Red Henry
Folks, I just had an excellent music weekend, and it was all local! The musical situations were all over the place (from “one end to the other” of the possibilities), but I had a good time. And it all showed how it’s possible to have fun in a really wide variety of situations.
Thursday night, I went out to the local jam. There were a lot of pickers and a lot of listeners, and we played for a couple of hours. Now, some folks don’t like getting into those situations where you might have a lot of guitar players (we had seven), or a lot of fiddle players (we had four), or a bunch of banjo players (there was just one, but some folks think that’s one too many—just kidding). But I had a mandolin with me that doesn’t get drowned out by guitars and banjos, and Chris had set up his sound system to relieve some of the customary local-jam confusion, and everybody had a good time. We all just took turns leading songs or tunes, and the session had good material and balance. Chris and I finished the evening up, singing Monroe’s “Toy Heart”. Thursday night was fun. One out of one!
On Friday evening I played at Borders Bookstore. Fortunately, Chris and Jenny were both able to come play, so we had a real good three-piece band. We picked from 7:00 to 9:00, playing one set of whatever songs came to mind, and then another set, mostly of requests. The crowd was one of the best I’ve played for in months, and they kept listening and paying attention and responding the whole time.
Jenny Obert, Chris Henry, Red Henry performing in May 2009.
I admit I’m sometimes reluctant to take a lot of requests because often people ask for songs and then don’t listen to them being played, but at Borders the audience was so responsive, and our music was so much fun, that I knew we’d sound good and the folks would respond even if we were just playing the “Wildwood Flower”. And we did, and they did. We finished up with my tune “Centerville Road”. It was fun. Two out of two!
Saturday looked a bit more difficult. For probably 20 years Murphy and I have performed for our local fire department’s annual yard party. The fire department folks set up a stage outdoors, and we play for their big annual crowd. Each year, we’ve had a band there. Sometimes it was Red and Murphy & Co. Sometimes it was Red and Murphy and Their Excellent Children. Sometimes it was just Red and Murphy playing a duet show. And last year Murphy was out of town, so I recruited Cousin David and his friend John, and we had a good impromptu band with the three of us.
But this year, I couldn’t round up a group. Murphy was gone. Chris and Jenny each had paying jobs playing music out of town. Cousin David was playing at a fiddle contest an hour away. So I was going to have to play solo, moving and setting up the sound equipment myself as well as providing the music. (That’s work for one person, but it’s okay if the situation’s right.) The trouble was that it started raining Saturday morning, and by the afternoon it was coming down hard! This did not bode well. What now?
I drifted over to the fire hall. The yard party wasn’t canceled because of the rain but just moved indoors, where a large crowd was enjoying chicken dinners and socializing. So I just set up to play in a corner of that big room, without a sound system. (“Setting up” in this case means tuning my guitar and fiddle, putting an extra flatpick in the watch pocket of my jeans, and standing up to play.) I launched into the good old “Tennessee Stud”, taking a guess at something the folks might recognize, and went from there.
There are disadvantages to performing in a large, echoey room where one or two hundred people are talking loudly. It’s hard to hear. It would have been hard work, except that I had some listeners. They sat close in front of me and requested some numbers: “Tennessee Waltz”, “Westphalia Waltz”, several other tunes too. There was no point in trying to play loud, so I concentrated on playing just to them. The results, in spite of the difficult situation, were quite enjoyable. I played guitar for a while, then fiddle for a while, then more guitar. People were listening. I played two sets and the fire department sent me home with a chicken dinner (it was good, too). So in a situation that could have been a musical disaster—believe me, I’ve seen enough noisy rooms to know– it all went fine.
Three days, three musical events. Three good times. Did I get rich? Well, no. But we don’t play bluegrass for that. Bluegrass pickers play because they like to, and I’m one of ‘em.
Red, you wrote a fantastic entry and in reply to the last sentence of the last paragraph I say, “Yes, you certainly are.” You are a talented, experienced and knowlegeable bluegrass musician. I guess everybody is asking themselves, “Where in the world does Red get all his energy?” You and Chris finished up Thursday night as father and son duo and that is something you have to brag about. By the way, when I first glanced at the above photo I thought you were on a tropical island.
Steve, thanks for the note. That tropical photo of us was taken last May, at the Florida Folk Festival’s Seminole Hut. More on that (along with the two other band members who were there with us) is at http://blog.murphymethod.com/category/shows/page/2/ .
Red