Watch my video "Eleanore Rigby" a few lines down on this site so you know what I'm thinking about this. By the way, many people have said that my playing is much like Ray Carles and Stevie Wonder's playing. Nor do they see the instrument they are playing, mara
In response to the original question, yes. I have been "playing while driving" for well over 30 years.
I give this response for purposes of polling data and not to argue a point to the judgmental nor to advocate or recommend as an activity for others. Your results (and mileage) may vary.
I spent many years driving to jobs all over the United States. Days upon days on the open interstate highway. I practiced. I practiced hours and hours against music on my stereo and just playing. Was I focusing on self-scrutinizing technique and compromising driving for harp or harp for driving? No. I was playing to pass the thousand of miles away.
In sitting here and running some rough numbers, I’m confident that I probably have an easy and realistic more than 5,000 hours playing harp while driving.
Yup. Singing with wild abandon. Holding a mic going into a Pignose plugged into my cigarette lighter outlet. And plenty of chromatic button pushing. Hurdling down the highway piloting a diesel dually pickup, playing harmonica and cheating death for both myself and the tens of thousands of other drivers rocketing along right next to me in blissful ignorance to the irresponsible hazard in such close proximity to their own well being.
You folks can speak for yourselves. I do not presume to speak for anyone but me alone. As stated, I am quite comfortable “playing harp while driving”. You can leap on that blanket statement if you so choose. To you, I say get your own life. I’m not justifying anything but me doing my thing. I’m not rationalizing or incrementaling anything when I say that of course I’ve never been foolish enough to play in heavy traffic, on city streets, or when navigating. But if I do, that’s my business. Spare me the sanctimony that I have a sharing the planet obligation to be responsible alongside my fellow driver. I am responsible. If I impact you, if you live to tell the tale to your attorney, you (or your survivors) can sue me.
Once again, I’m not advocating, recommending, nor bragging. Maybe you pick up a harp and it’s an imperative to focus with all your being on your playing. It is for me sometimes. I breath when driving sometimes. I’ve eaten a burrito while driving. I’ve unfolded an old Rand-McNally paper map while driving (probably never been successful at re-folding it though). I’ve dialed my phone, and I’ve changed out 8-tracks, cassettes and cd’s out of the stereo and even back into their cases. I’ve reached back and whacked a kid or two in the back seat. All while blasting a 3 ton hunk of steel sometimes at speeds approaching 80 mph.
In 40 years of driving I’ve never had an accident in a motor vehicle other than a motorcycle, or outside the USA. In those incidents, there was no harmonica outside of a storage case of some kind. Not bragging or rationalizing a point, just a fact. And it could change the next time I get behind the wheel.
I’m leaving here in about an hour. I’ll be out on US Interstate 80 crossing the Great Basin Desert and traversing Nevada later today on my way to Colorado. I’ll be out there for the next couple of days and I’ll be traveling with some sort of fantastic instrument that lets out a death sound. Here I come. Watch the fuck out.
---------- ~Buzadero Underwater Janitor, Patriot MBH poseur since 11Nov2008
so just yesterday i watched for the first time episode one of six feet under.... most of you have seen this, it is from 15 years ago.some how it seems appropriate.
