(Photo by Andrew Chin)

I belong to a group of musicians who get together every Thursday. They call themselves the “Zoom Family.”

We shoot the breeze, discuss current events, then pass the virtual guitar around, as it were, so each of us can take a turn playing and/or singing a song. I’ve only done it a couple of times, but I really enjoy it. It’s slowly helping me conquer one of my biggest anxieties.

But being a participant brings a certain — albeit relatively small — bit of pressure. We go through two or three rounds worth of songs every week. Nobody wants to perform the same tunes every week, so you need to have more than a few tunes under your fingertips.

I’m a very busy man. I don’t have nearly enough time to sit and memorize the progressive rock-driven type of tunes I tend to enjoy most. If I’m gonna learn a bunch of songs, I thought, I’m gonna have to keep things relatively simple.

It would seem that the older I get, the more I appreciate the skills of Tom Petty. I’ve never disliked his music. I’m just paying more attention these days. I thought it might be fun to learn a couple of his tunes, if it was possible to do so relatively quickly. Based on the tunes I picked, it is! In fact, I didn’t see just how easy it is! It was quite shocking!

There’s a fine line between “simple” and “simplistic.” If you’re a songwriter, the trick is to stay on the right side of that line. Tom Petty did it, and did it well. He wrote great songs with relatively simple chord structures, and it never seemed like he was playing down to his fans. That’s no small feat!

I’ve become a fan of Marty Schwartz, an online guitar teacher with a great YouTube channel. (He must’ve gotten someone’s attention, because he has parlayed that work into his own show on AXSTV.) He does a great job of teaching you how to play several popular songs. I decided to see if he could help me with Tom Petty. As a matter of fact, he could!

There’s nothing overtly flashy about Petty’s songs. The chords are very accessible. My friend Jimmy Griffin (whom I recently interviewed) has a Petty tribute band called Hard Promises. He noticed the same thing. “You keep waiting for that tricky chord to come up,” he said. “But it never does!”

But the lack of flash doesn’t equate to a lack of substance. If anything, the lack of flash only makes Petty’s tunes more enjoyable. One need only lay back and enjoy the tale being told. Or, if one chooses to play along, the song’s cn be deciphered and played much more quickly than an interlocking 7/8 figure a la King Crimson. And while I do love my Crim, they don’t quite seem to fit the mold presented by my Zoom Family.*

Like so many other things music, this topic is much better heard and experienced than it is written about. You owe it to yourself to explore and dissect this music. Something tells me these won’t be the only tunes the Zoom family gets to hear me play, And I can hardly wait to bring it to them!

* With that being said, there is one Crimson tune, Three of a Perfect Pair, i want to learn and play for them. Adrian Belew showed us that it can be played solo on an acoustic guitar. Challenge accepted!

#cirdecsongs

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I am currently at work on my second book, The Wizard of WOO: The Life and Music of Bernie Worrell.

Would you like to have your album reviewed? Please contact me at cirdecsongs@gmail.com