Blues Guitar Unleashed regional jams have been a regular enough feature in this blog that I’m not going to open this post with another explanation of what they are (although if you need that, see my posts from last year or the year before that). Beginning last December my friend and fellow musician Bob (aka BobbyUT) has been making and tweaking all the necessary arrangements for our gang of blues brothers and sisters to get together this fall in his hometown of Parker, Colorado, just south of Denver, for 4-1/2 days of music and mayhem. That event took place last week, and history was made. Again.
Sue and I have already written about how we got here and what we’ve been doing with Bob since we arrived in Parker well in advance of our plan (and of the event, itself). Finally, the day came when all the anticipation was behind us and the rest of the gang started to arrive! In all there were 25 BGU members who came to Parker to jam. The guitarists had been arranged into groups of 3 (except 25 isn’t divisible by 3, so we had two 2-member groups whose vacant #3 slots would be filled by a rotation of volunteers, sometimes pre-arranged, sometimes not). A new feature this year – Bob’s idea – was that each group chose a Band Name for themselves. These are listed at the bottom of the poster in the lead photo at the top of this post (click to enlarge), and I’ll put them in the appropriate photo captions below.
The venue Bobby found and booked for us, the Studio @ Mainstreet, is a combination of a performance and event venue (with a pro-level sound system, a very cool stage, and plenty of indoor and outdoor seating) and a local pub with a small and dedicated crew of regulars who totally reminded me of the TV show Cheers. The pub mostly kept to its regular hours, remaining open to the public (and to us, of course) for much of our event. On top of that, a handful or two of the players’ non-playing spouses plus a few relatives and friends were around from time to time to listen and watch and socialize, so the feeling and experience of performing on stage was all the more real. Probably this is also a good place to mention the co-owners (Lyanna and Ralph) and staff (talking about you, Kayleigh!) who were unbelievably welcoming, helpful, attentive – and patient! (Did I mention that we’re a quirky bunch?).
The guitarists were joined on stage by a drummer – most often Chris G, a friend and former bandmate of Bob’s whom Bob hired to back us up. If not Chris, then it was either Sue or my Albuquerque bandmate Gary (when we could pry him away from telling stories ;-)) who sat in on the drum kit to give Chris a few breaks. Filling out the rhythm section was a bass player drawn from an ever-expanding pool of multi-instrumentalist members – me (aka dvs), Chris D (twonotesolo), Lloyd (PapaRaptor), Elio (Elio), and our newest low-ender Bob (BobbyUt). The onstage crew often also included a keyboard player – most of the time Sue, if she wasn’t drumming, and sometimes Frank (FrankL). At our Wednesday night show we also had two ringers from outside tickling the ivories for us – venue co-owner Ralph and local celeb bandleader Ryan. And I didn’t forget our extraordinary harmonica players Larry (LarryH) and Elio.
Each group got to hit the stage for 3 or 4 songs at a time, aiming for about a 20-minute set, and then the next group would take their place. Rinse, reapply, repeat. That’s how it went for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and on Wednesday night we were the featured entertainment at Studio @ Mainstreet’s weekly, open-to-the-public live music show! How cool is that? The word on the street is that more people hung out to listen to us than there were down at the other end of the block with the pro band at the Studio’s main live-music competitor.
On the final day of the event, the frenetic pace of the previous three days was certainly affecting all of us players. Rather than follow our regular rotation, we formed ad-hoc groups to try new songs, to play with people we’d never played with before, coach somebody leading a group through a song for the first time, getting someone who’d never sung in public before up in front of the mic, and things like that. One of the highlights for me was to play along with my bandmate Chris D as he took his first turn at the mic to sing a French song called Un Autre Monde, by the group Telephone, that he says is what moved him to learn to play guitar in the first place. (Hopefully there is a video of it, because it is a beautiful song and I think the performance went very well. If not, I’ll put a link to the original song by the original band.)
