For a while now I’ve wanted to write about the work I’ve been doing as a musician. Well, not “work” work, in terms of getting paid for one’s labor. The payment is the experience itself. As most people who know me know already, for decades now I’ve been a dabbler and a closet/parlor musician, playing guitar and keyboards and singing pop and rock songs and some jazz & blues tunes. Last year, during the pandemic episode, while sheltering in my folks’ home in Acton Mass, I disciplined myself to cover at least one song on guitar and piano per day. That extended into a regular practice upon returning to China last fall. Then I joined up with my old and co-filmmaker Jud Willmont, who also plays guitar, and a Dutchman named Johan, and we formed a band of sorts. Three guys on guitar mostly. But sometimes me on keys. And more recently, on melodica (or melodeon depending on whom you ask).

We call ourselves the Swampers, in homage to the guys who backed so many great bands and singers in Muscle Shoals, the recording studio based in Alabama. Sometimes we’re the Shanghai Swampers, other times the Swamp Stompers, or maybe Stomp Swampers. I guess we need to nail down our name.

Anyhow, for months now, we’ve been getting together to play and jam to some of our favorite tunes. We tend to favor classic rock songs by old bands like Pink Floyd, the Eagles, Tom Petty, Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles. Jud is a bit of a deadhead, so we cover a few Grateful Dead tunes as well. We usually meet at either the Hop Project, a craft beer bar in my neighborhood in Shanghai, or at the 521 café near Suzhou River. Lately we’ve been meeting at the Border Bar. We get together in the evening and our jam sessions last hours, sometimes ending at 2 am or so. Others join in now and then, including another guitarist and singer named Tom, who is a veritable jukebox full of tunes.

In the process, I’ve been disciplining myself to memorize songs, both the lyrics and the chord changes, and thus wean myself off of using an iPad or iPhone with Guitar Tabs lyrics and chords to play the songs. Tom plays all his songs from memory, and that’s been inspiring for me. So now I want to describe some of the process I go through to learn the songs.

First, one has to select a few songs to work on and stick with them for a while. I find it takes around two weeks of solid practicing and playing to get the songs into my long term memory bank. It helps to have an event to look forward to and a deadline to perform the songs. In this case, it was Robert’s Birthday party, which was held last Sunday at the Eagle Bar in Kunshan (my favorite haunt there for those who don’t keep up with this blog). I’ll describe that historic event later in this blog.

So, back to memorizing songs. I’m usually on my guitar (a Martin acoustic), sometimes on keyboards. I play the song at least two or three times, trying to play it through the whole way. Sometimes I’ll stop in sections that I’m still learning, and work on them a few times. Then, as the song sinks into my memory, it starts looping in my mind. I hear the song and sing along while I’m walking my dog, or driving somewhere. I keep returning to the more difficult parts. Usually it’s the bridge. That always takes longer to learn. Sometimes it’s a section of the verse that’s a bit more challenging lyric-wise. Sometimes the lyrics confuse the mind, since they overlap or repeat. I wonder if this is a flaw in lyric-writing, but I’ve seen/heard it in just about every great band or musician. 

So, back to the “set list.” This is the list you are working on to memorize for a gig or just some jam sessions. For Robert’s Birthday, we chose the following set list:

1)     Summer of 69 by Bryan Adams 

2)     It’s My Life by Bon Jovi

3)     Losing My Religion by REM

4)     Don’t Cry by Guns n Roses

5)     Mary Jane’s Last Dance by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

6)     Tequila Sunrise by the Eagles

7)     Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix

8)     Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd

9)     Black Magic Woman by Santana

10)  Nothing Else Matters by Metallica

11)  Take on Me by Aha

So it’s a mix of classic rock tunes and pop songs from 1960s-1980s, mostly. We also do some more recent stuff now and then including some Radiohead covers. But mostly we are “classic heads,” as my old friend Marvin (Robert’s predecessor at Eagle Bar) called himself.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been going through this set list on a daily basis, and working especially on the tougher parts (for me at least). None of these songs are “easy” in any meaningful way. They each have their own challenges. But some are a bit less challenging to memorize than others. Some I’ve known and played for many years, and others are fairly recent additions to my repertoire. Some of them, such as It’s My Life and Summer of 69 were songs I picked up while jamming and singing with cover bands in Shanghai and Kunshan. These are perennial favorites and always get a good reaction from the audience. Others were in our repertoire as a band for a while now. Some are new additions. Much of the work is done on my own in my home, but of course it’s also essential to play together with the other band members now and then, which we tend to do on weekends, since that’s when I’m back in Shanghai. 

