Red Onion Jam Report

I went to the new Tuesday night jam at the Red Onion Tavern in Madison Park this week to check out the new space and see how I felt about playing with that group of folks. Driving there was super easy, and parking nearby was easy to find, a definite improvement over Conor Byrne in Ballard. If I were taking the bus, it would be harder to get to, and require me to go downtown to transfer. So, easier to get to by car, harder to get to by bus.

The space itself is great. A jam circle of  around 20-24 people fit in the front room, with a few people sitting around the edges of the room at tables. If you get there early enough, you can choose a seat by the fireplace or the door, depending on whether you prefer warm or cool, or back by the bar for room temperature. The acoustics were good, better than I remember Conor Byrne being. It’s a little smaller than Conor Byrne, I think, and the jam circle has definite boundaries which means that the jam probably can’t be as big as it could have been before.

I didn’t try any of the food on the menu, but I saw a few people order pizzas which looked pretty good. There were pretzels and roasted nuts, and a decent selection of beers on tap and bottled. I had a Manny’s Pale Ale and a Woodchuck apple cider. There are pool tables in the back, and a pinball table and video golf game by the bar. It looks like they have free wifi; I noticed folks using laptops and tablets.

As for the feel of the jam itself, well, it’s above my level. This is a jam populated by strong players with lots of experience. Local notables I saw included Jerry Gallaher, Candy Goldman, Tony Mates, David Cahn, W.B. Reid, Bonnie Zahnow, and a few others I recognized but couldn’t quite place. There were some folks I recognized from the Canote/Goldman string band class, and a banjo player I recognized from the Dusty Strings jam. It was mainly fiddles, with a fair number of guitars, two or three banjos, and two ukeleles that I saw. The pace was fast, and the tunes were mostly unfamiliar to me. The two tunes I did know (Barlow Knife and Shove The Pig’s Foot Further In The Fire) were played way faster than I normally play them (and faster than they are on the recordings I learned them from — I like Pig’s Foot around 105bpm max; they were playing around 130bpm). I do appreciate that they stay in one key for a good long while before switching; that must make things easier for the banjos and other instruments which have to retune or switch out for different keys. I think that may make things a little boring for the guitar players, though — I noticed a number of people switching back and forth between guitar and something else, usually fiddle. This week, they started in G and switched to C after the break. I don’t know any tunes in C, so I left after the break.

But! While this isn’t the jam for me right now, I can almost see there from here. Most of the tunes, I could figure out how to play at least a stripped-down version of by right around the last time through. And there’s plenty of room in the corners and around the back of the circle for sitting back and quietly trying to figure things out. So, there’s that. And this would be a good jam to bring a recorder to, to pick up some new tunes. There’s a ton of repertoire among the players here, and it sounds like they like sharing their less well-known tunes.

So I don’t want to dissuade any beginner or intermediate players from going to this jam. If nothing else, it’s a good free concert. And it seems like the people I saw there are people I see at a lot of other old-time events around town, so if you’re the social type looking for a “scene”, this is probably part of it. (Speaking of which, I was pleasantly surprised that about 20% of the folks there looked to be under 40. Which is not to say I don’t like older folks; it just seems like I’ve seen two distinct old-time communities — greybeards who’ve been playing together since the seventies or earlier, and early-twenties music school graduates — and it’s nice to see some overlap.) But I, personally, didn’t feel like I particularly belonged there, except quietly doing my thing in the back.

I’ll go back, though I might trade the fiddle for a digital recorder next time. And I want to try that pizza.

The Red Onion Tavern is at 4210 E Madison St, and the jam is every Tuesday from 8-11pm. I think they’ll be experimenting with starting at 7:30 next week, to see how that goes.