Videos! Big hits from the Ellis Street basement…

It’s been a while since I wrote, but more progress has been made.  Last time I wrote that I’d met Alex, a guitar player who’d just moved to Portland.  We’ve practiced four times together now, and we have three or four covers pretty well memorized and performable.  We practice in the basement of my house on Sunday afternoons, and we’ve worked on At Last, by Etta James; Angel From Montgomery, by John Prine; Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen; Fountain of Sorrow, by Jackson Browne; and Sunday Morning Comin’ Down, by Kris Kristofferson.

Here is Angel From Montgomery:

And At Last, by Etta James:

I’m sorry the video/audio quality is so bad. I have a webcam that wasn’t meant for this.  The washing machine is also a part of our humble little band, apparently. It has a solo at the end of Angel from Montgomery; I’m sure you could hear it.

Now that we’ve got a few songs ready, Alex and I are going to start looking into playing some open mics around Portland, hopefully in Southeast.  I’ll be sure to let you know where we can be found, even though we’ll likely only play for ten or fifteen minutes at a time.

In other news, I have my third guitar lesson tomorrow.  I haven’t really done my homework (what else is new), but things are coming along fairly steadily.  At the risk of looking like (even more of) an idiot, I’ve decided to share a video of one of my first songs with you.  I think I’ll post new songs pretty frequently, so you can see how things are coming along.  Here’s the first installment.  It’s Help Me Make it Through the Night, by Kris Kristofferson.

I have more videos than the ones I’m posting here.  All of them can be found on my YouTube page. You can check there regularly for updates.  I just don’t think it’s fair to subject the entire blogosphere to everything I record!

That’s all for now.  Let me know what you think by sending comments or messages.  See you next time!

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