Red Henry
Folks, I attended a local jam session last night. I’d been there many times before, but this time things were different: there were only a few pickers, but a lot of listeners. And the listeners wanted to listen to music.
Nobody was in charge. The pickers were standing around chatting, or acting as if they weren’t really there to play. This went on for a long time. Finally, I got out my mandolin and accumulated enough pickers to start. At first we had two guitars, two mandolins, and two fiddles. (That’s not much for this jam, which often includes 8 or 9 guitars and other instruments to match). And these were just nice folks who were there because they liked to play along, not because they’d want to take the lead in singing or picking.
It was time to start off with a song. Now, in a fairly disorganized session such as this, do you show off your favorite, fanciest new tune? Do you dazzle the folks with all the notes you can play? No. You play a song everybody knows, in a familiar key, and at a tempo at which everybody can follow. It’s a little bit like a slow jam situation. So in this case, I sang “Wabash Cannonball”, in G, at a moderate speed, and everyone was able to keep up.
I finished the song, and the audience responded nicely. They were paying attention. But among the musicians, nothing happened. No one else was ready to sing. Things ground to a halt.
That put me in an awkward situation. At most jam sessions, people take turns singing and playing their songs. That means that it was someone else’s turn, but the trouble was this time that nobody else wanted to sing. So I decided to take a little bit of charge. I did some introductions and a commercial for the folks who were hosting the event, and then sang another easy number, “Mountain Dew”, also in G and at only a little faster tempo than before. All the pickers kept up well, and the listeners liked that one too. But then things threatened to die again, as no one else came forward to sing and I didn’t think that I ought to be an M.C. for the night. So I decided to risk another song. I told the listeners a few true facts about our friend Clermont Hosford, by way of introduction, and sang “What About You”, in the easy key of D, and decided that I’d let the session go back to standing around and chatting if nothing happened soon.
Finally, at this point, our friend Gerald came in. Gerald knows a lot of songs and sings them well, and he also plays some lead guitar, which gave us some variety from the mandolin-and-fiddle-only sound we’d had before. He sang “More Pretty Girls Than One”. A good bass player arrived at that point, along with a couple more guitar players and singers, and the session was really under way with a fuller sound and more participation. But it had taken some work to get it there! Then we all picked for a long time, and lots of folks took turns singing.
I guess that if there’s a lesson here, it’s that sometimes the usual “taking turns” jam session format won’t work if no one wants to take a turn. In cases like that, just make suggestions and take an extra turn if you need to. To sing three numbers in a row is usually bad jam session etiquette, but if the session’s going to die out if nobody does anything, then just sing a song!
Red
Awww, come on and admit it, Red. The pickers were standing ’round and acting as if they weren’t really there to play because there wasn’t a banjo to start and keep the jam session rolling on. I bet the whole night sounded as if half of the pickers there were picking on double strings – just joshing with you. (Remember your one to many joke?) Another good entry and thanks.
“One too many,” right!
It’s a little strange that this jam, which attracts as many as 11 guitar players plus two or three fiddlers and a few mandolin pickers, is usually short on banjos, with either one or none.
Red