California Guitar Trio

California Guitar Trio
Blueberry Hill - Duck Room
University City (St. Louis), MO
Sunday, August 5, 2007
General Admission
On the Guest List! :-)

The California Guitar Trio are three former students of Robert Fripp's Guitar Craft school, Paul Richards, Bert Lams, and Hideyo Moriya. They've been together for 16 years now, and play a wide mix of music - classical, rock covers, surf guitar, original pieces, and Fripp-inspired music. They have a pretty good following in Philly, but are still building an audience here in St. Louis.

I first saw CGT when they opened for King Crimson on the THRAK tour in 1995, multiple times. I counted it out, and I think I've seen them a total of 15 times or roughly once a year. They're always nice to see live and they consistently put on a good show. I got burnt out on them and started skipping some shows when I lived in Philly. They played St. Louis for the first time a year after I moved here, and it was nice to see someone familiar in town. Now, the shows feel more like seeing old friends. These days, I would not miss a show intentionally. Plus, Roy and I have been helping them out by manning their merchandise table at the local shows. That's been fun too.

Some of the fun of CGT is the other people they play with. Two of the times I saw them were with Tony Levin on bass, and he is one of my favorites. CGT are also working with Jon Anderson!!! on a guitar concerto. We traveled to San Francisco last year to see CGT perform it with an orchestra. We were hoping Jon would be there too, but no such luck.

CGT had not played locally in a couple years, but they booked a show at Blueberry Hill. We made a day out of it, inviting our friend Dirk over to hang out at our place and then walked over to BBH for dinner. We were sitting in the "new" section of the restaurant, which is also the entrance to the basement club, The Duck Room. We saw Paul Richards walk up from the club. He saw us and came over to chat for a bit. They had just arrived a half hour earlier and he was too busy to join us for dinner. I felt pretty pleased with myself - what could be cooler than the musician you've gone to see walk over to talk to *you*?

Ralph couldn't join us earlier, but he came by before we finished dinner. We all talked for a while. At 6:30, we were due down at the club to set up the merchandise area. There was a guy in line already, but no staff there and the door was unlocked, so we walked right in. On our way down to the club, someone did ask what we were doing there. Oh, I'm doing merchandise for the band. And that was it. I brought a printout of Bert's e-mail detailing the time as "proof", but it wasn't needed.

CGT weren't ready for us yet, they were still soundchecking. In other words, oh my god, we just got to mosey in and sit down to watch the soundcheck! They were playing the end of one piece which I thought sounded like a reworking of Blind Faith's Can't Find My Way Home. Roy thought I might be right after I pointed it out. (Maybe I just have that song in my head since we saw Winwood and Clapton do it last week. It turned out to be a new song called Andromeda.) They also did part of Tubular Bells (which Roy recognized before me), and the opening notes of Echoes. But still, we were there and we belonged there. We got to see about 15 minutes of our private show. If they ever tour with Jon Anderson, I have to do this again!

Hideyo gave me his digital camera and asked me to take some pictures of them during the soundcheck. Unfortunately, the light was too low and the shots looked pretty bad. You can see for yourself. He used one of these shots in his tour diary at http://cgtrio.proaudiowebsites.com/cgi/viewroadcam.paw?465.

After the soundcheck, Bert came over. We had about 10 minutes to get set up before the doors opened. I inventoried the CDs and tshirts. Their sound guy Tyler organized the table display. They only brought three of the CDs to sell and limited sizes on the tshirts. Literally only one XL sized shirt. It went first. People started filing in before we were really ready. Also before we had received any money to use as change! Roy gave someone some of his own money as change before Bert brought over some fives for us. They were doing something different this time around - recording their show and burning copies of the live CDR after the show. It was $15 and the best seller by far. We were set and the guys went upstairs for dinner.

I enjoyed talking to people coming up to the merch table. One guy had only heard of them through the radio program Echoes and had never seen them live or heard any of their albums. Another came with a friend and bought the live CD before he had ever heard a note of music. Another was visiting from Costa Rica and was excited to find out they were playing here this night. Roy and Ralph started talking about some comic book movie coming out and I shooed them away from the table - I couldn't play the extroverted salesperson if I had to talk over them.

