One of the most endearing things about bluegrass is the improvisation. Songs (or tunes) have a melody, which establishes the identity of the piece, but when the instrumentalists take their solos, the music joins other great musical forms (like jazz or the blues) in on-the-spot creativity. Every jammer has had a night when they nailed their solo turn, and it can make your whole weekend, and be a bragging point for years to follow.
But if you play music in public, you know there’s another kind of improvisation, which requires a whole different level of creativity. When you’re hauling instruments and gear over the miles, Murphy’s law is in full effect, and the unexpected developments therein make for some crazy moments.
A missing or broken instrument happens fairly often. I have a friend who arrived at a gig, opened her fiddle case, and discovered it was empty! Luckily, at a festival gig, there is not shortage of fiddles to cure that malady. It happens to everyone – I was at a concert where Robbie McCoury had to borrow a banjo because the airline broke his. As it turned out, he borrowed some 1920’s Mastertone from David Grisman. That’s rarified air there. I’m not going to be calling the Dawg with my instrument woes anytime soon.
When I was a much younger rock’n’roller, I broke a guitar string while getting ready for a gig and didn’t have a spare. Turned out, no one else in the band had one either. Then we remembered that a nearby department store (Montgomery Wards) had musical instruments, so we rushed over there just before closing time to see if we could buy a string. As it happened, Wards didn’t sell strings, but we begged and pleaded so piteously the salesman let us take the high E string off one of the electric guitars they had for sale – for free! How’s THAT for improvisation!
Ever lose the end pin off an acoustic guitar? There is no easy way to attach a strap with no end pin. What you can do, however, is attach a piece of thin rope to your strap, feed the rope through the hole where the end pin would go, feed the end out the soundhole, then tie a knot big enough to prevent the end from going back through the end pin hole, and you’re all set! What isn’t fun is trying to rig this up with only five minutes to show time!
I have taped microphones to all kind of contraptions, onstage and in studios, to make up for missing or broken mic stands. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Whiskey Brothers encountered something rarely seen: a broken Shure SM57. There’s no tougher mic than the venerable 57, but this one snapped in the middle of its metal case, and dangled like a broken finger. Dave Courchaine found a very small, but very thick blue rubber band, and darned if that didn’t hold the silly thing together for the gig.
The secrets to improvisation are the same, whether you’re improvising an instrumental break or a break in an instrument: Be prepared, be imaginative, and don’t panic!
