THE DAILY GRIST…“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” Rudyard Kipling.
It’s the middle of festival season all across the nation, and as I have just returned from Grass Valley and am getting ready for Summergrass next month, my mind thinks on all the wonderful jams going on at all these great summer festivals. Jamming – what joyful concept to experience in today’s world! To highlight this, for example, here is just one experience Mike & I had back in 2014 at Bluegrass at the Beach in Lake Havasu. Here below is my 2014 Daily Grist column describing this memorable jam experience.
<i>Playing music takes you to situations you’d probably never imagine. The first of the month, Mike Sr. and I traveled to the Lake Havasu festival Bluegrass on the Beach which is promoted by Larry & Sondra Baker. It’s such a great event and we love the drive through the late winter desert areas to see how things are beginning to bloom, etc. Our friends Kit and Mary Birkett were traveling with us in their motorhomes.
The year before at this festival, we were jamming one night at our campground when two guys from Manitoba, Canada walked up with their mandolin and guitar and a terrific jam developed. This led to another great jam the next night. We exchanged emails and vowed to keep in touch. This year the Manitoba boys, Stephen and Terry, let us know that they would be at the festival again and would be looking forward to another jam with us. Friday evening found us all jamming inside our motorhome as it rained outside. Another great jam! And then Sunday afternoon found us all gathered enjoying another across the border music swap.
Delightfully, this year we got to know each other a little more. Between songs, we talked about the weather, where they left -50 degree weather to come to the festival. And then we discussed the drought here in the California and the Southwest. Stephen is a dairy farmer and he had a lot of current information on water usage and worldwide drought concerns that are affecting people globally. Terry is a financial planner so he had some definite takes on the state of current affairs. And let’s not forget the unique discussion on the latest dairy farmer acquisition – robots that milk cows. You heard it first right here, folks.
The Manitoba boys also shared that growing up in a small Canadian town before the internet was available there gave them little access to bluegrass music. They literally relied on one or two bluegrass albums that the large town music stores carried. They learned their bluegrass from those records like the Bluegrass Band Album and a couple Bill Monroe LPs. Because of this, they surmise that this is why a great many other Canadian pickers like them are steeped in the traditional bluegrass songs yet today. And this is reflected in their jamming tunes of choice. They also felt that through playing traditional bluegrass songs they somehow could more closely experience the feeling coming out of Kentucky when Bill Monroe was playing bluegrass. This is the nostalgia that bluegrass music holds for them – the idea to re-live those days through the music of that era. They explained, “This was the only way we could really feel what the music was since we lived so far away from it.” Indeed, they felt it captured most Canadians in that way. As such, they weren’t exposed to much progressive bluegrass, but stayed with playing the more traditional songs.
So at our jams we shared together, we had a new understanding of why they usually played the more traditional numbers, and why they weren’t as familiar with the more progressive numbers we played. It was a real pleasure to hear them sing the high harmonies and traditional numbers of Monroe, Stanley, etc., and they, in turn, really enjoyed our more modern tune choices. Because of our jam tune selections, our current events and history discussions, and comraderie, these jams have now become the annual meeting of the “Polar Vortexans.” At the jam’s end, we all shook hands and looked forward to our next summer jam in 2015. And, happily, I think this is only one jam story amongst many others out there happening all the time. Heartwarming.</i>
This festival season, wherever you are – at a festival, on vacation, or at home – give yourself a treat and search out a bluegrass jam. You’ll make some lasting friendships and memories. Smiles guaranteed.