The show started around 8:30. CGT opened with Yamanashi Blues from their first album. Some other familiar songs were Eve, Miserlou (the Dick Dale song used in Pulp Fiction), and Whitewater. The crowd seemed pretty attentive. They also played a classical piece using a method called circulation - each guitarist kept the melody going by playing every third note.

Their show featured four rock covers - Tubular Bells, Echoes, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Freebird. I'm torn on this. I really like the songs, how they sound, hearing stuff that's familiar, but I'm afraid doing so many will make them look like a novelty act. All of us in the crowd sure seemed to like them.

During the show, we didn't need two people manning the table. Roy sat in front with Dirk and Ralph. He came back to relieve me midway through and I took his seat. Bohemian Rhapsody is usually a highlight, with the crowd singing along. But the crowd wasn't singing. Hideyo turned the microphone towards the audience and gestured to encourage us to sing. Ralph and I sang, but not too loud, because well, I know the words, but have trouble with notes and timing and a lousy voice and those things. Most of the rest of the crowd was silent. I headed back to the merchandise table before the encore.

After the show, we were busy. Lots of people were buying the live CD and lining up to wait for the CDs to be burned. I get the feeling the band has been doing their own merchandising at some of the other shows this time. Hideyo was working the CDR duplicator keeping track of how many CDs were sold while he was signing autographs. Paul was handing out the discs. I could have helped with that. There was now a big bottleneck by the table and exit to the club. The CDs were $15 and so many people were paying with $20s that we were running out of fives again. I sent Roy over to the bar to get some more. I felt weird pulling this big wad of money out of the purse to search for change, and I began to keep my hand on the money purse at all times so it would be safe.

I was eyeing the live CDs. There were three left. I figured they'd give me one as a thank you, but I didn't want them to run out first! Hideyo handed me one and said "For you". I thanked him. When I asked Bert to sign it, he said "You didn't pay for this, did you?" He also gave me their new best of compilation Highlights and the last remaining live CD. I had been telling Ralph to buy it, but now I just handed it to him.

The crowd thinned out. Bert and I started to do the inventory. At all the shows where I've done merchandise, I've always worked with Bert on it. I guess that's his part of the duties. He offered to do the accounting at the end, but seemed relieved when I said I'd do it. We counted up everything and I calculated what we should have earned. Then I counted the money. We were off by $10 in our favor. Damn. Bert said it was close enough.

We chatted a while; it's nice to be in a situation when you actually have time to get to know someone better and aren't just making small talk. Bert moved to my home state of Pennsylvania in an area I know well - my dad used to have business trips to this town and I have some good friends who live nearby. I asked him about his work with Jon - they e-mail every once in a while and did a show together last year. He said it was nice to visit with Jon, very mellow. I don't know how long we talked, but afterwards, Roy asked me just what we were talking about. He wanted to join in, but was standing around talking to Ralph during that time.

As everything was wrapping up, I found Paul to get his autograph on my new Highlights CD. He asked me what I thought of the new songs. I'm so bad with song titles and knowing what's what. I mentioned liking Andromeda, and that when they were playing it during the soundcheck, I thought it was Can't Find My Way Home. He said he knew the song and would listen for that next time.

We are so lazy. Ralph wanted to borrow a CD from us, so he drove us home, all three blocks, and Roy ran upstairs to get it for him. It was still only about 11pm, pretty early for a concert night, but I was pretty excited by the whole night and it took me an hour until I was ready for bed. I told work I would be in late the next day, but I woke up before the alarm went off and got in only a half hour later than usual.

There is a downside to getting into a concert for free. I didn't receive a ticket stub to add to my collection! I have stubs for every concert going back 20 years. I can only think of once that I even lost a stub. Ralph kindly mailed me his. I will add it to my scrapbook.

ETA: Paul Richards has corrected me on my songs. The song in the soundcheck I thought sounded like Blind Faith was really a song they were rehearsing but did not play in concert. It is Monte Montgomery's Six String Wooden Friend. Thanks Paul!