[WhistlerMCMLV]

Originally Posted by Buzz123

Local resident, BB King, might disagree with the OP. And he's still as popular as ever.

The OP hereby goes on record as saying a) if it hadn't been for getting to see B.B. King in the summer of 1969 he never would have tried to play a guitar in the first place; and, b) he wasn't even close to referring to B.B. King himself. If only because it'll probably be the proverbial cold day in hell before I ever get a chance to play even one song with that man, and I know it.

[WhistlerMCMLV]

Originally Posted by Buzz123

Sounds like he IS the blues. Too arrogant man. Tone it down and sell what you got, not what you ain't.

Unfortunately, as my two earlier comments should have made a little more evident, in this town you can run into who knows how many self-professed blues people who actually a) don't really want to play the blues; or, b) want to use a blues band as some sort of stepping stone toward living their own other musical dreams/fantasies/hopes.

If there's something other than the blues that they really prefer to play, they should just go for that and not waste their time or anyone else's. I'd rather see a player go after doing the music he or she really wants to do, the music he or she really feels, than waste his, her, or our time pretending.

There's another side to that coin: a player who absolutely loves the blues, absolutely wants to play the blues, and backs away when there's an opening in a blues band for him/her. I had that happen with our band's earliest keyboard candidate. He came to practise with some great blues playing and a couple of blues songs he'd written. Then he told me the other band he was in was getting such a boatload of work he couldn't stay with us.

Fair enough---who was I to stop him from following the money when we weren't making any yet? So we replaced him with the fellow whose recent departure has opened the keyboard slot yet again. When that fellow left, my first instinct was to call the original candidate because I knew (he often came to our jam nights) that his other band had imploded within three weeks of his leaving us.

I called him. He seemed glad to hear from me. I'd caught him when he'd already been tapped to audition for a non-blues group and he'd let me know how that one went . . . after he gave me a new version of his how-deeply-he-wanted-the-blues speech. Fair enough. For a guy who loves the blues so deeply, he seems to have a thing for traipsing off to join non-blues bands. He did this time, too, joining a new band who didn't even have gigs yet.

So I figured, I'd better be bloody specific and leave as little question as possible about what our band is, what we play, and what we feel. I might have gone slightly over the top in that regard, but I didn't want to leave any room for doubt or infiltration, not necessarily in that order.

[detwahDJ]

^^Some guys play "blues" as a stepping stone because they think it's easy (3 chords and you got it). I call them "blues haters", though they might profess otherwise.
If your inspiration was a listen to BBK mine was hearing Anson Funderburg play real lines. Wasn't aware of the possibility in Blues (but wasn't paying much attention either).