Top 10 Countdown from the Demented Dobro, Sunday December 20, 2009

It’s about that time of the year when folks do their top 10 lists of things done, things that should have been, and things intended. I usually shy away from lists….it’s just not my nature and I believe in the philosophy of “if I can’t keep it in mind, then it isn’t a high priority”. Fortunately or not, depending on how you look at it, my memory’s pretty good so not too much falls between the cracks…….my wife has a somewhat different take on my memory, but that’s a different story.

In many ways this has been an exceptional year, good and bad, so in spite of my list aversion I’m going to take a whack at my top 10 Bluegrass-associated items for 2009 and prognosticate on 2010. Now be forewarned, my classification of “bluegrass-associated” can be interpreted pretty broadly, so expect a bit of columnistic license to range and wander.

2009 Top 10 Events in a semi-chronological, random order:

1. Take The Stage. Of everything that I did musically this year, this was the kick to start the year…it was a good, swift, sharp one right in the seat and gave me a really good launch. Thanks to Hilary and Dave and the rest of TTS, I got to experience the blood, sweat, tears, and joy that goes into pulling bands together for a stage debut; I met the good friends that make up my current fledgling, but most excellent, bands to continue what we started in TTS; and in a way everything that falls out below was touched somehow by this experience.

2. Volunteering at CBA Camp and FDF 2009. In a year of exceptional events this is right at the top and I have to recommend volunteering at the CBA camps and festivals to everyone….it is hands down a gas. Oh sure there is chair schlepping, canopy construction, meal ticket punching, jam leading, and stage setup duties but I felt like I was a part of the camp and festival….not just attending. As a volunteer it felt like MY music camp and MY festival, which gave me a jolt of unexpected pride. The dirty little secret is that as a volunteer you get so much more out of the camp and festival…….it’s so rewarding they could make us pay to be volunteers and I’d still probably do it. And I swear the CBA must have contracted out the cloning of Ingrid to a competing laboratory because she was everywhere...I think next year I’ll give all the Ingrid clones different names.

3. Welcome Columns. I never expected my TTS blog would lead to my plush office in the basement of the CBA International Tower Headquarters where I have the privilege of gazing up at the giants that make up the BOD as they arrive in their chauffeured limousines….actually I’m exaggerating a bit here…some prefer to arrive in chauffeured golf carts. My desk is well heated since it is located by the building boiler and they only charge me a few dollars to post my Welcome columns……just please don’t let them know I bring in my dog. There is no telling the controversy that would cause.

4. Playing the Freight and Salvage in 5 different shows. To avoid being labeled as somewhat less than truthful, I should put this in perspective. I was in 2 bands during the winter 2009 TTS which counts as two shows at the old Freight, then one of my new bands played the new Freight at a TTS event in August, and then both my current bands played at a Freight open house event in November. Okay, so these weren’t paid professional music gigs and were only 20 minute sets, but all the same…jeez…..5 shows in less than a year at the Freight….is that cool or what…never in my wildest imagination.

5. Immortalized on the cover of a Mel Bay Parking Lot Picker Dobro Edition. This unexpected opportunity has launched my career as a high profile Mel Bay male model and I now have lucrative offers to pose for such chic, international publications as the Dumpster Quarterly, the Road Kill Gourmand, and the Antique Hubcap Collector.

6. Radio Show. The top 10 list gets better and better…..and yes my band “Old Tunnel Road” really played a live show on Peter Thompson’s Bluegrass Signal on KALW.

7. Recording Studio Time. One of my “Oyster Stew” band members teaches film and sound at a local college, which needed a band to record for some student “recording engineer” final exams. We, of course, reluctantly agreed to go in and play the role of difficult, petulant musicians….but the students just laughed at me when I asked for my bowl of blue M&Ms. However, it was a good introductory experience for studio work and we’ll get a short demo CD from it.....

8. Friends, Jams, and other musical projects. I have played more music this year than I thought humanly possible and had an excessive, sinful amount of fun. This would not have been possible without the multitudinous friends and jams I was graced with this year……from the TTS to McGrath’s to my current bands, private jams, Columnist jams, jams in the foothills, Father’s day jams, the Grass Valley Dobro Jam (at FDF)….I don’t have a clue how I did them all….and there were so many missed opportunities for other jams.

9. My understanding wife and tolerant (not) dog. My poor wife and neglected dog are the primary victims of my bluegrass crimes and absences. I owe them big time and have to figure out how to spend more time with them, while jamming.

10. Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets winning the ACC Football Championship. Well Georgia Tech is in the south where bluegrass comes from, and I went to school there, so that qualifies it. THWG.

Those were only the top 10 for 2009. There was so much more that didn’t make the list that I suspect it will be difficult to surpass in 2010….but I’ll sure give it a try. Here are some hopeful predictions for ’10.

2010 Prognostications

1. Attend the 48-hour Jam. Need I explain this one….48 hours or so of non-stop, sleep deprived jamming. I haven’t made reservations yet because my wife has other potential plans (see number 9 above) but I might tempt fate anyway and show up with sleeping bag in hand, dobro on my back, a pot of boiled peanuts on my head and see what happens…..anyone looking for a roomie?

2. CBA Camp and Festival Volunteering. I had so much fun that I have to do it again……besides, last year we started a new tradition where one of the first year volunteers has to make the toast at the music camp wrap supper, and I need to be there to ensure the tradition is enforced…why should I be the only one to make annoying, embarrassing, inebriated toasts.

3. Gigs. I predict that 2010 is going to be the year of gigs for my bands. Granted maybe they will be baby step gigs, only moderately embarrassing gigs, almost certainly unpaid gigs, but gig we will, and there’s talk of busking too.

4. Columnisms. I will continue to lobby for a desk in the CBA International Towers that has a view of something other than insulation-covered pipes. And I will endeavor to ditch my stolid, academic style of writing and try to write more like Bruce and Rick and Cliff…you know, throw caution to the wind, walk where angels fear, bare my soul, shave my legs, and pull a few face plants.

5. Tour de Jam. This is an ongoing project…..I still have one or two unvisited jams in the city to attend and then I start my forays out into the hinterlands and down the peninsula. You never know when or where I’ll show up. Be wary, be very wary…..I’ve got your jam in my headlights and my foot on the gas.

6. Attend at least one new festival. I don’t know yet which new festival I’ll hit but I’ve been meaning to go to GOF and Plymouth for awhile now….guess I’ll have to make good on it this year.

7. Try at least one of JD’s recipes. Nuff said. JD any recommendations? How about one of your dutch oven recipes.

8. Columnist Jam 2010. The 2009 Columnist jam set the camp on fire so I guess we ought to do it again. At the FDF 2009 jam we had a good showing of columnists, but it was conspicuously incomplete attendance. So Columnists, this year get the Columnist Jam 2010 on your calendars, in your iPhone, or on your crackberry. I’m guessing that Friday evening at the FDF after the last band, just like last year, would be about right. Since Darby likes them so much, maybe I’ll bring some boiled peanuts. More details closer to FDF.

9. Improve my dobro playing. Another ongoing project, or rather an unending project, which entails learning my fretboard better, practicing slants, working on those fast hammer-on/pull-off runs, and arranging more of those bloody fiddle tunes. I swear, fiddle tunes must be a product of Satan because I can never play them fast enough or clean enough to sound good….then there are the crooked tunes that I believe were personally designed to embarrass me by proving I can’t anticipate or count those randomly placed extra beats. Works of the devil I tell you. In spite of that, I get such a good feeling of accomplishment when I wrestle with the devil and win.

10. Sing. If laying my guts out there playing dobro isn’t enough, I’ve been jonesing to throw my vocal guts up on stage as well. Hmmmm, I’m not sure I like the way the musical metaphors are going here…..we might be wandering towards a musical disembowelment. No matter. My path is set. I’ve been singing bass in a few songs here and there…which is reasonably straightforward because all I have to do is either double-down on the melody or sing on the 1 or 5. Now I like to think I’m a reasonably smart person (I can hear my wife laughing) so I figure the next logical thing to try vocally is to sing lead. My logic should be impeccable because I would be going from singing something already being played or sung (just an octave lower) to singing the melody, which is already being played by most of the instruments. Logical right. It makes sense to me because I’ve tried singing harmony and can attest that good harmony requires at least three things to happen in concert: one is to be able to hear the melody; two is hearing the other harmony voice; while, three, singing something else that doesn’t sound terrible. I have perfected the anti-harmony sounding terrible part and am slowly figuring out the harmonious harmony part. Meanwhile I will work on bass and melody (gulp…lead). Just be warned that if you see me walking on stage sometime, somewhere, wearing big rubber boots and carrying a sharp knife…something harmonically disturbing is about to happen.

