About thirty five years ago, when I was slightly younger, and annoyingly sure that my brand of folk/blues/folkrock was the answer to all the problems of the world-I was invited to play some with a group of what I felt were more "conventional" musicians.

I opened their eyes up with some blues, then showed off few of the songs I'd written--then they hauled out their musty old music folders and I condescended to apply my special gift to their decidedly old fashioned repertoire--

I made it through a few of their ragtime numbers pretty well--and I thought was hanging in there on the swing numbers, but then the steel guitar asked me to if I could play barre chords, and I was a bit put off("On an acoustic guitar? I have principles!)--

Then they pulled out "Stardust", and I died a long, slow, death. The chunka-chunk patterns that worked so well on Dylan and Mississippi John Hurt, on Jug Band tunes, and on all the stuff from the Beatles and the Byrds left me no room at all to fit in all those chords--and it sounded really wrong when I left some of them out--

On what, on later reflection, I determined must have been a purely malicious impulse, the keyboardist nodded for me to take a solo--a you can guess what happened. It wasn't pretty--

When you play out of Rhythm/picking patterns and chord positions, there's a lot you can do, but ultimately, it locks you into a box. If you want to progress, you've got to think outside the box.



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