Saturday, May 5 was a beautiful day in Washington Square Park.
For a while I listened to a very capable (ie, professional) blue-grass quintet: guitar, banjo, mando, stand-up bass. The guitar player (also the strongest singer) was a guy I recognized from Paddy Reilly's. I sat in the audience on the low retaining wall nearby and blew along on the harp for a couple of numbers. Sounded OK to me, but they never invited me to stand up and join them. Good warm-up anyway. I saw them send away a couple of guys with guitar and mando who asked to play with them ("this isn't really a jam").
OK, I could criticize these guys for not being open. On the other hand, I know from experience how accoustic music can seriously degrade when there are too many instruments playing at once, especially if some of them are off the beat or out of tune. Paddy Reilly jam often has 6 guitarists, 4 mandos, 3 banjos a couple of fiddles, and assorted others. It invariably sounds muddy and diffuse, even though many of the musicians are excellent. By contrast, this group in the park sounded terrific, probably because they kept it to a minimum (though a fiddle and dobro would have made it even better). So I understand what they were doing.
So I wandered over to where Pete was playing and spent a couple of hours. There was a guy named Jay there, who was a strong gutsy singer and accompanied himself on an Ovation Applause. Kind of a classic rock guy, I suppose: he did a Doors blues, a U2 ballad which I thought went great with the harp, American Pie, The Weight (a park standard) sung along to Bobby McGee in Janis mode, even though Pete was in Kristofferson mode. He said he was in a band--I guess he is the front man.
I did a few Hank shit-kickers, which I am getting pretty satisfied with. I would like to learn a few more.
A guy named Jeff who I met before played some nice leads on a Gibson, Dan was playing recorder and singing some harmonies, Ron was also singing some harmonies. Larry came by later on and did some Cat Stevens songs that a tourist in the audience kept requesting, as well as Nashville Cats which sounded great with harmonies (and I knocked out a very satisfying harp solo).
Towards the end, Pete, Dan and Ron harmonized on a couple of oldies. These guys are old hands at this kind of song and they always sound great to me.
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2 comments:
I think that's pretty obnoxious. if they want to play professionals, they should book shows instead of being indignant when someone wants to play with them in a park that is known for people jamming.
Glad you had fun anyway!
I didn't hear the whole conversation, but it didn't seem particularly heated--more along the lines of "well..actually we'd rather you didn't." And they were playing for money, which comes with a slightly different set of rules then just hanging out and playing for fun. But they certainly weren't friendly.
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