Tour de Jam Stage 3, Sunday November 15, 2009

Here it is at 10:30 on Saturday evening before my column is due and I’m still writing. It wasn’t due to procrastination, I’ve been noodling on this for the past week, but all the same I haven’t finished it……ok…..nose to the old fretboard and see if I can make a wrap.

What is it about long narrow pubs in the Bay area? I recently hit two jams in my tour and both reside in taverns with excessively rectangular footprints. Even though one pub has more square footage, both seem to be designed by the same architect obsessed with long and narrow dimensions…one consequence is that the venue footprints create some challenges for patrons to negotiate in and around the musicians on their way to the loo. One might think that bluegrass jams would migrate to venues friendlier to jam circle geometry…after all when was the last time you played in a square jam right outside a bathroom door. Maybe the architect responsible for these came to us from the sister galaxy that gave us coneheads…does that mean these rectangular alien architects should be called blockheads?

Well, tavern geometry aside the two pubs in question are the Plough & Stars and Amnesia, homes of some longstanding San Francisco Bluegrass jams worth checking out….and for the record their footprints help to give their resident jams a certain unique flavor.

The Plough & Stars (http://www.theploughandstars.com) is located in the Richmond district in the city, not too far from the Golden Gate Park and not too far from UCSF. This jam is hosted on the first Wednesday every month by Jeanie and Chuck, veterans of the Bay area Bluegrass scene, and the jam is a CBA sanctioned event…..if you attend, be sure to notice the CBA banner prominently displayed behind the musicians. One of the fun things about doing this Tour de Jam is experiencing jam personalities…..which seems to somehow reflect the sum of the musician personalities…..the McGrath’s jam is raucous for a reason and certainly reflects Bruno Brandli’s subtle, understated influence. The Plough and Star jam is no exception to this and unique.

My first impression on walking into the pub was…well it’s like other long and narrow pubs in the Bay area, tables in the middle, bar along one wall, dark wood, Guiness on tap, and microphones in front of the musicians in the back of the room……..strange thing that! Wait a minute…is that  a band up there performing…did I get my evening correct…or maybe it’s the wrong location…and why are the folks sitting at the tables applauding? While these things were seeping through my feeble, overtaxed brain I do what I usually do in times of confusion which is sit at the bar, order up a Guiness, and study the scene in front of me.

Ordering a Guiness is actually an important delaying tactic that I use when assessing unusual and abnormal situations. It kind of works in the USA, but is much more effective in Ireland and the UK where bartends actually know how to pull a proper pint. In the UK, and I believe Ireland too, there is a pour line on the pints and bartends are required to fill liquid, not head, up to the pour line……otherwise they are pulling a short pint and cheating the patron out of their full enjoyment…it’s the law. Regardless of the reason, it takes time to pull a proper pint of Guiness, which may be accomplished by a variety of techniques. Some pubs take the “pull and settle” approach where most of the pint is pulled into the glass, the head is allowed to settle, followed by more Guiness, until a full pint is present with the appropriate aesthetic amount of thick, creamy head. For these pubs you order a good 10-15 minutes before the pint you are working on has succumbed. The other technique, that I’ll call the spatula technique, is quicker but involves the sacrilegious wastage of good beer. I probably don’t need to go into detail on this technique except to say the price of getting a quicker pint is watching excess head scrapped off the pint and dumped in the sink to make room for a full pull. I always have mixed feelings when I see this and take delight in watching my pint prepared by pull and settle, and take even more delight anticipating the first sip. Now the reason for this prolonged diatribe is that most American pubs just don’t get it. They pull a straight shot into the glass and who knows how much beer and how much head you get. My Guiness arrived far too quickly, with a thick a head, too little body, and before I had opportunity to properly reconnoiter the happenings.

During the wait I did make a few key observations…..yes it did appear, in fact, to be a jam in progress…..and there were several friends playing which prevented any hope of making an anonymous escape if I was having an off night. So I opened up my gig bag and jumped in.

The thing that threw me into confusion on walking into the pub is what makes this jam unique….it’s what I’ll call a performance jam. The microphones are set for the jammers to step up and play or sing……bit of a different approach to the jams I’ve been frequenting……..but how cool. When a song comes around that you’ve got some chops on, you get to play like you normally would, but in a quasi-gig situation. And for someone like me, any mic time I can get helps; apart from helping to flush out the usual stage jitters, it is an opportunity to make mic mistakes in a relatively harmless setting. The novel challenge here though is to think quickly and make a jam break work in a more performance setting…..great practice for working those jam band bones. Chuck and Jeanie run the show by organizing the songs, breaks, and musicians all on the fly, though it was a little nerve wracking the first time when Chuck came over and said “you’re up next”…what’s a newbie to do? Some of the regulars did mention that there is often a group of less experienced jammers that hang out in the back under their respective “domes of silence” and play the periphery. This jam ends pretty promptly at 11PM so don’t wait too late to drop in and miss the fun.

Amnesia (www.amnesiathebar.com) is a very different scene…pubwise and jamwise. Yeah, ok, it’s long and narrow….a right beanpole of a pub, a tall drink of beer. While the Plough and Stars is fairly well lit, Amnesia’s ambience is dusky…….I felt right at home…lots of people, crowded, noisy conversations, dimly lit, and a decent selection of beer. Do you ever get the feeling I’m biased about the drink I prefer? Monday nights are bluegrass nights on the calendar and the bluegrass jam, hosted by Dave Zimmerman, is on the third Monday every month, followed by a show, which on third Mondays is usually Homespun Rowdy, but the evening I visited it was 49 Special.

This jam was the more familiar circle, but with different faces. Dave bills this jam as a beginners jam, and the jam atmosphere was relaxed, some folks more experienced than others, but all in all beginner friendly. Not to say that it didn’t cook on occasion…it did, just not every song.

What makes this jam unique are the onlookers……..since Amnesia is a bit on the narrow side, and the jam is located in the back of the pub right in front of the stage….folks waiting for the performance to start, park their stools right at the edge of the jam. The neighborhood Amnesia is in has a pretty diverse population and some of the more interesting citizens seemed to end up perched right at the edge of the circle, which means I had my choice of music or conversation….and sometimes both at once. Then there were the dancers……..some that felt moved by the vibes wanted to get really close to the music…….

Since the performance starts at about 8:30 you need to get there at the crack of 6:30 to enjoy the full jam….this is one I’ll hit again….maybe it was the ambience, the interesting patrons, the conversations with the other musicians post jam, or maybe it was the jam…this is a fun one and well suited for beginners looking to try out a new jam or jump into a more public jam situation.

Ahh…it’s now 1AM and time to post.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

Louis Armstrong 

Coming to you Live! Adventures from Radio Land. Sunday October 18, 2009

I was planning on going to the Fall campout this year, looking forward to it, waiting for it, anticipating it for the past 5 months. Instead of putting my camping gear in the shed after the Father’s Day Festival last June, I left it in the garage ready to load in the truck. I was all set to go. My dog was hot to trot, ready to sniff some new….errr meet some new dogs and generously leave his scent, hopefully not on an expensive banjo but on a banjo nevertheless. He was salivating at the thought of spending the weekend with me even though he’d probably end up in the truck for a good part of it because he just can’t stand not being the center of attention and would be creating too much of a fuss for me to play more than 5 minutes. I was ready for the jams, the food, playing with some new folks and playing some more with folks I met over the summer.

But same old story…something came up. I can imagine some of ya’ll shaking your head, tsk tsking, and thinking while you read this “come on Sargent…same old bs…get your act in gear and get your head on straight”.

And you’d probably be right to aim those brain waves at me….but I haven’t laid it all out for you yet so here’s the full poop. By the time you’ve read this it’ll be all done, fini, owari, over, the end, in the bag, a wrap……for a radio gig. Sorry guys…there will be more campouts…..but I might NEVER get the chance to embarrass myself live on the radio, never ever again. I mean we’re talking embarrassment on a potentially monumental scale…a scale bigger than the stage at the Freight even.

“Sigh”, I’m somewhat tongue in cheek here because my bandmates and I have been practicing and know we have the potential and ability to pull off a pretty good performance, but we’re still new at this so there’s always that little gremlin quietly sitting at the back of my brain, just biding it’s time, waiting to pop out in the middle of a song and wreck some havoc.

