Eddy Boston Music
"So," she breathes, leaning in close, eyes glittering in the bar's dim light. "What kind of music do you play?"
"Um..."
That's always the first
question people ask when I say I'm a musician, and I never know how
to answer. I usually mumble about my acoustic guitar,
my voice, fingerpickin' something-or-other. That sidesteps
the question, though, describing not the music but the
instrumentation.
How do I describe my music. Well, it's Eddy Boston music. That's all I got. It's me, in musical form. It's funny, if you think I'm funny. It's smart, if you think I'm smart. It's full of the things that are important to me: passion, love, anger, happiness, food and drink, aardvarks.
Even the cover songs I play are hard to describe in one pithy sentence. What do Sam Cooke, Lightnin' Hopkins, Paul Simon, and The Pogues have in common? Not much except that they're great musicians. Throw in a large dose of Bob Marley, Mississippi John Hurt, The Cure, and the Grateful Dead, and the picture only gets muddier. Still, they're musicians that I love, and hopefully that shows in the amount of fun I have on stage.
I don't play the same covers as other Charleston performers. I have nothing against Wagon Wheel or Folsom Prison, but there's such a wide universe of music out there that I can't fill my setlist with songs others already do so well. So I pick Eddy Boston covers, ones you may not have heard in a while, but well-written, passionately made, finely crafted pieces of music, played with a love for the craft.
So there you go, that's the kind of music I play. Eddy Boston music.
"Oh," she mutters, glancing away. "Well, uh, I think my friends are waiting for me. I better get going. See you later."
"Sure thing," I say and finish my beer. Then I go home to practice for my next show.