Sunday Session
Apr. 24th, 2005 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeanvieveWell, we voted to skip band practice and go to session at Connor O'Neill's in Boulder. On Sundays from about 7:30 to 10:30 any musician can show up and play with the session, and your bar tab is free. This is, alas, mostly wasted on a flute player as one needs that fine motor control in one's lips that alcohol takes away. I had a hot chocolate and switched to water pretty quickly.
Okay. Session. There are elaborate rules and customs attached to any Session, and after due consideration I've thought of the perfect analogy. For a performance/studio musician to first attend Session is to be like a devout early morning Catholic Mass attendee who visits the Baptist praise ceremony for the first time. One wonders nervously when one is supposed to start kneeling, standing, sitting, while everyone else jumps up and down and claps their hands and sings songs that sound like what you know but aren't. Then one jumps up to clap and get into it with courage, just as everyone else is sitting down and regarding one with that quizzical but patronizingly benevolent look they might give an idiot child or cousin who 'ain't quite right' but is still family.
The names were easy. All the men were named Michael and the women didn't introduce themselves. One was Laura, and I know that because Michael knew and said it out loud. Very fine fiddle player. Only one guitarist plays at a time according to the Michael who sat down first and seemed to know the place so well. A bit reprooving to my Michael, who shrugged and went to get his bass out of the car. Now, there can be up to 5 fiddles playing at once in various keys and intonations, and any number of mandolins. But by GOD that man was not going to have another guitar play over him. He condescended to shake my hand at the end and say it was fun, so I'll have to go back in two weeks. There were other cheerier sorts there as well, that smiled a lot more. But since my first praise cer-..Session when I joined a girl singing (as her voice was not strong, she was having trouble being heard) and she stopped singing to lecture me on the etiquette and who did I think I was yadda yadda I haven't tried to sing there much. There is a reigning queen, and I am no pretender to the throne.
Still had fun though. We discussed the need to record a bit, nodding all around. Some spectators hearing Mark, Michael and I play together in a quieter moment asked to buy CDs and coincidentally Michael had some. What luck. And something about playing Irish Music - it rained all afternoon and evening. The rain is still falling outside, softly at my back.
Must memorize about 30 more Irish tunes (need reels especially) in the next few months. Yeah.
Okay. Session. There are elaborate rules and customs attached to any Session, and after due consideration I've thought of the perfect analogy. For a performance/studio musician to first attend Session is to be like a devout early morning Catholic Mass attendee who visits the Baptist praise ceremony for the first time. One wonders nervously when one is supposed to start kneeling, standing, sitting, while everyone else jumps up and down and claps their hands and sings songs that sound like what you know but aren't. Then one jumps up to clap and get into it with courage, just as everyone else is sitting down and regarding one with that quizzical but patronizingly benevolent look they might give an idiot child or cousin who 'ain't quite right' but is still family.
The names were easy. All the men were named Michael and the women didn't introduce themselves. One was Laura, and I know that because Michael knew and said it out loud. Very fine fiddle player. Only one guitarist plays at a time according to the Michael who sat down first and seemed to know the place so well. A bit reprooving to my Michael, who shrugged and went to get his bass out of the car. Now, there can be up to 5 fiddles playing at once in various keys and intonations, and any number of mandolins. But by GOD that man was not going to have another guitar play over him. He condescended to shake my hand at the end and say it was fun, so I'll have to go back in two weeks. There were other cheerier sorts there as well, that smiled a lot more. But since my first praise cer-..Session when I joined a girl singing (as her voice was not strong, she was having trouble being heard) and she stopped singing to lecture me on the etiquette and who did I think I was yadda yadda I haven't tried to sing there much. There is a reigning queen, and I am no pretender to the throne.
Still had fun though. We discussed the need to record a bit, nodding all around. Some spectators hearing Mark, Michael and I play together in a quieter moment asked to buy CDs and coincidentally Michael had some. What luck. And something about playing Irish Music - it rained all afternoon and evening. The rain is still falling outside, softly at my back.
Must memorize about 30 more Irish tunes (need reels especially) in the next few months. Yeah.