A couple of weeks ago, Dave Zimmerman, our Take The Stage coach and mentor contacted our band “Old Tunnel Road” to see if we’d be interested in playing live on KALW…….two heartbeats and one click of my digital watch, and the Old Tunnel Road mind meld telepathically responded in a uniform yes, you betcha, of course, damn straight, and I need a beer….the latter is my usual response when I’m not already brewing a cuppa tea. Long story short….we quickly whipped 3 new songs into some semblance of an arrangement…..and Saturday evening it was off to the studio for our first live performance “On Air”.

We weren’t the only group playing Saturday evening on Peter Thompson’s “Bluegrass Signal”. First up was a group of my friends who have been playing with Ran Bush. Next up was Homespun Rowdy and then us, Old Tunnel Road. We planned to arrive at the station at about 6:30 and figured we meet at Scott Peterson’s house at 5 to run the set and relax a bit before driving over the bridge into the city. Well a few sausages and beers later, and heavier than expected traffic on the bridge and we are running a little behind schedule. So we tuned into KALW at 6:30, while stuck on the Bay Bridge in traffic, to listen to the first set and damn…they sounded sooooo good. These were my friends Linda Juratovac, Micheal Thilgen, Maureen Blumenthal, Kelly Trojan and Jacob Ofman. When we arrived at the station they had just finished their set and were leaving the sound booth….man was I happy to tell them how good they sounded.

Playing a set on the radio is a little like running yet another practice with one exception……your nerves. The same bloody nerves that pop up on stage but without any immediate feedback from the audience….no faces to see, no applause, no vibes, no feedback monitors, just you and a roomful of microphones…..and your nerves. In a way it seems irrational to be nervous since none of the usual cues that we associate with being on stage are present. But, my mind doesn’t work that way…I can’t lie to myself well enough to pull off the “it’s just another practice charade” so nerves it was and nerves are what I had to deal with. Thankfully though my nerves don’t usually kick in until the last minute so everything was pretty cool until we kick the first song. I’ve written about performance gremlins before so I won’t repeat that story…but what I will say is that the first song was the song where I worked out my nerves, made my peace with the performance gremlins, and the rest of the show went pretty well. It had to because the second song in was my big dobro kick and out of control panic leading to a botched kick was not an emotional state I wanted to experience in a performance. We were on for the better part of 4 songs…we were playing in the cleanup position and didn’t get to play our 5^th song..but we knew that was a possible outcome going in.

What a great night. We came away totally buzzed and excited. Peter gave us a CD of our part of the show, which we listened to on the ride home. All of us, Scott, Curtis, Fred, TJ, and I felt fine and listened to the CD to recapture the moment and do a post mortem on the performance……our families sent us text messages and voice mail, life was good. We ended up at Scott’s house to unwind over Tequila and beer and plan our next goals.

There is no shoe waiting to drop for the rest of this column…..all I wanted to do is describe the simple pleasure of going out and doing something new with some very good friends. We were all nervous but each made peace with their gremlins at different points during the performance and moved on…and there were other small achievements, we didn’t kick our songs at warp speed, we hit most of our marks and harmony stacks, but most important, we were able to look around and enjoy the moment and play well. It wasn’t a perfect performance, but it was a landmark event for us. I hope there are many, many more evenings like this.

I want to wrap this column by sharing what looks to be a really cool, addictive, free, musically overwhelming, web site that has some bluegrass……and no it won’t automatically transfer all your money into my bank account…..you’ll have to do that on your own (picture hypnotic spinning wheels).

I went to hear the Infamous String Dusters, opened by the Stairwell Sisters, several weeks ago…man o man what a show. Anyway, that’s just part of the setup. Because I wanted to learn a bit more about the ‘Dusters I was cruising around their web site……so far so good…when I noticed that on one of their web pages they had links to a different web site that allowed me download some of their music. That’s not all that unusual except that when I backed up a bit to check it out I discovered a treasure trove of music…..King Midas scale. The organization responsible for this, and the parent web site, is archive.org and their goal is to create an internet library…of everything as far as I can tell. But one of the things they have done along the way is to create an archive of non-commercial, royalty-free, no-cost, publicly downloadable music from live shows.

Some of you might already know of this site but for those of you who don’t it is worth a visit…….a long, long visit. The idea here is to have a common web site where, with artist permission, mp3 files for live shows can be posted…kind of like what the Grateful Dead has allowed for many years. Some of the recordings are off sound-boards and some are recordings made from the audience. The music archive has something like 69,455 recordings from who knows how many shows for 3, 759 bands. It shouldn’t be too surprising that there are recordings from 6,933 Grateful Dead shows on the site. Now you have to be a little patient and persistent because the bluegrass offerings are hidden like musical chocolate Easter eggs among a lot of other non-bluegrass artists…but they are there. Some are from apparently regional bluegrass groups but others…..well for example the Del McCoury Band has music from 126 shows posted. The link for the live music archive is:

http://www.archive.org/browse.php?collection=etree&field=%2Fmetadata%2Fcreator .

All I can say is don’t blame me if you have to go out and buy another hard drive for your music after visiting the web site. Apart from the mind boggling amount of music on the site, the thing I really like is that the music is from live shows, not heavily produced and electronically manipulated cds….and like a good unblended whiskey…some are gems, some aren’t but they are all pleasurable in a way sometimes lacking in commercially produced music.

I’ve been collecting new quotes with a musical theme and the one below seems to fit well for this column.

Keep on playing folks…and I promise to make it to a campout sometime soon.

“What we play is life.”

Louis Armstrong

Hello Possums, Sunday September 20, 2009

This week I’m just about all wrote out. I’ve been in the midst of what I call “grant writing hell” and have been oh so slowly, excruciatingly, painfully plodding along writing my sections of a large grant that will probably end up well over 200 pages. All the co-authors are behind schedule, which means I’m not getting much sleep and getting crankier and spacier than normal…..just ask my wife. One of the things that helps keep me going though is streaming bluegrass off the net. The music provides just the right amount of background noise to help keep awake and just the right amount of distraction to keep me from burning out. Every now and then I hear something I like and can see who is performing, which I have to admit has the annoying effect of sending me off to iTunes or the performer’s web site. I’m a little surprised at how much writing I actually do get done between the hours of midnight and 5 AM…given my general inability to mentally focus. Maybe the sleep deprivation is actually necessary to help me to filter out all of the random thoughts that keep intruding.

This kind of grant writing is always difficult for me…do a literature search on the next topic, download the papers, read them, write my paragraph or two or four, insert the references and start over. Once a section is finished I have to reread it, find the duplicated parts, make some transitional paragraphs, and then move on to the next section. Some folks just seem to have the words fall out of their fingers…..I have to pull my words out with a pair of pliers, then I usually chop up my finger tips a bit for good measure. Writing can be hard.

But the worst thing is……. the deadline is Monday and my co-authors are just now sending me the sections I need to do my work…….I have to write all bloody weekend and miss Plymouth. Bummer.

So what do I do for a break……write my monthly welcome column of course. Writing the column by comparison is actually fun…I get to call on a different vocabulary, not as dry as my grant vocabulary, and I even get to make up new words sometimes….like “jamphoria”…or at least try to use them in unexpected ways. Grant writing is just about the opposite. Don’t get me wrong, a good grant writer has a certain talent to communicate complex ideas without putting the reader immediately to sleep and part of that talent means you really don’t want to throw any unexpected curve balls that might fake the reader out, tempting the end result of “Not Recommended For Funding”. Not a good thing that.

Anyway, a couple of years ago I was visiting my parents in North Carolina right around Christmas. Since it was an extended trip I had my ax with me, and my bud Batso the wonder dog. My folks and one of my brothers live in a small town called Andrews, just west of the Smoky Mountain National Park which is about as far out in the countryside as you can get on the east coast….their closest Walmart and major grocery store is a solid 20 minute drive down the highway in Murphy…which is on most maps.

