Working for the Man, Playing in the Band by Damon Wood

Author:Damon Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2018-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

9/11

I’d been playing my burgundy Les Paul Studio guitar on the James Brown show and there was a sense that my Les Paul and Keith’s Paul Reed Smith (aka PRS) guitar were too closely matched in terms of tone. Jeff Watkins could hear the lack of tonal contrast between the two guitars and he talked to us about it. Plus, the high E string on my Les Paul just didn’t get the same volume as the other strings, possibly due to an issue with the pickups. The guitar had a slight grounding issue, too: I’d get unwanted noise if I took my hands off the strings. I thought maybe the Les Paul had seen better days and I needed to find something new. I’ve always been wary of people fixing my guitars. I’d rather wear out a guitar and then set it aside than let anybody touch it. I’d gotten the burgundy Les Paul brand new, and I felt I needed another new instrument, something I could start over with, something with low action, real smooth. Maybe an instrument with a different tone and playability would lead me to different phrasings.

I had been listening a lot to John Scofield and Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio and they both used thin, hollow body guitars, so I had gotten an urge to buy one and pursue new sounds. Maybe a new guitar sound would fit into the James Brown show. And I was thinking about my own sound. All that gigging for James Brown had me thinking about putting together a band of my own, on the side. At first I conceived of a solo gig just to have something fun to do in my downtime from touring with Mr. Brown. But as time went by I felt the need to develop new music with my own band, quite apart from the James Brown trip, and I began to envision a three-piece, instrumental, improvisational band.

I had a vacation day between gigs, so I’d gotten a room at the Sunset Motel on Sunset Strip in L.A., where a lot of guitar shops are clustered. I wanted to see what was on offer, and the price range. The next day I awoke to a weird vibe. As I checked out, the desk clerk told me what had happened — the planes, the madness. Shopping for guitars? Out of the question. I made it over to our bass player Bo’s house in Van Nuys and we hung out, talked it over. I didn’t even try to get back to Vegas until the next day. By the time I pulled up at McCarran Airport in Vegas in my rental car, hundreds of people were waiting for that car.

We all were aware of the magnitude of events, but James Brown had gigs to play. Nothing could stop James Brown — not even terrorists. Of course, the airports were closed for days. The September 11 attacks took place on a Tuesday, and we had a show set for the Harbor Center in Portsmouth, Virginia, that Saturday.

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