Boocause You're Mine

Greetings Blogsters. Today I bring you an encore performance of “Carlyn Lindsey & Snake Doctor” doing Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ marvelous tirade on love lost. This is especially appropriate because I think on the last entry I might have failed to credit the band in any way. Here’s the low-down. We’re back at Bears Friday night root gig. The place is packed and steamy. People are dancing in the aisles; we were all of us there-- celebrating with the gift of music. The magical transporting, healing powers of music were flowing greatly in the room that night.

This is definitely one of Carlyn’s signature tunes. I could listen to her sing it again and again. Carlyn’s performances have, from the start, cut straight to the heart of the matter. The musicians on the stand with her that night were all straight from the top of the Bloomington music whole fresh milk jug. The musical prowess of this outfit is here for us to know about because of another rinky-dink recording I made. Just imagine what it was like being there in the room that night!

Particularly KA on this track is Dave Witherd. I think it’s OK to say now that Scot and Dave clashed a little. Dave is a musician’s musician. He can talk about music with the same proficiency as he can play it. Scot had trouble with this because he really couldn’t take part that conversation and defensively categorized it as ‘time wasting’. Why talk about music when you can play it? They came to love each other and their mutual appreciation became vast. Check out this tenor sax. It’s about as close to the end of the tenor sax road as I’ve ever heard.

Also on the stand with Carlyn that night was Todas Phaegle on (killer) guitar, Tim Haas smacking it out on drums, Larry Vessily on keyboards (bless you and you 88 Larry), and Scot ‘Miracle Man’ Halpin. I may be imagining this but I think that Carlyn was calling Scot “Miracle Man” even before he got sick. Carlyn and Scot clicked musically. Scot new how to lead a band and he worked closed with Carlyn to cue her and help her in whatever way she needed. Carlyn is a well-seasoned professional now, but in those days, she was just learning about performing and singing in front of a band.

Today’s artwork is another piece pulled from the archive of editorial illustrations that Scot did in the early 1990’s. This one was for “Drums & Drumming Magazine” (now defunct). The staff of “Drums & Drumming” went on to put together a new publication that is still big on the news stands today—“Drum!” Scot was a contributing illustrator to “Drum!” for right up to the end.

This piece started out as a drawing done with a Sharpie marker. Scot then took that drawing to the “magic copy machine” at SF State to make many copies of the drawing. He would then lay color down on the drawing using illustrator’s markers. This piece I think stayed black & white. Then there’s that signature airbrush.