Linda Stout

Some things I'm working on: New songs I wrote (a backlog; there are lots since the CD came out; jazzy, some blues, rock, and think I'm growing. I'm working on a bandmate's great songs. I'm taking guitar lessons again, and that's good, grounding. I'm working on some covers I might play out. I learned a Crystal Gayle song, Talking in Your Sleep. I am sort of new to a Cole Porter tune, up and Latin as I'm doing it, So in Love. That song is just so hot. All right, who would have thought '80s, but Ain't Missing You, by John Waite, but my own version. Some covers I do: I particularly get so much great feedback about Tracy Chapman's Baby Can I Hold You. Matt has been singing really nice harmonies. I do a kind of more country version than Tracy, and my voice is higher. Also, I regularly play the standards Autumn Leaves (Mercer etc.), Summertime (Gershwins), Till There Was You (from The Music Man before the Beatles did it), Somewhere Over the Rainbow, with the verse (intro). Sometimes I do Misty, My Funny Valentine. Folk-rock covers: Neil Young's Comes a Time in a dropped D tuning, and it's a rock version. I do a jazzy version of James Taylor's Don't Let Me Be Lonely. I do the John Prine tune that Bonnie Raitt made famous, Angel from Montgomery. Most sets are mostly my tunes, and people don't seem to be getting bored. And I'm working on balance, in about every way. I wouldn't say I'm imbalanced, but it's an interesting thought, has come up in reading a Pema Chodrun book and other conversations with friends. The music itself always settles me, even when it's hard, maybe just as much when it's hard, well when it's easier, too. I bought a small collection of new heavy picks to try, after a complete attachment to little green medium Dunlop picks (they are everywhere in the house). Now, some heavy ones, for real attack on single-note playing...To try new licks...