Video Fridays: Steve Miller

You know, there was a time when I thought I’d never again need to hear the music of Steve Miller.

His many hits were ubiquitous on the radio in the late 70s and early 80s, too ubiquitous, over played, and I burned out on them.

Not Steve Miller’s fault, and not the fault of the music.

Then, a couple of years ago, I was playing an open mic night at a local tavern, just me and a friend, both of us on acoustic guitars, and in between songs, seemingly out of nowhere, I started playing the bass line from The Joker, my friend recognized it and started playing the chords, I started singing it and miraculously remembered all of the words, and…

…the small crowd at that tiny tavern — a tiny tavern not at all known for dancing — got up and danced.their.asses.off!

That still stands as one of the best musical moments of my life. We jammed on that song as long as we could, repeating verses and the chorus, and to see all those people having so much fun, moving to the tune and singing along, well, as a performer it just doesn’t get any better than that.

My current band has just added The Joker to our repertoire, in a full-on rockin’ electric version, and I can’t wait to debut it at our upcoming gig on March 2nd.

For now, in honor of that first magical music moment, on nothing but acoustic guitars, here’s a wonderful solo-acoustic version, performed by Steve Miller, at a radio station right here in the Pacific Northwest, Portland to be exact, which is fitting, given all of the Portland content I posted this week.

Happy Weekend, everyone!