I usually think of this part of the state as deep in bluegrass music country, but actually it’s probably more like deep in “old time” music country. When I was growing up we often heard stories about small, isolated communities in the area that were “discovered” when the Blue Ridge Parkway was being built around the time of the (first) Great Depression. Part of the folklore was that the people in those communities were performing music almost exactly like the original Scots/Irish settlers. I don’t know how accurate this history is, but I rather like it and it fits well with the surroundings. In this part of the world just about everyone takes off work for opening day of deer season, turkey season, and trout season. It doesn’t matter what your line of work is, it’s just a fact of life that a certain number of shops close, construction on houses stops, and don’t count on the plumber showing up or getting your road graded. And unlike in Atlanta, folks here will make eye contact and wave when you drive down the road, they’ll stop raking the leaves and have a conversation when you walk by, they tool around in trucks with dogs in the front seat and guns in the rack, go to high school football games on Friday nights and church on Sundays. There are a couple of dulcimer luthiers nearby, the John C Campbell Folk School is just down the road, and then there is Clay’s Corner in the town of Brasstown where every New Year’s eve is celebrated with the annual possum drop.

Brasstown is even smaller than Andrews, located further back in the hills, and like a lot of very small rural mountain communities, it’s situated at a crossroads landmarked by the only stop signs for miles in any direction. It has a couple of crafts shops that I’ve never seen open, a filling station/grocery store, maybe a dozen or so houses…with a creek running though it, surrounded by farms, luscious green fields, overgrown rail fences, and the North Carolina mountains. Somewhere in town you’ll probably see a grader parked behind one of the shops or a backhoe on a trailer with the hitch propped on an old stump.

While the annual New Year’s possum drop is an anti-tradition, making fun of the various big city descending balls, countdowns, and fireworks, it gets its fair share of unwanted attention. Turns out they really did have a live local possum that they lowered in a cage down the flagpole, at least until PETA discovered the event. But the resourceful folks around Clay’s Corner now make do with a frozen road kill possum carefully selected from a large number of contestants. The North Carolina two-lane blacktops have a healthy inventory of skunk, snake, squirrel, rabbit, and possum road kill to choose from, so a few days before New Years folks start entering their contestants. The judging committee decides on which contestant is the best specimen representing the species and then the least mangled possum gets posed and frozen in preparation for the New Year’s celebration. I suspect this is a serious undertaking with much discussion and can imagine that the final decision weighs heavily on the judges. I have to wonder, though, whether PETA’s intervention on the original possum drop ironically increases the incidence of Clay county marsupial-cide during the latter half of December.

Clay’s Corner is actually the filling station/grocery store located on one corner of the intersection in Brasstown and is where the local weekly bluegrass jam happens….in the backroom where they have the video rental section. Most of the regulars get there early and set up on folding chairs at one end of the room next to the sink and mops; the musicians are set up at the other end and arranged along one wall and the middle of the floor. There’s not a lot of space left between the audience and musicians, which means latecomers might have to sit in the spam isle next to the air filters and oil.

This jam is clearly a local’s jam and a real family affair. Folks walk around talking while babies crawl on the carpet underneath the musicians’ chairs. There’s some quiet conversation going on and a few folks greeted me when I came in. But this jam was more like a living room jam or some private jams that I’ve been to and way more relaxed than the hyper-competitive pub jams. Even so, when I visited Clay’s Corner I had been playing only a few months and wasn’t much inclined to make this my first jam experience, so I just sat and took it in. Like the private jams I’ve been to since, there was a good mix of musicians of all different levels and kinds……strangely the only thing missing that evening was a banjo player. It really didn’t matter much what was called, most were blue grass songs, but many I didn’t recognize…maybe in this part of the nation there is a different play list that folks go by…..and the listeners quietly appreciated what was played with some occasional light applause and encouraging comments spoken just a little louder than the background conversations. I left before the jam was over but I’m looking forward to going back to this one my next trip out and this time jumping in to get the full flavor. Actually, if you’ve ever been up the west coast of Ireland and visited a country pub on a lonely stretch of road you’ll be right at home at Clay’s corner …the only real difference is that Clay’s is in a dry county…and I don’t think there are possums in Ireland and know there aren’t any snakes.

G’day possums!

"Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century."  Dame Edna

Such a Deal, Sunday August 16, 2009

You know, every month about this time I start thinking on just what I’m going to write this week for my column. Sometimes happening events, like the FDF, drop a nice package right in my lap….other times I have to rely on ongoing projects like my Tour de Jam. This column resides somewhere between the “falling in my lap” and “shameless promotion” categories…but it is for a good cause and even includes some associated music making…of the bluegrass variety.

But first I want to say to Hank….welcome back into the fold. I can’t wait to read more of your columns and hope to back that up with jamming with you sometime. Guys, does this mean I’m no longer the junior member or does Hank get to grandfather in his previous seniority?

A few weeks ago I got an email from Hilary Perkins, of Nell Robinson and Red Level and Take the Stage mover-and-shaker fame, announcing the summer Take the Stage workshop performance. Since I am a Take the Stage alumnus I get these little gems from Hilary every now and then, but the really interesting thing about this email that caught my attention and raised the hairs on my very sparse scalp (no comments from my friends, CBA columnists, or band mates otherwise you will get yours in a future column) was her invitation for Take the Stage alumni bands to play as well……..at the NEW Freight and Salvage, on August 25, a few days before it officially opens.

Hoooooowie….visions of the new Freight tried running through my head, stumbled around a bit and caused a few dormant hair follicles to wake up with all the noise, but to no avail. Unfortunately my imagination just isn’t up for the task of conjuring what it looks like, and I really don’t want to….I want it to be a complete surprise when I walk in. But I bet it is sweet and it would be ok by me if we get to be some of the crash test dummies that test drive the stage before the big boys and girls play there.

Hmmmmmmm what to do…On one hand the new band I’m in can’t play that date….on the other hand I know some other Take the Stage alumni that I think would be up for it…..though we only have a few weeks to practice….Oh what the hell, let’s go for it because after all the chances of me ever playing the Freight again are probably only a little better than winning my million in the Lottery.

So I called my good friend and mando player, TJ, and our scintillating conversation went something like:

“What did you think about Hilary’s email”

”We gotta do it dude”

The latter was me. I have a vocabulary that hasn’t significantly left the 70’s and 80’s when one of my favorite movies was “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”.

”I heard Curtis might be available”

”Cool, I know a Bass player that we could ask”

“OK, practice, Sunday at 7”

and so it went. Brevity, not eloquence, is how I prefer my phone conversations. I imagine that similar conversations were happening because Hilary later sent an email confirming the line-up and clueing us in to some of the stage management issues we’ll have to deal with. Redwing scored the band slot and we (me, TJ Carskadon, Curtis Young, and Fred Cone) scored one of the “open mic” slots, with the other open mic slots taken by Kelly Trojan, Scott Peterson, and Jack Thrift; Ken Bellingham and Dick Mason scored one; and Lou Ponticas, one of the original Take the Stage founders, might close the show out. Most of these are familiar names to me with heavy representation by some of the Spring ’09 and Fall ’08 Take the Stage musicians…..they must be jonesing for some stage time like us. The show will be opened by the Summer ’09 Take the Stage all star musicians and somewhere in the mix Hilary, Dave Zimmerman, and Jim Nunally will get in a few songs.

My wife graciously went to my Take the Stage performance last March and is even considering going to this one, which is nothing short of amazing. So, if you are curious and would like to preview the NEW Freight this show should be a no-brainer; if you are remotely thinking about doing a Take the Stage workshop, this fall or later (application deadline for the Fall ‘09 Take the Stage is August 21), this gets you an up close and personal introduction to the workshop and the opportunity to talk with folks that have done Take the Stage, not once, not twice, but three times (can you say “habit forming”…might have to do an intervention for an unnamed individual); and last, but surely the most compelling reason to come would be to listen to the fine music, enjoy the fellowship, watch the Summer ’09 Take the Stage musicians strut their stuff, and see if the Take the Stage alumni retained anything of what they learned (hear that guys…the pressure is on). No matter, I can guarantee that it will be an entertaining if not enjoyable evening, worth the trip to Berkeley, and only for $5.50…..such a deal.

So to explain the promotional shtick I’d like to close with a quote from one of our most famous American showmen, businessmen, and entertainers, P.T. Barnum: “Without promotion something terrible happens... Nothing!”.

See ya’ll there.

This way to the Egress……fine plumage!

About Rattlesnakes, July 25, 2009

(JD Rhynes is a longtime member and founder of the California Bluegrass Association, one of the CBA columnists, and writes a CBA column on good down home cooking. This is a comment I posted about one of his columns describing his "love" (not) of rattlesnakes. JD is bigger than life in person and in his writing.)

