Clunker Chord (narration)

Well listening now, that was a pretty interesting attempt
at the improvised ending of a song
I’d gone to New Orleans with limited skills on the guitar
but in the city of jazz, I started attempting to expand my guitar
expertise in that direction
After all, I was living in the French Quarter, had grown a goatee,
and was hanging out at after hours bohemian bars listening to
some very talented musicians trying to pick up some pointers
So in my attempt to show off some of that talent to Travis and Milton
The D 9th jazz chord I was attempting, never made it out of the
starting gate
What was produced is what is known as a clunker chord
The guitars version of a trainwreck
The meter was running on my session time so I just
had them fade the ending before the clunker
On the original tape though, it was still there
When I first listened to the track I thought about trying to
repeating the fade but then I thought that clunker
chord was part of the process
Improvising is essential to anything creative, trying to
stretch beyond my comfort zone on the fretboard at the time
My fingers could not make out what I was thinking
If it doesn’t just try and not repeat your mistakes
So that brings us to the B-side of the first record
and a song called: Abandoned on Tuesday
By the time we were ready to do the track
some local musicians had showed up at the studio
and before I knew it, I had a band for the next cut
and the funny thing is, looking back on it, one
of the session players on this track
was a young guitarist from Mobile
named Rick Hersch, who was
one of the founding members of Wet Willy
who are from Mobile also
Rick had gone on to play with bands from Randy Newman to
Stevie Wonder
We would run into each other on the road occasionally but
then I lost touch with Rick
As faith would have it, as we were putting
the pieces of this project together
I went back to Mobile to visit with Milton and do interviews for
the video in this package that my daughter Delaney produced
While there as Milton told his version of events, he reminded me
that the guitar player on Abandoned on Tuesday
and several other tracks was Rick Hersch
Our Producer for Buried Treasure is Will Kimbro who is also
from Mobile
When I told him that Rick was the guitar player on the track
He told me he had been at Rick’s house on Dog River in Mobile
the night before
You can’t make this kinda stuff up
I’m getting back in touch with Rick who now splits his time
between Los Angeles and Dog River
He’s now another nugget in our burried treasure and I plan to
catch up with him soon
Rick is still making great music so you might wanna check him out
online
In the meantime you can hear him right here on Abandon on Tuesday