Oh, God, I Just Want To Play

Night is here, and I am getting scared. I’m in a nameless place now, but will soon be moving on. Dylan over the speakers and there was some metal guitar a few songs back. A maudlin feeling that might be the blues is overcoming me, sinking deeper and deeper as the bourbon settles. My light can shine so brightly, you know, so brightly I can barely see sometimes and so harshly few can even look at me. But it is hidden behind a beard and wrinkles and… other stuff. I’m hungry. Begin wandering the streets again. My feet are cold. Oh God, I just want to find a place to play.

Henry’s Pub is smack dead in the middle of Helsinki. It used to be the bus station building on the busiest street in the city until they paved it over and laid down statues, shops and pubs. The night bartenders and bouncers at Henry’s Pub are smoother. They are made for trouble and see it often. They spot me and my long coat immediately. Big huge pockets and many for carrying harmonicas, wallet, keys, notebooks, pens… The bouncer asks me to check my coat, and he knows I don’t like it. I start unpacking on the table in front of him.

“Look, can I have a bag for all this stuff?” He hands me a white plastic bag.

I never understood why you had to check your coat. The back of a chair in a shady pub was always fine with me, but you don’t mess with a fellow whose sole job is to throw you out. He takes my coat and hands me a 66. That’s a tag, not the revolver.

“You want me to check the bag, too?”

“No, Man, this is my STUFF!”

So I sit at a table piled high with harmonicas and glasses as the 20 year old women wander past and wonder who this lonely old bearded man is.

The Sunday Blues Jam is run by Canadian Mike Lynch, a 13 year resident of Helsinki. He’s rough, plays a Fernandez bass, wears a shark tooth necklace, and organizes a different house band for the jam each week. Robert Enstrand on keyboard is from Sweden, also a foreigner like myself. He’s in his 20s, really cool with a small goatee, a Malcolm X cross around his neck, and a blue wool cap with tassels pulled down over his head. I play harmonica and I am into guitars, but we end up talking about Hammonds, Rhodes pianos, Wurlitzers, Melotrons and Grands. Kalle Alatalo is on guitar. I first noticed him practicing on a gorgeous natural-stain Telecaster before the band came up. He’s a trained luthier. He was noodling with some vaguely CCR-inspired country-fried riffs. I just wanted to grab my harps and go up and noodle with him. That’s what Eric and I do, so I’m tuned to playing with just guitar. Lacu Lahtinen on drums is the old man of the group. He has ridden and is riding the wave of Rock and Roll. He wears a Graham Bonnet t-shirt. “Sure,” he says when I mention it. “From Rainbow. I played with him.”

The band plays a warm-up set before the jam, Classic stuff. Mike’s voice rings. Brings me home. I drink a couple more bourbon and a cider, because you have to pay if you want to stay. Oh Lord, I want to play but it seems to be slipping farther and farther away as the drinks pull me out of myself and the bouncer eyes me. I’m beginning to get paranoid. It’s time to go home, I figure, before the bouncers make that decision for me.

I look and he looks back at me, face hard, then suddenly from the stage, “Can we have Paul Bourgeois up here, please?”

“I’d love to,” I shout back, running up on stage.

“What keys do you have there?”

“Everyone. Got a box-full-o-harmonicas,” I answer, unpacking them on a nearby table. “How do you feel about the Peter Gunn Theme, key of A.”

“Sure.”

I call to the sound guy for a bit of distortion, bass and reverb to “meat-up” the harp. Thumbs up. Mike starts in with the bass line. It’s not a set piece, but he’s awesome… leads us… walks us… pulls us right in. Drums… guitar…

I play the familiar first two notes of the horn section, bending down deep and drawing the notes out. Robert laughs, his tassels flying, and joins me. The audience roars.

And we all dive sooo deep.