After practicing this set list intensively, I learned some important things. One is that if you are singing and playing an instrument (guitar or keys in my case), it’s really hard to remember them if you diverge from your regular playing pattern or style. As soon as I start to introduce some variation to the playing, I lose the thread of the singing, and vice versa—if I try to vary my singing style, something happens to my memory stack and the playing suffers. So you really need to lock yourself into a particular pattern of playing and singing until it sinks deeply into your long term memory bank, and then you can start doing some variations.

Same thing with the sequence. I wanted to memorize the entire sequence of songs we are playing so I can just call them out one by one. And the songs do go together thematically and stylistically, and even in terms of the keys in which we play them. So there’s a particular sequence and order that you need to memorize. Then, after an intensive few weeks of practice and training, both on my own and with my fellow band members, we were ready to perform them to a crowd. 

On Sunday afternoon, I picked up Johan and Jud at the high-speed train station in Kunshan, and we headed over to my pad for a final rehearsal. We went through the entire set list just in time to pack up our gear and head over to the Eagle Bar for Robert’s Birthday.

For those who haven’t followed my blogs on the Kunshan live scenes, Robert is the guitarist and bandleader who has been playing at the Eagle Bar these past few months. He was based in Suzhou for many years, and he still runs a music school there. Over the years he has developed quite a network of musician friends, students and followers, and this was very apparent when we arrived at the Eagle Bar. The bar was more crowded with customers and musicians than I’d ever seen there before.

That night, we watched in admiration and awe as band after band got on the stage and performed. Many of the bands and singers were Chinese. There were also quite a few Filipinos in the crowd as well, including Chris and many others whom I’ve come to know in the city’s live scenes over the years. The bands played a mixture of Chinese and English pop and rock tunes. Sometimes customers got up to sing a song or two. There were quite a few superb guitarists in the crowd, including a German named Thomas who lives in Suzhou. There were also bass players, both male and female, and drummers. People got up and played in different combos over the night. Many of the tunes were classic metal or rock songs, others Chinese pop songs. 

Finally, our turn came around. Robert was running the show of course, and he told us when to mount the stage. Our first set was all guitars, backed by Flas on drums and Edward on bass (the house band). I called each song and went through the sequence. To my delight, I recalled nearly all of the lyrics and was able to sing them smoothly without distraction, while playing my Martin. Jud and Johan were backing on electric guitars, and each of them took up solos here and there. Of course Flas and Edward had no problem keeping the beat, as these are all very familiar songs for them. Overall, the first set of five songs went down without a flaw (maybe one missed line or two but that was it). The hard work and practice had paid off. Even Robert was very complimentary, and he has high standards for performance. 

Things got a little sloppy after the first set. We settled back onto our bar stools and ordered another bottle of whiskey. Folks came around to clink glasses and cheer as the night got more blurry. People in the crowd came and went, and by late evening (after midnight) only the stalwarts of the scene remained standing. Finally, Robert signaled for us to take the stage for our second set. I had to set up my keyboard since they don’t have house keys. We started up, but the set collapsed after a few verses because of instrument failures. My keyboards weren’t connecting to the electric outlet and kept going off. My mic wasn’t working, and Johan was standing on the cord. Jud’s cord for his electric guitar came unplugged. It was a mess. Where are the roadies when you need them most? 

We scrambled about fixing the equipment and electric lines and salvaged the performance with a couple more songs. Good thing that only the stalwarts were still around at that point. But then some others joined the stage. Drummers came and went. At one point, Melody, the house singer, was backing us on drums. Flas picked up the mic and sang as Johan launched into one of his favorite tunes, Johnny B Goode by Chuck Berry. I hit the keys hard and we saved the night with a rousing jam. Then I ended our session with a solo rendition of Ye Qitian’s hit song Ai Pin Cai Hui Ying, which everyone in China knows even though it’s sung in the Taiwanese dialect. 

After that, it was time to pack up and head home for a well deserved rest, but of course we stuck around a while longer to toast Robert on the success of his birthday party. The whole evening was way beyond epic, and my student research assistants managed to capture most of it on video. So now it’s back to the editing room to make a short film about this magical and memorable evening. And to think about our next song list…