This Week — Live At The Monterey General Store

I play a little bit of jazz guitar — very little bit — but I am fortunate to have grown up with a fantastic, world-class jazz guitarist and we have remained great friends and this weekend we are doing a gig here in the beautiful Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. There are many stories I can tell about the circumstances that have led to this gig, 30-plus years in the making, but I will be brief. My friend, Dan Axelrod, was a musical prodigy from early childhood and he lived down the street from me and somehow we both fell in love with jazz as teenagers – Dan because he could play it as well as anyone and I because it was music that was always around, in my pores, courtesy of my dad. Dan and I used to hang around a lot and at various points he would teach me chords and how to strum and eventually I was proficient enough to accompany him as a rhythm guitarist, as long as we kept the changes relatively simple and dispatched with the suspended flatted fifths, ninths and thirteenths. What I lacked in ability I made up for in chutzpah and eventually I found us a gig at a local place called the Rainy Nighthouse and I somehow convinced Dan that this would be a fun thing to do, two nights a week. We were still in our late teens. Dan, if I recall properly, was studying with Billy Bauer and perhaps a little with Jim Hall and had not yet met his guitar hero, Tal Farlow, who would eventually become his great friend and mentor.

Anyway, we had this gig and it was two nights a week and I couldn’t remember the changes to all of the tunes and Dan would write them for me on little index cards that I would have on a music stand in front of me. He’d call off a tune, I’d search for the index card and we’d count it off and I’d play the changes and he’d do the soloing. The challenge was this: If it wasn’t a blues, I didn’t feel capable of taking a solo, so two nights a week for four to five hours a night, Dan had to take all of the solos on just about every tune. I never realized what a challenge it was – and I don’t think he realized it either – but it turns out to have been the equivalent of months in the woodshed for Dan, trying to be creative and inventive for hours and hours on a wide range of songs from ballads to bossa novas to bebop and beyond. People who heard Dan play before and after that summer in 1972, the height of our “fame,” couldn’t believe the difference in his playing. He had made the leap from prodigy to accomplished jazz musician and was now ready to meet Tal on fairly equal terms. It was a turning point for him and a lot of fun for me, although my playing never really got any better. At least it didn’t get worse.

Fast forward to the next century and Dan and I are still friends and I have this little lake house in Monterey, Ma., and there is a little general store here where I go every morning for my coffee and newspapers and one day there is a sign at the general store and it is advertising music every Saturday night. For some reason I tell the owner, Kenn, that, oh yes, I am a musician and in fact I am part of a wonderful jazz guitar duo. Of course, Dan and I have not played as a jazz guitar duo since the Rainy Nighthouse in 1972, but, in talking to Kenn, I manage to leave out this small detail. And Kenn says, great, let’s pick a date. And we do and I look through all of my things and there are the index cards and that’s all I need. This is six years ago and Dan comes up to the Berkshires and we get on the stage and I pull out an index card and it is the song “You Say You Care,” which Coltrane does so incredibly well on Soultrane.  And Dan starts wailing and I look over at Kenn and he has a huge smile on his face and the next thing I know he is on the telephone and calling people and holding the phone up in the air proudly because he realizes that, in Dan, there is brilliance in his midst. And we do the gig and it is a resounding success and I even take a couple of solos and all is well.

So the next summer I book us again, only Dan has had enough: Once every 30 years or so is fine with him. Undaunted, I hook up with another excellent guitar player, not necessarily in Dan’s league, but, then again, nobody is, and we do the gig that year and for a couple of other years. It’s fun, but not as fun as playing with Dan. So last year I convince Dan to do a return engagement and we have a blast and now, perhaps, it will be an annual event, as long as Kenn will have us. So this year, the gig is Saturday night at 7 p.m. in the Monterey General Store in Monterey, Ma., and if any of you happens to be in the neighborhood, please stop by and say hello. I was looking for some music to accompany this article and found this clip of Dan and me playing Donna Lee in my living room back in 1977, with me on index card and rhythm guitar. Check it out.

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