asked if they knew what he looked like and they said he’s supposed to be an old hippie. I told them this was a Gourds show- so that would pretty much describe the entire audience. Then I saw the strangest looking guy in the club, Hell- the strangest looking guy in the city- climb up on the stage. Dressed in a striped suit coat and a hat, he made the rest of us old hippies in the audience look pretty mundane by comparison.
He took a seat on the stage with a 1930s era National steel resonator, looking every bit as old as the guitar, introduced himself and started to play.
That’s the part that’s hard to describe- the playing. I’ve been told that an old National has a difficult to play fret board but you wouldn’t know it by watching Baby Gramps. He twitched and jerked as he plucked and strummed like he was actually possessed by the ghosts of a legion of delta bluesmen on acid. Then he started to sing.