SOLDIER’S DRILL
By Reverend Gary Davis

(Applause)

VOICE IN THE AUDIENCE : Put the microphone down on your guitar 1
STEVE: What? And play an instrumental?
VOICES: Yeah.
ANOTHER VOICE: No, Sing.
STEVE: I’ll play a corny Reverend Davis instrumental. (Starts alternating bass on guitar).
VOICES: No!
STEVE: (Stops playing his guitar abruptly), Dig! Would you dig this?2
The house is filled with collectors and traditionalists.3 And instantly they want.:
“Naw, I don’t want that, man, I got all the paramints from Europe to nineteen ten, I’m not ...
(two bass notes on guitar)
I don’t wanna hear that...
(two bass notes) I don’t wanna hear any Texas Blues with a variation by Blind Lemon Jefferson on a Lefkowitz Fianchetto.5..
He plays the opening bars of “Soldier’s Driil”
STEVE: Which you’ve probably hear many times. Anyway...
He starts again, mutters to himself, inventing an audience response
“He’s right...” without skipping a beat, and finishes the piece.
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1“Put the microphone down on your guitar.”
This comment from audience sounds very much like the voice of John Fahey. John might have been especially interested in the guitar instrumentals even more than the songs Steve sang. If this tape was recorded in the late sixties, it could have been Fahey, who we believe had started Takoma Records in Los Angeles by then. John Fahey often recorded himself, so he knew about where to place a microphone in relation to a guitar for both performing and recording purposes.

2 DIG: Everybody in America knows the old jazz slang from the 60’s: “Dig” means pay attention or appreciate (I dig this) means I really like it, or perhaps
“check this out” or “get a load of this” meaning “listen to what this guy just said!” (Refering to someone saying “no” to a suggested song title.

3 collectors and traditionalists
Steve is a collector of old blues records himself, so he knows a collector’s comment when he hears one. He is pretending to be annoyed that his audience is full of collectors trying to edit his (Steve’s) choice of songs to perform at his gig. He is imitating their “I don’t want this, I have that already,“ A paramint means an almost mint condition of a record. Is this guy making a bootleg (unauthorized) tape of Steve out in the audience and trying to get Steve to play only pieces not already taped?

4Steve’s nickname is Lemon, after Blind Lemon Jefferson, incidentally.

5 On a Lefkowitz Fianchetto!?
Don’t worry, guitar buffs, you are not lacking in your knowledge of rare guitars.
We struggled with this term ”Lefkowitz Fianchetto” for a long time before calling in Steve to help us out. He listened, grinned, and explained that this is a chess term; it is a particular strategic move named after a prominent chess master, apparently having something to do with taking a man by surprise from the side, or flank (fianco).
Probably one of the first recorded examples of what we now call a “STEVE MANNERISM,” this totally irrelevant remark certainly has a rather impressive, silencing effect on his audience. (Wow, what is he talking about?!)