Today I had a particularly banjo-filled day. I started out by sitting down to practice Pat Flynn’s material because I’m going to play a few songs with him at the Station Inn tomorrow night. But when I sat down, for some reason I was particularly inspired (could very well have been the new sweater I was wearing) and all these little licks and pretty rolls patterns started coming out of my banjo. So I worked on that for a while, trying to put them together into what will ultimately become “The Sweater Song.” Then I did actually practice what I was supposed to practice for a while, including the New Grass Revival songs “How Many Hearts” and “Do What You Gotta Do,” which require me to learn Bela Fleck licks—not my strong suit and therefore requiring a LOT of practice.
In the afternoon Michelle Canning came for a lesson. Michelle is the one who bought the second Casey Henry model banjo. She and her mom are in Nashville for a week of seeing the sights and stopped in for a lesson. She is turning into quite the banjo picker. I showed her a relatively obscure Scruggs tune: “Pick Along”. I learned it off of the Scruggs Revue LP “Strike Anywhere” and we listened to that track at the end of the lesson. Some things about the Scruggs Revue I like, some things I don’t like. Among the things that I don’t care for is that the banjo is not high enough in the mix. The saxophone takes a pretty good break, though…
The final event of the night was a practice with Pat Flynn of the songs we’re doing Wednesday night. We just ran the songs once or twice through, since I’d played all of them with him before. We’re just doing these numbers as a duo, though, so that means there is nowhere to hide. I have to know that stuff cold. So there will be at least a couple hours between now and show time when I’ll have the banjo in my hands running the tunes, or, to use an acedemic term, cramming. As I often point out to my students, cramming doesn’t really work in music, but it sure makes me feel better!