Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

917 BUST A MOVE

BUST A MOVE

You're probably wondering what was going on with the lawsuits, too. I'll get to that. We eventually ended up back at Ziggy's, and Barrett invited us to come up to his apartment for dinner.

That afternoon I wanted to do my vocal exercises, but Ziggy didn't have a piano–unless you counted a keyboard synthesizer he had propped on end between the desk in the office and the wall which I didn't feel like setting up. (And even if I had, I'm not sure there was an amp.)

There was, however, a guitar of mine. One of my two tour Ovations lived there. (The other was in Boston at the new apartment, and the 12-string and the backup were in Allston, along with the rest.)

I hadn't been exaggerating when I'd said the night before that I hadn't even touched a guitar in weeks. I had the weirdest feeling taking it out of the case, suddenly worried I was going to scratch it.

"I'm too tired to stand up to sing," Ziggy said. "I'm going to lie on the floor."

"You don't have to do this with me," I said.

"But I want to." He sat cross-legged on the throw rug in front of the TV. "I shouldn't let myself get out of shape either."

"You didn't look the slightest bit out of shape last night on the dance floor," I said. "And I'm not saying that because I'm biased."

"Ha. Oh, hey, one sec." He got up and while I tuned the guitar he rummaged through his shoulder bag. When he sat back down he had his notebook in his hands. "You've memorized the notes for the hymns by now, yeah?"

"And the German words for the most part," I said. "Not that they matter that much."

"Here. I've been writing an English version. I've only done the first verse so far." He showed me the page.

Well, of course we tried it. We warmed up first, which was an exercise in itself the way Priss had taught me to think about where my tongue was while I did it. I knew Ziggy was doing the same. Then we got down to work.

I didn't think about where this was going, if we'd ever record it, none of that kind of thing. I just concentrated on being present with him and learning the words and making the sounds.

Time sped by pretty fast that way. Before long someone–Barrett–was banging on our ceiling, not to tell us to be quiet but that it was dinner time.

When we got upstairs, I was surprised to see Carynne open the door. "Happy Thanksgiving," she said, as she hugged me with one arm, a glass of wine in her other hand.

"Wait, is it Thanksgiving?"

"Not till later in the week, officially," she said, matter of factly. She steered us away from the kitchen area, where Barrett was in the midst of doing several things at once, it seemed.

"Can we help?" I asked.

I received a firm "NO" from Barrett. "You can all sit down."

His apartment had almost the same layout as Ziggy's, except where Ziggy had an immense bed, Barrett had a dining room table, and where Ziggy had a couch and TV, Barrett had a desk and file cabinets. We took seats at the table. A bottle of wine, bottle of sparkling water, and a couple of candles stood in the middle of the table.

"Wine?" Carynne asked cautiously.

"Water would be better for me," Ziggy said. "How about you, dear one?"

"I'm not a big wine guy."

"More for me, then," Carynne said, and refilled her own glass before opening the sparkling water and pouring for us. "So how was the thing?"