Since JD got us on the subject of rattlesnakes, I’ve got a couple of East coast rattler stories that he might find amusing.

Back in the southeast we have two basic rattlers….the eastern diamondback…which can truly grow into a monstrous sized snake…and the smaller, but prettier, timber rattler. Thankfully I’ve never had a run-in with a diamondback…but have run across a fair share of timber rattlers.

My 3 brothers and I were out hiking down an old forest service road in north Georgia one spring when we came across this nice 4-foot long timber rattler that had just shed its skin. Since it was a cool day, and having just worked hard to shed, the snake was a little sluggish and just lay there in the middle of the road, warming up in the sun, ignoring us….even when poked with a stick. I can still remember the skin on that snake looked like velvet in the sunlight and you could see all the hues of black, grey and brown in the pattern on its back…it was one of the prettiest snakes I’ve ever seen in the wild.

Unfortunately for the snake, he was about 10 feet from our next campsite and it also had the misfortune to be alone in the presence of 4 unmonitored, overly-testosteroned young teenage boys…a bad combination for all concerned. My next to youngest brother, Robin, decided he wanted the rattles and besides we didn’t like the idea of camping that close to a venomous snake (think teenage boys, sleeping bags, and stories of snakes crawling in) so we decided to dispatch the reptile. Now we weren’t carrying any firearms but we did have my hunting knife and since there were no volunteers to try and grab the snake, we decided to tie my knife to a pole and cut the head off. This didn’t work so well because I hadn’t sharpened my knife in awhile and we had some difficulty cutting the head because the knife kept slipping off the pole. By this time, the poor snake finally figured out the benefits of self-preservation and slithered off into the laurel…with my brother Robin headfirst in hot pursuit.

In the southern Appalachian mountains we have something called “laurel hells”, which are very large patches of thick mountain laurel, azaleas, and other low growing brush, that have to be negotiated on all fours or on your belly. These laurel hells are pretty impenetrable, dark, and the ground covered in a thick carpet of wet leaves making it slippery and easy for snake concealment. But Robin was not to be deterred and besides he is the crazy demented brother, relatively speaking. About the time he realized he was catching up with the snake….and the snake figured someone was in pursuit…I grabbed the back of his belt and hoisted him back out onto the road. Robin of course thought my action was unwarranted and over-cautious…..no one has ever accused Robin of being the brightest bulb in the pack. Evidently we had mortally wounded the snake and were able to fish it out with a stick back onto the road where we promptly finished it off with a large rock dropped repeatedly on its head. I think Robin still has the rattles and I still feel a little guilty for unnecessarily killing that snake and not doing it quickly. I’ve killed plenty of copperheads around my parents house in North Carolina, without regret, but this timber rattler was something to behold and we could have just walked down the road a bit and found another campsite.

When I was a few years younger, several of my friends and their fathers went on a fishing trip to a barrier island off the South Carolina coast called Bulls Island. The trip to Bulls Island required a 30 minute ferry ride, which at that time was an old WWII landing craft, which for young teenage boys was worth the trip in itself. Bulls Island was known for two things….fantastic Bass fishing and a very large, healthy population of rattlesnakes….both were high in our minds. One evening my friends and I decided to walk across the island to the beach on the eastern shore, about a mile away from camp. We got there just about sunset and discovered some stuff washed up on the beach that would only interest teenage boys…one item in particular took the fancy of John…an 8 foot or so section of manila hawser used for mooring ships, probably about 3 inches in diameter. Eventually we got bored with the beach….especially since it was dark by then and we couldn’t see anything, so we headed back to camp. I remember that we had a new moon that night, and since the island was remote there was no man made light around…friends I can tell you it was dark and even darker once the road entered the tree canopy. Here we are, walking along a sandy dirt road with only one or two flashlights, not all that powerful, and suddenly we hear something rattling behind us…..we shine our dim lights to the rear and behind John is a large, brown slithering snake coming right at us…..and we ran for our lives…..but that damn snake kept right with us. After a bit we ran out of breath…the road ran out of leaves, and on second inspection the snake was John’s chunk of rope…….at that point John ran for his life as we wanted to make it plainly known how unhappy we were with his beach treasure.

Remembering Two Friends, Sunday July 19, 200

There are memorial jams today for two friends of mine who were part of our bluegrass community, Nick Champlin and Reza Honarkhah. I wanted to write something remembering Nick and Reza this morning, and I think it is particularly appropriate to do it here, because I met them through playing bluegrass. I’ve only been playing a little over two years but in that time have met an extraordinary number of people that I can consider friends, experienced more fellowship, and shared more joy simply by sitting down and playing some music. I think Nick and Reza are the first of my newfound friends to pass and sadly they won’t be the last.

I first met Nick and his family at Hardly Strictly 2007, listening to Gillian Welch with 100,000 of my best friends, and kept running into them at the usual bluegrass workshops, camps, and jams. I think it was about 18 months ago at one of the Alameda Music School Sunday night jams, which I had just started attending and was the typical tentative beginning player, where one evening in walks this red haired, somewhat goofy, but pleasant guy hauling a bass…..yep it was Nick. Now one of the endearing, and sometimes annoying, things that almost immediately struck me about Nick was his cheer, optimism, and constant enthusiasm. In my vocation, cheer and optimism are usually replaced by deliberation and skepticism so I was always happy and amused whenever I had the good fortune to run into him. I never saw Nick unhappy playing bass and singing…or talking about his wife and kids…..never saw him cynical or selfish, even during his illness. I admired Nick for that. It helped our friendship that we had some other things in common…a similar twisted sense of humor, love of all things musical, some tenuous connections to woodworking, and the same taste in movies. Nick was a good friend and I am truly sorry that we didn’t get to share more music.

If you have played the McGrath’s Monday night jam chances are you’ve met Reza barkeep, cook, head cajoler, lead conversationalist, and sometime humorist…..always there and always taking care of things. One of the folks that makes McGrath’s what it is. When Reza spotted me walking into the pub he would start pulling a Guiness....no questions, no talk, all we had to do was pass a look. I was also the victim of one of his jokes.....still makes me smile….I didn’t know beer mugs were made of lead until Reza offered me a beer in a mug I couldn’t lift….it looked like he thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

Nick and Reza crossed over ahead of the rest of us….and like it says in the gospel song……wherever they are I hope they’re home and hope they’re satisfied. Reza’s memorial will be at McGrath’s pub this afternoon Sunday July 19 from 2 onwards. Nick’s family is having a private memorial in Alameda at the same time.

Tour de Jam Etage 2: The Grass Valley Jam Couloir, Sunday June 21, 2009

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Cou·loir. Pronunciation: \kül-ˈwär\. Function: noun. Etymology: French, literally, passage, from couler; a steep mountainside gorge.

Summertime and the living is easy…….welcome to my first column for the summer of 2009…….during summers, some jams hang on by only a few hardy souls and others proliferate like mosquitoes to infest entire fairgrounds….what’s that annoying sound.…it’s just a banjo trying to draw blood.

This column is about the second stage of our Tour de Jam and takes us right into the heart of the mountains for the equivalent of a grade 1 or even a “hors catagorie” climb, a climb so steep it is not categorized,……..a long, steep, thirsty climb crowded with a large peloton of riders, some fast, some slow, some are climb specialists methodically grinding away, others ride recklessly at breakneck speeds down the hills, crashing and burning, littering the road with damaged bodies and broken gear.

If you haven’t figured it out yet I’m talking about the Father's Day Festival in Grass Valley, CA, and the California Bluegrass Association's music camp, a double header jam slam…yeehaw.

As for any world-class event, this stage of the Tour attracts a sizable crowd of spectators that occasionally bump riders off their tracks, the sag wagons with their refreshments are running up and down the peloton supplying the riders with liquids and sustenance their bodies crave to keep riding, pushing the tempo ever higher, focused, sweating, the crowds cheering, exhorting the competitors and teams to play harder, faster. At the end……the finish line where exhausted riders fall into the arms of teammates and families…..tired, spent, and limp. They pack their gear into their cars, trucks, and buses and drive off to the next festival for another Tour.

