About the Disneyworld Gig
Dear Band,
Please allow me to express my innermost feelings. Know this is meant to be interpreted as a good natured rant from a flawed human being who wants to gently make a point to the ones he loves.

I am facing a 13+ hour drive by myself pulling a trailer for the next two days.

On the way I will eat all meals by myself and stay in some shitty hotel worrying at all times about the security of our equipment and luggage.

Once I arrive in Orlando, I will have to move the trailer early every morning.

I will be super nice to EVERYONE, funny all the time, do 4-30 minute sets of music for 1000+ people but not repeat any song.

I will pray that 4 people (you guys) don't oversleep or have a problem with your flight on Friday. I will pick you up at the airport and get your room key for you. I make sure you are fed, prepared for the Sunday show, dressed properly, and aware of show times. I will grin and bear the bad sound system, the amateur choir, and any last minute changes the client has. I will do all of this in a well pressed coordinated, stylishly conservative clothing. (If you have ever cared anything about me, read on.) But, this is one of two well paying gigs I have this month and the first one I've had in a few weeks.

AND, I didn't pick the music for the Sunday thing. SO, (finally, the f*cking point) anything you can do to make this easier for me will be appreciated. Including, and especially, keeping all sarcastic and passive aggressive remarks about the Sunday thing to yourself. I didn't pick the music but the wife of the guy with the f*cking check did.

I and the world know you are too good to do this shitty music. Your refined ear makes it difficult for you to learn and rehearse these songs. I know it eases your pain (but increases mine) for you to approach the undertaking half-heartedly.

I've been lifting weights all summer and I can tell you, it's a lot harder to pick that heavy shit up
when you don't really want to pick it up. It's EASIER to have, sorry to sound corny, a positive attitude.

I also know that you are enduring some cruel cosmic joke that causes you to labor in obscurity playing in hack cover bands at Amway conventions while others with half your talent are stars.

I feel your pain.

BUT, it's one thing to be a great musician in a cover band. It's another thing to be a great musician in a cover band but with a shitty attitude.

Remember, no driving, you're getting paid, your own room, out of town for the weekend, hanging on the Disney property, and, 5-30 minute sets over a three day period. One more thing. I know it's funny to you to make fun of this gig and the crappy Sunday morning songs. It is your way of saying, "I'm too good to do this." Leave the funny shit to me. I'm funnier than you will ever be, so don't even try.

Just shut the fuck up, wear the clothes, do the gig, and get your check.

You can never be as funny as me unless you go back in time and are raised by a paranoid schizophrenic with bi-polar disorder in rural f*cking white trash Alabama with a job picking up trash on construction sights, brown paper sacks that sweaty f*cking hillbillies have shit in.

Then, you can spend the weekend at your Uncle's pool with your molesting cousin and half wit brother who beats the f*ck out of you whenever no one is looking. After that, you can go back to your nasty house where the dogs and cats have shit all over the place and practice guitar even though no one in your family plays and you have no reason to believe that you can. THEN, after 20 years of struggle, you can support your whole family and spend your free time wiping your Mom's puke from your porch and bathroom. Then, you can go to 13 different f*cking therapists, every twelve step program known to man and be baptized twice.

THEN you can spend your adult life being known as Fat Elvis. Then, after all that you can fly a guy to Disneyworld, carry him around, feed him, and pay him $550.00 to complain about learning some songs.

THEN, you will be as funny as me and you can make humorous remarks for everyone to enjoy about the Sunday show. In short, every day I don't kill myself or someone else is a Goddam miracle. I'm glad to have this gig and I'm glad to be going out of town and I'm thankful to have you as a friend and colleague. I'm a sensitive person who wants to please everyone around me and it makes me feel bad when you seem to be bugged by what I ask you to do. Please shut the f*ck up, wear the clothes, play the songs, and don't make me feel any worse about my life and what I ask you to do than I already do.

We have a lot to be thankful for.

There are a lot of incredible players in Nashville who are working construction...I have their f*cking phone numbers.

I love you guys, see you in Florida.

Victor Wooten Funk Festival

A Birthday to Remember by Ron "Old-Fcleffer" Liggett

www.awaywithwords.us

First, thanks to all of you uglies who wished me a happy birthday.
Now, I want to say that I did what any of you uglies would have done given the same opportunity. I didn’t go to the FUNK festival with the intension of meeting Victor Wooten, but when the cards fell into place, I stepped up and introduced myself.
I got to meet Victor thanks to Helstar (Mike) on the UBP forum who posted a thread about the FUNK festival a couple of months ago. I decided to check it out.

Turns out it was happening on my 56th birthday, August 27th, 2005, and I wanted to go.
I ran the idea past Gale and she wasn’t too keen on the overnight camping aspect at first, but finally agreed. I purchased tickets on the net and they arrived at our house about 3 days later.
Friday the 26th, we gathered up our camping gear, and the next morning we headed due west about 80 miles through the pleasant Indiana countryside to Bean Blossom, Indiana which is about 5 miles north of Nashville, Indiana in beautiful Brown County.
Bill Monroe Music Park is an ideal setting for an outdoor festival. Principally a Bluegrass park, there’s plenty of camping available at the park, and lots of rooms in nearby Nashville for the less adventurous.
We got there at about 10:30AM (11:30 our time) found a campsite and set up our tent. Next we went out walking. From my perspective that place was an Eden. Thousands of beautiful women (including Gale) with no makeup and I was walking on clouds and lapping up every bit of the eye candy.

