Hot Ticket
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The HT dates back to Real Book jazz days 25-30 years ago. I probably had 5 active music projects at time Rolling Blackout - (Hard Rock/Prog), Whiskey Pie (Americana Jam), Jazz with Alan (Straight Jazz), Wyatt Herb (R&B Funk Soul Jam) with the late great Dave D'Ambra, and The Rig (Bluegrass) with Chris Pandolfi - and I was working at Dolby with Bill. I can't believe how much time I had then, now.
I was playing with my neighbor Alan, a phenomenal piano player, and learning real book jazz but didn’t really have all the common groupings memorized so broke some rules. I wanted bring some of that raw openness to a live rock band, put some edge on it. So this was my first attempt write a traditional jazz structure. Jazz is where jam came from - and you can take it anywhere! The Jazz Odyssey … Just intro -> main vamp -> turnaround -> repeat with variation & extension while passing lead around the horn – let the improvisational mayhem get a little loose than resolving to a tight as nails turnaround and run the vamp them into the outro. Most of the time you comp -rhythmic chording on point- not lead, which means you get creative playing of each other pumping rhythm and accents, bouncning. And if it’s hot you keep going - add more players - it’s longer with more personality.
The song is pretty straight - all major/minor 7ths, 9th, 13ths, flat 5ths - building a simple melody into the chords but not really following tradition – play what feels and sounds right. So start on the turn around and keep it hot!. I wrote this on my 1987 Fender Gemini II acoustic - made in Korea! I had toted it around since high school. That guitar's claim to recording fame is that Prince pulled one off the wall of the studio and loved it - and used to over a lot nicer instruments for a recording Diamonds and Pearls. . https://www.mixonline.com/recording/gear-stories-sylvia-massy-prince-and-gemini-ii-366174
So we’ve been jamming Hot Ticket it for couple decades (and with several bands). Hot Ticket was a long time the show opener. We can loosen up, show off some chops, and it’s danceable. Anyone can jump in and run through some variation of the Em/G Am pentatonic blues and carry on - yah just gotta know the turn around. This studio recording is tight. It was actually just 3 of us. The first take of the day at Hyde Street - and after decades the first professional recording we tackled. - Erick’s headphones weren’t even working - he was flying blind on the kit. John arrived about an hour later to do all the material we released in 2023. Anyway, this track barely needed to be mixed but we did want to fill it in. The rhythm was just so hot and locked in and we left it. I just added some clean riffery at the end to make it thicker, give motion & swing, but maintain levity. The outro vamp shows off layering a few clean decorations. We had a section where Erick had sat back where he normally plays tricks - and ended up leaving a nice block of room for John to punch in a bluesy lead, adding variation to the mix - a little 60s bluesy licks.
John and I listened and thought it needed some keys - little stabs. We tried a few different sounds and we settled on this warbly rhodes and a standard evolver type sound. When it was done - wow - even after the blistering tasty leads - the clean friendly groove for the final vamps was such a winner. My daughter was just dancing around and couldn't believe it was us. This really rounded so much of the versatility demonstrated on the album. And it is a perfect segue to a dirty Pirates that wil be released with the full album in a few weeks!