and changed my life.  Lately I've been able to learn more about what the people of Vietnam endured, as we have come to know many Vietnamese immigrants...boat people...who have embraced us and shared their community with us in Philadelphia.  I have talked with many men and women whose families were torn apart, who spent years wandering from country to country, looking for a safe haven, before ending up to start a new life in Philadelphia.  We have been immersed in their culture...food, dance, religion, language, music.  They have been very warm and forgiving. 
The Vietnamese people have very big hearts.  They are very strong and generous people.
The other day I was playing music in Suburban Station.  A heavy-set African-American man walked up to me, smiling with very few teeth.  He was wearing a Vietnam Veterans cap.  There was a twinkle in his eye, but he looked as if he had fallen on some hard luck in his life.  He smiled, as I sang, and at the end of my song, I paused, giving him an opening.  He asked about my guitar.  I told him it had been my father's and it was a Harmony Sovereign.  They don't make them any more, he said.  Yes, and we talked about how great the sound was, a perfect full sound for the train station corridors and the acoustics in the corridors there.  He asked me if he could play my guitar, and decided, this man had a song to share, so I handed him my baby.  He started riffing on a rough blues lick, singing with a gravely voice.  It doesn't get much more real than this, I thought.  I let him play and play and play, as if he had been starving.  I watched him slip into a zone.  Finally he took a deep breath and stopped, smiled that toothless grin of his, and handed me back my guitar.
We talked about the music, how healing it was.  We talked about the war and how it had caused so much pain on both sides.  How music had brought him and me together to share this moment.  How a conscientious objector and a former soldier could be brought together and connect to heal after all these years.  A pain we had shared from two different sides of the conflict. 
We hugged before he left.  I watched him walk slowly down the corridor.  At the end he turned and waved.  And smiled.  That toothless smile of his, the warm twinkle in his eye....

Less is More

We live in an age of seductive technology.  I just watched a great documentary called "It Might Get Loud" with three guitarists who come together and play and talk about making music.  The Edge from U2, Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin, and Jack White from White Stripes, representing three different perspectives and decades.  I love The Edge and Jimmy Page, and they demonstrated all the amps, guitars, pedals and special effects they use to get the unique sounds they create.
But most surprising for me was Jack White, as I didn't really know his music well before viewing the film.  The film starts out with him on a farmhouse porch with wire and wood and nails and a few other scraps of material and tools.  No dialogue.  Just him pounding nails quickly, no measuring, wrapping wire, inserting a coke bottle into the construction, nailing a pick-up to it and plugging it into an amp.  Then he begins to wail a distortion lead and stops.  "See, you don't really need to buy a guitar," he says.
I thought this was very cool.  Later in the video he talks about the minimalist sound of Son House, a Black blues musician.  We see White putting on an LP of Son House and listening to a cut where Son House sings and claps.  His timing is slightly off.  Who cares.  It's about the soul behind the music.  White says he's been trying to make music like that since he first heard the record.
I wonder if it's something you can learn.
I think of the minimalist guitarists I know.  O'Dell Harris is one.  A friend gave me a cd, recorded after hours in a bar.  I had never heard of him before.  He blew me away, the way Son House blew Jack White away.  O'Dell Harris.  Guitar and drums.  Minimal.  Keeping the beat to his chunky guitar and singing.  Recorded after hours, maybe two mics, no mixing and mastering.  Naked music.
I gotta admit, I love it.  Maybe it's because it's so immediately connected to the audience without all the technology acting as a buffer.  Without all the computer programs and hours of retakes in the sound studio, where tracks are mixed in a computer, and everything can be controlled.   The band doesn't record together any more, and something is lost.
I perform now in Suburban Station and on the streets, unplugged.  Just guitar, harmonica and voice.  It's right out there, with very little to hide behind.  I have to do it all.  The only volume control is in my voice and in my fingers.  No special effects, although I've been know to do weird things with my voice sometimes, or play in different styles on guitar, or bend the reeds on the harp.  The sounds of the street and concourse mix in happily with the music and my voice.  Footsteps, sirens, brakes squealing all add to the mix.  Totally random, uncontrolled.
It's clean and pure.  I love it.  Back to basics.
Less is more, as my wife, Patricia, has always said.
Zen.