Not a bad metaphor for the FDF jams…….not even too over the top. The FDF experience is like a long hard ride…and to completely immerse yourself into the culture of FDF requires stamina, perseverance, and a certain disregard for normal sleep patterns. One can train for an event like FDF…..oh there are other early season races…..errr….festivals to see how your stamina and speed are progressing….for example there was the recent spring Tour de Berry, a significant preliminary event that bookends the festival season, and some would have you believe is a rival to the FDF (this writer humbly believes otherwise.…but since I have not experienced a Tour de Berry, my credibility might be faulted). And, there are other training regimens one can follow….one popular regimen is designed to help prepare the liver….a vital jam organ....but since this is a family oriented column all I will say about that is kids.…we are the people our parents warned us about....don’t try it at home.…it’s only for experts….and….because I told you so.

I was fortunate enough to get a slot volunteering for the CBA camp due to a last minute cancellation and I’m looking forward to this Camp/FDF week more than the previous two I’ve attended....I know a whole lot more folks this time around, many I’ve already played with, and man-o-man I’m going to get to play with a whole lot more folks.

Unfortunately there is a price to pay. I had to give up a few things….my dog gets left for the week with our sitter, and my wife has to stay behind to work. To make things worse my wife pulled a leg muscle this week and is hobbling around the house muttering dark things about me going off in her time of need. There could indeed be a very high price to pay when I get home…..from both.

But I will have a full menu of things to keep me occupied and distracted from those issues….Ingrid is sure to keep us hopping for the camp. There’s the Saturday camp set-up, the Sunday sign-in….somewhere in there are rumored to be a couple of pickup bands to play in. Oh yes….there is rain in the forecast…..that could make things interesting. And then there is striking camp on Thursday and Sunday.

And at this FDF we are also going to convene the primordial coven of CBA columnists to commune and chant around a space-time disruption disguised as a Coleman lantern....we will be accompanied by instruments of sonic destruction, aided and abetted, not by soul-less martinis, but by a neat god-fearing liquor from the land that spawned bluegrass, fit for creating a transcendental jamphoria.

Ok, maybe that last paragraph was a little over the top.

Saturday afternoon, June 20, 2009…..I’m sitting at Vern’s Stage, under the awning by the beer window, with my computer discretely plugged into an outlet behind the bar, drinking a Sierra Nevada Summerfest, enjoying the music, and trying to finish the column to post at 12:01 AM……if I can find a good wifi signal.

There is too little space and not enough time to describe the past 7 days….and you’re certainly not going to get the last night’s worth of jams from me….at least in this edition of the Tour de Jam because I’m going to be out there playing instead of writing.

I sometimes like getting up early to watch the dawn, especially if I’m out in the country-side where I can watch the view slowly revealed and see the day unfold. That’s what it was like arriving Saturday before the CBA camp to find an almost empty campground with only a few tents providing a bare visual framework for what would become tent city jam central. It was kind of eerie walking through the trees over ground that I knew would soon be filled with tents, canopies, vehicles, players, and jams. The better metaphor might be watching a good sized thunder storm roll in….in either case I could easily imagine the unfolding camp and hear the music already playing.

True to my prediction…Ingrid kept us moving…..maybe not nonstop but everyone, campers and volunteers alike, was clearly exhausted by Wednesday evening. Of course we celebrated the conclusion of another successful camp with a little champagne and at supper some of my volunteer comrades insisted that I get up to present a toast to Ingrid….which I did with a mixture of reluctance and pride….reluctance because by then I was reasonably well toasted myself which sometimes has unpredictable and embarrassing consequences when I have to speak in public. However…I wisely chose to make it short and simple. I am trying to convince the other volunteers that my toast will set the tradition and require rookie volunteers to perform the end-of-camp toast.

The Festival started in earnest Thursday morning with the chair scramble…..actually for some folks it started Wednesday evening when they pitched camp outside the gate to get first row real estate in front of the main stage. Last year I vowed not to get up early and just place my chair later in the morning.…my memory isn’t what it used to be so at 5:30 AM I’m in line snoozing in my chair….next year I vow to sleep in…..probably not.

But this column is supposed to be about jams. By Saturday evening before music camp, jams were already hatching and buzzing. The CBA music campers were in the first hatch but were quickly joined by jammers arriving from afar. There were day time jams but the most interesting ones for me occurred in the evening when jammers anonymously appear without warning from the dark, briefly play, often without any introduction or conversation, and move on….in the dim light and dark night this had a certain sensual dreamlike quality that reminded me of an Erica Jong novel.

There were just too many FDF jams going on to describe them all….most were small affairs between friends sharing a campsite or adjoining RVs, usually around a lantern or grill. A few jams happened in the early morning hours, typically under a dim streetlight illuminating a tight knit circle quietly playing. Walking past these shadowy jams I could hear snippets of conversation, music, and vocals fading in and out from the ghostly players in the pale light. The largest jams in the early morning were usually at the hot dog stand on the periphery of RV land and were all light and noise, resembling crowds at baseball games with people constantly coming and going, groups talking and laughing, accompanied by loud clusters of musicians strung out randomly down the road.

For those of you unfamiliar with the FDF there are two jam-continents at the fairgrounds….Tent City, full of hard core diehard jammers that can’t sleep because their mattress deflated leaving them to find comfort on the hard cold ground….and RV Land….a strange enclave of warrens, canyons, and gullies created by wheeled buildings containing nice comfortable beds…….guess where I was.

Unlike the city and suburban jams……there were things one can only see and experience at large festival jams….like the quietly tolerated, wobbly, half-naked-drunk-guy on the periphery of a small friendly jam…..referred to in conversations, strangely enough, as half-naked-drunk-guy. Just as interesting was a subculture of predatory juvenile jammers. These imps magically appear with an innocent, maybe even angelic, look on their faces and ask to join an unsuspecting circle saying they only play rhythm, or some such nonsense, and when the break rolls around.…nonchalantly bust awe-inspiring solos…..these little mischief makers live to prey on groups of naïve, inexperienced adult jammers and get their joy from watching the slack jawed expressions of amazement followed by the creeping realization of being sandbagged. Ain’t it great…here’s to you Buster…jeez if I was only 13 again and cut loose to roam FDF.

But one of the most noteworthy jams was at my camp where we corralled some extraordinary dobro players, Ivan Rosenberg and Greg Booth as well as Todd Clinesmith and some other good San Francisco dobro players. We got to hear Greg and Ivan trade tunes and explain some thoughts about their arrangements. Then there was the jam itself where the rest of us mortals just hung on for dear life and tried to ride it out………whoohoo what a rollercoaster and a rare opportunity to see how it is done up close and personal.

There were several other extraordinary dobro players at the festival that some of us got to hear...Lisa Berman taught dobro 1 and played on stage with the Stairwell Sisters, Kathy Barwick was playing with Mountain Laurel, Peter Grant stopped by the California Bluegrass Association's Music camp and played at the Dobro 1 workshop, Ron Stanley put on several dobro workshops at the festival, and Leroy Mcnees was present as well.

The Father's Day Festival is an amazing opportunity to hear and play with some of these great muscians, of course not only on dobro,......last year we had Rob Ickes, Ivan Rosenberg, Phil Leadbetter, and Josh Swift (apologies if I've forgotten someone)....in ’08 Rob and Ivan taught at the CBA camp and played a dobro duet of Maiden's Prayer at the camp concert, and all were on the festival main stage as performers. But here's the kicker.....as with most festivals there is a glut of jamming....I was walking around one evening looking for a jam to play in and heard a dobro playing....it was Rob in a jam at his family's RV and then I came across Josh at a different jam. In my opinion it can't get much better.

The columnist jam exceeded all my expectations….not only can these guys jam with a pen....they rip on the music. Cliff was busting on guitar, Rick brandished a threatening iridescent fiddle bow, Bert held forth on mando, Bruce drew blood with the most intemperate of instruments….and if my memory serves, Brooks danced with an upright 4-stringed floozy. What an exceptional group of individuals and characters. I’m honored to be keeping company with them and look forward to reading more of their columns and crashing their jams.…I think the bar just got pushed higher.

This was truly one of the best weeks I’ve had in a long while. I haven’t really described all the people I met along the way, the old friends I got to see, and new friends I made…there were just too many. I am looking forward to seeing all these good people again, over and over, at the FDF and hopefully other events. The whole thing is pretty amazing to me that we can all come together, create a community for a week that is focused on playing music and that simple thing we have common for only a few days creates so much more. Unfortunately, I have to admit occasionally feeling a little guilty and sad during the week because there was a good friend and family missing that I believe I originally met at Grass Valley. I realized at camp that the 2008 FDF might have been his last and wished there was a way to take some of the FDF, and all it is, back to them.

