Jim Coats: Playing for the Love of It (Band Profiles, Part V)

Born and raised in Northern California, Jim Coats grew up steeped in the pop music of the early to mid-60s, singing along to AM radio, 45 singles, and American Bandstand. Every Sunday night he watched the Ed Sullivan Show with his family, and there along with plate-spinners, performing bears, and the comedy of Wayne and Shuster he witnessed Elvis, the Beatles, the Lovin' Spoonful, Simon and Garfunkel, and other rock 'n' roll acts – and also got a glimpse of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and that whole jazz scene. He had had a few early years of piano lessons, but at age 11 Jim got his first acoustic guitar for Christmas. By lucky chance, this happened just in time for our hero to drag the guitar into his standard-issue pre-teen period of withdrawal from human society. In music he found an ideal outlet for adolescent angst and rage, and he continues to recommend it for that purpose right up to this day.

It wasn't til he went away to college in Berkeley, though, that Jim actually started to perform with other players. Some guys down the hall at the vegetarian co-op -- this was Berkeley, mind you -- were plunking out old-timey tunes on banjo (Mikey Gardner) and fiddle (Ben Lapp), and he asked if he could sit in. It was an easy fit, and soon he was backing the others up on guitar. Lapp was trying to learn a tune from a Bill Monroe record, and Jim was intrigued: the vocals on the record were awful, of course, but the tunes were great. The three of them worked out the tune, and a band was born: Gone Fishin'. They played gigs now and then – say, a wedding or party, or drop-in sessions at the local Irish pub – but mostly they just got together and played every week or so for the fun of it, says Jim, "like it was poker or bowling or something."

Then in the late 70s someone gave Jim a David Grisman record, and his mind was completely blown. Okay, maybe his mind was kind of that way anyway. But this was music like he'd never heard before. Here were the tight harmonies of bluegrass and the swing of hot jazz . . . and that crazy mandolin: a melody instrument that could jump out in front of the rhythm guitar and play, really, just about anything. The Bay Area was the center of a budding Mandolin Universe, and Jim got himself an instrument: an old, well-worn mando with its brand name, "Strad-O-Lin," painstakingly spray-painted onto its peg head. Cheap, maybe, but its frets were in the right place. Jim did a little editorial work for Grisman's magazine, Mandolin World News ("It fits in your case!"), went to workshops, and got a chance to play casually with folks way beyond his league. That was a huge thrill in itself, and besides that those folks were tremendously accepting and encouraging. It was a kindness that he would never forget.

Over the years since, Jim has managed to keep a day job, marry, buy a house, raise a family, and still continue to play in a variety of groups and idioms: bluegrass with the Narrow Gauge String Band, Irish with Riggity Jig, recorder quartets with the Yolo County Windpipe Ensemble, folk and world music with the Redwood Grovers, and of course good ole rock 'n' roll with the ACE X-Tension Chords. "Getting a paying gig is great," Jim says, "but I'm like the musical equivalent of a junkie, I guess. I swear, I'd do it anyway, just for the endorphins. When we're all up there playing and singing together, it's like we're sharing a mind, the band and the audience, thinking the same thoughts, sharing the emotions. Groupthink. Groupfeel. It's the ultimate high. And, of course, there's the free beer and adulation, and sometimes you do get paid for it." What could be better?

The Owen Roberts Story: A Rhapsody in Ab (Band Profiles, Part IV)

This is a story about Ab. In musical lingo, Ab is "A flat," not an abbreviation for Abraham, Abner, Absalom, or Abigail. Ab is where Owen Roberts's musical education began, and that probably explains a lot.

At age 13, Owen found it was not an option or a desire -- rather, it was a requirement -- that all cool guys be in a band. One of his best friends was Lonnie Aarssen, "an amazing keyboard player already at 13," and together they decided that if they were to be at the sharp edge of cool they needed a band. This despite the fact that Owen couldn’t play anything other than the Satisfaction riff on his acoustic guitar (a riff you can still hear any time the X-Tension Chords play) and The Wabash Cannonball.

What instrument, Lonnie wondered, could his sincere but talent-challenged pal play well enough to be part of the band (eventually called The Store, since most of the members worked at a -- you guessed it -- store)? Lonnie settled on the bass for Owen. Four strings shouldn’t be too hard, right? The only problem was, no one in the band knew much of anything about the bass: how to play it, for instance, or even how to tune it. But Lonnie was a teenager! A rebel! And in the spirit and wisdom of youth, he just made it up. (Please note: This guy is now a long-tenured, highly published biology professor at Queen’s University in Canada, one of the country’s most prestigious institutions. He also has his own blues band, and sings uptempo blues like he was born in Chicago).

To tune that bass, Lonnie focused on fundamentals, the ABCs. Or at least the A. Make that Ab. Who really knows what he was thinking? Under his expert guidance, our hero's first bass guitar (an ugly but affordable Kay) went from bottom to top, A flat, D flat, F sharp, "and I forget after that," recalls Owen, foggily. It didn’t really matter, because who played the top bass string, anyway? In fact, who played the top two strings? Show-offs, that’s who.

The best thing about this tuning was that no musicians watching him could figure out what the heck he was playing. He wasn't all that good, but he sure was different.

That merriment ended a few years and basses later, when Owen joined an established country band, The Alley Cats, to get himself through school. The band leader, Jim Stirling, was about 20 years Owen's senior and did amazing Elvis impersonations. He played a Fender Broadcaster, which is worth a mint now. He knew every country song imaginable. Owen hardly knew any, but Stirling's patience with the newcomer was legendary.

Onstage, Stirling wouldn’t even bother shouting out the name of the next song, he’d just shout out the key it started in. Owen would dutifully go to it, finger in place on the fretboard of his Hofner copy (totally out of place in a country bar, but no moreso than Owen, with his hair halfway down to his butt), waiting for the leader to kick it off. Stirling would stare over at Owen and emphatically repeat “C!,” expecting him to find the note where every other bassist would. But it was not to be. This drove Stirling nuts. "He’d see me poised," says Owen, "and keep shouting across the stage, looking at my finger position, 'C!' And I’d keep yelling back 'Got it right here!'” Stirling's wife, Gloria, was the drummer. Eventually, they divorced. Ab tuning probably had nothing to do with that, but it certainly didn’t promote harmony on stage.

In subsequent bands (The Reflections, Speed O’ Light, Canadian Grande, Spice, Hat Trick, The Mudcats, The Roberts, and most recently, the GMOs [www.gmomusic.com]), he continued to play bass for awhile, but finally switched to guitar, mainly because he was usually the lead singer/hot dog, and how many bassists (Sting and Sir Paul aside) double as leaders? "Ironically," Owen reflects, "it was then I came to appreciate the musical magic that takes place when a superb bassist and drummer hook up, like Ron and Robert in the X-Tension Chords. As the band’s quasi-front man, I can’t say enough about the rhythm foundation they give us, which is really the secret to how we can bring 12 people onstage, several of whom are shaking hands for the first time, and have it sound like we’ve been together for more than 30 seconds."