Boy Wonder: Professional Musician 126

Day 125 - June 14th 2009

With no Philly Rising yesterday today was the start of my “work week” it’s weird because music is my job now, and frankly it doesn’t feel like work but it’s hard work.

I left the house in time enough to get to my guitar student’s apartment early. Since we had time we decided to go shopping for songbooks. Joined by my other student we walked out of her apartment towards FYE

The walk over was hilarious. We hit FYE to search for books. One of them saw a book she liked as I thumbed through it. I want to make sure that the book is filled with things she can learn with the knowledge she currently possesses (you don’t want a book filled with songs that have major 7ths in them if you haven’t taught them the major 7th) it was a Jack Johnson Book that had a very special song in it she wanted to learn so I told her that I could probably teach it to her if she practices and works really hard.

We hit border’s to see if we could find a better selection. There were a lot of books We found a book of Children’s songs for one, and a book of Pop songs and a Beatles book for the other. We went back to FYE and got the Jack Johnson Book so now they both had two books to learn from.

Once we got back to the apartment I started my first lesson. We ran through all the drills and broke out the children’s book. It looked like endless love and Torn were going to be the first songs we work on. The book she got has tab which will help her immensely. She wants to dive into that Beatles book and she will when it’s time. With a clear goal hopefully she’ll practice more.

My second lesson was a bit easier. We ran through all the drills and broke out the children’s book. It looked like B-I-N-G-O was gonna be the first song I teach her. Lots of kids will know that one and she says a lot of the songs they do are to that melody so it should be pretty useful. Now that she has songs to learn it’ll probably help to increase her practice time. Her guitar is a P.O.S. so I gave her a beat up one I found in my basement.

Once I was done I txted my Thursday students to confirm and I headed over to the Tritone where I was guest hosting their open mic. Unfortunately the pickins were slim. Me and one of the other singups Alex Rawdin basically traded off tunes until my string broke, then he let me play his guitar. We basically went back and forth until the comedians arrived. Alex was very good in my opinion, has an excellent version of Chris Cornell’s version of Billie Jean in his repertoire. He runs an open mic on Tuesdays at panda bar, an old haunt of mine, well sort of. I may try to make it over there.

Got in late so it was time for bed. Big show at Lickety tomorrow and I gotta call the Six Flags people.