I’m going to wrap this column now because it is getting a little on the long side and I can hear music on the main stage and just can’t keep away any longer. Besides, according to Twain I won’t know what I should write until I’ve finished writing it.

Keep on jamming folks and remember….if you can hear everyone else around you playing during your break…you’re probably not playing loud enough.

"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say."

Mark Twain's Notebook, 1902-1903

The Tour de Jam, Etage 1, The Infamous McGrath's Pub Monday Night Jam, Sunday May 17, 2009

I’ve decided to start a new project…a project that has playing bluegrass music at it’s center, and one that I’ve been thinking about doing for some time now…..oh say for at least 24 hours which, is a long time for me.

So tell me, what do bluegrass music and the famous bicycle race the “Tour de France” have in common?………Nada, nothing that I know of except I’m a fan of both, and I secretly fantasize about leading a breakaway every time I’m on my bike, which is easy if you’re the only one in the race……. So inspired by the overwhelming French influence on bluegrass, I will name my project the “Tour de Jam”. You probably can guess where this is going.

Now, the plan is to go around the Bay area over the next few months, with a couple of required side trips….like to FDF, but wait a minute that’s just one gargantuan jam, which qualifies……and visit all the long running, established bluegrass jams and see just what kind of folks are playing there, what the surroundings are like, and what the overall atmosphere is like. 


Actually this is just an excuse to go visit jams in San Francisco and visit some new pubs (I live in the east bay just south of Oakland). I think I have already played many of the jams I know of around here, though there are still a few I know I still need to hit. Since I strongly adhere to the theory that my musical skills are improved disproportionately by liberal applications of home and pub brew, whether in its natural or refined state, the pub based jams are the most interesting.

Unlike the Tour de France, I will not be doing this on the back of my bike….toting my dobro makes that a little impractical and I don’t want my sound well cover to be mistaken for a stolen hubcap. Let the mando and fiddle players and vocalists peddle their bikes to the jams, they have small instruments……The banjo players of course are already a danger to themselves and the public, so I shouldn’t encourage them to become more mobile……..but then again maybe their trying to play while in traffic would be entertaining and provide a Darwinian revelation. Most of the bass players already have wheels and can just giddyap their instruments down the road. The problem with guitar players is that there are so many of them in the world, a few most likely already live under the pub bars….and like termites they lust after things made with pretty wood, live in large communities, eat you out of house and home, and are difficult to get rid of at the end of the evening.

Another reason for the Tour de Jam has to do with the past 15 months, which have been some of the most musically intense months of my life. A little over a year ago I entered a new phase of my bluegrass education by taking some ensemble workshops, going to my second CBA camp, and most importantly….attending jams….including the ever-feared Monday night jam at McGrath’s pub in Alameda. For those of you who were playing a bluegrass instrument in the womb, or singing high lonesome Bill Monroe harmonies in the cradle, and for those of you who are borderline sociopaths or mutant for genes responsible for fear, humiliation and embarrassment…..you don’t know what I mean by “ever-feared”, you don’t have a clue.

McGrath’s Pub is an institution in the community and luckily my local. In addition to hosting bluegrass performances on the weekend, it has one of the better known, longstanding bay area bluegrass jams every Monday night. Actually there are two jams….the rough and tumble front room jam, and the more discrete back room jam. Each has its own idiosyncrasies, rules, and players. Even if you don’t play an instrument, the McGrath’s Monday jam is well worth a visit and a place where you can see everyone from intermediate to professional players jamming together.

To the rookie bluegrassers though, playing the McGrath’s jam is something akin to a gladiator’s first bout in the coliseum……complete with fear of an ignoble death, vainly trying to survive against insurmountable tempos, danger to the right, danger to the left, confronted by predatory keys ensuring a slow, painful, and bloody death by vicious sharps or beaten to a pulp by heartless flats.

It would be a unfair to paint the McGrath’s jam as unfriendly and intimidating….it’s not…..well, at least it’s not unfriendly. It is intimidating to rookie jammers for many of the usual reasons……a large group of strangers, all playing better, faster, etc. In reality it is a supportive, though raucous, group of musicians, hell bent to play as much bluegrass that can possibly be crammed into an evening. I should mention that in the context of McGrath’s, “rookie” should probably best be described as an “unjamitized” intermediate player looking for the next level of challenge…as I mentioned, the level of players includes a few intermediates to a few professionals with most folks being very experienced, many having played more than 30 years.

One strategy for the uninitiated, timid jammer to ease into the front room jam is to play around the edges by discreetly pretending to be invisible, playing in a pretend “dome of silence” off to the side or at one of the tables at the back of the room…and there are often several folks doing that…I did. Beware though, eventually other players will take notice and entice you with sweet promises and perfumed breath into the maelstrom, and onto the rocks, of the big circle.

The obvious advantage to being an edge player is learning what favorite tunes get played every week. It is a big, although fleeting, confidence booster to have some of these under your belt, or at least as new projects, before jumping in feet first. The other strategy is to pick your time to jump in the circle…..through the evening, like ocean tides, the circle will ebb and flow, expand and contract. It seems to be linked somehow with the ebb and flow of players’ beer, wine, and whiskey. One of the odd things about the jam though is the number of dobros……..it is the only jam I know where dobro players occasionally outnumber all the other musicians, and there are routinely more dobros than guitars. Home, sweet home for me and my dobro.

If you don’t already have jam smarts..…I’m not talking about jam etiquette…….you will get them drilled in real quick at McGrath’s. For one, this isn’t a jam to waste time apologizing for mistakes…..here it’s more like hang on and enjoy the ride whatever happens and wherever it takes you. In the circle, the flanking players are often more than happy to take your break if you don’t step up smartly. This is a good news, bad news situation for inexperienced players. 


When I first started in the circle it was a relief to get skipped over…..every song….now that I’m trying to stretch my playing a little more, it is getting to be an annoyance. On more than one occasion I’ve been tempted to see if my axe could split some knotty noggin. In the end though, it is up to players to step up and take the break or lose it. And know your keys…especially the key of the song you call….and you will eventually have to call one. Believe me, from personal experience, you don’t want to call a song in A and enthusiastically kick it off in G to realize 24 bars in, you forgot to put on your capo....this sin will get looks from the other jammers that range from humorous to perplexed to annoyed and you will experience the feeling of driving a jam into complete disarray and utter confusion…What power!…to watch an entire jam spin out of control, sucked right into the maelstrom and spit out onto the rocks….just what I felt like.

Since this is the first stage of my Tour de Jam, I don’t have other jams yet to compare to….but can say with some certainty that if you want to ratchet your jams skills up a level or 3, this is the place to go. You’ll meet a lot of fine folks and some damn good musicians who you will play with over and over again on the “Tour de Festival”…another ride I’ll have to take…….maybe in 2010.

I usually like to close with a quote from Twain or his ilk, but will close this month with some unattributed “gems” that summarize my philosophy to learning bluegrass, learning music, venturing into unfamiliar territories, and other stuff.

“There’s only one way to learn and that’s to crash and burn” (from watching beginning white water kayakers try to negotiate their first rapid).

“If you ain’t falling down, you ain’t trying hard enough” (advice from a ski instructor a long, long time ago).

If any of ya’ll would like to accompany me on the Tour de Jam, I would love to have a few “jam riders” in the peloton, so please drop a note on the message board or send me an email…..and jam suggestions are always encouraged, pub-based or not.

Onwards and jamwards.

Confessions of a Latecomer to Bluegrass, Sunday April 19, 2009

(This is the first of my California Bluegrass Association Welcome Columns, posted on April 19, 2009. You can check out the CBA and our other columnists at www.cbaontheweb.org.)


Well…..this is my inaugural  California Bluegrass Association Welcome Column and I have been casting about in my wee brain for ideas to write about. Turns out I don’t have any shortage of ideas for the columns and most of them do somehow relate to bluegrass and related musical genres…but jeez where do I begin. And after all since I am a Welcome Column addict, it’s on my morning web page route, I know there is a pretty high bar to clear for the writing and content. So maybe the best thing to do in this first column is give an introduction and a bit of my history and kind of slide into the experience (after all I am a dobro player).

For starters, I just participated in the Winter 2009 Take The Stage workshop, which was offered through the Freight & Salvage and supported by the CBA. One of the things I volunteered to do with that was blog the 8+ weeks of practices, achievements, carnage, and gossip. The blog turned out to be a whole lot more fun than I expected and my band mates are still talking to me, which I take to mean I must not have embarrassed them too much. The blogs are all posted in the CBA news section if any of ya’ll are interested.