Something that struck me (and a few others of us who’ve been doing these jams for a while) is how much better all these groups are sounding from one year to the next – and the rate of this improvement is accelerating. (Here I am speaking generally, not about specific groups since there are different groups of different people every time we do this – although I certainly also see remarkable improvements in each player I already know, whether through the forum or IRL.) I have a theory about what might be going on here. When most of us old-timers started going to jams, we’d learned more than a few things about playing blues from Griff’s courses, and we each knew how to play a handful of blues standards from start to finish, how to play a solo and comp, but we’d not done it much (if at all) with other people, never practiced signaling, maybe never even encountered a need to watch for signals, never had to play in time with someone else. A whole jam group would be standing nervously up on the stage, each with decent technical skills on guitar, none really sure how to get started, when to trade off soloing, whose turn is it (wait, who decides that? do I just go?) and jeez, how do we end this?
Each time we tried it we’d do a little better, mostly by trial and error, and eventually we could get through our song without a train wreck. And yes, we did learn! As more of us became more comfortable playing with a group, the new folks at the next jam had more folks they could watch and learn from, and there were more people around (in addition to Griff) who could help coach and provide useful models to imitate. Somewhere in the last 10 or 12 years we reached a critical mass of experienced players and there is now a substantial cohort of members at these jams who know a lot more than any of us did “back in the day.” By now, the jam organizers can (and do) purposefully arrange groups so that new people have the opportunity to play with and observe more experienced players who can coach them and the group.
At this jam, we had four members who were attending their first BGU event. All four were experienced guitar players with some serious skills. I believe Liz and Marc (aka MarcV) have both spent some time up on stage. Marc plays in a band back east. Liz does open mics and has been trying to build interest in a regular blues jam near where she lives in NY. They jumped right into the deep end, started swimming and never looked back. Brandon and Dave brought their considerable technical skills and musicality to the stage for the first time ever, and they, too, hit the ground running.
I want to express my thanks to my friends Chris (twonotesolo) and John (JPSuff), my jam partners in Group I (our chosen band name was Grew π). I’ve known both of these guys “virtually” for years through our participation in the BGU online forums (we’re all three among the more prolific members there, although among these jam attendees we may not particularly stand out for that). Anyway, Chris I’ve met in person several times at BGU jams and we’ve gotten together a couple of times when Sue and I were traveling through Colorado, where Chris lives. John and I met in person for the first time at this jam in Parker. Our group took a relatively relaxed approach to preparation, although as I mentioned in an earlier post Chris and I had a couple of late-in-the-game opportunities to play together while our RV was getting fixed. Perhaps at that point a little panic began to set in, prompting a few hasty phone calls, emails and chats between the three of us, a hotel-room rehearsal and practice session once we’d all arrived in Parker, and an ad-hoc marathon analysis and arrangement session on the T-Bone Shuffle during one of our afternoon breaks. All of it was fun, and we all learned a few things. Highlights? For me, that arrangement we finally settled on for T-Bone shuffle is a big one; Dear Mr. Fantasy; hearing JP’s amazing slow-blues soloing (Live And In Person!) on Stormy Monday and Sky is Crying; and I already mentioned playing Un Autre Monde with Chris.
Other highlights of the event for me include singing Summertime with Be Sharp (Group C, Liz and DougE aka backSlash), all the times I got to sit in on the bass guitar (way more than I ever have before), and playing so many songs with Sue on drums or keys – especially Magic Carpet Ride, Flip Flop and Fly, Dear Mr. Fantasy (also w/ Brian aka Ted_Zeppelin), and The Letter with Mike N (BraylonJennings).
When they are available, I will add links to a few videos here. Sue and I didn’t record any video ourselves, however others did with a stated intention to share, so keep checking back…
There are more of our photos available in these flickr albums: BGU/DEN Group pix, BGU/DEN Fun pix, and some taken by friends that they have allowed us to use are in this one: BGU/DEN OP (other people’s) pix.
Great synopsis of a super week.
Thanks, Mike! Great to see you and Marsha again.