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