Pickin' and Grinnin'

For much of my life, I've spent as much as several hours a day playing guitar. Sometimes this has been serious "practicing", other times more like random noodling. My focus has usually been on electric guitar, but lately it has shifted more toward acoustic. Part of the motivation for this has been a search for songs I can play and sing for my young son, Alex. I no longer have time for more than a few minutes of guitar at a time (1 year olds demand a lot of attention. Who'd a thunk it?). So entertaining him with a bit of picking kills two birds with one stone.

Alex seems to like songs with a bit of a beat, and a happy major-ish kind of sound. He also likes to crawl up to the guitar while I'm playing, start swatting at the fretboard, and use the neck as a chinning bar. This all kind of makes open tunings work a bit better than standard tuning. I can take my fingers off the strings, pry him off the neck, and let him bat at the fretboard, and the results will be a little closer to music than it would be otherwise.

I've never been much of an open tuning player, though. I've occasionally played a bit of slide blues guitar, and done the Keith Richards thing, but rarely gotten too far figuring out chords and plucked phrases, a la the great fingerpickers. To address this deficit, I dug up a Blind Blake CD and started figuring out one of my old favorites, "Police Dog Blues", which Blind Blake plays in an open E tuning (or maybe D capoed up a whole step). This has got a strong ragtime beat, a gentle sounding vocal melody, and lots of cool licks that aren't too hard to figure out. It also has two of my all time favorite blues couplets. Singing about the dog who guards the house of a girl he's fallen for:

I'm scared to bother 'round her house at night
I'm scared to bother 'round her house at night
She's got a police dog craving for a bite

His name is rambling, and when he gets a chance
His name is rambling, and when he gets a chance
He leaves his mark on everybody's pants.

I love the way he sets up the expectation (by naming the dog "Rambling") that the dog will do one thing (like maybe ramble around the neighborhood), and winds up doing something totally different. Alex seems to like it, too. When he's getting all fussy and upset about going to bed, singing "Police Dog Blues" usually stops the screaming.

No if I could only get him to sit still for my solo arrangement of "Giant Steps" ...