Clunker Chord (narration) - Jimmy Buffett

Well listening now, that was a pretty interesting attempt

at the improvised ending of a song

I’d gone to New Orleans with limited skills on the guitar

but in the city of jazz, I started attempting to expand my guitar

expertise in that direction

After all, I was living in the French Quarter, had grown a goatee,

and was hanging out at after hours bohemian bars listening to

some very talented musicians trying to pick up some pointers

So in my attempt to show off some of that talent to Travis and Milton

The D 9th jazz chord I was attempting, never made it out of the

starting gate

What was produced is what is known as a clunker chord

The guitars version of a trainwreck

The meter was running on my session time so I just

had them fade the ending before the clunker

On the original tape though, it was still there

When I first listened to the track I thought about trying to

repeating the fade but then I thought that clunker

chord was part of the process

Improvising is essential to anything creative, trying to

stretch beyond my comfort zone on the fretboard at the time

My fingers could not make out what I was thinking

If it doesn’t just try and not repeat your mistakes

So that brings us to the B-side of the first record

and a song called: Abandoned on Tuesday

By the time we were ready to do the track

some local musicians had showed up at the studio

and before I knew it, I had a band for the next cut

and the funny thing is, looking back on it, one

of the session players on this track

was a young guitarist from Mobile

named Rick Hersch, who was

one of the founding members of Wet Willy

who are from Mobile also

Rick had gone on to play with bands from Randy Newman to

Stevie Wonder

We would run into each other on the road occasionally but

then I lost touch with Rick

As faith would have it, as we were putting

the pieces of this project together

I went back to Mobile to visit with Milton and do interviews for

the video in this package that my daughter Delaney produced

While there as Milton told his version of events, he reminded me

that the guitar player on Abandoned on Tuesday

and several other tracks was Rick Hersch

Our Producer for Buried Treasure is Will Kimbro who is also

from Mobile

When I told him that Rick was the guitar player on the track

He told me he had been at Rick’s house on Dog River in Mobile

the night before

You can’t make this kinda stuff up

I’m getting back in touch with Rick who now splits his time

between Los Angeles and Dog River

He’s now another nugget in our burried treasure and I plan to

catch up with him soon

Rick is still making great music so you might wanna check him out

online

In the meantime you can hear him right here on Abandon on Tuesday