I’m the world’s worst at carrying a camera so I have only one picture from the day or so we spent there. When we walked toward one of the smaller stages we saw Victor Wooten jamming with a number of other bassists. We stopped and listened, and when the music stopped, Victor announced that several talks on nature were about to commence.The first talk was Victor himself giving a talk about the connection between music and nature, and his belief that music is a language like English.Then they had a fire making demonstration where the guy did it “Quest for Fire” style with a stick, a grooved plank and a bow.

As the fire demonstration continued, Victor stepped to the side of the stage and that’s when I approached him.
I have met a half a dozen individuals who have achieved global recognition. Most were athletes, and many of them are very guarded, even standoffish when introduced to strangers. Victor is the most approachable individual of world renown that I have ever spoken with. On that day, any one of you uglies could have met and talked to Victor Wooten.

Victor said in his nature/music talk that he and his naturalist partners have a message, and they feel that the best way to spread the message is one person at a time. After speaking with him and watching him with others, I’m convinced that he means it.
At any rate, there I am standing in the presence of an individual who is recognized as one of the greatest ever to pick up a bass. I’ve played bass for 40 years. I know bass. I have my heroes: Jaco, Rick Laird, Barry Oakley, Bill Wyman, Jack Bruce, Billy Cox; but I told Victor that he has the most command over the instrument of any that I’ve ever seen. He is recognized as the best alive today. Possibly there are others who have equal or greater talent, but they’re not acknowledged in the same light as Victor Wooten. At this point in time, Victor Wooten is the bass king, and I’m just a bass jester.

As it turns out, Victor had just conducted a Bass Camp in "the hills of Tennessee." He was obviously very tired, and the FUNK festival was the culmination of a ten day stretch where Victor hadn't gotten enough rest. The bassists he was jamming with were participants in the Bass Camp. They had come with him, and all of them were volunteering at the festival. Victor spoke of spreading the message about nature and conservation one person at a time. I know now that he really believes in that. When he was done onstage, I walked up and began to talk to him.

L to R: Gale, Victor, Ron

My impression of Victor Lemonte Wooten is that he is one of the sweetest, most sincere, and unassuming individuals I have ever spoken with. I hope nothing ever changes that in him.
It was probably unnecessary, but I pimped the fact that it was my birthday and asked if I could get a picture with him. He gladly obliged, and asked how old I was. I told him, and he said, "Wow, a 56 year old bass player, I hope I get to be 56."
Looking at him, and the genuine nature in which he’d spoken about his future, I replied in my most reassuring and fatherly tone, "I think you're going to be alright. You don't seem to have that anger and the angst that a lot of my heroes who died young had. I think you'll live well past 56."
"You think so?" he asked.
"You're so incredible," Gale said, "you'll be fine."
He said that it was different to talk to someone about that, "Most people say that I'm not as tall as they thought I was."
I told him that physical stature meant little to me. "You're a giant," I said, "You have more command over the bass instrument than anyone I've ever seen." I don't think he could know that I have seen literally thousands of bassists in my 56 years. Then we posed and a young woman took the photo with my camera.

That afternoon a violent rainstorm pummeled the park for about an hour and set the band schedule off by an hour. When we got to the main stage area, Mofro was finishing up their set. Next was Keller Williams. If you’ve never seen this guy, don’t miss him if you get the chance to see him. He is incredible. He did all of the instrumentation himself by playing samples he made on the stage while we watched. He’d play a bass line and loop the sample, keyboards and loop the sample and on. It’s hard to describe, just take my word for it, he’s worth the price of a ticket. He’s got a DVD available on his website too. About 10pm fog began to set in.

Victor and his band (which included his brothers Reggie and Futureman Roy) jammed for a solid two hours. Vic played most or all of the songs from his new CD Soul Circus and mixed in some Led Zeppelin and Hendrix. It was a great show. Well staged and very high energy.
Halfway through the set, the fog was so thick that you couldn’t see 20 feet in front of you, but the stage lighting and music cut through it.
I can’t get much more into detail about the show because I was about 12 beers in the bag by then.

Anyway, it was a great show, we had a great time, and I got to meet the finest bassist on the planet. Throughout Saturday's music, all of the musicians kept saying that they didn't know any music by Bill Monroe. "It sure is a beautiful park though," Keller Williams sang to us.

Anyway, the last thing I did on Sunday morning before we left was to take my acoustic/electric bass over to the small stage where I'd met Victor. Some of the Bass Campers were jamming, and when I asked if I could sit in, they let me. They told me to kick off a jam so I told them I wanted to teach them a Bill Monroe song. I played and sang a verse of "Blue Moon of Kentucky," and we all jammed on it for a couple of minutes. Someone at the FUNK festival had indeed played a Bill Monroe tune in his park. After that, Gale and I headed home.

One hell of a birthday for an old ugly who hasn’t caught many breaks in this lifetime.

Ron Old-Fcleffer Liggett
www.awaywithwords.us