Okay. Years ago, our company didn’t have a regular band, but we put one together for an annual charity drive. I can sing, so I usually fronted, but while I could do the Ramones, for example, they didn’t lend themselves to spoons. (And honestly, all I had to do was shout, since the Ramones never really sang.)
One year, the theme of the charity drive was “country,” and our company’s band was doing country music. I was fronting, and I had a boom mike, so I could raise it to my mouth to sing, while lowering it down to my left leg, which I was banging the spoons off. Anyway, we did, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”
“Fire on the mountain, run boy run”
Tikki-tikki-tok, tikki-tikki-tok
“The Devil’s in the house of the rising sun”
Tikki-tikki-tok, tikki-tikki-tok
“Chicken in the breadpan, picking out dough”
Tikki-tikki-tok, tikki-tikki-tok
“Granny does your dog bite? No child no.”
And then on into a great duet between the fiddler and the spoon player. You can imagine that after that song, between singing and spoons, I was out of breath. I’m afraid that unlike drummers we spoons players don’t have “padiddles” and the like, but I hope I’ve described it adequately.
Well. That song ended our set, and I went to get a most-welcome beer from the bar. A young lady caught up with me there, and remarked on the spoons–she’d heard about them in music, but never heard them played, much less seen them played. She complimented me on my playing in “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”, and we started talking. To make a long story short, we talked a lot over the next year, and eventually, we got married.
But it never would have happened without my spoons.
) and then came over and spent the night sunday, best sleep I’ve had in a couple weeks.