At the end of the Winter ’09 Take The Stage I was pleasantly surprised when Rick Cornish contacted me and asked if I would contribute to the Welcome columns. I guess my blogs created the illusion that I passed an English course somewhere in my misty past. What Rick doesn’t know yet is that my mother and upbringing forever ruined any hope I have of speaking or writing normal American English. Take growing up in the deep South, with a British mother, to completely muddle my language skills so that I simply don’t know how to pronounce half of our American vocabulary. For example, I always make the wrong choice in putting the pronunciation emphasis on a word’s first or second syllable which means I always get confused on how to pronounce words like Caribbean and adjective……..and then there is my fondness for British slang and the Brit’s inborn talent for creative cursing, only surpassed by the Scots and Irish talent. Anyway, so here I am.

Maybe the more relevant thing to talk about is just what the devil am I doing by getting into bluegrass at this rather “mature” stage of my life. And I should clarify that “mature” only refers to my physical age and has nothing to do with my behavior and mental age….at least according to my wife.

Actually, I think it’s pretty ironic that this good ol’ boy from Georgia didn’t really dig into bluegrass until after moving to California, 20+ years after leaving the South. It’s not like bluegrass wasn’t around when I grew up, but as with most kids for me it was all about rock and roll, and jazz. Now, growing up in the South meant a lot of that rock and roll was the southern fried variety, which is really a mishmash of blues, country, and rock. My FM radio was pretty much filled with music from the Allman Brothers, Charlie Daniels, Marshall Tucker, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Atlanta Rhythm Section, and the Dixie Dregs in addition to all the Brit bands. One of the Dregs had a house that I drove by everyday on my way to Georgia Tech where they parked their band truck. I always wanted to stop and ask if I could listen to a practice but never got up the moxie.

Most of the other music was on “Country” stations, which weren’t cool to admit listening to. I do remember hearing some Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson and a few others, but they were played alongside the standard country artists and I don’t remember anything on the airwaves really devoted to bluegrass at the time. Having said all that, we did listen to a fair amount of bluegrass…though almost exclusively from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and almost exclusively the Circle album. We listened to the Circle Album.......a lot. I went to several Dirt Band shows in Atlanta and even saw The Earl Scruggs Review in the 70’s at an Atlanta landmark club called “The Great Southeast Music Hall” where the beer was sold in buckets, which might be a contributing factor to my hazy memory and pronunciation problems. Apart from those two bands I wasn’t aware of any of the big name bluegrass groups that surely must have played Atlanta in the 70’s.

It is more surprising that bluegrass didn’t stick with me back then because I spent an awful lot of time in the hills of north Georgia and North Carolina fishing, hiking, climbing, and white water kayaking…..gotta a whole bunch of good stories there. If you’ve ever seen the movie Deliverance then you’ve seen a slice of north Georgia that was a home away from home for me…..the real life Chattooga River was the “river double” for the fictional Cahulawassee River and the closing supper at the end of the film was in the Dillard Hotel in Clayton, GA….and I can tell you first hand that the food, the scenery, the music, and the people you see in Deliverance aren’t movie fiction. There’s nothing like coming across a couple of good ol’ boys hunting out in the middle of the woods who say “ya’ll ain’t from around here are ye”.

If you wanted to listen to music back then, far away from the big city of Atlanta, you had two choices…..AM radio or your 8 track tape player. The standard thing to do at the end of a kayaking trip, while our gear was drying, was pop in a tape and blast the Circle album as loud as our speakers would allow, kick a little hacky sack, and imbibe……. One advantage in going to an engineering-based college was that the students were always into the latest and greatest technologies…even back then. So I can say with some pride, and hubris, that we didn’t have little car speakers……nooooooo, the electrical engineers among us designed and built the biggest, baddest speakers and amplifiers they could pack into a Ford van…….we were just the kind of kids many of us complain about now…..how does that saying go…”we are the people our parents warned us about”, something like that. I will bear witness that the hills rang out with amplified high wattage Tennessee Stud, a modern day siren’s song that drew in other groups of itinerant kayakers to ignite spontaneous bluegrass raves, usually on the shoulder of some state highway bridge in the middle of nowhere. Maybe anthropologists in the future will analyze that behavior and conclude it was a mating ritual similar to those going back millennia, but with some odd 20^th century cultural twist involving beer, bluegrass music, and little leather bags full of beans.

There might have been a few guitars around in the evenings at camp, but the music played was generally folk, inevitably someone wanted to play Stairway to Heaven or Freebird, and after a mason jar of product from the local distillery it really didn’t matter much what we tried to play.

Sunday mornings in the hills had a very different rhythm from the city. Usually the AM radio would be on while someone cooked breakfast and I can remember waking up in my sleeping bag to the rhythmical, sonorous preaching from one of the local evangelists mixed with smells of eggs and bacon. The best mornings were ones where the sound of rain on my tent, or if I was lucky the cook shed roof, provided the percussive accompaniment to the sermons…..kind of nature’s own banjo…mostly too loud, a little out of tune, unpredictable entrances, and never quite in tempo. In thinking back on it, I have to wonder if rap music doesn’t actually have roots in the rhythms and tempos of evangelical radio preachers. Anyway, the rest of the Sunday morning radio fare would have a generous helping of Gospel music that was energetic enough to get us off our tails and back on the river.

The other reason I am a latecomer to playing bluegrass is probably because back then I was heavily involved with playing jazz and classical...in fact I still have my horn. Been dragging that thing around for over 30 years.

One thing about the South is that churches often work as social centers in communities, even large communities like Atlanta. In addition to hosting every sport, as long as it was basketball, football, or softball, they were where you went to play music outside of school….and they often had a better musical offering than we could get in school. I had my plate full with vocal choirs to sing in, brass choirs to play in, and folk services to perform in. It was sometimes music 7 days a week, several hours a day. We would do the Sunday rounds of singing choir in the Baptist church, playing brass choir in the Presbyterian church, and playing guitar at the folk service in the Episcopal church. Can’t say that any of the preaching rubbed off on me though.

And frankly, back then, guitar fret boards were a mystery to me. Playing horns, at least at the level I was at, was a pretty linear experience….you might have 2 1/2 to 3 octaves to really work with, which is only about 20-24 notes not counting sharps and flats….but in contrast, the fret board of my dobro has 120 notes. Whenever I picked up a guitar back then I always wondered how does anyone know where to go on that fret board to find the right note. And since we had cheat sheets for jazz and classical….aka sheet music, we didn’t have to memorize the music. So my horn seemed a lot easier by comparison.

So how did I end up playing bluegrass and ultimately contributing to the Welcome column? Well after not playing for 30 years I was missing music too much…..practicing, playing, and performing. Some folks shoot hoops, play baseball, do woodworking, dance, or yoga……I guess I do music. Sure I took a 30+ year hiatus with the bizarre delusion that I was too busy with my career to play…….and I wish some of my friends would have had the insight to do a musical intervention and bring me back into the fold, but it didn’t happen that way. What did happen is that I just couldn’t stand not playing anymore…so I went to the 5^th String in Berkeley and after some consideration purchased not a guitar like I intended…but instead bought a resophonic guitar, known as a dobro to most of the world. Best damn thing I’ve done in a long time. Some folks say you don’t choose the dobro….it chooses you. I do endorse that wisdom. The other thing that happened was discovering the CBA…the music camp and the Father’s Day Festival. There is a reason why many of the classes at the CBA camp fill on the first day of enrollment…..the instructors and experience is unsurpassed. But then again most of you already know that. So one thing led to another, I rekindled my obsession with playing music, and renewed my acquaintance with blue grass.

Now life is almost back to the way it should be. I get to practice my dobro at home for hours at a time, I get to play with friends and interesting strangers at jams, and I even occasionally get to have the thrill and embarrassment of performing. It’s all strangely comfortable.

I just can’t seem to find my old hacky sack.

When you get down to it though, bluegrass is a music that speaks to me in a profoundly personal way. Bluegrass has deep roots in the South and describes life in a language, panorama, and rhythm that is my home and heritage. And when I go home, and most of the folks that I know that grew up in the South still refer to it as home, now I look at the landscape and people through the lyrics and hear the language and rhythms in the melodies. Ain’t it glorious.

"In the South, perhaps more than any other region, we go back to our home in dreams and memories, hoping it remains what it was on a lazy, still summer's day twenty years ago." Willie Morris