A word or two about music.
Actors all want to be musicians and musicians all want to be actors. And other truths.
I met Michael on the set of a Comcast commercial which we all got overpaid for and had to pay back. Now that’s a whole other story and not the one I wanted to write about today. What I did want to share was how Michael helped me along my journey with making music.
This particular Comcast commercial was like many other commercials I did for corporations that later got gobbled up by other corporations. It was helmed by a director of vision from a Northern European Nation - in this case, Sweden, who spent most of his time doing wild and crazy things and then having to explain those wild and crazy things to the advertising executives who in turn had to explain that to clients. The clients then explained what they wanted to the executives who in turn explained things to said director. And round and round it went.
What ended up happening was multiple 14 hour days. Which is a good thing, because it means overtime. In the end, the shot caller for Comcast - who was not there on the day but on a beach - thought the whole thing wasn’t in line with company values, and they killed the spot and hence we all got overpaid.
On the first day, I was unprepared for the golden time1, but for the second day, I came prepared with my guitar. At the time, all I had was this beat up old Fender Acoustic. Fender isn’t exactly known for their acoustics. It was what you call a starter guitar. The kind that comes with a soft shell case, a book of basic chords, a few picks and is out front of Guitar Center during the holidays.
It’s fate for the first few years of its life span was sitting in the corner of my dorm room as a talisman to try and help me get laid. It never worked. There is something sad about an unplayed guitar. Eventually, it mocked me enough that I picked it up one day and started playing.
Needless to say, like many, I was not very good at first. Till I met Michael.
We were waiting on client approval for the right color sweater a character should wear,. It wasn’t long till Michael found me, and then without asking permission from anyone, walked off, entered the sound stage, and a few seconds later came back with an equally unimpressive guitar from the corner of the living room set as set dressing.
Michael was born in Zambia, spent his formative years in the Congo, and then South Africa, as an artist and actor, coming of age during the later stages of Apartheid. He wasn’t going to let a PA or set dresser keep him from grabbing a prop guitar no one was using to help demonstrate his point.
He somehow magically turned the knobs and brought the lifeless, pink, children’s guitar in tune with my way out of tune guitar and started to add elements of high life patterns made famous by East African players or adding in Saharan Blues riffs made famous by the great Ali Farka Tourè. Michael was a magician. And magicians can turn junior children guitars painted pink into living things.
When you’re starting out learning an instrument and have your first encounter of playing with someone who is far better, who doesn’t make you feel like an idiot, it can go one of two ways. Either it quickly becomes a train wreck or you get a glimpse of why you struggle trying to tame this hunk of wood and wire and feel - for perhaps the first time - like you made real music.
Michael was both generous and demanding. He looked at me with eyes that had known oppression I will never fathom and said, you sing. I know you have all the Bob Dylan song you like? Right? That’s why you play. To do the Baby Blue for the ladies? Come on, sing.
He had me pegged. Till then, I hadn’t really ever had the courage to sing for anyone. And yes, I was about to bring in the Dylan obscure classic, “Desolation Row” to my acting class. All twelve verses. But right now I was just trying to get from a C chord to an F chord without losing the groove and somehow spit out the damn lyrics.
Sing, he said. Who was I to tell Michael no. And so I tried to do the first verse of Desolation Row. “They’re selling postcards of the hanging / They’re painting the passports brown / the beauty parlor is filled with sailors / the circus is in town.”
I added in that fake gravel twang Bob used to do to imitate Woody. Michael laughed. And before even the second verse was over, we were called back to set.
Somehow everyone was looking for us. When you go AWOL on a set, even if you are right outside the door, it is like an APB goes out, and people who have stood around and done nothing for hours all of a sudden sort of collectively overcompensate.
We were suddenly the ones holding everything up, even though we had been waiting for two hours on approval of a sweater. But blame rolls downhill in production and gets broadcast over headsets and radios quite liberally.
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