<\/p>\n
I’m an official “old guy” now.<\/strong><\/span> An arts agency<\/a> made a documentary about roots music in Ohio, and a bunch of \u00a0baby-boomers, including me, was the subject.\u00a0 We were the old fogies on the porch picking away at authentic instruments.\u00a0 Meanwhile, my<\/em> “old guys” \u2014 Muddy Waters, Dave Tarras,<\/a> Mickey Katz<\/a> \u2014 are dead.<\/p>\n I saw a 92-year-old piano player recently.\u00a0 He wasn’t dead.<\/p>\n I still get nervous when I play.\u00a0 Good, I’m not dead.<\/p>\n I played at Nighttown, a local club,<\/span> <\/span>for the “old guy” DVD-release party.\u00a0 Something like my 1,028th Yiddishe Cup gig. \u00a0I played “Nelika”<\/a> in 7\/16 and stopped halfway through it.\u00a0 I didn’t take the repeat.\u00a0 Man, I was playing it in 9\/16 or 10\/16. \u00a0I was so ahead of the game.\u00a0 I was freaked out by my fellow musicians in the room.<\/p>\n Always good to be nervous.<\/strong><\/span> Me and nervous go way back. \u00a0My first couple recitals at Victory Park elementary school were debacles.\u00a0 I had memorized the tunes and then forgot where I was.\u00a0 Let’s take it from the top again, shall we?<\/em> Those grade-school gigs are hot-stamped on my brain.\u00a0 Worse, a violinist prodigy always followed me. \u00a0Philip Setzer.\u00a0 He wound up in the Emerson String Quartet<\/a>.<\/p>\n [For goys<\/em> only: “A.K.” in this post’s title stands for alter<\/em> kocker<\/em> (old cocker).\u00a0 An A.K. is anybody 10 years older than you.] I’m an official “old guy” now. An arts agency made a documentary about roots music in Ohio, and a bunch of \u00a0baby-boomers, including me, was the subject.\u00a0 We were the old fogies on the porch picking away at authentic instruments.\u00a0 Meanwhile, my “old guys” \u2014 Muddy Waters, Dave Tarras, Mickey Katz \u2014 are dead. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n—-
\nTomorrow:<\/span>
\nNo more of\u00a0 these “tomorrow” teasers.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"