Dusty Strings Jam, 2013/11/10
A huge turnout at the Dusty Strings jam today — we ended up expanding the circle out to the walls of the room, and still had some folks squeezed into the corners. The tunes we played were:
- Old Joe Clark (A)
- Soldier’s Joy (D)
- Tune of the Month: [Go/Come] Home With [the] Girls in the Morning (D dorian)
(Download) - Red-Haired Boy (A)
- Tennessee Waltz (D)
- Leather Britches (G)
- The Moon and Seven Stars (D)
- Emma(‘s Waltz) (Dm)
- Whiskey Before Breakfast (D)
- Stormy Night (Gm)
- Arkansas Traveler (D)
- Lazy John (D)
- Me and My Fiddle (G/D)
- Over the Waterfall (D)
- Johnny Don’t Get Drunk (D)
- Paddy on the Handcar (A dorian)
- Road to Batoche (G/Em)
- Hills of Mexico (D)
- Angeline the Baker (D)
- The Girl I Left Behind Me (G)
- Faded Love (D)
- St. Anne’s Reel (D)
- Woodchopper’s Reel (D)
- Buffalo Gals (A)
- Cripple Creek (A)
- Bile Them Cabbage Down (A)
- Midnight on the Water (D)
21 of those tunes were called by people in the circle, and there were some abstentions, so I’d guess we had at least 25 players, including a few younger kids, which was awesome. I think this jam has the widest and most even age distribution of any of the jams I’ve been to in town, and I think it’s important to have that. Not just for encouraging kids to play, which is great, but also for encouraging older beginners. I don’t think there’s much recognition of how hard it is to pick up a new skill later in life, not just because of reduced brain plasticity, but because older beginners don’t have the social shielding that kids do — nobody’s going to snub a kid who’s just learning to play, but there’s less of a social penalty for doing so to an older beginner. So, hooray for the Dusty Strings old-time jam for not doing that.
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