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I haven't been writing much. I have had a dose of this weeklong plague that has been going around. The week before the plague set in we had some furnace issues and a new boiler had to be spec'd out. All work and no play has made Jack a very dull boy. Finally today I swilled some lemon water along with some West Hill Honey and made my way down to Foreign 5 on Bridge Street in downtown Chippewa Falls to catch Jerry Way on guitar. Great music small crowd.
I suppose it was supposed to be music to shop by. But there were only a couple of people in the store. I am guessing everyone was over buying plastic crap at Walmart. Such a shame. The music was a mix of upbeat Christmas tunes along with some of Jerry's original songs. With maybe some folk covers mixed in. My favorite of the day was Forty Below, a topical commentary on the Wisconsin weather.
His music style was quite nice. Vocally his music was good, but nothing spectacular. I thought the real high point is his guitar playing. On guitar, his chords, are very complex. He used sort of a mix of picking and strums with lots of accent notes mixed in. The overall result was most enjoyable and some of the better acoustic guitar playing I have heard in a while. Compositionally, I really liked what he had done to most of the Christmas songs. They were very upbeat and with lots of guitar. Very, very nice.
I had never heard Jerry Way play anywhere before. I had heard about him, since he is, I believe, the uncle of Chris Way, rhythm guitar player of the band Assembly Required. Jerry has played music in this area for over forty years, was the music teacher at the Chippewa Falls schools, and lead the Jerry Way Orchestra.
I have a tough time being inactive, so while I have been sick I have gone through a dozen movies, read a few books. My favorite movie of the stack was Charlie Wilson's War I read a John Grisham novel. I finally got around to reading the Alex Haley book, Roots, which I had put off for I suppose close to thirty years. And, just moments ago finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was actually quite a better read than expected. I also once again started to read Dante's Inferno. This is maybe the twelfth time I have started it with intent to finish, maybe this time it will actually happen. I suppose it depends on how quick I get healthy.
Jerry will be playing at the Foreign Five for the next couple of Thursday nights. Call them for more details. You can buy Jerry's music at the following web site: http://www.reallygoodmusic.com/rgm.jsp?page=composers2&compid=123180 and you can see one of his videos, here on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GoVzCIG6LE .
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