{"id":525,"date":"2011-07-07T23:22:22","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T04:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?p=525"},"modified":"2012-08-27T13:17:29","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T18:17:29","slug":"a-big-step-playing-with-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?p=525","title":{"rendered":"A Big Step: Playing with Others"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was a Big Day<\/a> for me: it was the first time I’ve played my guitar with other musicians. I went over to Jeff’s at 8:00 and after his friend Cesar arrived, the three of us played together for an hour or so.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t go as badly as I feared. I didn\u2019t feel embarrassed or humiliated and while I was probably tense, the atmosphere was loose enough that I had fun. I played some reasonably good leads, but had trouble (as I had anticipated) keeping my place when I played rhythm. In part it was so loud with both the bass and drums in a basement room that it was hard to hear the chord changes.<\/p>\n

Jeff would pick a song, and usually said what key it was in. Mostly I wasn\u2019t familiar with the songs. He did a version of Albert King’s \u201cCrosscut Saw\u201d that was in a different key than I was used to, but at least it was a familiar song. For one song, Jeff sang the notes of an accent lick he wanted me to play. I managed to figure out the notes, which pleased me.<\/p>\n

On the whole, I felt it was a successful experiment, at least from my point of view. I hope Jeff will be interested in repeating the experiment, though Cesar took his drums home at the end of the evening.<\/p>\n

About 10:30 we headed over to the Harlem Avenue Lounge<\/a>, which has an open mic blues jam on Thursdays. Jeff signed up to play and strongly encouraged me to sign up. I had taken my guitar home to avoid that possibility. Because I was still recovering from a bad cold, I was really pushing it to go at all and should probably have gone home to bed. However, I hope eventually to get up the courage to sign up and play.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad I went. It was a fun time, and it was good to hang out with Jeff. He knows a lot of the Lounge regulars. I asked him when he first started playing, and he said in junior high, when he was about 12. I wish I\u2019d started that early. At one point in the evening, he mentioned playing with Junior Wells. I\u2019ll bet he\u2019s got a lot of fascinating stories to tell about the guys he\u2019s played with over the years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was a Big Day for me: it was the first time I’ve played my guitar with other musicians. I went over to Jeff’s at 8:00 and after his friend Cesar arrived, the three of us played together for an hour or so. It didn\u2019t go as badly as I feared. I didn\u2019t feel embarrassed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,42,114,1],"tags":[62,179,15,75],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":600,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}