This year marks 50 years that I have been playing gigs. The only pause during those 50 years happened when I had to stop for about a year when I had my cancer surgery. Over the years I have had the pleasure of playing with some great musicians. The most famous of these was Rock ’n Roll Hall of Famer, the one and only, Bo Diddley.
In 1992, Rock 101 in Manchester had a contest - “Bo Needs a Band”. Bo Diddley was coming to Manchester and he needed a back-up band. There were 2 rounds of auditions followed by the finals and my band Lichen won! We were thrilled and then in a classic local band hard luck story, the club where the concert was scheduled was padlocked shut by the city for some financial reason. We went from the heights of success to the depths of disappointment. Luckily, Rock 101 found an alternate venue, the Carousel Lounge in Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts. The show was back on.
We were all set up and ready to rehearse with Bo at 3:30 as requested, but we were told that Bo was taking a nap. The show was at 8:00 and Bo comes strolling in around 7:00. We run through 2 of his new songs and that was it. For most of the show, Bo would just launch into a tune and I would quickly figure out the key and shout it to my bandmates and away we went. It went really well and I had a blast. I asked him about how long we would be playing and he said 1 hour, we played 2 hours, so he must have been having some fun too. There are many funny stories from this night. Ask me about it if you are interested.
Here is a picture of us with Bo after the show:
