Beatles Tribute Night
So, I got this call earlier in the week from Bay Area songwriter Jim Bruno about a Beatles tribute night that he had put together at The Union Room in San Francisco. It turns out that he had a cancellation for his show on Saturday, July 17th and needed another songwriter to perform a couple of Beatles tunes. Now, I don’t own any Beatles records at all, and I don’t really listen to them, so I thought this might be a fun exercise. [To be honest, I'm more of a Hendrix, Cream, Zeppelin, Allmans sort of guy, and I just didn't know how vast the Beatles song catalog was.]
Yes, it's the bugle for The Union Room.
In any case, I said I was in, then completely forgot about it until yesterday, just a few hours before I was scheduled to perform. So, with just about two hours before the show, I scrambled online to figure out a few tunes to play, work out some arrangements, etc. Now, I have to thank my Facebook friends because I posted a plea for help in terms of what to play and received about 40 different comments on song suggestions. Ah… the power of social networking!
In the end, I performed a blues/slide rendition of “Come Together”, a Joe Cocker inspired version of “With A Little Help From My Friends”, and a soul/R&B version (alternated with a bluegrass/zydeco inspired vibe) of “All My Loving”. That was pretty much the first time I had played all three all the way through (I was literally reading the charts/lyrics on stage) and just had some fun with it and let loose. None of them sounded like The Beatles, but perhaps that was the point… to make them your own. In any case, a huge thanks to Jim Bruno for putting together the night and for including me in the fun. I definitely have a new appreciation for The Beatles and I really enjoyed listening to some of the other songwriters’ interpretations of some of their classic and lesser known tracks. In particular, this guy Hiram did a ridiculous version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on his ukelele (seriously, it was insane). All in all, good stuff… Thanks to everyone who made it a really fun night.