The last gig I played was a tavern on one of the main streets in Hillsboro,
just a couple of blocks from the farmers market there. It was a band
mostly based around the guitarist and vocalist; 2 guys who had morphed a
relationship and spun off from a flailing garage band that had tried to
succeed by adding more and more members. The vocalist referred to this
former garage arrangement as "The Inbreds". I called them
"The-last-band-to-most recently-fire-me". We parted ways in good company
really, I just didn't want to spend endless Saturdays in a garage in a
suburb knocking out "Sweet Home Alabama" and eating pizza rolls generously
provided by a garbage man's trophy wife.

They were playing Friday nights at this Hillsboro club and the band had
been burning through bass players for a few weeks before I joined the chaos.
On the first Friday I luffed in my 2 basses, took one look at the amp that
was provided and went back out to my Honda to get the basic elements of my
own rig. The bass player(s) before me had apparently been happy to play
through an underpowered Yamaha PA that was coupled with a tiny 10 inch
speaker cabinet - the likes of which would be rejected by second hand
instrument dealers. As I rolled in my Hartke 4 X ten cabinet, a moose of a
cabinet so heavy it needs to be on a dolly, and Behringer amp (lovingly
nick named "The Dish Rattler") the guitar players eyebrows raised just a
little. "We're going to have some fun", I thought.

For a couple of Fridays our out-of-sync, unrehearsed tavern crashers stunk
up the place but had a pretty good time. The drummer quit but we brought
in another and I rehearsed 2 Saturdays with the guitarist in his tiny
apartment, blasting out the neighbors and rattling his wife's dishes with
great satisfaction. Between hidden puffs of what smelled like pretty
cheap marijuana, the guitarist would pop out of the kitchen, bathroom, back
room, or where ever he was clandestinely inhaling and we would carefully hit
the changes and riffs for all the songs he liked to cover. We weren't
quite grooving yet, but we were covering some standards.

The last night of the gig came and we finally got off the ground to some
applause. We played Marshall Tucker's "Can't You See" totally unrehearsed.
I just handed the vocalist the lyrics and started in on the bass line. The
second guitarist, a guy I had played with years before, immediately caught
on, made a smooth dynamic lilt of the 3 chords and we played the song so well we were
bringing in people off the street. Then the drummer got drunk. Recruited
from still yet another former band, he was known to have a "little trouble
drinking". He had drank some the first night he was with us but he laid it
on thick that last night.

After a 3 song non-stop rip the drummer totally faded during "Highway to
Hell" and slumped over his borrowed kit. The disgusted guitarist turned
to me and said (even though I was totally without hope for continuing at
all) "Born to Be Wild" and launched the signature 3 chords that started the
song. The singer, out front of the tavern smoking, was totally caught off
guard and began singing right there on the street in front of the tavern. He
had a wireless microphone (fortunately) and jumped in on time however - much
to the confusion of farmers market passersby and traffic stopped at the
light. The drummer was a goner and we played the last song, of my
last gig, on the last night in June, without drums. As I drove home to
Corvallis that warm evening (morning actually) I savored that last song. We
nailed it, drummer or not. I cruised through the little valley towns
looking at the verdant farms under the nearly full moon. I have not
really had a desire to stand before a room of people and knock out old rock
n roll since then. I think I paid my dues to the demons (and gods) of rock
many times over on those handfuls of Fridays at that old tavern in
Hillsboro. Maybe there weren't any pizza rolls, but I got out of the garage.

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Online at www.russwoodward.com